Portal:Mars/Suggested mergers

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The main talk page for this conversation is at talk:Mars.

[edit] Purpose

This page exists to discuss possible mergers of Portal:mars with Portal:Astronomy or other portals/subjects. The original conversation is below. Please feel free to debate on this page further thoughts on merging or keeping the Portal open.

[edit] Suggested merger

I suggest merging this portal with Portal:Astronomy. To do so would avoid potential duplication of effort, as well as ensuring that visitors don't need to visit two different portals to find Mars information. I do not think that individual planets should have portals - it would seem much better to me to combine efforts and ensure that the astronomy portal provides an excellent navigational aid for those interested in astronomical topics. Worldtraveller 10:15, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't think we need to merge this with astromony. If we merge every planet's portal the astronomy article would be excessively big. user:zhanster

Also, against the merge. Mars is not a "narrow topic." Marskell 15:20, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

I removed your tag, coz not everything in Mars portal is suitable in astronomy portal. Just like America, Asia or Europe, Mars is a place, so it should belongs to geography or areography, just like Portal:Europe does, you cannot merge Europe portal with Earth portal, so you also should not merge this portal. &mdash Yaohua2000 00:01, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

I have put the tag back - it's there to invite discussion and removing it prevents people being aware of the discussion. Please don't unilaterally decide what the community consensus is. I feel your logic is incorrect - Mars is an astronomical topic. Portals should cover broad topics which are likely to be of interest to a general reader. I feel that astronomy is a broad enough topic in which many people have a casual interest, but that Mars is a narrow topic far less likely to engage the reader. In addition, if there were to be a separate portal for every planet the duplication of effort would be enormous, and where would one stop? A portal for every major moon? Kuiper belt object? Worldtraveller 16:40, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

OK. Mars is an astronomical topic. But it is not only an astronomical topic. Mars is a planet, just like our Earth, its land area almost equals to our Earth. Mars is different, unlike other planets, our knowledge about Mars is sufficiency to maintain a separated portal. My opinion is, you cannot merge France portal with Europe portal, so you should not merge this portal with something like Astronomy portal. -- Yaohua2000 17:19, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

For my tuppence-worth, I agree with Yaohua and zhanster above - Mars is worthy of study under both astronomy and planetary science. Also, as zhanster points above, if we have the level of detail in Mars:Portal for every planet in the Astronomy portal, it would get impossibly huge.-Berek 08:38, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Well for one thing, no other planet has a portal, and I don´t think that they should have. Planetary science is a subset of astronomy, but it would make far more sense to me to have planetary science portal in addition to an astronomy portal, rather than having Mars and Jupiter and 2003 UB313 and Vesta and whatever portals. Portals on broad topics are good; very narrowly defined portals are bad (why not just have an article?). It would be very easy to merge the content here at the moment with the astronomy portal, which would be improved rather than made impossibly huge - I would certainly like to see that happen. Worldtraveller 20:04, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Strong oppose: I agree with all that Yaohua2000 wrote above. Perhaps not every planet so far deserves a portal, but if some do, then Earth and Mars are definitely the top candidates. (BTW: I did a quick check and was amazed that a Portal:Earth does not yet exist.) --Misza13 ^(Talk) 19:29, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, as I said above, I don´t think any planets should have portals. Portals should cover subjects, not objects. Worldtraveller 20:33, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Looking at the discussion above, Worldtraveller, you'd have to agree you seem to be in the minority - 4-1 against a merge at the moment. Berek 12:18, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

I too am against a merger. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 18:58, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Against a merger. Mars is a broad topic within the scope of Astronomy/Space. What is too bad is there is no ability as far as I know to create a Sub Portal like creating a Sub Category. So a manual approach must be taken, and a specific hierarchy of subjects should be established within the Astronomy/Space Portal. So Mars is a viable Portal, as a Portal is nothing more than a presentation of a Project. I think the organization should get more specific and diversified, not more general. I vote for a complete set of Portals representing each planet. --Exodio 00:35, 1 August 2006 (UTC)