Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Ancient warfare

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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:  delete. —&thinsp;JJMC89&thinsp; (T·C) 00:48, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Portal:Ancient warfare


Eight selected articles (last substantial update in 2008). Four featured pics (pic #2 of 5 has been deleted from Commons.) Does not meet WP:POG. Mark Schierbecker (talk) 17:43, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment - The subject matter has not changed as much in ten years as robotics. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:30, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete - The portal has only 6 average daily pageviews, as opposed to 226 for the article ancient warfare. As the nominator notes, it has had no significant update since 2008.
 * One common method for the design of portals, in use at least since 2005, has involved sometimes large numbers of subpages of the portal, one for each selected article and picture, and sometimes for news items and Do You Know (DYK) items. Often the subpages for selected articles consist of a copy of the original article, or a copy of the first part of the original article.  The subpages for In The News (ITN) and DYK items may also be copies of the lead paragraph or a portion of the article page.  This approach to design of portals is sufficiently commonly used that it can be considered standard.  However, it is an honorable experiment that has failed, and should be abandoned.  In numerous cases, it has been found that portals have displayed outdated and incorrect information to the reader.  These discrepancies have been especially common with, but not limited to, political leadership.  These discrepancies are a serious problem because they cannot be readily corrected.  Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, meaning that any reasonably computer-literate person can edit an article; but editing the displayed information in a portal requires specialized technical knowledge of how portals are implemented, which is presumably why errors persist, sometimes for years.  An editor who has Twinkle installed can tag articles in need of editing if they do not have the time or knowledge to fix them; but tagging via Twinkle is not available for portals.  Experience has shown that the use of portal subpages that copy portions of articles results in outdated information being displayed, sometimes for years, because it is difficult to correct.  This design technique, partial article copies, has been an honorable experiment over the course of more than a decade, but the experiment should be assessed to have been a failure.  Some other design approach for portals should be used in the future.
 * Although the subject matter has changed less in the past ten years than robotics, it should be kept current, because academic and popular accounts of the subject continue to be published, and depictions of ancient warfare, both historical and fictional, are evolving and of considerable popular interest.
 * The portal should just be deleted. If someone wants to propose a new portal on the subject with a design that does not use partial article copies, they know where Deletion Review is.  Robert McClenon (talk) 06:05, 26 June 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete. Yet another abandoned mini-portals which fails the WP:POG requirement that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers". --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 15:42, 3 July 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.