Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Houston

 __NOINDEX__
 * 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) 23:35, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Portal:Houston


Neglected portal.

Ten selected articles created in June 2011. One created in January 2013. None updated except for a minor edit to Portal:Houston/Selected article/4 in June 2015.

Ten selected bios created in June 2011. No updates save for a few image updates.


 * Errors:
 * George H. W. Bush died last November
 * Ron Paul retired from Congress in 2013
 * Yao Ming retired from professional basketball in 2011. He is now prez of the Chinese Basketball Association. Mark Schierbecker (talk) 05:01, 26 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete per the nom. This portal has been abandoned for eight years, save for small one off maintenance in 2013 and 2015. It clearly fails WP:POG's requirement that portals should be about subjects broad enough to attract large numbers of readers and maintainers. This portal has had over a decade of no maintainers and it had a very low 18 views per day from January 1 to June 30 2019 (despite the head article Houston having 3556 views per day in the same period).


 * The DYK section was last updated in 2011, while WP:DYK states: "The DYK section showcases new or expanded articles that are selected through an informal review process. It is not a general trivia section" ... but this eight-year-old set has nothing to do with new or expanded articles, so its only effect is as a WP:TRIVIA section. All of the entries are fake DYK's as well, save the one for the Houston Volunteers and are usurping the good name of WP:DYK. Interestingly, Tropical Storm Allison and Kathryn J. Whitmire both have real DYK's, but neither are being used in the portal DYK section. Portals stand or fall on their merits in the now, not what could someday hypothetically happen with them, and this one falls flat. I oppose re-creation, as eight years of hard evidence shows Houston is not a broad enough topic to attract readers or maintainers. Newshunter12 (talk) 06:04, 26 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Just to notify him about this WhisperToMe (talk) 11:19, 26 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete due to nearly a decade without maintenance. The errors illustrate that the use of forked subpages is a maintenance trap.  This is an example of a previously elaborately maintained portal that has fallen into disuse.  Perhaps city portals do not warrant elaborate maintenance.     There is no short-term reason to expect that a re-creation of this portal will address the problems.  Any proposed re-creation of this portal using a more modern design, and taking into account the failures of many portals, can go to Deletion Review.  Robert McClenon (talk) 00:09, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment – A few comments on Do You Knows in portals are in order. As User:BrownHairedGirl and User:Newshunter12 point out, the Do You Know section of the Main Page has quality criteria, so that the hooked articles are recently improved articles, and the DYK section of the Main Page is not a general trivia section.  The Do You Knows in portals are almost always a general trivia section.  However, there is neither a guideline requiring Do You Knows in portals, nor a guideline specifying that, if there are Do You Knows, they have passed any test.  They are therefore almost always a general trivia section.  There is no rule against having general trivia.  My own thinking is that portals almost always have Do You Knows precisely because providing general trivia on a one-time basis is fun for portal originators.  The Do You Knows of portals are useless but harmless.  They are neither a reason to keep a portal nor a reason to delete a portal.  Robert McClenon (talk) 00:09, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
 * @Robert McClenon, WP:TRIVIA bans trivia in article space. The portal guideline permits it, which seems to me to be a case of WP:LOCALCON  ignoring a broader community consensus.
 * I disagree with your assertion that The Do You Knows of portals are useless but harmless. They may be harmless, or maybe not.
 * The lack of any scrutiny process means that the random trivia section of portals consists of unsourced and unscrutinised factoids. Those may be accurate, but they may also be erroneous, or simply made up.  Having examined several hundred of them in the last few months, I found the quality to be highly variable: everywhere from DYK standard to semi-literate nonsense, with a fair number of more minor failings in between.
 * It seems to me to be a defiance of basic en.wp principles tolerate these unsourced trvia sections. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 00:22, 27 August 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:Texas), without creating duplicate entries. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 00:22, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment: I wonder how much the move to mobile phones choked off the whole portal thing. AFAIK Wikipedia editing patterns were already becoming less dynamic by 2011 or so. Portals aren't visible with people viewing WP on cell phones. Also I think the Google previews of Wikipedia articles are meaning people just aren't eyeballing the pages as much. It would be interesting comparing records of portals prior to 2011. WhisperToMe (talk) 13:23, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete per nominator and NH12, and oppose re-creation. Fails the WP:POG requirements for readers and maintainers. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 22:37, 29 August 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.