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 . —  JJMC89 ( T· C) 23:32, 21 April 2019 (UTC) reply

Portal:Webcomics

Portal:Webcomics ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

"This portal is maintained by the Webcomics Workforce, a subgroup of WikiProject Comics." Except that is not true. The "In the News" is "Old News" from 2014-2017. The images is showing a big red error message. The selected quote shows a red "does not exist" error. Running less than 3 page views a day so readers are not finding this neglected page useful. Even with all the mucking around on the page they can't get it to look proper. Legacypac ( talk) 19:56, 3 April 2019 (UTC) reply

• I am not sure why the images stopped working. It's odd, as they worked fine until recently, and I can't find an edit in which it may have gotten broken. The 'In the news' section is a bit hard to keep up, as it is hard to find news stories that are relevant to webcomics in general rather than just a small set of webcomics. The long timeline there is by design. I fixed the quote; the max number was indeed one higher than it should have been, so there was a chance for it to give an error message rather than a quote. I really hope someone could figure out what went wrong with the image template. Maybe the template itself got changed? ~ Maplestrip/Mable ( chat) 20:53, 3 April 2019 (UTC) reply

Your efforts would be much better served on the articles within the scope. No one is reading the portal anyway and the portal wikiproject has been too busy creating new broken portals to fix the old broken portals. Legacypac ( talk) 21:10, 3 April 2019 (UTC) reply

Well, whatever was going on (with the slideshow template?), it seems to be working again. Oornery ( talk) 23:43, 3 April 2019 (UTC) reply

@ Maplestrip, Oornery, and Legacypac: Module:Random slideshow was updated about 2 weeks ago to require that images have captions in order to be displayed. Portal:Webcomics had the text parameter, but not the caption parameter, specified on the {{ Selected image}} templates. I added the captions to fix it. -- ferret ( talk) 00:06, 4 April 2019 (UTC) reply

Image captions are a must for portals, so the change is good. So how many other portals did that change break? Legacypac ( talk) 00:15, 4 April 2019 (UTC) reply

That is a question for someone else, I have little involvement with portals. This was mostly academic for me, as I read about the images being broken on WP:Discord so took a look to see if I could fix them. (For anyone with canvassing concerns: The MfD itself was not brought up there, I found it from the tag on the portal page itself) -- ferret ( talk) 00:23, 4 April 2019 (UTC) reply

• Regarding "Your efforts would be much better served ...", was this not a rationale for deleting all portals in general? Does this not apply to most portals? I do partly agree (I especially agree that the portal WikiProject has mostly done things to break existing portals since the project-for-deletion discussion..), but it's also a fallacy to say that any effort I or other editors put into this portal will take time away from actual articles. If anything, it's the kind of change-of-pace that can energize a person to become more active in general. Either way, now that all the minor fixes have been done, I would certainly say keep. I should keep track of this page more, because I like it and it may be a good way for me to get back into Wikipedia again after having gone through a bit of a slump. ~ Maplestrip/Mable ( chat) 05:18, 4 April 2019 (UTC) reply

Absolutely - most to all portals should be deleted. They don't serve readers as shown by the readers who don't use them. Every topic shows the same trend. Google does not send readers to portals. Searching on Wikipedia does not bring up portals unless you specifically ask for them. Even portals linked at the top of the mainpage (the best links on the whole site) get pitiful traffic. The only reason I care about portals is I'd like to see readers get the best experience possible and junk portals don't provide a good experiece. If you are modivated by having people read your work, pick an article. Legacypac ( talk) 05:51, 4 April 2019 (UTC) reply

• Delete - The above discussion indicates that this portal was another good-faith effort that is not being maintained. Robert McClenon ( talk) 03:22, 5 April 2019 (UTC) reply

• Could someone link me to some specific deletion policies for portals? I have difficulty finding any, and I would like to put the work into this page to keep it existing. ~ Maplestrip/Mable ( chat) 07:44, 8 April 2019 (UTC) reply

