Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Ohio State University

Portal:Ohio State University

MfDs for this article:

• Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:The Ohio State University

Portal:Ohio State University (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Underdeveloped portal. Narrow topic.

Since June 2019 the selected article has been a Start-class article. Before this it was Ohio State University.

Four of the five selected bios are C class. One is Start class.

Quotes/1 doesn't mention Jesse Owens' relevance to OSU. The unsourced quote is related to his professional career, not OSU. Mark Schierbecker (talk) 04:59, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

• Note to closing admin. I don't want in any way to prejudge the outcome ... but if you close this discussion as delete, please can you not remove the backlinks? I have an AWB setup which allows me to easily replace them with links to the next most specific portal(s) (in this case Portal:Ohio and Portal:Universities), without creating duplicate entries. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:36, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
• Pinging the participants in the March/April 2019 MFD: @Ɱ, CoolSkittle, Espresso Addict, Legacypac, Levivich, Meszzy2, Northamerica1000, Pldx1, Pythoncoder, Robert McClenon, SuperHamster, Thryduulf, TonyBallioni, and UnitedStatesian, plus the closer @Amorymeltzer. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 06:09, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
• Delete, and oppose re-creation. WP:POG requires that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers". This fails on all three counts:

1. N Broad topic. Ohio State is a moderately large university, with about 64,000 students. However, it's not exceptionally large: it is 21st on the List of the largest United States colleges and universities by enrollment, and it is not one of the 70 entries in List of largest universities and university networks by enrollment. The general unviability of single-university portals is illustrated by the fact that after scrutiny at MFD of many dozens of single-university portals, the only other university portal remaining is Portal:University of Oxford, which as a significantly broader scope on account of being 766 years older than Ohio State.
2. N High readership. The portal's January–June 2019 daily median of only 5 views per day is trivially low. (Note that the daily mean is higher, at 12 views per day, due to a spike during the previous MFD). This is trivially low readership, barely above the background noise of editors poking around, and about 0.5% of the 1,056 average daily views of the head article Ohio State University.
3. N Lots of of maintainers. This portal was created in 2016 by SuperHamster (talk · contribs) who also seems to have been its only significant contributor. The limits of what can be achieved by one editor are illustrated by the fact that after 3 years, and after prolonged scrutiny at MFD 6 months ago, the portal still has only a single selected article.

WP:POG also guides that "the portal should be associated with a WikiProject (or have editors with sufficient interest) to help ensure a supply of new material for the portal and maintain the portal". In this case WP:WikiProject Ohio functions only at a low level of activity (several years since there was any discussion in its talk page, i.e. where one editor replies to another editor), and this search shows that there has never been any discussion there of the university portal.

The B-class head article Ohio State University does a significantly better job at the core portal functions of navigation and showcasing, and a vastly better job as an image gallery thanks to the image gallery built-in to every Wikipedia page for non-logged-in readers. (To try it, just view Ohio State University is a private/.incognito window, and click on any image to start the gallery).

Like so many portals, this one is a failed solution in search of a problem. For many years, portals enthusiasts took far too narrow a view of what constitutes a sufficiently broad topic, leading to hundreds of portals which languish as underdeveloped, low readership pages which are often largely dependent on the continued attention of their creator. I don't doubt the creator's good faith, but the overwhelming evidence is that this and other similar university portals are simply too narrow a topic to sustain a portal, so I strongly oppose any re-creation. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:02, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

• Weak Delete - I concur with the analysis by BHG. This portal has one advantage over most of the portals being considered for deletion; it has one more maintainer than most portals. Although multiple maintainers are called for, having one is unusual. Low readership, not enough articles, the usual flawed design with forked subpages. A navbox would work as well. Any plan to re-create a portal on this topic should go via Deletion Review and indicate why to expect readers. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:15, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
• Keep Look, I can do this too:

1. Y Broad topic: One of the largest and most influential universities in the U.S.
2. Y High readership: Compared to the main article, every portal has low readership, thanks. I'm pretty sure this portal has average readership compared to most college portals (before this massive, depressing, unwarranted portal deletion).
3. Y Lots of of maintainers: Lots of prominent editors with tens/hundreds of thousands of edits here, most probably watchlisting the page: SuperHamster · 16 (43.2%) The Transhumanist · 8 (21.6%) Pbsouthwood · 3 (8.1%) BD2412 · 2 (5.4%) Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars · 2 (5.4%) Northamerica1000 · 2 (5.4%) Xerxes225 · 1 (2.7%) Dreamy Jazz · 1 (2.7%) BrownHairedGirl · 1 (2.7%) Mark Schierbecker · 1 (2.7%). ɱ (talk) 15:23, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

• • And what are the nominator's points for deletion?:
    • "Underdeveloped portal." Looks fully complete, not a criteria for deletion.
    • "Narrow topic." False in my opinion, but yet totally up to one's opinion.
    • "Since June 2019 the selected article has been a Start-class article. Before this it was Ohio State University." Not a criteria for deletion, not relevant here.
    • "Four of the five selected bios are C class. One is Start class." Not a criteria for deletion, not relevant here.
    • "Quotes/1 doesn't mention Jesse Owens' relevance to OSU. The unsourced quote is related to his professional career, not OSU." Not a criteria for deletion, not relevant here. ɱ (talk) 15:27, 7 September 2019 (UTC)