Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Philosophy of science

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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 | [comment] || 01:32, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Portal:Philosophy of science

 * – (View MfD)

Abandoned portal. Ten selected articles created in December 2006. Selected article/10 is the only entry that has received any moderate edit since then. Two entries are unillustrated.

Ten selected bios. Selected biography/5 is the only entry with a moderate edit. Three entries are unillustrated.

This is still a relatively active interdisciplinary field, so it is imperative that content about the topic is updated frequently. Mark Schierbecker (talk) 20:47, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

Philosophy of Science

 * Comment Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:Philosophy_of_science appears to list 20 articles and 20 biographies, but there are only 10 of each, and 10 null entries. Spot-checking shows that the articles and biographies were content-forked in 2006, and some have been tweaked, and some now differ substantially from the parent articles.  Robert McClenon (talk) 22:18, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Weak Delete as per nomination by User:Mark Schierbecker without prejudice to a new design not using content-forked subpages, and with a maintenance plan.
 * 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.
 * This portal is not being maintained. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:14, 30 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:Philosophy + Portal:Science), without creating duplicate entries. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 21:12, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete per above, per WP:TNT, and per the fact there is no good reason to keep portals that are in this state. Relatively low page views and the state it is in mean zero value is added by such a portal. Portals are not content, so any comparison to how broken articles are handled would be improper. The downgrading of POG cuts both ways - there is no policy or guideline which suggests this portal should exist. -Crossroads- (talk) 03:42, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep as a good portal on a legitimate topic. Its quality assessment resulted in the highest possible rating: Featured Portal.  Lack of maintenance since then means that it may not cover recent developments in philosophy.  However, this field of study changes slowly, and omission of the latest trend is a reason to improve, not to delete. Certes (talk) 10:16, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
 * Merge and redirect to Portal:Science. 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 13:21, 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) 16:03, 1 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete. Yet another narrow-topic portal which has not been maintained. Its narrow scope means no surprise that it has failed to attract maintainers.
 * A set of abandoned, outdated content forks does no favours to readers, who would be much better served by visiting the head article. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 20:48, 3 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete. This has not been sufficiently maintained for many years - e.g. Portal:Philosophy of science/Things you can do has had no substantial edits since 2009 so, for example, the article request for Larry Hickman has been a bluelink since an article of that name was created in 2009. Unlike with articles (and to some extent wikiprojects) it is better to have no portal (to distract readers/editors from pages that are being updated) than to have an out of date portal. DexDor(talk) 12:39, 5 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.