Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/University portals

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. Having gone through this nom and plotted all the comments on a chart, I believe there is a reasonable consensus to delete all of these portals. The discussion has been open for nearly 2 months. 11 parties offered a bolded opinion. Of those, 6 unreservedly argued to delete all. Only two unreservedly argued to keep all. Pldx1 and VQuakr both deviated from delete all to request keeping one each (Pittsburgh and A&M respectively). Espresso Addict was the only truly mixed voter, arguing delete for A&M and Missouri, keep for Pittsburgh and W&J, and remaining neutral on the rest.

All that taken into consideration, I believe there is reasonable consensus to delete all, even Pittsburgh (which was the most argued-for, at 4 keeps vs 6 deletes and 1 neutral). ♠PMC♠ (talk) 22:53, 26 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

University portals

(Convenience links: subject articles University of Chicago, Fordham University, University of Missouri, University of Montana, Osaka University, University of Pittsburgh, Texas A&M University, Texas Tech University, Washington & Jefferson College)

(Wikipedia:WikiProject Mizzou, Wikipedia:WikiProject Texas A&M, and Wikipedia:WikiProject Texas Tech University courtesy talkpage notified)

Delete I think I can interpret the consensus established at Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/Portal:University_of_Arkansas_at_Pine_Bluff to be: unless you are a 900 year-old university, it is very unlikely that you will meet the breadth-of-subject-area requirements of the WP:POG guideline. The subjects of these portals, (Portal:University of Missouri is single-page, the rest are multi-page), which are of course in various states of repair or disrepair, do not meet this requirement. UnitedStatesian (talk) 16:41, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
See also Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Glorified navbox microportals for universities (41 portals deleted) and Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:New York University. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:44, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete all per nominator. A single university is a narrow topic which fails the WP:POG criterion that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers". --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:45, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - Will !vote after spot-checking. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:30, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Keep Portal:Texas A&M University; Delete the rest. Texas A&M is a quite large and complex university system, and its longish list of article links seems to support that assessment. The portal's >11 year history also makes it stand out, even if the number of edits to it over the years has been limited. Happy to revisit my !vote if others feel these reasons are not sufficient per the guideline. VQuakr (talk) 19:47, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- Other universities, including ones on this list, are just as complex, if not more so, than Texas A&M's, and also have significant lists of linked articles. CrazyPaco (talk) 13:20, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Crazypaco: specifically which ones have as many article-space links? Texas A&M is the 2nd largest in the US by enrollment. (talk) 15:28, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I would argue that Wikipedia article links don't make the actual institutions more complex or diverse or important. That said, Pitt portal has more linked articles than Texas A&M. It is true that Texas A&M has the second largest enrollment, but as defined somewhat narrowly as among only public universities and for single campus enrollment (if including its health science center as a single campus). If size was a criteria of prominence or import, than UCF, FIU, GSU, and USF would be among the top 10 universities in United States, let alone schools with major system enrollments like Liberty, the University of Phoenix, or Ivy Tech Community College. Clearly none of those latter schools are even among the most prominent institutions in their own states, or in many cases, even the most prominent schools in their own cities. That said, I agree that Texas A&M is worthy of a portal as it is a topic that covers a myriad of broad and varied topics, as are many other universities that don't already have portals. I do not believe being dismissive of the value of portals for an entire category of topics as diverse and complex as universities is appropriate and I believe it sets a bad precedent. After all, a role of portals is to introduce readers to a large, varied topic by curating the most representative articles.CrazyPaco (talk) 01:02, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. I don't think a university needs to be quite 900 years old to merit a portal, but I think it does help if it has a large number of very prestigious alumni with decent-quality articles, as well as the sort of byzantine structure that results from centuries of haphazard growth. I don't know much about the US universities (or anything about Japanese ones), but I thought Chicago was one of the top ones? Still 5 articles, 5 biographies & an image is not enormous, and it does not look to have received much attention before The Transhumanist took over. Some of the others seem possibly viable too, eg Osaka claimed as 3rd Japanese university, but there just isn't time to assess them all properly, not just for what there is but what might be possible. Espresso Addict (talk) 20:27, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Per Pldx1's research below (which I haven't checked):

Keep portals University of Pittsburgh and Washington & Jefferson College, which meet/exceed the minimum;
Weak keep on portal University of Chicago, which has an international reputation and has some content worth preserving;
Delete portal University of Missouri, which is automated, and Texas A&M University , which is static;
Neutral on the others. Willing to keep if someone comes forward to maintain and expand them.

