- 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. ‑Scottywong | [express] || 18:17, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
Neglected portal.
Ten never-updated selected articles created in January 2008. Fourteen bios created in January 2008. The first and only update occurred on one entry in August 2008. Eleven never-updated selected cities created in January 2008.
- Errors
- Mitch McConnell has not been Senate minority leader since January 2015.
- Jim Bunning left the Senate in January 2011, he died in May 2017.
- Rick Pitino was fired from Louisville basketball in 2017
Mark Schierbecker ( talk) 07:09, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
- Keep, easy to {{
sofixit}}, for example by using automated transclusion for the bios. MFD is not cleanup. —
Kusma (
t·
c)
08:40, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
- @ Kusma: WP:DINC only applies to articles. ToThAc ( talk) 19:18, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
- I notice the "did you know" section and others are very focused on confederate trivia. Is this undue weight? Nemo 10:00, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
- Merge and redirect to Portal:United States. We need to rethink our approach here. Rather than deleting content outright, we should generally be merging unsustainable portals up to sustainable ones. bd2412 T 13:18, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
- @ BD2412: I strongly oppose both merger and redirection:
- Merger just means preserving a set outdated of content forks, which is a very bad idea.
- Redirection means that portals links will display a link to a portal which doesn't exist, and then surprise the reader by opening up a portal on a broader topic. Nearly all such redirects have been deleted at RFD for just that reason. It's much better to simply replace the links, as I proposed above. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 15:56, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
- Redirecting is obviously better than deletion. However, I am not sure merging is a great idea. The United States are an immensely broad topic, and it is much easier to make a focused portal for a smaller entity. Smaller portals are usually more coherent than those about very broad topics. — Kusma ( t· c) 16:08, 1 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:United States), without creating duplicate entries. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 15:56, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
- Keep. Perfectly good portal with trivial errors that could have been easily corrected in the time taken to write this nomination. Let's work to improve Wikipedia, not destroy it. Bermicourt ( talk) 16:24, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
- Abandoned for a decade is
trivial errors
? I need a new dictionary, because my old one clearly has an outdated definition of trivia.
- The best way to improve Wikipedia in this case is to direct readers to the head article B-class Kentucky, with its navbox Template:Kentucky, rather than luring them to yet another misconceived, unmaintained attempt to create a magazine. It is sheer folly to lure readers away from a well-maintained articles to an abandoned portal. Even if all the absurd content forks were updated, it will remain a daft exercise in displaying one-at-a-time a pointless excerpt from one item on a list which isn't even displayed. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 16:49, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
- Abandoned for a decade is
- Delete per nominator, and per the fact there is no good reason to keep portals that are in this condition. Low page views (14/day, compared to 2,766/day for Kentucky) and the condition it is in mean zero value is added by such a portal. Portals are not content, so it is improper to try to compare dilapidated 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 lack of pageviews and maintenance. Content forks are worthless and should not be saved via merger. A redirect would confuse readers; it is better to replace with a link to the next most specific portal. The assertion that this portal is "perfectly good" is a sign of very low standards for portals. Deletion of junk is improvement of Wikipedia. -Crossroads- ( talk) 01:26, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
| Title | Portal Page Views | Article Page Views | Percent | Comments | Articles | Notes | Baseline | Deleted | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| South Carolina | 12 | 2409 | 0.50% | Originated 2007. Originator inactive since 2013. Last maintenance 2009; articles last tweaked 2016. | 4 | Jan19-Feb19 | FALSE | State | |
| Kentucky | 14 | 2927 | 0.48% | Originated 2006 by editor who last edited 2017. 10 articles, 10 attractions, 14 biographies, 11 cities, no substantive maintenance since 2011. | 45 | Fairly complete calendar, many DYKs. | Jan19-Feb19 | FALSE | State |
| Nevada | 14 | 2600 | 0.54% | Originated 2009. 21 articles created 2009, no substantive maintenance since 2009. | 21 | Jan19-Feb19 | FALSE | State | |
| North Carolina | 16 | 3747 | 0.43% | Originator last edited in 2011 after starting portal in 2006. One featured article at a time without other articles, last tweaked 2013. | 1 | Jan19-Feb19 | FALSE | State | |
| Louisiana | 16 | 3186 | 0.50% | Originator came in 2007, did their thing in 2007, went in 2007. 22 articles and bios originated 2007, some unchanged, some tweaked in or before 2017, no substantive maintenance. | 22 | Jan19-Feb19 | FALSE | State | |
| Tennessee | 18 | 2972 | 0.61% | Originated 2007, originator inactive since 2016. Last maintenance 2011 on six articles and five bios. | 11 | Jan19-Feb19 | FALSE | State | |
| Arkansas | 20 | 2583 | 0.77% | Originated 2008. Originator quit in 2018. Last substantive maintenance in 2009, some articles tweaked. One article tweaked Oct 2019 after MFD. | 21 | Jan19-Feb19 | FALSE | State | |
| United States | 235 | 42004 | 0.56% | Originated 2005 by sporadic editor. | 101 | Complete calendar. Some articles have obsolete information, such as listing Hilary Clinton as Secretary of State. | Jan19-Feb19 | FALSE | Country |
- Comment - A complete list of metrics for US state portals, including deleted portals, is available at Wikipedia:US State Portal Metrics. Robert McClenon ( talk) 04:04, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
- Delete - Low viewing, not maintained.
