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: no consensus. From a purely numeric standpoint, there are five keeps (including one comment) and nine deletes (including the nominator). That would suggest a delete outcome, but I don't think the arguments are evenly balanced in strength.

All five keeps express the belief that there is content enough for a portal here; four provide reasonable arguments in beyond a simple assertion, and two provide comparatively detailed or supported arguments. Of the nine deletes, the most common argument is the opposite, that there isn't enough content, and the focus of this portal is too narrow. Other arguments touch on low page views and a sense of promotional/notwebhost; the latter is a tad esoteric being applied to this scenario and, shall we say, not yet firmly established, but I think it's a reasonable argument that Tony makes quite well.

A number of the participants favoring delete (four?) expanded on their !vote with some form of the view that universities (or most organizations in general) shouldn't have portals. While it's a fair argument, given the conversations around portalspace lately, I think that puts them a little ahead of community consensus, and perhaps a little over their skis. That is, I think those statements weaken their argument; indeed, most of the arguments saying this portal is too narrowly focused fall back on that as the prime argument rather than counter the keep !votes. Similarly, while I think page views are more valid as an argument for/against Portals, they're still an argument about use, not content, and thus rarely a particularly strong one.

In short, after weighing the strength and balance of the arguments, plus the fact that this has been open for four weeks, I do not see a consensus to delete this portal. ~ Amory ( u • t • c) 18:55, 17 April 2019 (UTC) reply

Portal:The Ohio State University

Portal:The Ohio State University ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

(Time stamp for bot to properly relist.) — pythoncoder ( talk |  contribs) 23:55, 8 April 2019 (UTC) reply

Too narrow scope for this useless portal that gets 4 pageviews a day. CoolSkittle ( talk) 00:54, 22 March 2019 (UTC) reply

• Delete part of a mass creation of Uni portals. One of many Uni portals, many mass created. Generally I don't think any company or org needs a portal. The article does a better job of describing the organization. Legacypac ( talk) 01:18, 22 March 2019 (UTC) reply
• Comment. This was actually created in Feb 2016, well before the current mess. I don't understand the rankings of US universities, but there appears to be sufficient content in the category Category:Ohio State University and its subcats to support a portal. Espresso Addict ( talk) 02:22, 22 March 2019 (UTC) reply
• Delete by throwing into Lake Erie. Too narrow. Robert McClenon ( talk) 03:37, 22 March 2019 (UTC) reply
• Keep and broaden to be a portal about universities in Ohio, as while this institution seems broad enough on its own to support a portal, the other public universities in the state are unlikely to be, so using this a basis for a portal including them would seem to be the best all round. Thryduulf ( talk) 19:39, 22 March 2019 (UTC) reply

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Ohio-related deletion discussions. Thryduulf ( talk) 19:41, 22 March 2019 (UTC) reply

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Education-related deletion discussions. Thryduulf ( talk) 19:41, 22 March 2019 (UTC) reply

Stop voting to keep things that don't exist. This is not about Portal:Universities in Ohio it is about a single school. If you want to create that portal I'll MFD it. Why Universities in Ohio or New York or any other arbitrary grouping of various schools that happen to reside in a given geographic area? We might have lists for that but not articles even. Legacypac ( talk) 19:51, 22 March 2019 (UTC) reply

Thank you for your bad faith and inaccurate statements. I am recommending (remember this is not a vote) that this portal, which verifiably exists, be kept. I am also recommending that it be broadened, for the reasons I gave and you have ignored. Universities in the United States are largely organised per state, so that is a logical grouping. Before commenting again you might also wish to check your facts: see University System of Ohio, List of colleges and universities in Ohio, Category:Universities and colleges in Ohio, Template:Colleges and universities in Ohio, etc. Thryduulf ( talk) 20:35, 22 March 2019 (UTC) reply

I'm also confused by a "keep and broaden" vote. You're saying move with redirect Portal:The Ohio State University to Portal:Universities of Ohio, and move all the subpages? Leviv  ich 05:16, 5 April 2019 (UTC) reply

• Keep and expand – Plenty of content exists to improve the portal, such as the examples listed below.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ohio State University.

