Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:M*A*S*H (4th nomination)

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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. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 12:16, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

Portal:M*A*S*H


Ancient, abandoned, static micro-portal on the popular media franchise M*A*S*H.

Created in May 2005 by an anon IP (yes, IPs could create pages back then), three months before creation of the portal namespace.

Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:M*A*S*H shows a small list of subpages. There were a few edits in the years after creation, but almost no significant edits in the last ten years:
 * Portal:M*A*S*H/Featured article has displayed the same topic (Abyssinia, Henry) since December 2006
 * Portal:M*A*S*H/Featured picture has displayed no picture since this edit in October 2007
 * Portal:M*A*S*H/M*A*S*H news is wholly unchanged since this edit on 3 December 2006‎
 * Portal:M*A*S*H/Did you know has displayed the same items since 2011.. . Per WP:DYK, "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 list loses the newness, so its only effect is as a trivia section.

The lead of WP:POG says "Portals which require manual updating are at a greater risk of nomination for deletion if they are not kept up to date. Do not expect other editors to maintain a portal you create" ... and this one has not been maintained or updated.

WP:POG requires that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers" ... but this portal has been unmaintained for fourteen years, and it has abysmal page views. In Jan–Feb 2019 it got an average of only 9 pageviews per day, barely more than half the abysmal median for all portals of 16 views/day and a mere 2.1% of the 438 daily views for the head article.

This abandoned pseudo-portal has been to MFD 3 times before, most recently in 2011 (see WP:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:M*A*S*H (3rd nomination)). The was deleted in 2011.

It hasn't improved in the 8 years since then, and it's time to just delete it. Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:39, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment - "But this was a very popular TV show." Robert McClenon (talk) 00:42, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
 * @Robert, I had a wee bet going with myself how long it would be before one of the defenders-of-any-old-portal would come out with that line, as if it somehow trumped the evidence of a decade-and-half of abandonment by readers and editors.
 * I had bet that it would take at least twelve hours, but your prompt anticipation of the same thing has lost me the bet. So now I have to cough up: I owe myself a bottle of the good stuff.  This portal cleanup work is a tough gig . --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 01:45, 9 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete with silver bullets (not just Korean bullets). This is a zombie portal that was stillborn in 2005 and re-animated in 2009 after being properly certified dead.  This portal was redirected as a quasi-deletion in 2009 and was then unredirected.  The second MFD, in August 2009, should have been final.  I will note that the habit of defending portals with lies is not new.  It was also done in 2011 with the statement that this portal satisfied portal guidelines.  It did not; the requirement for a portal maintainer was always there (unless there never were any guidelines).  Neither the war nor the show lasted fourteen years, but this portal only appears to have been alive for fourteen years.  I also concur with the analysis by User:BrownHairedGirl.  Robert McClenon (talk) 01:34, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete - I've tried to stay away from portal discussions, but the data provided above is just astonishing. What good is a portal if it hasn't changed in some parts in over 14 years? As an aside, I'll note that I believe that a FA main article for a TV series will always be better than any portal for that single TV series and will provide better value for the encyclopedia as a whole. --Gonnym (talk) 12:30, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Gonnym. Sadly, I was a wee bit less astonished to discover this, because this is just one of many hundreds of similarly-abandoned portals which have been brought to MFD in the last few months.  I have found almost a dozen of them just in the last few days.
 * In every case, the head article does a much better job. These abandoned portals add no value for readers, and just make Wikipedia look like a dying platform. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 13:00, 9 July 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.