Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Massachusetts

Portal:Massachusetts

Portal:Massachusetts (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Neglected portal.

Twenty selected articles, 20 selected bios and 15 selected locations created and/or last updated in October or January 2012. Plus one selected location updated October 2019.

Errors

• Thomas J. Hudner Jr. died in November 2017. Mark Schierbecker (talk) 09:28, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

  A neglected portal not updated since October 2019? SOFIXIT. Certes (talk) 11:12, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

• Comment - The portal had an average of 22 daily pageviews in January-February 2019, as opposed to 4599 average daily pageviews for the head article. Robert McClenon (talk) 11:42, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
• Comment - The presence of BLPs for dead heroes (or dead statesmen) that need to be fixed illustrates the unsoundness of a design relying on content-forked subpages. Robert McClenon (talk) 11:42, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
• Delete we don't need this state portal period.Catfurball (talk) 18:09, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
• Comment - As noted by nominator, this portal has 20 articles, 20 biographies, and 16 locations. One of the locations has a maintainer, User:Ksherin. Is User:Ksherin interested in maintaining the portal, or only one page? Robert McClenon (talk) 19:10, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
• Comment to User:Certes - The portal itself has been the subject of experimentation by TTH and others, but the portal itself is not what needs to be maintained. The portal has 56 article-style subpages, or which 1 has been maintained and 55 have not been maintained since 2012 or 2013. What are you suggesting should be fixed by whom? Robert McClenon (talk) 19:10, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

  We could easily replace those subpages by transclusions, as I've done with the late Mr. Hudner here. After that one-off conversion, any editor updating the relevant article automatically maintains the associated extract. Certes (talk) 20:39, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

• Comment - The portal had 25 average daily pageviews in the first half of 2019, and the article had an average of 4179 daily pageviews in that period. This is not much of a change from the first two months of 2019. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:10, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
• Comment - I am providing a table showing portal data for US state portals that have not been deleted, in descending order of view rate in the first two months of 2019, only if the portal is viewed less than 30 times a day. That is, the least viewed portals are shown at the bottom. A few state portals, including Portal:California and Portal:Texas, are not shown because they are viewed more than 30 times daily. Portals that have been deleted are not shown. If a comment is no longer accurate due to more recent maintenance of a portal, please advise me on my talk page, or at Wikipedia talk:US State Portal Metrics (where I have data listed for all of the US states), unless it has to do with Portal:Massachusetts. That is, please do not fill this MFD with arguments about state portals other than Massachusetts. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:48, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
• Comment - I also have data on provinces and territories of Canada and states and territories of Australia. My data on states and union territories of India is incomplete. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:48, 10 October 2019 (UTC)
• Comment - Massachusetts has more pageviews than 22 other US state portals. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:48, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

US State Portals in Descending View Order

Title	Portal Page Views	Article Page Views	Comments	Percent	Articles	Deleted	Parent Portal	Type	Notes
United States	235	42004	Originated 2005 by sporadic editor.	0.56%	101	FALSE	North America	Country	Complete calendar. Some articles have obsolete information, such as listing Hilary Clinton as Secretary of State.
Massachusetts	22	4599	Originator inactive since 2010. Originated 2008. Has 20 articles, 20 biographies, and 16 locations. Location 16 has a maintainer.	0.48%	56	FALSE	United States	State
Pennsylvania	22	4818	Originator inactive since 2008. No maintenance since before 2016. Facing material out of date.	0.46%	30	FALSE	United States	State
Illinois	21	3456	Last updates in 2018.	0.61%	70	FALSE	United States	State
Virginia	21	4371	Portal is being maintained.	0.48%	46	FALSE	United States	State
Hawaii	20	8490	Originator inactive since 2007.	0.24%		FALSE	United States	State
New Jersey	20	4159		0.48%		FALSE	United States	State
Ohio	20	3333	Originator inactive since 2014. News is obsolete.	0.60%		FALSE	United States	State
Oregon	19	3193	Originator edits sporadically.	0.60%		FALSE	United States	State
Alaska	18	6775	Originator edits sporadically. Last maintained in 2012 except for AWB tweaks.	0.27%	28	FALSE	United States	State
Missouri	17	3424	Selected biography out of date. Last updates appear to be 2011.	0.50%	41	FALSE	United States	State
Georgia (state)	17	4088	Originator inactive since 2009.	0.42%		FALSE	United States	State
Michigan	16	3912	Originator inactive since 2013	0.41%		FALSE	United States	State
Connecticut	16	3109	Being reworked by MJL.	0.51%		FALSE	United States	State
Utah	16	2857	Originator inactive since 2007. Last maintenance 2009.	0.56%	46	FALSE	United States	State
Maryland	15	3315	Originator inactive since 2016.	0.45%		FALSE	United States	State
Minnesota	15	3785	Originator inactive since 2018.	0.40%		FALSE	United States	State
Mississippi	14	2737	Originator inactive since 2012.	0.51%		FALSE	United States	State
Indiana	14	2787	Originator inactive since 2010. No maintenance since 2010, except news is 2016.	0.50%		FALSE	United States	State	No consensus 27 May 2019.
Kansas	14	2813	Originator inactive since 2014.	0.50%		FALSE	United States	State
Oklahoma	13	2708	Originator inactive since 2007. Has had some maintenance since then.	0.48%	63	FALSE	United States	State
New York (state)	12	5528	Originator inactive since 2014. Last content maintenance appears to have been 2017.	0.22%	36	FALSE	United States	State
Rhode Island	12	2760	Last article update 2012.	0.43%	24	FALSE	United States	State
Iowa	11	2516	No maintenance since 2011.	0.44%	15	FALSE	United States	State	No consensus.