On a more general note, I don't think universities are necessarily narrow subject areas (though some of them are), and bundling disparate portals is a poor way of getting a clear result. Espresso Addict (talk) 11:51, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Keep Universities are very complex institutions, often even large systems, with an incredibly broad diversity of related categories that fall under their purview. Many institutions have dozens to hundreds of notable associated articles ranging in topics from their nationally and internationally notable academic programs and resource centers, nationally notable athletic teams and programs, major research complexes and medical systems, nationally and internationally designated landmark buildings, major museums, internationally recognized faculty and alumni, major academic publishing houses and media productions, and arts, music, and theater programs. Many universities topics spread through all manner of human endeavors with varied missions and subunits, often with very unique and significant histories both locally and nationally. The curation and organization of these topics into introductory portals for these vast topics fit the very definition of what portals were originally designed for. CrazyPaco (talk) 13:20, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: !voter is portal creator/editor on Portal:University of Pittsburgh and was talk page notified; it is usually considered good form to disclose that. UnitedStatesian (talk) 13:41, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Portal:University of Pittsburgh - At least a great slideshow. Old portal, 324 subpages, created 2010-08-06 01:59:32 by User:Crazypaco. Empty maintainer= field.

	article	biography	picture	dyk	athletics
chicago	5	5	1	0
fordham	2	5	4	8
missouri	auto
montana	2	4	2		2
osaka	2	2	9
Pittsburgh	22	18	23	235	9
texas A&M	1	1	1
texas tech	5	5	5	2
Wash & Jeff	18	3	10	21

this one MUST be kept, at least to have an example of a large slideshow and to be used as a reference when evaluating ridiculous pseudo-portals pretending to describe and navigate into extra large and broad topics. Rem: the 235 are "events of the day", not DYK. Portal:University of Pittsburgh Pldx1 (talk) 22:03, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Pldx1:: we don't need to keep a portal on a narrow subject area for that; Portal:San Francisco Bay Area has a 232-image slideshow. UnitedStatesian (talk) 00:19, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The topic of the University of Pittsburgh, and many other universities whether they have existing portals or not, are absolutely not narrow subject areas.CrazyPaco (talk) 00:29, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Portal:University of Missouri - Useless duplicate of a navbox, 0 subpages, created 2019-03-01 02:50:44 by User:Grey Wanderer: Portal:University of Missouri. Pldx1 (talk) 22:03, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete the other 7 portals. Not even decent slideshows. Abandoned portals or too microscopic topics, at reader's choice.

Listing one by one, to be sure

- Old portal, 32 subpages, created 2010-04-21 05:11:32 by User:Article editor. No apparent maintainer. Portal:University of Chicago

- Old portal, 26 subpages, created 2017-04-25 04:04:41 by User:Drown Soda. No apparent maintainer. Portal:Fordham University

- Old portal, 20 subpages, created 2010-12-15 23:20:08 by User:Dsetay. No apparent maintainer. Portal:University of Montana

- Old portal, 24 subpages, created 2011-11-03 21:29:36 by User:GaiJin. No apparent maintainer. Portal:Osaka University

- Old portal, 9 subpages, created 2007-09-21 03:00:25 by User:Dvmorris. No apparent maintainer. Portal:Texas A&M University

- Old portal, 32 subpages, created 2008-09-04 22:06:38 by User:Wordbuilder. No apparent maintainer. Portal:Texas Tech University

- Old portal, 54 subpages, created 2010-06-09 20:40:54 by User:GrapedApe. No apparent maintainer, 2012 snippets. Portal:Washington & Jefferson College

Pldx1 (talk) 22:03, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Slight update on Pitt Portal numbers that you listed above: one new article, one new athletic, and two new biography subpages have been added for a total of 71 subpages when counting images, but not including the 100s of "on this date" subpages which continues to grow with the goal of having information for all 365 days. Of note, the "on this date" information included in the Pitt Portal is a unique curation of information does not exist elsewhere (including outside Wikipedia). CrazyPaco (talk) 06:28, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per nomination and consensus from Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff and Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Glorified navbox microportals for universities. SITH (talk) 12:06, 14 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Further Discussion of University Portals

I said that I would spot-check these nominations, and am about three weeks in doing so, but this MFD has not yet been closed. Here are the metrics on average daily pageviews for the portal and for the article for all of the universities that have portals at this time, regardless of whether they have been nominated for deletion. (Many more were already deleted.)

