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.
Stale portal using static copies of poor-quality articles from 2006. Other than this 2020 expansion of the Selected Article rotation, this portal has gone without updates since 2006.
DeletePortal:Texas and its subpages. The use of subpages was always an unsound design. The nominator has provided multiple examples of how content fork subpages became obsolete and incorrect. Subpage rot is especially obvious when the pages are based on biographies of living persons. The nominator probably means that there has been no maintenance on the subpages, of which there are 103. There has been drive-by maintenance, of course, by User:Northamerica1000, who likes portals and likes to do drive-by maintenance on them. The view rate has always been between 0.5% and 0.7% of the view rate of the lead article Texas:
No, Robert McClenon, you may not set Heymann criterion to dictate when and where others will work on Wikipedia. In fact, as a direct reaction to your blatant attempt at bullying, I will not be working to improve any portals until this tag team stops its systematic nomination of the namespace for deletion. Certes (talk) 09:42, 1 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I did not intend to dictate that anyone do any work. I only intend to specify what work can be done that will cause me to change my !vote. I actually do not expect the portal to be redesigned. as Portal:World War II was not redesigned, but was deleted. I am willing to revise my wording some further, but that is the Heymann criterion that will cause me to change my !vote. If the portal is not redesigned, as I expect that it will not be redesigned, my recommendation will continue to be that it be deleted, because it presents incorrect information to the readers. Robert McClenon (talk) 13:55, 1 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Question - The wave of Portal MFDs in 2019 began after the creation of second-level Indian national division portals, the idea being to create automated portals of this nature for all countries, which would lead to the creation of 10000 portals. The community rejected this idea. So why do we keep out of date Portals about American and European second-level national divisions? Why so much resistance to deleting them if the automated model of those that were deleted was superior? Are these portals supported by Wikiprojects and those no? Mass creation? "Western bias"?Guilherme Burn (talk) 13:10, 1 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
User:Guilherme Burn - The problem with the 5000 portals, including the second-level divisions (states) of India, was the automated creation. All or nearly all of the automated portals were deleted, and the focus had shifted to deletion of little-viewed legacy portals with rotting subpages, before the ArbCom case was opened, and what ArbCom sanctioned was not a type of portal or method of portal creation, but incivility and personal attacks. Automated portal creation has been deprecated, and portals with subpages that drift out of currency should be deprecated. The automated model was not superior. It was inferior, but the architecture with subpages is also inferior. I think that this at least partly answers your question. Robert McClenon (talk) 13:55, 1 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I understand the "automated creation" motive. My point is that the community deleted the portals of second-level divisions (states) until it reached a "Status quo" that should not be touched. These portals we're discussing here, in a way, were also “mass creation/ automated creation” in the period 2005-2009.Guilherme Burn (talk) 19:03, 1 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
User:Guilherme Burn - First, I don't think that any status quo that was reached in 2019 should be considered a binding consensus, because Consensus Can Change. Second, I don't think that any consensus was reached on anything in 2019. After deleting a few thousand of the excess portals, and keeping others, the survivors of the portal deletion wars stopped fighting due largely to exhaustion. We did reach a status quo because some of the portal critics were exhausted, and one portal opponent was topic-banned from portals. There had been portals for nearly all of the second-level subdivisions of the United States (states), Canada (provinces), Australia (states), and the United Kingdom (counties), and at least some of the second-level subdivisions of India (states). Some US state portals and British county portals were deleted. I don't remember at this time about Canada, Australia, and India. Third, I wouldn't characterize the manual mass creation of portals in 2005-2009 as comparable to the mass automated creation of portals in 2018. All or nearly all of the portals created by automation in 2018 have been deleted. Fourth, it appears that all or nearly all biographical portals were deleted, but I would not consider that to have been a consensus, but simply a result after chaotic quarreling. Fifth, there definitely is not a consensus to delete all second-level division portals. Some of them are better than others. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:51, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sixth, I think that I will be copying some of this discussion to a page in project space, so that it doesn't get lost by archival when this MFD is closed. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:51, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There are many useful comments on important issues both here and at parallel MfDs such as Beer. It would be helpful to reach a conclusion, or at least a statement of opposing positions, rather than having to rehash the arguments on every other MfD. Certes (talk) 10:02, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I have updated the portal to use transclusion rather than subpages for all the article selections on it. This should fix the issue of outdated content fork subpages. After doing so, I see no more major issues with the portal that would require its deletion. DraconicDark (talk) 20:25, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep – The recent changes fix the main criticisms, leaving WP:NOBODYREADSIT as the only outstanding argument for deletion. The ratio between article and portal views is typical, so is an argument for removing the namespace rather than this portal in particular. It is also not entirely equitable, because portals are excluded from searches and because most readers will type or click on "Texas" which leads straight to the article with no option of viewing the portal instead. Certes (talk) 00:47, 8 February 2024 (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.