Sure User:Maplestrip there are WP:POG but they are not reflective of community consensus (too loose). Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal MFD Results is already fallen out of date but the discussions will help you see what is expected now. Legacypac ( talk) 08:00, 8 April 2019 (UTC) reply

Thanks, @ Legacypac:! Looking through the deletion list, the pattern I'm noticing is that the deleted portals were generally semi-automatically and/or nobody came forward with any interest in maintaining them. The Guideline page doesn't have a clear deletion criteria, but I suppose the following line comes closest: "The portal layout should be complete or there should be ongoing efforts to make the portal layout complete. The portal should be maintained and serve a useful purpose." I'm going to set up a monthly check-up to make sure errors like the image one don't pop up again and to include new information (adding a few missing 'on this day' entries right now). ~ Maplestrip/Mable ( chat) 08:14, 8 April 2019 (UTC) reply

I think the other sentence that is relevant is this: ". . . should be about broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers." How many readers has this portal attracted? UnitedStatesian ( talk) 17:14, 11 April 2019 (UTC) reply

• Delete This dies not meeto WP:POG's breadth-of-subject-area requirement, and is unlikely to attract a large number of interested readers. UnitedStatesian ( talk) 17:17, 11 April 2019 (UTC) reply

463 page views on a portal is quite good. But 8900 on the related article shows which readers find more useful. Legacypac ( talk) 17:20, 11 April 2019 (UTC) reply

An entire form of media is not a large enough breadth-of-subject? We have around 600 articles under the webcomic project, which is not particularly huge, but it is ten times bigger than something like Mario. (and as for which page readers find more useful, isn't that the case for literally all portals?) ~ Maplestrip/Mable ( chat) 08:10, 12 April 2019 (UTC) reply

• Delete. Unused, and unmaintainable: even the portal's creator Maplestrip acknowledges above that it is hard to find news stories that are relevant to webcomics in general. The data is clear that as with most portals, readers simply do not use this one. They use the head article instead:

January-March 2019 pageviews for Portal:Webcomics: Total 242, or 3 /day

January-March 2019 pageviews for head article Webcomic: Total 30,799, or 342 /day

That's 127 views of the head article for every view of the portal.

Yet again, the data confirms what be seen from simply looking at the two pages: the head article itself does a great job as a navigational hub, and the portal is redundant. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 12:37, 12 April 2019 (UTC) reply

What I meant with the news stories aspect is that those simply aren't particularly relevant to the subject matter because it is distributed. Unlike an industry, there are relatively few major organizations defining the news. There's no Marvel/DC/Dark Horse/Imagine, there's no Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft, there's no Hollywood. It's a different kind of medium, one that simply doesn't work well with news specifically. The other aspects of the portal are still fine, and the few major news stories one can report are particularly interesting. As for which page is used more: aren't all articles viewed 100 times more often than their corresponding portal? Portal:China got 13,000 pageviews in 90 days, while China got over 2 million. That's 154 times more pageviews on the article compared to the portal.

....I beg of someone to tell me, why webcomics and not any of the thousands of other portals? A friend informed me that Portal:Video games doesn't have any news stories from 2008 onwards in its "This month" section! Portal:Webcomics has existed for a year and I've actually been maintaining it since it was created. ~ Maplestrip/Mable ( chat) 12:55, 12 April 2019 (UTC) reply

@ Maplestrip:

1. It really doesn't matter why the material isn't there. If it can't be readily gathered, there is no point in having a portal to display it
2. Yes, most portals do have abysmal pageviews. But 3 per day is barely above the background noise of visits by bots and webcrawlers; it may indicate no human usage at all.
3. As to why webcomics and not any of the thousands of other portals? That's a classic WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS argument. But in this instance, don't worry: there are currently over 1800 portals being discussed at MFD, as you can see at Category:Miscellaneous pages for deletion. Many more will be brought to MFD when that lot is processed, because consensus has turned strongly against this forest of unused, pointless navigational devices.

