Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:United States Army

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. (Copying from articles to portals without attribution is an infringement of the CC BY-SA 3.0 license.) — JJMC89 (T·C) 02:45, 26 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:United States Army

See also Portal:Military of the United States in discussion and in closing.

Subpages are plagiarized (e.g. Portal:United_States_Army/equipment), and need to be attributed back to their source. See WP:COPYWITHIN. Last news article is from 2011 (I wrote that one). Mark Schierbecker (talk) 05:19, 18 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Keep nominee does not understand how subpages and attribution works for portals....no plagiarism. No valid reason for deletion of a portal with featured content. --Moxy 🍁 05:39, 18 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Moxy: Can you explain what you mean? As I understand it, copy-pasted content from Wikipedia needs attribution when used like this. Mark Schierbecker (talk) 05:48, 18 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The purpose of a portal is to regurgitate the article, thus attribution is obviously implied because its intent is a mirror of the article...see Wikipedia:Portal#Purposes of portals.--Moxy 🍁 05:56, 18 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Clear attribution is required by WMF Legal and does not impede the purpose of portals. I don't understand... Mark Schierbecker (talk) 06:01, 18 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Think of it as transclusion of a page like a navbox...Will let others explain how this works in more detail ...but.....pls dont nominate our main page or other portals if you not sure how portals work.--Moxy 🍁 06:06, 18 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - Per WP:PWP#Broad Subject Area Is Arbitrary, If a portal topic is broad, it can hardly be integrated into another portal. A narrow portal topic can easily be integrated into another topic. This is the case here.Guilherme Burn (talk) 11:49, 18 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment – Heritage-style portals with subpages snarf up portions of articles and display them to the user as outward-facing content. One disadvantage of this capability is that it can result in obsolete information being displayed to the reader of the portal, even after the article from which the material was copied has been updated. I would have said to look at Portal:Zimbabwe, which said that Robert Mugabe was President of Zimbabwe, when Zimbabwe says correctly that he was overthrown in 2017, as an example of this problem, but the MFD for that portal was closed as delete (thanks, User:Jo-Jo Eumerus) a few hours ago. The copying and pasting of material from articles to portals is a feature and a misfeature of portals. It is not, to the best of my knowledge, considered an infringement of the copyleft. It is, however, a reason why portals that are not being maintained properly should be deleted, because they may contain lies that were earlier true.

Title	Portal Page Views	Article Page Views	Ratio	Percent	Comments	Articles	Type
United States Army	50	4430	88.6	1.1%	Portal appears to have been last maintained in 2016. Originator last edited in 2014.	13	Military
Military of the United States	46	3246	70.6	1.4%	Originator last edited in 2014. Appears to have been last maintained in 2010. Many articles, and calendar of dates, but not currently maintained.	82	Military

Question - Who is maintaining the portal, and at what frequency? Robert McClenon (talk) 05:50, 19 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - Cleanup is not a rationale for deletion, re-write the areas that are potential copyright violations. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 16:10, 20 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment to User:Knowledgekid87 - The copyright violations are a myth. The issue is that a heritage-style portal snarfs up text from selected articles. This is not a copyleft violation because attribution is clear. So the issues are whether it is being viewed and whether it is being maintained. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:13, 20 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per Guilherme Burn. Buckshot06 (talk) 20:17, 21 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Delete - This portal is not being maintained. Most portals, whether heavily viewed or lightly viewed, are not being maintained. The advocates of portals find it easy to say that the critics of portals should work on improving portals rather than deleting them, but, although the advocates scold the critics, the advocates don't do anything. Both this portal and Portal:Military of the United States are being actively viewed, so that maintenance would add value. We don't need two US military portals. Both this portal and the other US military portal are being viewed (which is more than can be said for many portals.) This one should be merged into Portal:Military of the United States. If this portal is deleted, it should be deleted without prejudice. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:35, 22 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

We actually have at least six U.S. military service-related portals: Military of the United States, United States Marine Corps, United States Navy, United States Air Force, United States Army, United States Merchant Marine. I'm not convinced any are needed, but many of them could simply be redirected to P:Military of the United States without much harm. Mark Schierbecker (talk) 03:12, 23 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. WP:POG requires that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers". But in practice, this portal has not attracted maintainers. It displays unsourced content forks of a small set of articles, most of which have not been substantively changed since 2011. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:19, 23 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I've deleted the selected article and news sections on quality grounds, per WP:POR. I've also trimmed the selections in bios and equipment. There was only one equipment article of high enough quality to display. Mark Schierbecker (talk) 02:10, 24 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

US Military Portal Metrics

Comment as per the mention by User:Mark Schierbecker, here are the metrics for the US military portals:

Title	Portal Page Views	Article Page Views	Ratio	Percent	Comments	Articles	Type
United States Army	50	4430	88.60	1.13%	Portal appears to have been last maintained in 2016. Originator last edited in 2014.	13	Military
Military of the United States	46	3246	70.57	1.42%	Originator last edited in 2014. Appears to have been last maintained in 2010. Many articles, and calendar of dates, but not currently maintained.	82	Military
United States Coast Guard	18	2642	146.78	0.68%	Originator edits sporadically. Five biographies and one article. No articles added since 2011.	6	Military
United States Navy	43	4234	98.47	1.02%	Originator inactive since 2014. No maintenance to equipment and biographies since 2010.	26	Military
United States Merchant Marine	7	832	118.86	0.84%	Originator sporadic from 2012 to 2018, now inactive. No maintenance since 2008.	30	Military
United States Air Force	60	3909	65.15	1.53%	Originator inactive since 2011. This portal has many subpages, but they do not appear to have been maintained since 2010.	100	Military
United States Marine Corps	39	4573	117.26	0.85%	Many subarticles. Sporadic maintenance through June 2019.	100	Military

Robert McClenon (talk) 23:54, 24 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.