- 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.
- I respectfully disagree with User:BD2412 about changing our deletions of portals to upmerges. They caution against deleting content outright, but portals should not provide unique content. Portals provide arbitrarily selected content that often becomes outdated. There is no need to preserve and build up portals that have what BHG properly calls a Rube Goldberg machine structure. Adding more arbitrarily selected portions of articles to an existing arbitrary selection of portions of articles just increases the Rube Goldberg factor. It will not make the higher-level portals sustainable. The proposed upmerging of portals should not be confused with the upward redirection of backlinks by BHG.
- Discrepancies illustrate how content-forked subpages are a flawed design, and that upmerging them only perpetuates the likelihood of errors. Robert McClenon ( talk) 04:04, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
- Delete states don't need portals period. Catfurball ( talk) 19:15, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
- Delete per nominator. Yet another severely neglected and barely read portal on a sub-national region.
- The last 6 moths of MFDs have repeatedly shown that a sub-national region is very rarely a broad enough topic to sustain a portal. These narrow-topic portals attract neither readers nor maintainers, creating a spiral of decay ... and the complete lack of interest from the WikiProject gives no reason to hope that this might change. --21:49, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
- 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.
- 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. ‑Scottywong | [express] || 18:17, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
Neglected portal.
Ten never-updated selected articles created in January 2008. Fourteen bios created in January 2008. The first and only update occurred on one entry in August 2008. Eleven never-updated selected cities created in January 2008.
- Errors
- Mitch McConnell has not been Senate minority leader since January 2015.
- Jim Bunning left the Senate in January 2011, he died in May 2017.
- Rick Pitino was fired from Louisville basketball in 2017
Mark Schierbecker ( talk) 07:09, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
- Keep, easy to {{
sofixit}}, for example by using automated transclusion for the bios. MFD is not cleanup. —
Kusma (
t·
c)
08:40, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
- @ Kusma: WP:DINC only applies to articles. ToThAc ( talk) 19:18, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
- I notice the "did you know" section and others are very focused on confederate trivia. Is this undue weight? Nemo 10:00, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
- Merge and redirect to Portal:United States. We need to rethink our approach here. Rather than deleting content outright, we should generally be merging unsustainable portals up to sustainable ones. bd2412 T 13:18, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
- @ BD2412: I strongly oppose both merger and redirection:
- Merger just means preserving a set outdated of content forks, which is a very bad idea.
- Redirection means that portals links will display a link to a portal which doesn't exist, and then surprise the reader by opening up a portal on a broader topic. Nearly all such redirects have been deleted at RFD for just that reason. It's much better to simply replace the links, as I proposed above. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 15:56, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
- Redirecting is obviously better than deletion. However, I am not sure merging is a great idea. The United States are an immensely broad topic, and it is much easier to make a focused portal for a smaller entity. Smaller portals are usually more coherent than those about very broad topics. — Kusma ( t· c) 16:08, 1 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:United States), without creating duplicate entries. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 15:56, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
- Keep. Perfectly good portal with trivial errors that could have been easily corrected in the time taken to write this nomination. Let's work to improve Wikipedia, not destroy it. Bermicourt ( talk) 16:24, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
- Abandoned for a decade is
trivial errors
? I need a new dictionary, because my old one clearly has an outdated definition of trivia.
