Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Universities

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. — JJMC89 (T·C) 21:51, 12 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Universities[edit]

Portal created in 2005 and barely updated since. 254 edits by 97 editors across all subpages, with a large part being vandalism.

Portal:Universities/Featured article seems to have never managed to showcase more than a single article, despite long stints of purported good articles that weren't. The portal is therefore a poster child of the epidemic of WP:UNDUE neglect in portal namespace. Time to restore a semblance of respect of the five pillars. Nemo 16:22, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete The unnecessarily and bizarrely caustic nomination is correct in its essential conclusion that the portal is undeveloped and unmaintained. ElKevbo (talk) 16:43, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- On the contrary, ElKevbo, I think that @Nemo understated the problem. The neglect is not an epidemic, as Nemo claims; it is endemic, i.e. it is a stable and consistent feature of portal-space for most of its existence. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:30, 7 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete without prejudice to a redesign that has a maintenance plan with at least two maintainers and a design that does not involve content-forked subpages, or a lack of content-forked subpages. Several months ago I made a note for myself that this was a high-visibility but unmaintained portal, at 68 average daily pageviews. It still is a well-viewed but unmaintained portal. Like Portal:Companies, the topic is broad enough to support a portal, but it has one-fifth of the viewers of Portal:Companies and the lack of maintenance is far more obvious.
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.
As a matter of common sense, delete it first and replace it later. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:52, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per delete votes above, and per the fact there is no good reason to keep such a portal as this. Relatively 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 also oppose re-creation, as experience tells us that despite the view numbers, a portal on the topic gets neglected. -Crossroads- (talk) 16:49, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete this portal is hard to navigate. And later remake it so it is easier to navigate.Catfurball (talk) 17:57, 10 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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.