Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Discrete mathematics

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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) 06:27, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Portal:Discrete mathematics

 * – (View MfD)

Long-neglected bonsai portal on the field of discrete mathematics, with low readership. Only 5 sub-topics (last addition 2008, no content change since), one picture (same as 2008) and a pair of fake DYKs. Redundant to the head article Discrete mathematics.

This portal was created at 20:00 on 11 April 2008‎ by, who also created the sub-pages. However, their last edit to any part of the portal was 62 minutes later at 21:02, 11 April 2008 (see portalspace contribs). Since late 2006, the lead of WP:POG has said "Do not expect other editors to maintain a portal you create." I will AGF that despite being a prolific portal-creator, Cenarium somehow managed to remain unaware of that prominent guidance when they created Portal:Set theory, Portal:Category theory, Portal:Number theory, etc.

Whatever the reasons for the creator's near-instant abandonment, portals need ongoing maintenance, and this one hasn't had it.

Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:Discrete mathematics shows a slim set of sub-pages:
 * /Selected article/1, /Selected article/2, /Selected article/3, /Selected article/4, /Selected article/5, were all created by Cenarium in April 2008.  Since then, the only edits to any of them have been trivial such as disambiguation, and the addition in 2018 of a formatting template.  Nobody has updated any of the content.
 * /Selected picture/1 is the only image page. It shows same pic as when the page was created on 12 April 2008‎ by
 * /Did you know consists of 2 items added in April 2008 by Tompw. Neither of them has any connection to the scrutinised curation process at WP:DYK, which exists to showcase new or expanded content.  These two items are just factoids selected and summarised without scrutiny, usurping the good name of WP:DYK to create a collection of random WP:TRIVIA.

WP:POG requires that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers". It also guides that "the portal should be associated with a WikiProject (or have editors with sufficient interest) to help ensure a supply of new material for the portal and maintain the portal". This portal fails on at least three of the four counts:
 * 1)  Broad topic . I'm not sure.  Category:Discrete mathematics and its subcats contain lots of articles, though attempts to count eluded me because even a deep Petscan search strayed heavily into topics such as music, whose relation to discrete mathematics is weak. This may indicate a broad topic, or maybe a narrow topic covered in copious detail.  But either way, it matters little, because of the next three points.
 * 2)  High readership .  Fail. The portal's January–June 2019 daily average of only 16 views per day is trivially low.
 * 3)  Lots of maintainers . Fail. Since the creator abandoned the portal, there have been a few trivial drive-by dabs etc, but I have seen nothing that could really be called an act of substantive maintenance to the content, let alone expansion towards the risibly low POG minimum of 20 articles.
 * 4)  Associated WikiProject . Fail. There is no WP:WikiProject Discrete mathematics, and WP:WikiProject Mathematics doesn't seem interested. Relevant discussions are:  Feb 2019 lament about the flood of portalspam, with subsequent discussion, plus an April 2019 question by Legacypac asking "Which of these approx 30 Portals does the math project provide support to or are you interested in managing?". Legacypac's plea brought only one response, and no offers of maintenance.

Meanwhile, two newish features of the Wikimedia software means that the article and navboxes offers all the functionality which portals like this set out to offer. Both features are available only to ordinary readers who are not logged in, but you can test them without logging out by right-clicking on a link, and the select "open in private window" (in Firefox) or "open in incognito window" (Chrome).
 * 1) mouseover: on any link, mouseover shows you the picture and the start of the lead.  So the preview-selected page-function of portals is redundant: something almost as good is available automatically on any navbox or other set of links.  Try it by right-clicking on  this link to the head article Discrete mathematics.
 * 2) automatic imagery galleries: clicking on an image brings up an image gallery of all the images on that page. It's full-screen, so it's actually much better than  a click-for-next image gallery on a portal.   Try it by right-clicking on this link to the article Discrete mathematics, open in a private/incognito tab, and click on any image to start the slideshow of 8 images.  It's still small, bit it's a much better image gallery than the lone pic in the portal.

It's long past time to stop luring readers to this abandoned page. Time to just delete it. I also oppose re-creation, because of the long-term failure to meet the fundamental requirements for a portal. Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:12, 12 September 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:Mathematics), without creating duplicate entries. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 11:21, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete per the thorough and highly detailed investigation of the portal by the nominator,  Brown HairedGirl . Portals stand or fall on their merits in the now, not what could someday hypothetically happen with them, and this one falls flat. It's a useless time suck that lures readers to decade-long abandoned junk and damages Wikipedia's hard won reputation for quality. I oppose re-creation, as a decade of hard evidence shows Discrete mathematics is not a broad enough topic under WP:POG to attract readers or maintainers. This portal is a solution in search of a problem. Newshunter12 (talk) 12:55, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Discrete Mathematics

 * Delete - Another unmaintained poorly viewed mathematics portal. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:13, 14 September 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.