– North America ¹⁰⁰⁰ 10:49, 25 March 2019 (UTC) reply

• Keep and improve (as original portal creator). I'm not really familiar with the mass portal creation + giant discussion that is currently going on, so I'm writing this from my own little vacuum. I know this doesn't make a difference for inclusion, but for context's sake since Legacypac brought it up, this portal is actually from a while back (as Espresso mentioned), and actually served early on as something for OSU students to work on as they onboarded and trained for Wikipedia editing. Took a look at WP:POG, and I'm confident in the amount of content we have on OSU (between notable people, buildings, groups, sports, etc.) to warrant a portal, and I'm happy to revisit and expand the portal + see if others in the Ohio sphere would be interested to as well. With most of the subject's articles being of historic nature and/or not rapidly changing, the risk of the portal falling out of date also isn't too high. ~ Super Hamster Talk Contribs 21:52, 28 March 2019 (UTC) reply
• Delete I'm not really sure what people mean by there being enough content to warrant a portal. The fundamental question for all of these should be Does the existence of this page provide anything of value for the reader, or is it just a webhost for the creator? While I respect the intent SuperHamster had, looking over this, I see it as a WP:NOTWEBHOST issue. The collection of links in itself is not particularly useful to readers, and there isn't really anything gained here apart from the regular Ohio State page. I also find the suggestion to make it a portal about universities in Ohio a bit odd, given that someone would have to collect all the information about higher ed in the state of Ohio, and at that point it'd just be easier to write an article on the topic. Unfortunately, this is a delete. TonyBallioni ( talk) 02:11, 29 March 2019 (UTC) reply
• Keep useful for navigation here, plenty of content. ɱ (talk) 15:41, 31 March 2019 (UTC) reply
• Delete I agree with Tony; I see this as very little content–enough to put in the article or a navbox. A single school is too narrow of a topic for a portal, and also too promotional. Leviv  ich 05:16, 5 April 2019 (UTC) reply

• Delete - a portal is supposed to be for broad topics to help navigate all themany articles that may fall under it. A single university is not a broad topic that needs that kind of help. Its scope it too narrow. Right now its basically a fancy navbox, which is already at the end of all the related articles. Meszzy² ( talk) 08:29, 9 April 2019 (UTC) reply
• Delete - This is not a portal, only a shameful joke. Plenty of content! The only notable people across two centuries are a footballer and another sportsman. What a great University! or perhaps: what a great portal! Pldx1 ( talk) 18:21, 9 April 2019 (UTC) reply
• Delete: almost unused.

Despite @ Legacypac's false claim in the first !vote above, this is not part of the wave of portal spam. Nor is simply a duplicate of a navbox; it has a handmade article list.

So this is one of the better portals. Yet in the months before it was nominated here (i.e. 20/12/2018 - 20/03/2019), it received only 4 pageviews per day. For the same period a year earlier (20/12/2017 - 20/03/2018) had 51 pageviews in 90 days.

Yet again, the evidence is very clear: readers do not use portals. Why? Because head articles do a significantly better job as a navigational hub. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 21:04, 10 April 2019 (UTC) reply

A friendly, general sidenote: Regarding the notion that, "readers do not use portals", this (is not an absolute) simply isn't true at all. For example, Portal:Arts has received 23,270 page views between 3/19/2019 - 4/8/2019. Meantime, The arts article has received 17,659 page views in the same time period — more page views than the article. No personal offense intended toward you, and I know that you're really into getting portals deleted for your own reasons, but the notion of "readers do not use portals" as a blanket statement for all portals is patently false, and misleading relative to the actual facts of the matter. North America ¹⁰⁰⁰ 21:17, 10 April 2019 (UTC) reply

• Lies, damned lies, and statistics.