Title	Portal Page Views	Article Page Views	Ratio	Notes	Percent
University of Missouri	15	643	42.9	Period is 1 Mar 19 - 30 Apr 19, and includes a few high initial days due to a TFD.	2.33%
University of Oxford	11	3,801	345.5	Not nominated for deletion.	0.29%
University of Cambridge	9	2,894	321.6	Originator inactive since 2018. Not nominated for deletion.	0.31%
University of Texas at Austin	7	1,644	234.9	Not nominated; survived a recent MfD	0.43%
University of Pittsburgh	6	823	137.2		0.73%
Texas A&M University	5	2,005	401.0	Originator inactive since 2009.	0.25%
Texas Tech University	5	727	145.4		0.69%
University of Houston	5	757	151.4	Not nominated; survived a recent MfD	0.66%
University of Chicago	4	1,632	408.0	Originator blocked indef in 2016 for disruption	0.25%
Fordham University	4	1,444	361.0		0.28%
Osaka University	4	112	28.0	Originator inactive since 2013.	3.57%
Washington & Jefferson College	4	217	54.3	Originator inactive since 2015	1.84%
University of Montana	1	280	280.0	52 total portal pageviews. Originator inactive since 2015.	0.36%

As can be seen, the University of Missouri appears to have the highest pageview rate, but it was only created on 1 March, and had initially high pageviews due to a TFD notice. No university portal had as many as 20 daily pageviews.

Although it can be argued a priori that universities are broad subject areas, the a posteriori evidence is that university portals do not "attract large numbers of interested readers". Robert McClenon (talk) 04:33, 24 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete All without prejudice to future creation in accordance with new guidelines. Willing to consider changing the Delete to Neutral for any university for which an editor makes a statement that they plan to maintain (or continue to maintain) the portal. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:33, 24 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment – Recommend a Relist. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:33, 24 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Keep All – There are too many portals in this bundled nomination to properly assess them all. This makes it quite easy to state "delete all" in a short paragraph, but makes it extremely time consuming to actually analyze each portal individually based upon each topic's own scope relative to WP:POG. No prejudice against renomination using single-entry MfD discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 21:30, 26 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- When portals are MFDed in bundles, portals fans such as NA1K argue that the portals need individual nominations. When they are nominated separately, portal fans complain that there are too many MFDs. NA1K and other portal fans have had four weeks to assess the 9 portals nominated here, and that's plenty long enough. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:22, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - Saying that a bundled nomination of NINE portals makes it extremely time consuming to actually analyze each portal individually and suggesting that NINE individual nominations would be better in this respect is (1) innovative: this is really a whole new argument ; (2) counter-productive: if User:Northamerica1000 really wants to keep all of them, it could be an error to suggest that only fallacies remain as arguments to keep (3) misses the key point: comparing makes better decisions. And here, a simple comparison shows that Portal:University of Pittsburgh belongs to an endangered species: unlike others, this one is a maintained portal. And we must protect this endangered species, by clearing those fake portals that lure the reader and create a strong rejection against the whole portal space. Pldx1 (talk) 07:58, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete All. On a technical level a single university fails the WP:POG criteria that portals should be about "broad subject areas" (e.g. the main article+navbox can handle it). However, at a WP:COMMONSENSE level, outside of TH edits, these portals are again, largely abandoned cut-and-pastes of a main article+navbox. Universities should be a place where Wikipedia wants to encourge new editors to join the project; any university student wandering into their portal, will get the impression that Wikipedia is a failing/decaying project. Britishfinance (talk) 12:18, 17 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete All - A university portal is "per si" a limited scope. There is a "bias problem" too, much concern for the creation of portals to everything related to the US, Britain and Australia while portals of important themes are neglected.Guilherme Burn (talk) 01:41, 18 June 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.