Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Massachusetts

 __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. There is a clear consensus that this portal should be deleted, as it is both poorly maintained and little-viewed. Several editors proposing to keep the portal point out that it previously held featured portal status, but no basis in policy is identified for giving this status any weight in current discussions of whether portals should be kept. bd2412 T 23:55, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

Portal:Massachusetts

 * – (View MfD)

Neglected portal.

Twenty selected articles, 20 selected bios and 15 selected locations created and/or last updated in October or January 2012. Plus one selected location updated October 2019.


 * Errors
 * Thomas J. Hudner Jr. died in November 2017. Mark Schierbecker (talk) 09:28, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
 * A neglected portal not updated since October 2019? SOFIXIT. Certes (talk) 11:12, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
 * This portal has not had any maintainer since about 2015 and its content is now badly skewed. A portal is not an article that can be fixed up – it is a live dynamic entity that needs ongoing maintinance to avoid becoming forked/redundant.  The WikiProject Massachusetts has not touched it, and nor have any of the many editors who actively maintain the Massachusetts main article, and do so with high frequncy, and to a full "live" GA standard.  This abandoned portal thus degrades the work of those editors in the eyes of the reader.  The only way to fix it, is to delete it.Britishfinance (talk) 09:14, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment - The portal had an average of 22 daily pageviews in January-February 2019, as opposed to 4599 average daily pageviews for the head article. Robert McClenon (talk) 11:42, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment - The presence of BLPs for dead heroes (or dead statesmen) that need to be fixed illustrates the unsoundness of a design relying on content-forked subpages. Robert McClenon (talk) 11:42, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete we don't need this state portal period.Catfurball (talk) 18:09, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment - As noted by nominator, this portal has 20 articles, 20 biographies, and 16 locations. One of the locations has a maintainer, User:Ksherin.  Is User:Ksherin interested in maintaining the portal, or only one page?  Robert McClenon (talk) 19:10, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment to User:Certes - The portal itself has been the subject of experimentation by TTH and others, but the portal itself is not what needs to be maintained. The portal has 56 article-style subpages, or which 1 has been maintained and 55 have not been maintained since 2012 or 2013.  What are you suggesting should be fixed by whom?  Robert McClenon (talk) 19:10, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
 * We could easily replace those subpages by transclusions, as I've done with the late Mr. Hudner . After that one-off conversion, any editor updating the relevant article automatically maintains the associated extract.  Certes (talk) 20:39, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment - The portal had 25 average daily pageviews in the first half of 2019, and the article had an average of 4179 daily pageviews in that period. This is not much of a change from the first two months of 2019.  Robert McClenon (talk) 19:10, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment - I am providing a table showing portal data for US state portals that have not been deleted, in descending order of view rate in the first two months of 2019, only if the portal is viewed less than 30 times a day. That is, the least viewed portals are shown at the bottom.  A few state portals, including Portal:California and Portal:Texas, are not shown because they are viewed more than 30 times daily.  Portals that have been deleted are not shown.  If a comment is no longer accurate due to more recent maintenance of a portal, please advise me on my talk page, or at Wikipedia talk:US State Portal Metrics (where I have data listed for all of the US states), unless it has to do with Portal:Massachusetts.  That is, please do not fill this MFD with arguments about state portals other than Massachusetts.  Robert McClenon (talk) 19:48, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment - I also have data on provinces and territories of Canada and states and territories of Australia. My data on states and union territories of India is incomplete.  Robert McClenon (talk) 19:48, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment - Massachusetts has more pageviews than 22 other US state portals. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:48, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

US State Portals in Descending View Order

 * Comment – The table above is highly inaccurate, and it has been nominated for deletion. North America1000 00:08, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment - The statement that the table has been nominated for deletion is incorrect. This table and the table that has been nominated for deletion are not the same, because they were generated at different times from mostly the same information.  The Colorado line has been removed, because it did not reflect the expansion of the portal in June and July 2019.  Besides, the issue in this MFD is whether to delete Portal:Massachusetts.  Please review exactly what I did and did not say about Portal:Massachusetts.  Robert McClenon (talk) 03:59, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

