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: keep . TheSandDoctor ^Talk 02:11, 2 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Peter, Paul and Mary (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Why create a portal for a single band? The relevant articles are interlinked by the navbox at Template:Peter, Paul and Mary. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 06:20, 24 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Speedy keep Keep – Wikipedia has had portals on bands for over a decade, and also on individual singers. This not the venue for creating new policy.    — The Transhumanist   07:43, 24 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • @The Transhumanist: Please read WP:CSK: no speedy keep criterion applies here. Other-stuff-has-not been-deleted is is, well, WP:OTHERSTUFF. This is the place to establish consensus on whether a particular page is worth keeping, and other portals have deleted at MFD. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:24, 24 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • But you are talking about a whole class of pages. A navigation system without musical entertainers would be incomplete. It would be embarrassing to call ourselves encyclopedists. :)    — The Transhumanist   06:34, 26 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Provisional keep — Do we have a guideline as to which topics merit portals? WP:Portal guidelines tells us how to make or improve a portal but I don't see much about the first step, i.e. deciding whether to keep or create one. Once we agree a threshold, it should become clearer whether this topic is sufficiently broad. We can't always decide by subject area: Portal:Queen (band) should exist but Quintessence (English band) doesn't need a portal. Peter, Paul and Mary lies somewhere in between. In the absence of a guideline, I'd judge that the high number of related articles makes it a weak keep. See also WP:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Pebble Beach. Certes (talk) 08:44, 24 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Certes: the guidelines are severely lagging behind. Until recently, what portals got created depended on if someone had the time and energy to set them up and maintain them. It required considerable effort. After portals were given a second chance after the RfC the way portals technically work was overhauled. Portals can now be created in an instant with AWB and then forgot about because maintenance is negligible.

The guidelines don't reflect these new realities and give some pretty laughable standards. The only fast rule is WP:P2: There has to at least three non-stub articles that the portal can include. You'll have better chances finding a topic that does not meet this requirement! The de facto criteria has been someone to complete and maintain it, but since that's no longer an issue, creation is uncurtailed. We've gone from 1,500 portals to over 3,000 in a short period of time. Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals even envisions – under one model – 34,000 portals. I feel strongly that we should set a reasonable standard. See also related discussion at User talk:BrownHairedGirl#Portal:Pebble Beach – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 09:11, 24 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• @Certes: I agree in principle that this lies somewhere in between Queen and Quintessence. However, a little scrutiny shows it to be very much at the lower end of the scale: 41 article pages plus 24 images, and some of those are tangential. That's a long way from what you call a high number of related articles; it's just enough for a meaty navbox. If we set the threshold that low, we will open the door to many hundreds of thousands of pointless portals which amount to nothing more than a less screenspace-efficient navbox. What's the point of that?

If we were writing policy, I'd say that the minimum scope for a portal should not be lower than "too many articles to be listed in a navbox". And I'd like to see it significantly higher. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:48, 24 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I've admitted that I'm measuring without a yardstick here. Perhaps we should put this MfD on hold until we have consensus on the threshold. As with other types of page, there may be a middle ground of marginal cases where we weak-keep existing pages but discourage creation, and this example may sneak in. Certes (talk) 11:17, 24 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Certes: I sincerely hope that nobody is seriously contemplating setting the threshold anywhere near this low. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:31, 24 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep - Deal with portals on single bands and singers as a class if necessary (or attempt to establish some sort of guideline), not piecemeal. — Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 18:50, 24 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Godsy: This is not a music-specific issue. The problem here is the low number of articles within the project's scope. A micro-portal is equally useless whether it is about musicians, asteroids, toxins, landforms, elections, films, or whatever. Guidelines follow AFD consenus, so I expect that the advocates of micro-portals will cite any keep outcome here as evidence of a consenus in favour of micro-portals: "look! it survived AFD" --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:08, 24 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@The Transhumanist: I believe there is a guideline that suggests a minimum number of articles within a portal's scope for its existence to be appropriate, but I cannot find it offhand. — Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 19:15, 24 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Godsy: I can't find it either. I remember seeing it somewhere. Keep looking, and so will I.    — The Transhumanist   07:13, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. This particular band has a broad enough scope for a portal. As for why create it - there are lots of good reasons for creating a portal but that's a more general discussion and doesn't belong here. WaggersTALK 12:31, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment – expanded the image slideshow.    — The Transhumanist   07:04, 26 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

*Keep as per the consensus over at some Wikispace which I forgot where consensus was to keep these - I personally disagree with it but hey ho, If you want portals deleted then it might be worth reopening another RFC on it but as it stands keep pretty much per the rfc and above. –Davey2010^Talk 01:20, 27 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep per Godsy et el. –Davey2010^Talk 01:58, 29 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep – A useful navigational aid for readers interested in this popular folk group. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 03:20, 27 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere. You are invited to participate in the ongoing discussion at: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals § Time for some portal creation criteria?. — AfroThundr ^{(u · t · c)} 16:47, 26 September 2018 (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.