- The best way to improve Wikipedia in this case is to direct readers to the head article B-class Kentucky, with its navbox Template:Kentucky, rather than luring them to yet another misconceived, unmaintained attempt to create a magazine. It is sheer folly to lure readers away from a well-maintained articles to an abandoned portal. Even if all the absurd content forks were updated, it will remain a daft exercise in displaying one-at-a-time a pointless excerpt from one item on a list which isn't even displayed. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 16:49, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
- Abandoned for a decade is
- Delete per nominator, and per the fact there is no good reason to keep portals that are in this condition. Low page views (14/day, compared to 2,766/day for Kentucky) and the condition it is in mean zero value is added by such a portal. Portals are not content, so it is improper to try to compare dilapidated 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 lack of pageviews and maintenance. Content forks are worthless and should not be saved via merger. A redirect would confuse readers; it is better to replace with a link to the next most specific portal. The assertion that this portal is "perfectly good" is a sign of very low standards for portals. Deletion of junk is improvement of Wikipedia. -Crossroads- ( talk) 01:26, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
| Title | Portal Page Views | Article Page Views | Percent | Comments | Articles | Notes | Baseline | Deleted | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| South Carolina | 12 | 2409 | 0.50% | Originated 2007. Originator inactive since 2013. Last maintenance 2009; articles last tweaked 2016. | 4 | Jan19-Feb19 | FALSE | State | |
| Kentucky | 14 | 2927 | 0.48% | Originated 2006 by editor who last edited 2017. 10 articles, 10 attractions, 14 biographies, 11 cities, no substantive maintenance since 2011. | 45 | Fairly complete calendar, many DYKs. | Jan19-Feb19 | FALSE | State |
| Nevada | 14 | 2600 | 0.54% | Originated 2009. 21 articles created 2009, no substantive maintenance since 2009. | 21 | Jan19-Feb19 | FALSE | State | |
| North Carolina | 16 | 3747 | 0.43% | Originator last edited in 2011 after starting portal in 2006. One featured article at a time without other articles, last tweaked 2013. | 1 | Jan19-Feb19 | FALSE | State | |
| Louisiana | 16 | 3186 | 0.50% | Originator came in 2007, did their thing in 2007, went in 2007. 22 articles and bios originated 2007, some unchanged, some tweaked in or before 2017, no substantive maintenance. | 22 | Jan19-Feb19 | FALSE | State | |
| Tennessee | 18 | 2972 | 0.61% | Originated 2007, originator inactive since 2016. Last maintenance 2011 on six articles and five bios. | 11 | Jan19-Feb19 | FALSE | State | |
| Arkansas | 20 | 2583 | 0.77% | Originated 2008. Originator quit in 2018. Last substantive maintenance in 2009, some articles tweaked. One article tweaked Oct 2019 after MFD. | 21 | Jan19-Feb19 | FALSE | State | |
| United States | 235 | 42004 | 0.56% | Originated 2005 by sporadic editor. | 101 | Complete calendar. Some articles have obsolete information, such as listing Hilary Clinton as Secretary of State. | Jan19-Feb19 | FALSE | Country |
- Comment - A complete list of metrics for US state portals, including deleted portals, is available at Wikipedia:US State Portal Metrics. Robert McClenon ( talk) 04:04, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
- Delete - Low viewing, not maintained.
- 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.
- I respectfully disagree with User:BD2412 about changing our deletions of portals to upmerges. They caution against deleting content outright, but portals should not provide unique content. Portals provide arbitrarily selected content that often becomes outdated. There is no need to preserve and build up portals that have what BHG properly calls a Rube Goldberg machine structure. Adding more arbitrarily selected portions of articles to an existing arbitrary selection of portions of articles just increases the Rube Goldberg factor. It will not make the higher-level portals sustainable. The proposed upmerging of portals should not be confused with the upward redirection of backlinks by BHG.
- Discrepancies illustrate how content-forked subpages are a flawed design, and that upmerging them only perpetuates the likelihood of errors. Robert McClenon ( talk) 04:04, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
- Delete states don't need portals period. Catfurball ( talk) 19:15, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
- Delete per nominator. Yet another severely neglected and barely read portal on a sub-national region.
- The last 6 moths of MFDs have repeatedly shown that a sub-national region is very rarely a broad enough topic to sustain a portal. These narrow-topic portals attract neither readers nor maintainers, creating a spiral of decay ... and the complete lack of interest from the WikiProject gives no reason to hope that this might change. --21:49, 8 October 2019 (UTC)
- 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.