• Comment – The table above is highly inaccurate, and it has been nominated for deletion. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 00:08, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
• Comment - The statement that the table has been nominated for deletion is incorrect. This table and the table that has been nominated for deletion are not the same, because they were generated at different times from mostly the same information. The Colorado line has been removed, because it did not reflect the expansion of the portal in June and July 2019. Besides, the issue in this MFD is whether to delete Portal:Massachusetts. Please review exactly what I did and did not say about Portal:Massachusetts. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:59, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

Massachusetts

• Keep. This was a featured portal when that award ceased in 2017, and has not deteriorated significantly since. As explained in many other MfDs, comparison of pageviews between portals and articles says nothing about page quality; it merely shows that articles (correctly) have more incoming links and are much easier to search for. Certes (talk) 09:33, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
  • As usual, Certes deceptively fails to mention that although the FP process ended in 2017, Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:Massachusetts actually took place in 2013. I advise editors to look at the FP review, and note that it contains absolutely no discussion of either the selection of articles or the state of the content forks. As usual with the generally-abysmal FP process, discussion was focused overwhelmingly on presentation, rather than on the substance of what the portal actually serves up to readers. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:53, 13 October 2019 (UTC)
• Keep, very well made portal, very easy to navigate and update. I just turned the one remaining BLP in the Selected bios into an auto-updating version. Given the strong community consensus against deleting all portals, I don't think portals of this quality should be nominated for deletion. —Kusma (t·c) 12:13, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
• Keep, this was a featured portal and is well constructed. I do not see the benefit to Wikipedia by deletion. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 15:50, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
• Delete per nom and per the fact that there is no good reason to keep such a portal as this. Low page views and the condition it is in mean zero value is added by such a portal. There is no policy or guideline which suggests this portal should exist. Portals are not content, being for navigation instead, so it is improper to try to compare dilapidated and useless portals to articles and say they should just be fixed. There is no reason to think that hoped-for improvements and long-term maintenance will ever materialize anyway, even if promised at the last minute just to stave off deletion. Simple assertions that the topic is broad enough are entirely subjective; rather, that it is not broad enough is demonstrated by the lack of pageviews and maintenance. Content forks are worthless, since they go out of date, preserve potentially inferior versions of article content, add pointlessly to the maintenance burden, and are vandalism magnets; therefore they should not be saved. I support replacement or removal of links rather than redirection, to avoid surprising our readers.
• The nominator correctly described this portal as neglected. It has been pointed out in other MfDs that the now-discontinued Featured Portal review was not a rigorous and critical process, so that designation is meaningless. -Crossroads- (talk) 05:49, 12 October 2019 (UTC)
  • The idea that "broadness" of a topic is connected to pageviews or maintenance is absolutely ridiculous. This portal is in fairly good shape, so very little maintenance work is needed, so what is the problem with the absence of a large number of maintenance edits? Most of your arguments apply to all portals and so should be discounted, by the strong community consensus not to delete all portals. —Kusma (t·c) 06:43, 12 October 2019 (UTC)
  • As Kusma pointed out, there is a community consensus not to delete all of the portals, WP:IDONTLIKEIT and WP:SOFIXIT apply. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 23:00, 14 October 2019 (UTC)
• Delete as per nominator, and as per desire of Northamerica1000 to ignore the above table. The table had been included in order to provide the case that Portal:Massachusetts had better pageview metrics than 22 state portals, which would be an argument against deletion of this portal. However, since the table is subject to objections, we should consider only that it has only 22 average daily pageviews, and that 55 of its articles were not maintained as of 10 October. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:19, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

  I don't think the desire of anyone to ignore or not to ignore a table you made has any connections to the question whether the portal should be kept or not. As to pageviews, well, WP:NOBODYREADSIT is not an argument for deletion, just like "lots of views" isn't an argument for keeping. —Kusma (t·c) 08:17, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

  WP:POPULARPAGE is a discredited argument for deletion. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 23:07, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

• Delete per nominator. Another long-neglected portal, whose low readership makes it unlikely that it will attract enough maintainers to make it viable. The former FP status which some editors point to was a) conducted in early 2013, and in no way reflects the portal's current abandoned status; b) like most FP reviews that I have seen, that one focused almost entirely on technical and presentational issues rather than on the substance of the portal's content.

I also see no sign of interest from WP:WikiProject Massachusetts, which is tagged as only semi-active. There is no mention of the portal at WT:WikiProject Massachusetts, and a search of the talkpage archives for "Portal:Massachusetts" gives only one hit: a January 2013 announcement of the featured portal review.

So I see no basis for assuming that the portal has any greater chance of revival and ongoing maintenance than the 900+ other abandoned portals which have been deleted in the last 6 months. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:09, 15 October 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:United States), without creating duplicate entries. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:12, 15 October 2019 (UTC)