Massachusetts

 * Keep. This was a featured portal when that award ceased in 2017, and has not deteriorated significantly since.  As explained in many other MfDs, comparison of pageviews between portals and articles says nothing about page quality; it merely shows that articles (correctly) have more incoming links and are much easier to search for. Certes (talk) 09:33, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
 * As usual, Certes deceptively fails to mention that although the FP process ended in 2017, Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:Massachusetts actually took place in 2013. I advise editors to look at the FP review, and note that it contains absolutely no discussion of either the selection of articles or the state of the content forks.  As usual with the generally-abysmal FP process, discussion was focused overwhelmingly on presentation, rather than on the substance of what the portal actually serves up to readers. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 14:53, 13 October 2019 (UTC)
 * It is clear that this portal is a long way from any type of featured stauts. The many editors who actively keep the main Massachusetts article at GA standard (and it definately is GA, unlike many other US states that were GA), ignore this – last material edit was 2015.  The WikiProject Massachusetts, has also ignored this. Britishfinance (talk) 09:17, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep, very well made portal, very easy to navigate and update. I just turned the one remaining BLP in the Selected bios into an auto-updating version. Given the strong community consensus against deleting all portals, I don't think portals of this quality should be nominated for deletion. —Kusma (t·c) 12:13, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep, this was a featured portal and is well constructed. I do not see the benefit to Wikipedia by deletion. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 15:50, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom and per the fact that there is no good reason to keep such a portal as this. Low page views and the condition it is in mean zero value is added by such a portal. There is no policy or guideline which suggests this portal should exist. Portals are not content, being for navigation instead, so it is improper to try to compare dilapidated and useless portals to articles and say they should just be fixed. There is no reason to think that hoped-for improvements and long-term maintenance will ever materialize anyway, even if promised at the last minute just to stave off deletion. 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, since they go out of date, preserve potentially inferior versions of article content, add pointlessly to the maintenance burden, and are vandalism magnets; therefore they should not be saved. I support replacement or removal of links rather than redirection, to avoid surprising our readers.
 * The nominator correctly described this portal as neglected. It has been pointed out in other MfDs that the now-discontinued Featured Portal review was not a rigorous and critical process, so that designation is meaningless. -Crossroads- (talk) 05:49, 12 October 2019 (UTC)
 * The idea that "broadness" of a topic is connected to pageviews or maintenance is absolutely ridiculous. This portal is in fairly good shape, so very little maintenance work is needed, so what is the problem with the absence of a large number of maintenance edits? Most of your arguments apply to all portals and so should be discounted, by the strong community consensus not to delete all portals. —Kusma (t·c) 06:43, 12 October 2019 (UTC)
 * As Kusma pointed out, there is a community consensus not to delete all of the portals, WP:IDONTLIKEIT and WP:SOFIXIT apply. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 23:00, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
 * KK87's comment is a classic argument from false premises. A decision to not delete all portals in one go is absolutely no barrier to making decisions on the fate of individual portals, and nobody is making WP:IDONTLIKEIT arguments.
 * Kusma is engaging in another type of fallacy, namely proof by assertion. Kusma's claim that this portal is in fairly good shape is contradicted by the evidence posted by the nominator, and Kusma simply denies the evidence without either disputing the evidence provided or providing other evidence. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 16:31, 19 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete as per nominator, and as per desire of Northamerica1000 to ignore the above table. The table had been included in order to provide the case that Portal:Massachusetts had better pageview metrics than 22 state portals, which would be an argument against deletion of this portal.  However, since the table is subject to objections, we should consider only that it has only 22 average daily pageviews, and that 55 of its articles were not maintained as of 10 October.  Robert McClenon (talk) 03:19, 13 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't think the desire of anyone to ignore or not to ignore a table you made has any connections to the question whether the portal should be kept or not. As to pageviews, well, WP:NOBODYREADSIT is not an argument for deletion, just like "lots of views" isn't an argument for keeping. —Kusma (t·c) 08:17, 13 October 2019 (UTC)
 * WP:POPULARPAGE is a discredited argument for deletion. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 23:07, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete per nominator. Another long-neglected portal, whose low readership makes it unlikely that it will attract enough maintainers to make it viable.  The former FP status which some editors point to was a) conducted in early 2013, and in no way reflects the portal's current abandoned status; b) like most FP reviews that I have seen, that one focused almost entirely on technical and presentational issues rather than on the substance of the portal's content.
 * I also see no sign of interest from WP:WikiProject Massachusetts, which is tagged as only semi-active. There is no mention of the portal at WT:WikiProject Massachusetts, and a search of the talkpage archives for "Portal:Massachusetts" gives only one hit: a  January 2013 announcement of the featured portal review.
 * So I see no basis for assuming that the portal has any greater chance of revival and ongoing maintenance than the 900+ other abandoned portals which have been deleted in the last 6 months. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 16:09, 15 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) 16:12, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep Massachusetts has over 200 good/featured articles, meaning the topic would be broad enough to maintain a portal. Neglect is not a reason for deletion. SportingFlyer  T · C  05:17, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Portals are not content; they are just showcases, which have reason to exist only if they add value for readers. SF seems to be saying that a showcase with a small and outdated set of topics somehow has some inherent value even when nobody can be bothered to maintain it. That's a bizarre proposition. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 19:37, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
 * User:BrownHairedGirl - If a proposition about portals seems bizarre, it is probably mystical. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:43, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Monthly views
Source:
 * Comment - The number in the above table that is labeled Article Page Views is actually Annual Page Views, not an average but a sum. The correct value for Article Page Views is 133,854.  Sometimes guessing how the numbers were obtained doesn't work.

