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. (non-admin closure) Nova Crystallis (Talk) 04:58, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

State-level road portals[edit]

(convenience links: subject articles California roads, Maryland roads, Michigan highways (redirects to Michigan State Trunkline Highway System), Washington roads)

Delete Multi-page portals that are narrow redundant subsets of the existing Portal:U.S. roads. Even though three of these were Featured Portals when that process was operating, they are far from that now (California has a big Lua error), and more importantly they fall far short of the breadth-of-subject-matter requirement of the WP:POG guideline. UnitedStatesian (talk) 20:00, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

- @UnitedStatesian:, this statement about the California roads portal having a Lua error is misleading. This code to an unrelated Lua module which broke the code was made 19 hours before the nomination. Using this fact to imply that the California roads portal is not being maintained is dishonest and I ask you to retract that statement. --Rs chen 7754 00:19, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@UnitedStatesian, I am sure that your statement was made in good faith. My addition of tracking categories had some unforseen glitches on larger portals, which have all now been resolved. As @Rschen7754 notes, the Lua error was my fault, not the fault of the portal.

I apologise to both of you for this error which I caused through an unforeseen scaling problem ... but Rschen7754, please don't call UnitedStatesian dishonest for drawing the perfectly reasonable conclusion that the flaw was in the portal. Sorry again to both of you, and please don't let the egg I splattered on my face trigger a falling out between you two fine editors. If a joint exercise of pieing me would help restore goodwill between you two, I'll happily supply the pies

. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:43, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe "dishonest" is not quite the right word, but if it were me, I would have looked more closely at what was causing the Lua error before insinuating fault on the portal maintainers. As it was, even though I brought the portal to featured status I wasn't even notified of this discussion. It seems that a lot of portals are being carelessly nominated for deletion in a war against portals (and I've skimmed the numerous threads on AN(I)). Maybe there were some crummy portals created en masse by one editor, but carelessly going through and mass-MFDing portals that people actually maintain and care about is not the proper solution for this. I strongly urge User:UnitedStatesian to reconsider this nomination. --Rs chen 7754 04:01, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Just to put your mind at ease, I assure you that I took great care in this nomination, starting with actually reading the WP:POG guideline. I for one am not engaging in any "war against portals" (and your use of that phrase indicates a remarkable assumption of bad faith), as indicated by my numerous !keep votes and continued effort to improve the portals that cover subjects that are uncontroversially broad enough to meet the WP:POG guideline, an effort that is helped dramatically if the portal space actually conforms to that guideline. UnitedStatesian (talk) 14:37, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I never stated any of these portals was not being maintained. Can't retract a statement I never made. UnitedStatesian (talk) 14:20, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - Enough content to sustain a portal. Plenty of articles that can be featured as the selected article, and enough pictures and DYK hooks that can be cycled. Dough4872 20:19, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep—Michigan has over 200 articles at the GA or higher level (32 FA, 4 A/GA, 188 GA, 1 GAN/B) plus the FLs, providing years worth of selected articles. There are dozens of quality images yet to be used, and the DYK sets that are supposed to be recycling based on a couple hundred DYKs hooks. (Dough4872, you need to get back on that.) That's plenty of content to sustain a portal.
The other states' portals may not have the same breadth of content, but they have enough to warrant retention. Imzadi 1979 → 21:52, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Question - Are the portals being actively maintained? The originator of California has not edited in six months. The originators of the other portals edit, but that may or may not mean that they are maintaining the portals. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:53, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- The nominator of the portal to featured portal status certainly is. --Rs chen 7754 00:14, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Question - Are the portals the original portals developed by a developer, or have they been downgraded to some sort of automated portal structure by the portal platoon? Robert McClenon (talk) 22:53, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- I have been keeping the Maryland portal updated. I pick a selected article every month while the pictures and DYK hooks randomly rotate between different selections every time the portal is loaded. This concept can be applied to all the portals (even for the selected articles) in order to keep maintenance to a minimum. Dough4872 23:18, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- California was purposefully designed to not require updating. --Rs chen 7754 00:14, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- The Michigan portal is the original, and it's kept updated, or at least my end is. Dough4872 assists with the DYKs, and it appears he misses the last update cycle. Imzadi 1979 → 01:13, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  - Yeah, need to get back into updating the DYKs, though I would suggest doing something like the Maryland portal and having several pages of different hooks that rotate randomly each time the portal is loaded. The article and picture can still be updated monthly if desired. Dough4872 01:21, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep There is certainly enough content to sustain these portals. --Rs chen 7754 00:15, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The subject matter is well defined, albeit niche as a general topic. Admittedly I have been prioritizing other projects, but the Washington portal can be easily restocked with a number of FAs/GAs that have recently been promoted, not to mention my photos. Sounder Bruce 06:29, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep all California, Maryland & Michigan are former featured portals. All four have enormous amounts of featured/good content. There seems rather little deletion rationale, beyond a Lua error that BrownHairedGirl introduced accidentally. Enough people have emerged from the woodwork to suggest that the portals are currently being maintained. Espresso Addict (talk) 07:14, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep all per all of the above. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 07:49, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment

