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: keep . ♠PMC♠ (talk) 22:25, 5 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Air France (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Far too narrow a scope for a portal: only 34 articles. A set with this low a number of pages is better served by a head article and a navbox; we already have both. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:12, 24 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• PS This is simply a fancier navbox, located on a lonesome standalone page rather than handily appended to an article. I see nothing in WP:Portal guidelines#Purposes_of_portals to support this usage of a portal as a fancier navbox. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:11, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per nomination. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 02:21, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@BrownHairedGirl and Finnusertop:

• Keep – the subject is well-served by the portal, which displays content not present on the article. This will allow a user to browse through the leads of the rest of the articles on the subject with ease, which helps a great deal with topic selection. This is much slower to accomplish using a navigation template. Note that the article hasn't even been linked to from the encyclopedia yet, so we don't even know if anyone finds it useful.    — The Transhumanist   10:39, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reply @The Transhumanist: what you describe is simply a fancier navbox, on a standalone page. It replaces a list of topics with a scroll-through of ledes, biut loses the integration into article pages. I see no evidence that readers want such standlone scroll-through navboxes; the pageview data I have seen is v clear that readers use some broad-topic portals, but nit micro-portals in narrow topics. Do you have any evdence to the contrary? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:49, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Fancier, yes. Navbox, no (navboxes are footer boxes of links, while the core feature of portals are text frames, the best of which are slideshows). The pageview data reflect where users are coming from: external search engines. Portals are generally not accessed that way (who would put "Portal" in their search string?). It doesn't mean they wouldn't want to use one if they knew about it. But they don't show up in google searches of the root topic, generally. If they did, a lot more people would probably visit them.

Most of the traffic for portals, and the other navigation systems come from within Wikipedia, rather than google. Except for the portals with links on the Main Page, portal traffic compares about evenly with the other types of navigation pages. Navigation pages are supplemental to searching, and are not meant to replace or compete with it. If a navigation page gets 1% of the traffic that its root article gets, it's doing good.

The nice thing about the new portal design is that portals that use it take a small fraction of the time that other nav page types take to develop. Due to automation. Eventually, there won't be any portal pages at all, just a button that you push that will create a portal for the current subject on the fly. Currently, for that design concept to work right, the underlying navigation features must be properly named. So, we have to find another method of access (besides calling matching titles), as such conformity is not likely.    — The Transhumanist   06:31, 28 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment – another useful feature is that the portal is news aware and "Did you know..." capable. That is, news items and Did you know blurbs will appear automatically in the portal if any become available, which could happen at any time. This is support that neither the article nor the navbox provides. And then there's the image slideshow, which provides a better look at the pictures, and lets you cycle through them forwards or backwards, while retaining the captions. For a more complete explanation of the benefits portals provide that navboxes do not, see Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Body piercing.    — The Transhumanist   10:39, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. 34 is plenty of articles to constitute a broad enough scope for a portal, and I'm sure there are more that could be added. A portal is much more than a collection of links to articles plus a bit of information about the main subject - the idea that a head article and navbox serve the same purpose between them is nonsense. WaggersTALK 12:22, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Waggers: please can you expand on that? When the portal has the same scope as a navbox, what exactly does it add other than a bit of information about the main subject plus a snippet on the subtopics? As far as I can see, what you are describing is simply a fancier navbox, located on a lonesome standalone page rather than hnadily appended to an article. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:43, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • I think @The Transhumanist: has already addressed that very clearly at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Body piercing. Selected pictures, recent events, "did you know", and a far more immersive & deeper user experience than a simple list of links, to name a few. Let's not repeat the exact same discussion on every single MfD. WaggersTALK 12:55, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • @Waggers: your rationale of far more immersive & deeper user experience simply amounts to "fancier navbox on a standaline page". Same scope as the navbox, but presented as click-through snippets rather than as a list of titles. Where is the consensus to create this sort of portal-as-alt-navbox? Or the evidence that readers want or use such pages?

Given the narrow scope, the chances of recent articles or DYKs falling within the scope are vanishingly small. A quick probabability estinmate suggests an Air France-related DYK only about once every 20 years ... so we can discount that as any justification for retaining this portal. -BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:10, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This nomination is primarily based on the premise that the number of selected articles is too low, and that indicates too narrow a scope. As I've said above, I don't think the number of selected articles is too low, and even if it were, that's not the only measure of the scope of a portal. There is no policy or guideline that sets out a minimum number of selected articles required for a portal to exist, nor any other definition of the minimum scope required for a portal to exist. These manifold MfD nominations are based on your personal opinion, not on any guideline or policy. As User:Godsy says, let's get an agreed guideline in place and then we can determine which portals meet it or fail to.WaggersTALK 12:22, 26 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep - If there is to be a minimum number of articles within a portal's scope for it to be appropriate (or some other broadness of topic clause), then a guideline should be established to that effect. Handling them individually without established guidance is undesirable and inefficient. — Godsy ^(TALK_CONT)

*Keep as per the consensus over at some Wikispace which I forgot where consensus was to keep these - I personally disagree with it but hey ho, If you want portals deleted then it might be worth reopening another RFC on it but as it stands keep pretty much per the rfc and above. –Davey2010^Talk 01:20, 27 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep per Godsy et el. –Davey2010^Talk 01:58, 29 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep – A useful navigational aid for those interested in the topic, and a great way to learn about various aspects of the airline in one area. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 03:19, 27 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Hold until we have consensus on the guidelines currently being discussed. Certes (talk) 00:48, 28 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Certes: that could take a month and a half. Probably best not to leave this hanging that long. If the portal doesn't meet the new criteria, it may wind up at MfD again. ;) In the meantime, it wouldn't hurt to share your views. May help, in the coming debates.    — The Transhumanist   05:41, 28 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • Shooting in the dark as we are, I think this is a borderline case and would make a good concrete example for any RfC. If forced to !vote now, I'd err on the side of the status quo and go for Weak Keep, without prejudice to bringing it back to MfD once we have a yardstick to measure it by. Certes (talk) 08:46, 28 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment – the guideline currently in place sets a low end threshold of articles needed of "about 20 articles". See Wikipedia:Portal guidelines#Article selection.    — The Transhumanist   19:58, 5 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere. You are invited to participate in the ongoing discussion at: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals § Time for some portal creation criteria?. — AfroThundr ^{(u · t · c)} 16:47, 26 September 2018 (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.