See: https://tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&start=2018-10&end=2019-09&pages=Massachusetts Robert McClenon (talk) 08:40, 16 October 2019 (UTC)


 * The monthly average of 745 is still considerable when presented in this format. Again... what is the threshold for views? There appears to be no established consensus on the matter so I do not see how it is an argument considering the other reasoning presented. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 13:43, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
 * The monthly average of 745 is the same as the daily average of 25 that I listed. (The baselines are different, but the pageview rate did not change).

Robert McClenon (talk) 18:48, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
 * The intended Portal Guidelines were never approved by a consensus of the Wikipedia community, and we have never had real portal guidelines. We should therefore 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.  (There never was an actual guideline referring to broad subject areas, and the abstract argument that a topic is a broad subject area is both a handwave and meaningless.)  Common sense 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 selected articles (not only by an a priori claim that a topic is broad) (the number of articles in appropriate categories is an indication of potential breadth of coverage, but actual breadth of coverage should be required); (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 maintenance, (a) with at least two maintainers to provide backup, with a maintenance plan indicating how the portal will be maintained (b) the absence of any errors indicating lack of maintenance (including failure to list dates of death in biographies).  Some indication of how any selected articles were selected (e.g., Featured Article or Good Article status, selection by categories, etc.) is also desirable.  Any portal that does not pass these common-sense tests is not useful as a navigation tool, for showcasing, or otherwise.
 * These are great proposals but per WP:NOCOMMON "When advancing a position or justifying an action, base your argument on existing agreements, community foundation issues, and the interests of the encyclopedia, not your own common sense." You are trying to take what you think should be adopted and applying it as your version of common sense. One could argue that keeping a portal that has 745 average monthly views is common sense, or that keeping a portal that has been fixed up since this MfD started is common sense. Keeping this portal around in a fixed up state does not harm the encyclopedia. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 00:18, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
 * User:Knowledgekid87 - You cite an explanatory statement that says to base your argument on "existing agreements, community foundation issues, and the interests of the encyclopedia". I wish that we had any existing agreements, but the portal guidelines were defeated, so we have to rely on the interests of the encyclopedia, which are not served by keeping a portal where 55 of the 56 articles are not maintained and that has fewer than 25 daily viewers or 750 monthly viewers.  I tried to get an agreement to ratify the portal guidelines, but the portalistas voted it down because they prefer to wave their hands, blow smoke, and shout.  So we are left only with common sense, the common sense of the philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment and the Roman Empire, for those of us who have it.  Robert McClenon (talk) 04:12, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Massachusetts (again)

 * Comment I added a view by month scope for readers as it is relevant to the under-viewed argument which just accounts for a per day basis, errors for the portal have also been addressed. If the under-viewed count is the issue then where is the line drawn on how many views are acceptable versus how many aren't? Would 1,000 views a month default to a keep, 2,000? - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 00:33, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

template to this page three times today without stating a reason. Then he templated my talk page with and reported me at WP:AN/3 even though I have not broken the three-revert rule. seems to have been preemptively applied. Mark Schierbecker (talk) 00:49, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment - User:Knowledgekid87 has added the


