Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Xray Crystallography

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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  Keep - I've renamed it to Portal:Crystallography, but since a scope change can't actually be imposed by fiat, unless the portal actually expands to all Crystallography, it may well be re-renamed in the future. Wily D 08:12, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Portal:Xray Crystallography


The scope of this portal is so tiny as to not be functional. It's not really complete, there's no room for expansion, and there's not really enough content here for it to be worth it.  S ven M anguard  Wha?  15:38, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
 * No room for expansion? Boghog (talk) 19:31, 15 September 2012 (UTC)


 * delete. It's been dead for a long time.  Nothing preventing some surge of interest in the future, but its a useless distraction at present, IMHO. --Smokefoot (talk) 17:23, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Following that logic, any Wikipedia article that has not been edited for a long time should be also be deleted. Also, how is it distracting?  If you don't want to look at it, ignore it.  Boghog (talk) 19:38, 15 September 2012 (UTC)


 * … and an ambiguous link correlation coefficient demonstrates the quality better than MfD discussion. If one knows where to merge this, then merge please (except for spoiled links), otherwise… [[Image:Wrikiball.png]] Incnis Mrsi (talk) 18:29, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep – an important subject whose portal will hopefully be revived in the future. If it were deleted, recreating from scratch would create unnecessary additional work. Furthermore there is no harm in keeping a dormant portal.  Boghog (talk) 19:41, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Portals are for wide subjects that can support 10-20 articles, a dozen images, and then any of a quote bank, a frequently updatable in the news section, a second set of articles (say biographies), etc.). This subject is so narrow that it's never going to get a dozen articles or a dozen images. I think you're fooling yourself about your ability to make this work.  S ven M anguard   Wha?  20:33, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
 * 10-20 articles – more than 56 crystallographic Wikipedia articles already have been created
 * a dozen images – User:PDBbot has uploaded tens of thousands of images of protein structures that have been solved by X-ray crystallography that are used in Gene Wiki articles (see this link 38,255 images in total). In addition, I have created, uploaded, and inserted a few dozen crystallographic structures into Wikipedia articles myself.
 * a second set of articles (say biographies), etc.) – see Category:Crystallographers. Dozens of Nobel Prizes have been awarded for work directly related to, or involving the use of, crystallographic methods and techniques including the 2011 Prize in Chemistry (to Dan Shechtman) and one of the most important scientific discoveries of the 20th century, the 1962 Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of the helical structure of DNA (to Francis Crick, James D. Watson, Maurice Wilkins that should also have included Rosalind Franklin). The list of Nobel Prize winning crystallographers is easily a few dozen and most if not all have Wikipedia articles written about them.
 * Boghog (talk) 22:44, 15 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Rename to Portal:Crystallography. I have no objections to the renaming proposal. Delete. Category:X-ray crystallography has only eight pages as of now. Scope is too small to build a meaningful portal.--SGCM (talk)  21:07, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep. The argument about number of articles above is denied by the fact that the portal itself lists 56 articles in the field, plus some redlinks that might be made into articles. Category:X-ray crystallography is a sub-category of Category:Crystallography, which contains a large number of articles. X-ray crystallography is by far the most important techigue in crystallography and the two terms are often used to mean the same thing. I suggest that this portal be renamed to Portal:Crystallography to avoid confusion and widen its content to some extent. There is plenty of room for expansion. -- Bduke   (Discussion)  22:03, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I have updated it a bit and cleaned it up. -- Bduke   (Discussion)  23:01, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your informed input, I agree with your renaming proposal, but I do have a question. Would it be possible to expand the scope further to include other related fields? I'm not familiar with the subject, but the wider the scope, the better.--SGCM (talk)  01:53, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I also think the renaming proposal is a good one since it would incorporate related electron crystallography and neutron diffraction methods. However I would be very hesitate to expand the scope any further since the subject of the portal would become too difuse. The next higher level might include things like NMR. Merging crystallography with NMR wouild be a forced marriage ;-) The ultimate purpose is the same, but the methods are quite different. Boghog (talk) 15:40, 16 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Rename What is there looks to be useful and mostly valid, but a lot of it is Crystallography related so I support Bduke's suggestion to expand the scope to Portal:Crystallography. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:08, 15 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep. The reasons given for deletion are not accurate as Boghog has outlined.  Bduke's suggestion is a good one.  -- Ed (Edgar181) 12:19, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Note I would not be opposed to renaming it to Portal:Crystallography. If that's done, you can withdraw my deletion nomination.  S ven M anguard   Wha?  18:10, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Agree to rename - the topics box is big enough showing that there is enough to support a Portal, and it's a complicated enough subject that it deserves a portal as much as DNA electrophoresis does. &mdash; Cup co  02:27, 17 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Rename to Portal:Crystallography. A lot of the articles covered by this portal are not specific to X-ray crystallography. RockMagnetist (talk) 17:54, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Some absurd statements in the nomination, which is probably evidence for Portals not belonging in WikiPedia. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:24, 20 September 2012 (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.