Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Health

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. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 18:40, 25 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Health[edit]

Abandoned, static portal. Basically unchanged since 2006.

This is one of the oldest portals. It was created[1] by Violetriga (talk · contribs) in February 2005 as redirect to Personal life‎, 6 months before the portal namespace was created. In December 2005‎, Go for it! (talk · contribs) converted[2] the page to an actual portal.

However, it has never been developed, and none of its incarnations come anywhere near satisfying the WP:PORTAL principle "Portals serve as enhanced 'Main Pages' for specific broad subjects". But this is massively less useful in every respect than the head article Health.

The list of sub-pages at Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:Health shows a small set of one of each type. By July 2017, they were so outdated that @Metropolitan90 nominated the three content-fork sub-pages for deletion at WP:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Health and fitness/Selected fitness article, noting that the "selected" articles in this portal in the subjects of fitness, nutrition, and biochemistry were chosen in January 2006, copied from the respective articles Physical fitness, Healthy diet, and Cholesterol as they were at that time, and have not been significantly updated or replaced since then. That is, those three articles have been displayed on the portal for the last 11 years, rather than being rotated with other fitness, nutrition, or biochemistry articles -- and not only that, but they're being displayed with their text from 2006, even though the writing style of at least the former two has improved considerably over the years. None of the three articles is or has ever been a Featured article in terms of quality.

Metropolitan90 proposed I would like to see these three portal subpages deleted, and then, if there are people interested in maintaining this portal, they can use Template:Random portal component, or a similar method, to select a rotating choice of higher-quality articles to display, instead of keeping the same articles in place for years at a time.

The discussion closed as "no consensus", and the 00:43, 24 August 2018‎ version was stil using the same outdated, content-forked, sub-pages, each of which still displays the 2006 topic:

Portal:Health and fitness/Selected biochemistry article, still same topic (Physical fitness) in 2019 as in 2006[3]
Portal:Health and fitness/Selected nutrition article, stil' the same topic (Healthy diet) in 2019 as in 2006[4]
Portal:Health and fitness/Selected biochemistry article, stil' the same topic (Cholesterol) in 2019 as in 2006[5]

Later on 24 August 2018‎, @The Transhumanist (TTH) converted[6] the portal to a fully-automated clone of Portal:Contents/Overview/Health and fitness, using the following code to build its "selcetd articles" list from that page: {{Transclude linked excerpts as random slideshow | paragraphs=1-3 | files=1 | limit=15 | more= | Portal:Contents/Overview/Health and fitness | }}

That is clearly pointless duplication, so today I reverted[7] to the last pre-automated version.

Now we are back where we were when Metropolitan90 MFDed the sub-pages 2 years ago. Heath s clearly a broad topic, which should in theory satisfy 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". But in pratice, this one has been neglected for 14 years, so it abysmally fails the core point of POG, its lead, which currently reads bear in mind that portals should be about broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers. Portals which require manual updating are at a greater risk of nomination for deletion if they are not kept up to date. Do not expect other editors to maintain a portal you create.

It is very disappointing that some editors continue to misrepresent POG as some sort of licence to litter Wikipedia with abandoned portals, just becuase the scope is broad enough. POG is very clear that scope is a necessary condition, but an insufficient one: the portal must also be maintained.

So I propose that this portal and its sub-pages be deleted per WP:TNT, without prejudice to recreating a curated portal in accordance with whatever criteria the community may have agreed at that time. Once this abandoned relic and its outdated, content-forked sub-pages have been deleted, it may be appropriate to redirect the title to Portal:Contents/Overview/Health and fitness. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:23, 18 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@BrownHairedGirl: The portal was actually created by Go for it! in December 2005; Violettriga just created a redirect. * Pppery * _survives 14:26, 18 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- Thanks for that clarification, @Pppery.Sorry for my mistake. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:27, 18 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 15:42, 18 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - As per nomination. Robert McClenon (talk) 08:35, 20 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Someone kindly notified Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine about this MFD. In my experience, the editors at WPMED have not been particularly interested in portals for many years now. I do not think it is realistic to expect any form of active support/maintenance from that group. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:16, 25 May 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.