Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Pterosaurs

:{{pagelinks|Portal:Pterosaurs}} – (View MfD)

{{WP:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Pterosaurs/related}}

Abandoned, flawed mini-portal on a potenially viable topic.

This portal was created in November 2015‎ by {{User|Abyssal}}, who shortly thereafter created the sub-pages listed at Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:Pterosaurs: 4 selecetd articles, 4 selected pictures, and one page of Portal:Pterosaurs/Science, culture, and economics articles. However, Portal:Pterosaurs/Science, culture, and economics articles is all redlinks, and only one of the four article pages should exist:

1. Portal:Pterosaurs/Pterosaur articles/1 is just the head article Pterosaur, which is already covered in the introi section, so that's redundant
2. Portal:Pterosaurs/Pterosaur articles/2 is about Pteranodon, which looks like a good fit
3. Portal:Pterosaurs/Pterosaur articles/3 is about the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, which is poor fit for this portal: Pterosaurs get only a one-para mention at Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event#Pterosaurs
4. Portal:Pterosaurs/Pterosaur articles/4 is about the Chicxulub crater, which doesn't even mention the word "Pterosaur".

So if we discount the page of redlinks and the three inappropriate selected articles, we are left with one article and 4 pictures. That's not even a mini-portal; it's a slim single-issue magazine, no use as a showcase or for navigation.

I checked :Category:Pterosaurs and its subcats to see how many articles are within scope.

• Total = 266
• minus pages tagged as Pterosaur stubs‎ = 181
• minus :Category:Pterosaurs in fiction+subcats = 168
• minus articles assessed on talk page as a stub = 154

However, the few start-class articles I checked looked more like stubs, e.g. Caelidracones and Monofenestrata, both of which fail WP:DYKCHECK.

So I excluded all start-class articles, and was left with 66 articles. I then selected only those that were C-class or higher, giving a final set of C-class or better 52 articles. So I think that's probbaly enough material here to make a decent portal ... if someone wanted to do the hard work of creating it and someone was committed to maintaining it. However, we have seen many other abandoned portals which are potentially viable, but which have languished for years without any significant expansion.

In the meantime, readers are being lured to a page called a portal which really isn't a portal. Per WP:PORTAL, "Portals serve as enhanced 'Main Pages' for specific broad subjects" ... but this is actually a severely degraded version of the WP:GA-class head article Pterosaur.

so I propose that this portal and is sub-pages be deleted without prejudice to recreating a curated portal not based on a single other page, in accordance with whatever criteria the community may have agreed at that time. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:18, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

• Delete by putting into the Chicxulub crater as per the analysis of BHG. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:45, 1 May 2019 (UTC)
• Comment. I wish {{u|Abyssal}} would come and express their view on these, as they are currently active. With 4 articles (tho' I see the caveats in the nomination), 4 images, and a DYK set this is neither acceptable as is nor so useless I don't have qualms about consigning it to extinction. Espresso Addict (talk) 17:08, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
• Delete - automated portal, created by TTH atop an older one, 19 subpages, created 2015-11-19 16:55:50 by User:Abyssal. No apparent maintainer. As analyzed above, TTH was right when nuking the older abandoned portal. Concerning the new version, {{Transclude list item excerpts as random slideshow | paragraphs=1-2 | files=1 | more= | Portal:Pterosaurs | section1=Topics | }} says so much about the lack of care that was the rule during the portalspam period. As usual, without prejudice to a decent portal, rebuild from scratch. Pldx1 (talk) 07:54, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

Portal:Pterosaurs. Pldx1 (talk) 07:54, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

: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.