Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Arkansas

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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. ‑Scottywong | [talk] || 18:21, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Portal:Arkansas

 * – (View MfD)

Ten selected articles created in June-July 2008. All but one were never updated. Alltel was seven years prematurely put in past tense. The company became defunct in 2016, but the entry is still mostly in present tense. Three never-updated selected cities created in March - July 2008. One never-updated selected bio created in March 2008, three bios created in July 2008, and three created in December 2009. Two of the latter, Maya Angelou and Glen Campbell, were belatedly and partially updated in August 2018 with their deaths.

Mark Schierbecker (talk) 09:41, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Errors
 * Hillary Clinton resigned from the Senate in January 2009. Her entry says nothing of her 2016 presidential run.
 * Darren McFadden is retired and hasn't played for the Raiders since 2014.
 * Jermain Taylor retired from boxing in 2014.
 * 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 13:17, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I strongly oppose both merger and redirection:
 * Merger just means preserving a set of outdated of content forks, which is a v bad idea.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 precisely that reason. It's much better to simply replace the links, per my suggestion below. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 15:52, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
 * We redirect from subtopics to supertopics all the time - we have redirect templates specifically for that function. As for preservation, why wouldn't we preserve failed portals the same way we preserve failed projects, for historical reference? bd2412  T 16:49, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
 * if you want to preserve the portal as a relic for the benefit of future wikiarchaeologists who want to study the failed history of redundant content forking, then the solution is to move it to project space. What you are proposing is to keep the stale content forks live by dumping the into another portals, which both is a disservice to readers and a poor means of preservation.  But apart from those wikiarchaeologists, I really struggle to see any benefit in preserving content forks.
 * We redirect from article subtopics to article supertopics all the time. This is not an article; it is a portal, and there is long-standing consensus at RFD that a) portals are not plausible search terms, and b) a portal redirect much a broader topic misleads readers. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 17:18, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I would definitely support moving moribund portals to project space pending potential further recycling of their contents. I would not suggest redirects from all topics, but there are some distinct subtopics, such as states to countries, for which I think this would be appropriate. bd2412  T 17:33, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
 * we shouldn't be content-forking at all. Even some of the most ardent portal fans have given up on that idea.  What on earth is the point of recycling stale, redundant content forks? --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 17:45, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Looking at the specific topics listed as selected articles and selected biographies under this portal, some need brushing up but most could be moved to the relevant selected topics of Portal:United States as is. Of course, then the latter portal would have an overabundance of Arkansas-related topics, but this would not be the case if all of the deleted or nominated state portals were moved in the same fashion. bd2412  T 19:00, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
 * the imbalance would occur unless all state portals were deleted and moved. But I see no sign of for example, P:California being deleted.
 * If all state portals were deleted and moved, then ten articles from each would mean 500 content-forked subpages just on state topics, before any federal topics were included. That would be absurd, because a) it would massively imbalance the portal away from federal topics; b) there's no way that 500 content forks can be maintained.
 * We have already seen repeatedly how the contents simply aren't maintained in the vast majority of portals. Your response to this problem seems to be to create a vast single pile of content forks, which makes no sense. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 08:37, 2 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. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 15:53, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete per nominator, and per the fact there is no good reason to keep portals that are in this condition. Low page views (20/day, compared to 2,559/day for Arkansas) and the condition it is in mean zero value is added by such a portal. Portals are not content, being for navigation instead, so it is improper to try to compare dilapidated and useless 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. -Crossroads- (talk) 02:15, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Tagged US Portals

 * Comment - A complete list of metrics for US state portals, including deleted portals, is available at US State Portal Metrics. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:24, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Arkansas

 * Delete - No substantive maintenance, low viewing.
 * 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.
 * I concur with the analysis by User:BrownHairedGirl and by nominator User:Mark Schierbecker.
 * Errors illustrate that content-forked subpages are a flawed design approach, and that upmerging would simply perpetuate content rot. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:24, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete states don't need portals period.Catfurball (talk) 19:11, 2 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.