 * Reasoning was stated in edit summaries, 3RR warning with diffs was given and reverted without further discussion. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 01:02, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Your first two edit summaries were: Not a vote added and Undid revision 921459450 by Mark Schierbecker (talk). This one? Undid revision 921482810 by Mark Schierbecker (talk) Stop reverting standard templates and WP:AGF. If that's a standard template, why isn't it added to every discussion? Mark Schierbecker (talk) 01:08, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I told you to WP:AGF with the addition of the template which acts as a reminder to editors and is acceptable as a standard template. I admit I didn't give an edit summary on all three reverts but to say "template to this page three times today without stating a reason" is a lie as I clearly gave edit summaries. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 01:10, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Your edit summary amounts to "Stop questioning me." That's not any kind of explanation. Mark Schierbecker (talk) 01:13, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Your edit summary amounts to the template being "condescending" which is an opinion, and linking to an unrelated essay that deals with talk page templates for regular editors. "Wikipedia offers many user talk templates to warn users about possible violations of vandalism, the three-revert rule  , and other policies and guidelines. You should use these templates carefully." and WP:DTTR "Take the template as a reminder and/or constructive criticism and just move on. ". - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 01:19, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Anyways you got no 3RR, but that still does not excuse all of this over the addition of one reminder template. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 01:21, 16 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete per above and for being a biased presentation of the topic. From Portal:Massachusetts/Selected article, one is brought to think that Massachusetts is only known for military events and natural disasters of nearby states which also happened to tangentially cause damage in the border of the state. Nemo 08:19, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't know what you are talking about as only 9 of the 20 selected articles are about war and disasters. Other diverse topics included that represent Massachusetts are: Plymouth Colony, Boston, Metacomet Ridge, Godsmack, Museum of Bad Art, 2004 World Series, Burnside Fountain, Longfellow House–Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Aerosmith. The selected articles have to be GA or FA status so more can always be included or haven't been made yet. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 13:56, 16 October 2019 (UTC)
 * KK87 writes: only 9 of the 20 selected articles are about war and disasters. So 45% of Massachusetts being war and disasters is a balanced portrayal of the state?  YCMTSU. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 19:32, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes I did write that, in the 200+ year history of the state of Massachusetts there were lots of wars and disasters. I also pointed out that this representation can be changed with other future FA and GA articles out there. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 00:07, 19 October 2019 (UTC)
 * *Delete per delete votes above. This is yet another little-read, near-abandoned portal on a fairly narrow topic.  To attract enough readers and maintainers to be viable, portals need to be about broad topics. The last 6 months of detailed scrutiny at MFD of over 1000 portals has repeatedly shown that for too long, portal enthusiasts had radically underestimated the degree of breadth needed. That resulted in many hundreds of almost unused portals which rotted because nobody wanted to maintain them.
 * Like many other portals, this one is orphaned. There is a WP:WikiProject Massachusetts, and it has some activity, but the project has never shown any interest in it.  I searched in the archives of WT:WikiProject Massachusetts for "Portal:Massachusetts", and got only one hit: a 2013 note on the FP review.  I also looked at Portal talk:Massachusetts, and find zero discussion there, ever. Just nothing.
 * Again, like so many other portals, this portal fails entirely to meet the WP:PORTAL goal of being an "enhanced main page" for the topic. It has only ever been a hobby for a few portal enthusiasts, who themselves gave up on it once it got its star.
 * Meanwhile, the head article Massachusetts is an actively-maintained GA-class article with 596 watchers (that's more editors watching it than the portal gets viewers in a fortnight). The head article is written in WP:SUMMARYSTYLE, so it does a much better job than the portal of showcasing articles, and with its fine collection of navboxes to is a much better navigational tool than the portal.    In other words, the head article is a vastly better portal than the portal itself.
 * The portal's risibly low pageviews are explicable by any defence of lack of promotion. The portal is linked from a commendable 6,412 articles and categories.  Yet in the year to end Sept 2019, the portal got only a total of 8,943 views.  So on average, each link generated 1.39 pageviews per year.
 * So editors don't maintain it, the WikiProject isn't interested, and readers ignore the links to it. Time to just delete it. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 00:42, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Struck duplicated vote, your "Delete per nominator" opinion above is noted. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 17:14, 18 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete. This portal demonstrates the core problem of US State portals, and why things are only getting worse for them, and why the "band-aids" should be avoided.  Unlike many other US State articles, the main Massachusetts article is in full GA shape and is actively supported today by a large collection of editors (which is great).  However, they want nothing to do with the Massachusetts portal, which was last supported in about 2014-2015.  In fact, the Massachusetts portal is so abandoned, that even vandals (of whom there are plenty on the main article), ignore it.  The WikiProject Massachusetts ignores it.  Our readers ignore it.  It has now become forked and biased, and only degrades the good work done on the topic in the eyes of the reader.
