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) 01:03, 13 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Computer science[edit]

Portal:Computer science (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Seven selected articles created in November / December 2011. Never updated. Two do not have images. Four are B class and three are C class.

The selected bio is a start- or C-class article, and has had no updates to it since it was added in January 2014. This had replaced the start-class entry for Frances E. Allen that had had no updates since November 2009.

The selected picture has not been changed out since January 2007.

The selected quote, which has been live since November 2011, at the top of the page is WP:UNDUE. I searched the phrase "is too woolly to be of any help" and came up with only two reliable sources, both of which are transcripts. Mark Schierbecker (talk) 06:42, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete per the nom. This portal has been abandoned for nearly eight years, save one-off updates by passing editors, and is 12 articles short of POG's minimum of 20. It clearly fails WP:POG's requirement that portals should be about subjects broad enough to attract large numbers of readers and maintainers. This portal has had nearly eight years of no steady maintainers and while it had a much higher than most portals 109 views per day from January 1 to June 30 2019 (the head article Computer Science had 3,339 views per day in the same period), this is a sharp long-term decline from the 172 views per day it had from July 1 to Dec. 30 2015.

POG also states portals should be associated with a wikiproject, but while Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer Science has some activity, the portal was last mentioned on the talk page in August 2014, where an editor described the project and portal as inactive and wanted to "revive" them, but got no response. Portals stand or fall on their merits in the now, not what could someday hypothetically happen with them, and this one falls flat. I oppose re-creation, unless a dedicated team of topic-knowledgeable, long-term maintainers with a comprehensive portal building and maintenance plan are behind any re-creation attempt. Newshunter12 (talk) 08:49, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment – This is a poorly maintained but well-viewed (more than 50 daily pageviews) portal. Any proposal to delete this portal should focus on whether it is doing any actual harm, such as presenting incorrect information to the reader. If this portal uses partial copies of articles as subpages, it should be recognized that the risk of presenting incorrect information to the reader is high, because copied subpages are not updated when the articles are updated. Robert McClenon (talk) 11:42, 6 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment - User:Newshunter12 has identified the appropriate reasonable conditions for re-creation of any deleted portal. Robert McClenon (talk) 11:42, 6 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Computing Portals[edit]

• Weak Delete without prejudice to re-creation, but only with a maintenance plan and a team of at least two maintainers, and with a design that does not use forked subpages that drift out of sync. This is a well-viewed but unmaintained portal, and with too few (unmaintained) articles. The readers deserve something better, or to be sent to the article.

Robert McClenon (talk) 13:06, 7 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Note on backlinks. I don't want in any way to prejudge the outcome ... but if this discussion is closed as delete, I suggest that the backlinks be removed. I have an AWB setup which allows me to easily replace them with links to the next most specific portal(s), without creating duplicate entries, but in this case I see no suitable alternative portals. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:00, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete, and oppose re-creation. Long-term neglect = clear fail of the WP:POG requirement that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers".

Note that in addition to the unchanged picture, the small set of neglected articles, and the dodgy quote which were all identified by the nominator, the "Did you know section" is a fake. I have checked all 4 entries in Portal:Computer science/Did you know, and have found no trace of any of them appearing in WP:DYK or its predecessors. WP:DYK exists to showcase new or expanded content, but these four items are just factoids selected and summarised without scrutiny, usurping the good name of WP:DYK to create a collection of random WP:TRIVIA.

I also oppose re-creation, unless NH12's conditions are met: a dedicated team of topic-knowledgeable, long-term maintainers with a comprehensive portal building and maintenance plan. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:23, 12 September 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.