Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Orphan box-footer subpages of portals

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 * 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. (non-admin closure)  N0nsensical.system (err0r?)(.log) 14:45, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Orphan box-footer subpages of portals
The structure of portals has changed in the years; the design page is marked as historical while /Components seems more up to date. Nevertheless, it's possible to identify some structures which are definitely no longer used or necessary. I made a database query for orphan subpages: it looks for first-level subpages of portals which were left without incoming links or transclusions and which were probably superseded either by new templates or by the evolution of wikitext and template parsing.

A clear example are the "box-footer" subpages, which were endemic at some point before 2008 but have since been replaced by other templates or by direct invocation of box-footer. They generally look the same and have no significant history after creation, apart from the occasional vandalism, so the deletion will only be an improvement. As an alternative to deletion, they may be redirected to box-footer. Many of them have an incoming link from a userpage, from 2008 and 2018: maybe there was some mass change at that time, as a discussion about box-footer errors suggests. About 1000 edits in July 2016 replaced Portal:Box-footer with box-footer and the same for box-header.

I'm listing all the affected pages in the box below. I think they may qualify for speedy deletion but it would feel disruptive to edit hundreds of pages at once (same for notifications). Being a merely technical matter with no effect on actual or potential portal content or presentation, I trust that a notification to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals will be enough, but please correct me if I'm wrong.

Nemo 08:28, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep all, deleting these means that old revisions of portals can't be viewed, as the box-footer subpages contain a necessary closing div. Alternatively, redirect them all to the generic box-footer template (or something else that includes the closing div). —Kusma (t·c) 08:54, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
 * What's this about a closing div? I've looked at a sample of these pages (e.g. Portal:1990s/box-footer) and none contained a closing div. DexDor(talk) 12:38, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I haven't checked them all, but your example does: It invokes the Box-footer template, whose most important feature is that it has an unmatched closing div. —Kusma (t·c) 12:45, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Ah, thanks. DexDor(talk) 12:48, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I have actually undeleted Portal:Germany/box-footer before, for this precise reason. —Kusma (t·c) 13:08, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, that subpage doesn't do anything at the moment. I have nothing personally against undeletion "to make old revisions work", but that's not something usually done on the English Wikipedia. We have millions of old revisions of articles which can't be fully experienced for lack of a (correct) version of their templates, but that doesn't stop deletion of superseded templates. Cf. T2851. Nemo 14:03, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
 * A missing template does not usually cause the entire display to go bananas. It was basically impossible to figure out how good some pre-Transhumanist "restart" portals were without undeleting their /box-footer pages. I also see nothing at all that is improved by deleting these pages: where is their existence causing any problems? —Kusma (t·c) 14:45, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Weak redirect. DexDor(talk) 12:48, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep at present because the nominator has not explained what the purpose of the deletion is. (Maybe they have explained it, but if so, the explanation is incomprehensible.)  I really have no idea what the objective of this deletion is.  If there may be a risk to the deletion, the benefit, that hasn't been explained, should outweigh the risk.  Robert McClenon (talk) 19:19, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep. It's not clear to me that all of these are not being used anywhere, including historical pages. It's very easy to break portals accidentally and not be able readily to work out what's happened, while their continued existence causes no harm that I can see. Espresso Addict (talk) 00:12, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep per Kusma, frequently viewing old revisions myself.  J 947 &thinsp;(c) , at  04:36, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep per Espresso Addict. Also keep because no case has been made for why archiving is not good enough housekeeping, and during this tumultuous time in Portals, demanding this level of attention on these pages is not justified.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:31, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete all These pages are effectively templates not located in the Template namespace, and "unused" and "redundant to other templates" (box footer in this case) are accepted reasons for deletion of templates. * Pppery * it has begun... 16:59, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete all - Keep voters argue that there are no benefits to exclusion, I disagree. Deleting useless subpages is a way to make the portal space simpler and leaner, which encourages new editors to explore it. I also don't see the historical benefit of maintaining them.Guilherme Burn (talk) 14:14, 10 February 2020 (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.