Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Brussels

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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 | [confer] || 18:14, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Portal:Brussels

 * – (View MfD)

Portal created in 2008 and lightly touched in 2012 by its creator, who's since focused on other portals about broader geographic areas in the European Union. It's a lightweight portal but still manages to look like a ghost town with details such as presenting 2005 statistics of the Brussels Airport. The corresponding article adds that "Brussels Airport continued to appear in top airports lists as of 2012", so maybe efforts would be best spent updating that instead. Nemo 06:48, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Merge and redirect to Portal:Belgium. 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)
 * As far as I know, merging is a possible outcome of a MfD. If I started redirecting things without an MfD, I could be undone any time. Nemo 14:08, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
 * 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 * Merger just means preserving a set outdated of content forks, which is a very bad idea.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 propose below. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 15:58, 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:Belgium), without creating duplicate entries. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 15:58, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep but improve. The topic is notable enough, but the portal needs work by WikiProject Belgium who haven't even been notified yet. Don't worry, I'll fix that. Bermicourt (talk) 16:29, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
 * WP:Notability is a test for articles. This is not an article; it's a portal, so the test doesn't apply here.
 * Bermicourt is wrong yet again in his claim that WikiProject Belgium who haven't even been notified yet. The project was of course notified almost 8 hours before Bermicourt wrote that comment, when WikiProject Belgium/Article alerts was updated at 08:16. (Bermicourt has posted similar nonsense before about notifications, and should have learnt to check before asserting).
 * The portal has needed work for years. The problem is that as with most portals, nobody wants to do the work ... because most editors are wise enough to know that portals are basically a failed concept which only attract non-trivial readership when they are about very broad topics. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 17:09, 1 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete as underviewed and under-maintained.
 * Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:Brussels shows 9 pictures, 6 articles, and other subpages. The six articles were content-forked in 2008.  Four of them were tweaked between 2010 and 2016.  Two of them were converted to transclusions in 2018.  The portal had 12 daily average pageviews in the first half of 2012, as opposed to 2483 daily average pageviews for the article.
 * 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.  Just delete it.  Robert McClenon (talk) 17:15, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

Belgian Portals

 * Comment - Even if Portal:Brussels were upmerged into Portal:Belgium, the resulting portal would have only 12 articles, not all of them properly maintained, and probably no more than 40 daily pageviews. Merging a very unsustainable portal into a moderately unsustainable portal does not always result in a sustainable portal, at least not if the unsustainable design of content forks is used.  Robert McClenon (talk) 19:25, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete per above, and per the fact there is no good reason to keep portals that are in this state. Low page views and the condition it is in mean zero value is added by such a portal. Portals are not content, so any comparison to how broken articles are handled would be improper. 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 generally better to replace with a link to the next most specific portal. However, in this case, Portal:Belgium is sparse in content and viewership, so I suggest replacement with Portal:Europe instead. -Crossroads- (talk) 00:53, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete cities don't need portals period.Catfurball (talk) 19:17, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete per nominator.  Massive, long-term neglect ... and very low readership.
 * As has been found at many dozens of MFDs over the last 6 months, cities very rarely make viable portals; they are just too narrow a topic. Brussels is no exception. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 20:58, 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.