- Portal:Idaho (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (XfD|restore)
US State "Idaho" portal deleted almost a decade ago, due to inactivity. I would like to try to resurrect it. It would be great if the oldcode is lying around somewhere. Original author (and most of the project personnel) are long gone. WP:Refund sent me here. Mjquinn_id (talk) 13:46, 30 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- The reason I advised the OP to come here is that this is essentially a request to overturn the result of a deletion discussion, which isn't within REFUND's remit (it's only for uncontroversial restorations). Hut 8.5 07:38, 31 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment - I was the nominator of the MFD, and will try to explain, with as much context as I can, and providing as little of the bitterness and emotion as possible of the portal conflicts. The deletion was not a decade ago, but two years ago. The portal had not been maintained for about a decade. This deletion was one of hundreds of portal nominations, after thousands of portals were created by a team of editors whose objective was to create thousands of portals. Many of the portal deletion discussions were extremely contentious. One side effect that was not just a side effect was that the portal guidelines that had long been thought to be in effect were found never to have been properly adopted. An RFC to enact them as guidelines failed. As a result, we have no portal guidelines.
- The conflict over portals ended up with an ArbCom case, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Portals, due to conflict between two administrators. One of the administrators was sanctioned. ArbCom advised that a community discussion be conducted, to develop a portal guideline that would then be adopted by the community. The community discussion fizzled out, and we are almost back where we were two years ago, with no guidelines concerning portals. (At least, I am not aware of any new portal guidelines. If there are new guidelines, they may have been adopted without adequate community notice.)
- I acknowledge that I am not neutral on the subject of portals, because I am a portal skeptic. Some of the arguments in favor of portals have seemed unconvincing to me, and have struck me as having mystical aspects. I am trying to describe the portal conflicts neutrally.
- Most of the legacy portals that were the subject of contentious MFDs were of the old design, with subpages that were partial snapshots of articles, and were thus content forks. A problem with this design is that the lede section of the article often changes and the portal subpage does not change, so that a selected article reports that a person is alive, but the person has died, or that a politician is running for an office, but they are running for a different office. That design required a level of active maintenance that was seldom achieved. As a result, many portals with that design that were not being maintained were instead deleted. Portal:Idaho was one of them. Most of the portals that were deleted had very low pageview rates. Portal:Idaho had an average of 9 daily pageviews, as contrasted with the main article, Idaho, which had an average of 2377 daily pageviews.
- Newer designs, using transclusion rather than forking, have also been used, and some editors preferred the newer designs. Restoring the old portal code, as requested, would restore the old weaknesses of the portal design.
- I concluded my nomination with: "This portal should be deleted without prejudice to re-creating a portal maintained by a volunteer who is willing to invest the time to support a miniature Main Page under the portal guidelines that are in effect at the time".
- Does the appellant want to restore the old code, which involves subpages that become obsolete, or does the appellant want to implement a more modern design? Is a volunteer willing to invest time to maintain the portal?
Robert McClenon (talk) 17:32, 30 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment - I have another comment after a look at the WikiProject. WikiProject Idaho was marked in December 2018 as being believed to be inactive. If the appellant is trying to revive Wikipedia collaboration about articles on the state of Idaho, I would encourage the appellant to start by recruiting editors to the human team effort of the WikiProject. A portal is a time-intensive effort that should be led by a WikiProject, rather than using a portal to try to attract interest in a WikiProject (which puts the cart before the horse). As the template on the WikiProject says, editors who are trying to restart the state WikiProject should probably start their efforts by recruiting other editors from the national WikiProject.
- An active WikiProject should normally be a precondition to finding volunteers for a viable portal. A portal doesn't attract volunteers; it only demands them.
Robert McClenon (talk) 19:19, 30 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- Restore the only arguments put forward in the MfD were that the portal wasn't being maintained and that it didn't have many pageviews. The first reason disappears if the OP is willing to maintain it and the second one isn't much of a reason to delete anything anyway. Hut 8.5 07:38, 31 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- Hmmm... Yes, I am willing to maintain it (and the associated WikiProject)...sigh (Under the Rule:Step up and Do it Yourself). AND, I do fully intend on using the new(est) guidelines... just wanted the baseline... Unless someone could recommend an "Example" state? Then I could start by copying that.
Frankly, I am conflicted about Portals, but haven't found a better "consolidation" mechanism. When learning or investigating a new topic; it becomes a pretty priceless way to go to the portal and find the "central" location for all the possible branches to that topic. Or even the latest on your favorite topic. I know from WP:Tennis that we get a good deal of "newcomer" traffic...I can only hope we are helping with their need/desire to understand that topic...
Plus now I have to change THAT one with all the new transclusion code... (BTW, Nothing on the Wikipedia:Contents/Portals page screams, "Hey, here are the latest standards!!"... I'm just saying... Mjquinn_id (talk) 20:47, 31 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- I don't have any objection to restoring if someone's undertaking to actually maintain it, but portals are starting to die off and the extent to which they're used is unclear. Stifle (talk) 09:36, 2 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- Portals started to die off 15 years ago, and the negligible extent to which they are used has been documented (somewhere). Pageviews contains the damming data. For every step, click, they are from the Main page (itself a portal), pageviews drop ~1000-fold, which indicates that loading a portal is a rare even that does not lead to loading of portals, which indicates that portals do not serve readers. For readers, they are redundant to the parent article (eg Idaho), and for editors they are redundant to a WikiProject. SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:18, 2 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment - Replying to User:S Marshall - I was providing the history. I didn't provide a !vote as to whether to grant or decline the request, and that is why I didn't provide a policy-based reason. However, there is no policy on portals. All attempts to adopt a portal guideline failed. This probably means that Use Common Sense is the governing guideline. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:47, 3 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment - User:Stifle writes that "portals are starting to die off and the extent to which they're being used is unclear". I agree with the first clause and respectfully disagree with the second clause. It is true that I don't know to what extent portals are being used in 2020 or 2021. I can provide statistics comparing the viewing of portals to the viewing of main articles in 2018 and 2019 for hundreds of portals. It was very rarely as much as 5% of the viewing of the lead article. Do you really want to see the reports? Robert McClenon (talk) 03:47, 3 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- I guess I was implying "to me" after "unclear".
- When trying to fix the portal situation in the past has got an admin desysopped, I doubt admins are queueing up to try again. Stifle (talk) 08:40, 3 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- Restore. The reason given in the MfD was "No maintenance since 2011". Now we have somebody who wants to maintain it, so that reason is no longer valid. The worst that happens is they fail to live up to their commitment and it'll get deleted again. -- RoySmith (talk) 13:14, 3 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse the original MFD, if this is an appeal (but this isn't an appeal).
- Neutral - My only reasons for opposing restoration of the portal could be seen as personalizing a war that isn't being fought. The one policy-based argument that must be mentioned, if this is a request to restore the old portal, is that the subpages are content forks if they are not updated at the same time as the selected articles are updated. Past experience has been that subpages are almost never updated, but that is the way portals have been designed (maybe by dinosaur trappers), so that is the way many portals work. My advice to User:Mjquinn id is that either links or categories are better devices for familiarization with a topic than a portal. However, that need not concern us at DRV. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:34, 4 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- Restore a reasonable request. As far as I know, such portals are allowed and I see no reason to not let the editor have the old portal as a starting point. It was deleted for inactivity, this is solved by someone willing to work with it. Hobit (talk) 14:47, 4 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn (to archive). There was no valid reason for deletion, over archiving. “Not maintained” is a reason to archive, not a reason to delete. I see no good reason to revert the archiving. These discussions should not be played out in deletion forums. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:47, 4 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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