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. There seems to be pretty clear consensus that this page is no longer useful for Portal:Costa Rica or the project at large. The question then turns to whether the page should be deleted or marked as historical, which is evenly divided at five users on each side (not counting the nominator).
Historical pages, per WP:HISPAGES, serve as records of past Wikipedia processes to give context to historical discussions and to inform future discussions on similar topics. Therefore, the burden is on those arguing for a historical marking to assert that the page can be useful for this purpose. In this case, proponents fail to meet their burden – the most prominent argument being that the history of the page is per se valuable as a page that was transcluded to the portal's front page. While that is history concerning the portal, proponents fail to demonstrate that it will be at all useful in future discussions. The page only fills out an archival box, and has not been demonstrated useful as historical reference. The argument for deletion prevails as the default option for an irrelevant projectspace page. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 19:42, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A single, unchanging picture isn't very dynamic or useful. Not used in the portal and we have much, much better ways of doing this. Cremastra (talk) 21:01, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Mark Historical - This should never have been created. When it was created, the optimistic assumption was that someone would maintain the portal by changing the selections periodically. Many portals were created with the assumption that, if you build the portal, the portal maintainer would come. But creating a portal is fun, and maintaining a portal is diddly work. So many portals were never maintained, and many portals had an unsound architecture consisting of fragments of selected articles. This single unchanging picture isn't useful. Whether the portal is useful is another question. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:42, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete and oppose marking historical. This has too little content to have significant historical value, and the people in favor of marking historical fail to present an actual coherent argument against deleting. * Pppery *it has begun...20:51, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
KeepDelete. If the whole portal goes, this will go too. If the portal stays, the maintainers will ask for unneeded pages to be deleted or tag them historical, and anyway deleting just a couple lost sub-pages feels quite unuseful. (I really don't see the point in portals, but I see even less any point in deleting lost bits)- Nabla (talk) 21:06, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
the maintainers will ask for unneeded pages to be deleted or tag them historical just saying, I represent the entirety of the "offcial" maintenance team for this portal. Cremastra (talk) 21:08, 16 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@SmokeyJoe: Nope, I'm not a member of WikiProject Costa Rica. Of course I claim that the portal has nothing to do with the Wikiproject, because it doesn't. Since when do WP:PORTALs have to be affiliated with the corresponding WikiProject? I'm just interested in improving the portal.
What would you want me to post at Portal talk:Costa Rica? I've listed myself as the first maintainer. Do you want me to organize a parade, or a song and dance?
Lastly, (and I'll note that I've only been the maintainer since two weeks ago, approximately), I didn't make my status clear in my nomination statement because I felt that would be unfair. Cremastra (talk) 15:17, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
And actually, If I may say so, I think I've done a fine job of maintaining the portal. I've improved the layout and attractiveness of the main page, added links from possible over a hundred articles, and changed the way the images display to avoid redundancy. If you don't think that's good enough, be my guest and list yourself as the second maintainer. Or do something other than complain. Cremastra (talk) 15:20, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
User:SmokeyJoe - Insulting the portal maintainer, User:Cremastra, is not useful. It is rare enough for there to be a portal maintainer, let alone one who follows best practices, especially when there isn't a document listing best practices for portal maintainers. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:06, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Insult? Insult was not intended. Clearly there are different perspectives. I am amazed at “of course”, the portal has nothing to do with the WikiProject. So amazed I walk away. Portals are useless and harmless, so why care, and if a portal maintainer thinks of course they would have no connection to the corresponding WikiProject, then I can’t think what I can say of any use. SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:13, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@SmokeyJoe Where in policy does it say that portals should be in some way associated with the corresponding WikiProject? Should we also force WikiProject Mammals to maintain the mammal navbox? Shall we say "no, you can't edit that article about the Lesser Hairy-Snout Shrew – it's maintained by Wikiproject Mammals!"? The proposition is absurd. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 16:08, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep or mark historical Is it really that hard to find more than one picture of Costa Rica? When deleting something takes more time, more effort, more thought, and more discussion than just making it better, you should do the latter. Vanilla Wizard 💙22:53, 19 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for clarifying. This was not immediately obvious from the initial deletion rationale or the discussion above. It looked like the issue was that it was a single, unchanging image, and I jumped to wanting to improve the page because I have seen far too many discussions where editors opted for deletion over improvement (especially when it comes to portals, which are very easy to improve). I understand what you mean now. I still prefer to mark it as historical as this is normal practice for portal subpages that have become obsolete, but I'm glad we got that cleared up. Vanilla Wizard 💙23:09, 19 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus. Relisting comment: This discussion has been going for 23 days (!) without a relist and though there is a consensus to do something, there doesn't seem to be a consensus on whether to delete or just mark as historical. Relisting. Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, NotAGenious (talk) 16:30, 29 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete due to it being superseded and due to there being no compelling arguments for keeping it or marking it historical. Occidental𓍝Phantasmagoria [ User ] [ Talk ] [ Contributions ] 06:24, 7 January 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.