A friendly general sidenote @ User:Northamerica1000: please do not put words in my mouth. I am favour of getting rid of most portals, because most of them just duplicate a navbox, most of the rest are of too narrow a scope, only a tiny hanfdul receive significant pageviews. That tiny handful is basically the 8 portals directly linked from the prime slot at top right of the main page. There are currently over 4,000 portals, and 8 out of 4,000 is 0.2%. I am not in favour of deleting all portals, unless that it is the only way of clearing the crud without excessive effort. (Ideally, I think we should have about 30 to 100 portals ... but I'd prefer zero portals to 4,000 portals)

So your claim that my statement is patently false is a sleazily dishonest claim based on cherry-picking one item from that 0.2%, and using to make a case about the 99.8%.

So, yes, I should have been less absolute. I should have written "99% of portals are effectively unused by readers".

But North, you know this data fairly well. You have been involved in enough of these discussions to know that the actual fact of the matter is is that usual pattern of pageviews for a portal is less than 1% of the views for the head article. So you coming here to accuse me of being misleading is an utterly shameful piece of statistical deceit, a wilful misrepresentation designed specifically to misrepresent the reality and malign me. It's truly despicable to see an admin conducting themselves in such a deliberately deceitful way.

So, friendly general sidenote @ User:Northamerica1000 No. 2: Don't cherrypick statistics to tell lies and malign other editors.

Best wishes, -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 17:20, 11 April 2019 (UTC) reply

• My comment was not meant to cause you ire, and apparently I read a bit too much into your statement. However, this is a debate. You stated that readers do not use portals. I cited statistics that counter that claim; this is not dishonest or deceitful, nor was it intended to be. Numbers don't lie, and I tend to focus on concrete facts. Other examples of high portal page views exist as well, but I digress. I've modified part of my comment above by striking and with a parenthetical addition, and seriously, I tried to word things in a friendly manner, and sorry that you were offended, which is never my intention. Also, yes, there are many portals that receive much less page views compared to articles, some pathetically so. Conversely, however, you have maligned me in several areas lately, referring to me in highly negative terms on public noticeboards as a "supporter of portal spam", etc. because I perform work in portal namespace and have worked on portals. I do notice that this has significantly lessened recently, which is appreciated. In the spirit of moving on and hopefully getting along, I will be taking steps to word my posts in a more congenial manner. North America ¹⁰⁰⁰ 18:26, 11 April 2019 (UTC) reply

• Numbers don't lie ... actually, numbers shorn of crucial context are pretty much a lie. But thanks for the strikeout. That's welcome.

And I'm sorry that my ire has shown more than usual. That's because I am increasingly fed up with the way that the portal project has done collectively precisely nothing to help triage portals, so that other editors who had no involvement in the spamflood are being left to do all the research into them while lots of those who involved were involved nitpick that the cleanup work which they left to others is not being done in ways that they like.

I have engaged with several other projects over the years where it is has eventually become clear that the project's output includes large numbers of pages which are well outside the community's limits. Most of them have eventually accepted the consensus worked to implement it quite well; one (World's Oldest People) engaged in mass disruption until it went to Arbcom, but I have never seen anything like the way that the portals project has just washed its collective hands of the problem. Some individuals have helpfully supported a few deletions, and you have helpfully removed some of your own creations ... but there has been a steady stream of demands for more scrutiny of drive-by creations, and also of calls to "keep and improve" pages which readers clearly don't want.

For example, look at this page. 4 viewers per day is barely above the background noise of bots and webcrawlers. It's less than 1% of the pageviews of the head article. Why on earth are we even discussing this sort of unused stuff? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 23:02, 11 April 2019 (UTC) reply

• Delete Does not meet the breadth-of-subject-area requirement of the WP:POG guideline. UnitedStatesian ( talk) 20:25, 12 April 2019 (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.