- Old portal, 82 subpages, created 2012-04-04 09:55:10 by User:Jj98. No apparent maintainer. Portal:California roads

- Old portal, 134 subpages, created 2012-04-19 01:07:12 by User:Dough4872. No apparent maintainer. Portal:Maryland roads

- Old portal, 51 subpages, created 2011-02-13 00:37:47 by User:Admrboltz. No apparent maintainer. Portal:Washington roads

- Maintained, 251 subpages, created 2011-05-19 02:24:05 by User:Imzadi1979, maintained by User:Imzadi1979. Portal:Michigan highways.

-remark 1: the best way to say that a portal is maintained, is to document the ad hoc template at the top of the code of the portal. This looks like ((Portal maintenance status|date=December 2018 |subpages= |nonstandard= |manual=yes |maintainer1=Imzadi1979 |maintainer2=Dough4872 )). Moreover, filling the subpages= field could help the passerby (and the survival of the said subpages).

-remark 2: From [wmflabs], it seems that the views per day of these four portals are respectively: 8,7,4,3. Therefore, it seems that there is certainly enough content to sustain these portals has no influence on there is certainly enough readers to read these portals. But how to be sure that a miracle will not occur ?

-remark 3: who knows what caused the 2019-03-09 peak ?

Pldx1 (talk) 17:17, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Pldx1: I maintain the California roads portal. I do not know how to say this more clearly. --Rs chen 7754 18:13, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Dear User:Rschen7754. As you have already suggested The nominator of the portal to featured portal status certainly is, I had no doubt about that. And after your I maintain the California roads portal, I have even less doubts. But the present MfD will close at the end of the week. Thus it would be easier for the next passerby to find this information at the top of the Portal:California roads page, instead of reading, at the very top, ((Portal maintenance status|date=June 2018|broken=minor|note=Has no root article)). Moreover, adding and filling a subpages= item, could help protecting the subpages. Be assured that I am not the one who invented this template, you can check its history. Pldx1 (talk) 08:20, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Pldx1: Very well, however, when I've used templates like that I've been accused of WP:OWN. --Rs chen 7754 18:19, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Rschen7754: If --and only if-- you are ever facing someone who has so much difficulties to distinguish between owning and maintaining, then put my name as maintainer4= (and ping me, in order that I become aware of) ! Disclaimer: I already know that Highway Sixty One is not part of this series. It would have been a plus! Pldx1 (talk) 19:02, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Weak Keep - These portals are being maintained. Road networks are a broad area for editors who are interested in road networks. Maryland is the smallest of the four states, but I know that one can get lost on Maryland roads, and that Maryland really has three disjoint sets of roads (due to its peculiar geography) and Michigan has two disjoint sets of roads. I also know that I am personally unlikely to give a Strong Keep to any portal, but the case has been made. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:16, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Keep. - I subscribe to the maintainer theory of portals (if it has an active maintainer, then it probably meets WP:POG). I have no honest clue how it has been done, but P:MDRD has been maintained consistently for SIX YEARS. I am utterly baffled by this accomplishment. For six years, every month, there has been new content to visit at Portal:Maryland roads. For the record, I found this MFD because of Dough4872's support vote in WP:ENDPORTALS... which semi-ironically states: As sad as it is, no one seems to care about portals anymore. Dough4872 then included a link to P:MDRD which is where I saw the deletion notice. The others seem to have content as well, and I feel this states more about Wikipedia then on portals tbh. Until now the prominence of US State highways in File:Size of English Wikipedia Broken Down 2008.png has escaped me, but I think it finally makes sense. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 00:37, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Keep. I think that these are examples of the Wikipedia phenomenon of "narrow topic covered in copious detail". That doesn't make it a broad topic per WP:POG, but on the other hand they do seem to be well-maintained.

If we were having a priorities-based discussion on which portals should exist, starting from a clean sheet, I am pretty sure that these would be so far down the list that they'd not be built for another decade or more.

But we're not having that discussion here. So unless and until there is some broad consensus to remove well-maintained low-priority portals, these should stay.

But ... please please please somebody clean up that forest of sub-pages. There are now much better ways of transcluding the lead of an article chosen at random from a curated list. Those semi-automated methods avoid the content-forking and the massive vulnerability that goes with having so many under-watched pages, and save a lot of work. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:49, 7 May 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.