Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Louisiana

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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 | [spill the beans] || 18:19, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Portal:Louisiana

 * – (View MfD)

Neglected portal. Twelve never-updated selected articles created in July 2007. Ten never-updated selected bios created in July 2007. Ten never-updated selected cities created in July 2007. Mark Schierbecker (talk) 08:27, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
 * 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 * Merger just means preserving a set outdated of content forks, which is a very bad idea.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 proposed above. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 15:56, 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:United States), without creating duplicate entries. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 15:55, 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 (17/day, compared to 3,052/day for Louisiana) 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 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) 02:06, 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) 04:11, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Louisiana

 * 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.
 * Just delete it. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:11, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete states don't need portals period.Catfurball (talk) 19:14, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete. It should be worthy to note that one of the articles in the DYK was deleted as NN having been created by a serial copyright violater - see this link. ミラP 21:45, 6 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.