 * However, given that I have started spending more time at portal MfDs, I ask myslef why is this happening? A healthy active article + healthy editor interest in topic (with WP Project group), but complete abandonment of the portal. My conclusion is that all of the functions the portal could have preformed are now done elsewhere:
 * 1. In terms of content, the main article is a thorough and structured read on the topic with lots of links to other related articles on the topic, and is vetted more regularly for WP:PAG.
 * 2. In terms of navigation, the main article has a detailed navbox (which is transcluded and thus regularly checked). that covers the topic area well.
 * 3. In terms of serving as a navigation tool on the grades of articles on the topic, WikiProject Massachusetts does this comprehensively, and without POV.
 * The point I am making, is that for rational reasons, US State portals like this have become abandoned and redundant (e.g. they are "rationally abandoned"), not because of bad luck or fickle editing or reader fashion and habits, but because they service no useful purpose; and are inferior to other Wikipedia tools that better service these needs (per 1 to 3 above). The only thing they are now doing is to degrade the work of the topic area, by presenting out-of-date and forked material in a platform that sits largely outside of real WP guidelines. Britishfinance (talk) 10:01, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I endorse BF's eloquent analysis. Whatever purpose a portal such as this mught have been intended to serve when it was created by in 2008, after 11 years those functions are all performed much better elsewhere.  Even if the portal had been maintained and developed (which it manifestly wasn't), there are now other tools and pages which do the job much much better.
 * However, I would also add that the core functionality of the vast majority of portals is displaying excerpts of selected articles, one at a time. The value of these excerpts  is considerably reduced (and possibly eliminated) by the built-in previews on mouseover which is now available to logged-out readers on any Wikipedia page.  Those built-in previews now mean that, for example, a navbox is effectively a huge set of excerpt previews.  --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 16:15, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
 * If your issue is with portals in general then there has already been two community consensus discussions regarding keeping portals. This argument should be discredited as a potential blanket issue that goes beyond the scope of this MfD. Readers have not "rationally abandoned it" as you claim as per the views on the page and amounts to guesswork, if we are going with WP:OSE then Gamma-ray burst progenitors would also meet the criteria for low readership deletion. Notability of the state of Massachusetts is firmly established here. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 00:05, 19 October 2019 (UTC)
 * I am realising why this portal is so abandoned by editors and readers. These reasons have an obvious parallel with why so many WP portals are abandoned (and have been so for a long time now).  Nothing to do with guesswork or WP:OSE or Gamma-ray burst progenitors.  There is no material service that the Massachusetts portal provides that isn’t BETTER PROVIDED by other WP Massachusetts tools.  That is an observable fact, and explains why the abandonment of the portal has happened; and it is only worsening. Now that I see it, and it is so obvious, and I am ashamed it took me so long. Britishfinance (talk) 00:22, 19 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Do you feel that this point applies particularly to Massachusetts, or is it applicable to portals in general? Certes (talk) 00:37, 19 October 2019 (UTC)
 * It is clearly evident in the Massachusetts portal. However, because the Massachusetts topic is so actively supported (but not its portal), it clarifies that the issue is that the Massachusetts portal as a tool, is redundant technology to editors and readers of this topic.  If the portal technology has been left behind by better WP technologies for Massachusetts, then it must apply more broadly?  Even in my short experience of portal MfDs, I have encountered three portal creators and past maintainers, who !voted Delete.  I should have listened to them.  To paraphrase Warren Buffett, if WP portals had not been previously invented, would somebody still invent them today.  The answer must be no, as they as inferior to existing objects (per outlined above).  It is like someone building a new horse-and-cart factory after Henry Ford starts mass production of cars - it can only have one outcome. Britishfinance (talk) 00:55, 19 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Thank you . The syllogism "all portals should be deleted; this page is a portal; therefore this page should be deleted" would only work if we established that all portals should be deleted.  That point is still being debated at VPPR and your argument might be more appropriate there.  Certes (talk) 10:41, 19 October 2019 (UTC)
 * @Certes, I think that Britishfinance's concept of "rational abandonment" of portals is an important one, because it summarises a number of factors which have been seen in the MFD scrutiny of many portals.
 * I suggest that is an issue which should be examined on a case-by-case basis. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 02:22, 19 October 2019 (UTC)
 * . I haven’t come as this MfD with “all portals should be deleted, therefore this portal should be deleted” is 100% not what I have said. I have said that THIS portal should be deleted (for clearly stated reasons specific to this portal), however, I have also considered the reasons for this portals deletion (ie “rational abandonment” and inferior technology), on a wider scale, as there are obvious implications.  Thanks.  Britishfinance (talk) 16:09, 19 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete largely per Britishfinance and BHG. Abandoned portal for a topic whose articles/WikiProject are quite active + low page views - indicating no interest in the page from either editors or readers. SD0001 (talk) 17:02, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete per findings by Britishfinance. Low page views + poor maintenance = failed portal. ToThAc (talk) 05:16, 24 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete states don't need portals period.Catfurball (talk) 20:15, 29 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete per Britishfinance and @ Brown HairedGirl . This portal is long abandoned, almost unread, and whatever functions it was meant to serve are done better elsewhere (ex. the head article Massachusetts). Crud like this is not needed on Wikipedia. Newshunter12 (talk) 07:09, 1 November 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.