Maplestrip, I am sure that you built this in good faith, and put in a lot of hard work researching the news items. (I see no sign at all that you were one of the spammers who spewed out dozens of drive-by portals.) But now, 7 years on, step back a little from all that work. What on earth is the point of keeping this when readers don't want it? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 14:14, 12 April 2019 (UTC) reply

• Keep. I make the simple request that this one be kept. I do not think view-count should be the major factor for determining whether or not something gets deleted (if it were then we could say goodbye to several country-related portals). I 100% know of a few people on this site who may be willing to help Maplestrip/Mable maintain this portal, but I am not going to ping them due to the canvassing concerns that would bring with it. I could see this as becoming a great location for individuals to find our content on webcomics such as xkcd, Homestuck, and Penny Arcade. We actually have a lot of content related to webcomics. For example, Category:Webcomics by genre has 32 subcategories and 122 biographies at List of webcomic creators. I can even see what is currently out there on Commons to give us more multilingual variety if needed. I really don't think finding content is as much as trouble as has been previously stated. I propose we delete Portal:Webcomics/Webcomics news and call it a day. Other than that, what will need to happen is this portal getting linked on all the relevant articles for more exposure. The rest comes with time, but I am sure Maplestrip/Mable has proven at least for now to be willing to give those things. – MJL  ‐Talk‐ ^☖ 15:53, 18 April 2019 (UTC) reply

@ MJL: we have been here many times before over the years, with may portals. Here's the cycle:

1. Portal is neglected. It's broken and/or way out of date
2. Somebody MFDs the portal
3. Up pops one or two editors to say "but I like this topic, and/or it has slots of content, so the portal should be kept"
4. An editor volunteers to maintain it, or promises to find someone who will
5. The portal is kept because, hey, it's gonna be maintained
6. Some fixes are applied, either before or shortly after the MFD closes
7. Before long, the maintenance fizzles out, and the portal is neglected again for years.

There are some very simple reason why portals are not maintained. Readers don't use them, because the head article is a better navigational hub, and the portal is un-needed. For similar reasons, most editors don't see them. Those who do see them spot that they are not much use and barely used, so either do nothing or give up soon. It's all v well saying that there eager maintainers waiting out there ... but his portal has been tagged for MFD for two weeks, and they haven't even spotted that. If the portal is too little use for them to even visit once a fortnight, why assume they are suddenly eager to maintain it?

The low viewing figures are not going to be resolved by spamming links to these pages onto articles. Readers fairly rapidly spot that portals are not much use, so they don't follow the links ... and it's not fair on readers to lure them to a navigational hub which doesn't help them navigate.

Webcomic is only a Level 5 Vital article, i.e. it's only in the 10,001–50,000 range of priority topics. Plenty of portals in the top 1000 are abandoned, so the chances of this one being a shining star are slim. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 02:08, 19 April 2019 (UTC) reply

@ BrownHairedGirl: I trust your judgement, and I do have the exact same concerns you shared as well. When it comes to portals, my views have been mixed as a whole. On my own time, I pretty much only ever used Portal:Connecticut and Portal:East Frisia (as a reader). However, I also like webcomics a lot. In fact, I actually had written my own one a while ago. For portals such as... idk let's use Portal:Abuse as an example. I do think portals like that could really do major damage to the project. I won't refute what you anything you said. I just linked the webcomics portal on wikidata. No other language project has it (including diq.wiki). My only contention remains subjective. I feel like the project assumes minimal risk here for what hypothetically could be potential benefits. It isn't a guarantee. We just need to cut back on bandwidth usage by doing away with the automated templates. Other than that, I think it could be utilized in such a way to really promote our webcomic-related content which can use a lot more attention. The idealist in me even wants to say that maybe one day people will go to Portal:Webcomics as a way to discover new webcomics. Unlike other topic portals, webcomics are an image-based medium. That means we can draw more readers in if we find enough free-use content like xkcd to include. I suppose that is all I could really say on this matter before seeming disruptive. I acknowledge I'm out of my league here. – MJL  ‐Talk‐ ^☖ 16:32, 19 April 2019 (UTC) reply

So, basically that's WP:ILIKEIT. . -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs)

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.