Portal:Victoria – Endorse, as it is clear that there will not be a consensus to relist or overturn the outcome of the previous discussion. I further note that the discussion was open for a solid eight days during a time when other discussions at MfD were reasonably well-trafficked, which suggests that low participation was due to lack of interest by editors advocating for other similarly nominated portals. Although there was, as noted, one editor whose comments in the discussion amounted to advocacy for keeping this portal, there remains a solid consensus for deletion. I would also remind those seeking to overturn the discussion that portals are not articles. The deletion of a portal does not foreclose the recreation of a new portal for the same topic at some future time (although the fact that a previous portal under the name has been abandoned or otherwise found to be lacking should provide a considerable caution). Furthermore, as User:SmokeyJoe notes, "anyone who cares for the history [can] request undeletion into a subpage of a WikiProject". bd2412T 15:11, 27 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The following is an archived debate of the deletion review of the page above. Please do not modify it.
I am seeking for the MfD to be reopened to be listed for a further time. MfD was closed with no reasons given by the closer, there were only three nominations for deletion, one of which violated WP:IDONTLIKEIT and at the time of closure there were ongoing discussions about the reliability of data used by one of the poster. I am concerned about the fairness of some Portal MfDs, which seem to be driven in part by a belief that Wikipedia should have no portals at all. If that was the case, that would be fine, but there is no such policy. Bookscale (talk) 00:33, 13 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I'm not really sure what to do here. General consensus has been portals are okay and worth keeping, consensus at MfD has been strong delete, but the guidelines for keeping or deleting portals have been incredibly vague and end up along the lines of WP:ILIKEIT/WP:IDONTLIKEIT. I would have no problem with draftifying the portal, but I'm not sure that's possible. SportingFlyerT·C 04:40, 13 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
SF, draftifying is possible, tho it may involve a little more than a simple move. To test this earlier this, I created Portal:Ballyporeen, which I moved first to Portal:Incubator — Ballyporeen, 'cos I had been exploring the possibility of a pseudo-namespace for portal drafts. Then I moved it to User:BrownHairedGirl/Incubator — Ballyporeen. I found that it needed only a v few tweaks to restore full functionality. An older portal may not move quite so neatly, but any issues could be resolved with a simple AWB run.
However, I really doubt the merits of doing so. A long-abandoned set of stale content forks and stale DYKs is not worth keeping. Wikipedia:WikiProject Victoria is inactive, and even tho its talk page has never been archived, it contains zero mentions of "Portal:Victoria". Its only post which makes any mention of the bare word "portal" is 2018 announcement by TTH. In the unlikely event that the WikiProject a) revived, and b) chose to try to build a portal, it would do much better to start from a blank slate, without a set of long-abandoned pages. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 21:20, 21 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse as one of the participants in the MFD, and as the editor who provided the data that is being referred to. No one took any issue with any of the data that I had provided on any Australian state portals. The issue had to do with comments concerning US state portals, and in particular with statements that there had been no maintenance that did not reflect very recent Article Rescue Squadron work on portals. There was not and does not appear to be any question about any information that was used in the deletion debate. Robert McClenon (talk) 09:21, 13 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - that's not correct. I've commented twice on MfDs involving Australian states that the data is not up to date because it uses transcluded pages that have been updated. You can't use out of date data to suggest pages haven't been edited when they have (regardless of whether it's the page in question or comparison pages). Bookscale (talk) 09:59, 22 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Relist this MfD was not well attended WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. I think it would benefit from a relist. Lightburst (talk) 13:26, 13 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment- did you discuss this with the closer before bringing it here? ReykYO! 19:53, 13 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse. Sufficient participation for yet another routine deletion of a useless portal. Encourage anyone who cares for the history to request undeletion into a subpage of a WikiProject, but as a Portal there was a clear case of failure and abandonment, making it a meance for readers. NB. Victoria is ambiguous. I have to guess whether this is about the Australian State, or the 19 century Empress, or even something else. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:37, 14 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - The portal is about the state. The state is named for the Empress and was part of her empire. The MFD made it clear that it was about the Australian state, because the MFD included the portal view metrics that some of the editors dislike, comparing portals on Australian states. I agree that ambiguous portal names, such as New York or Washington or Georgia, are potentially troublesome, and that Wikipedia does a very good job of disambiguating articles, but portals are not articles. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:25, 14 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse- routine deletion of an abandoned portal. Consensus at the AfD was clear. ReykYO! 07:42, 14 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
relist. When the IDONTLIKEPORTALS and similar comments are discounted there was no consensus for or against deletion of this portal. Assertions that we should or should not have portals of any given type or state or quality really should not be given any weight in these discussions because it is clear there is no community consensus underpinning them. Only arguments that address why the individual portal under discussion should or should not be deleted AND which are based on policy are relevant and there was almost none of them in this discussion. Thryduulf (talk) 11:46, 18 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Relist per Thryduulf. Discussions should be based on the actual evidence at hand, and community consensus on the principles of portals, not personal opinions on the matter. As such, !votes that don't address the matter at hand should be discuonted, and there was as yet no consensus. — Amakuru (talk) 11:59, 18 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Relist per Thryduulf. There is no community consensus supporting the idea that portals on states should be deleted, or that portals with fewer than X pageviews should be deleted, so those comments aren't based on anything other than personal preference. Hut 8.5 10:04, 20 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse. Routine deletion of an abandoned portal. The MFD was open for the full 7 days (actually just over 8 days), and was duly notified. Nobody !voted to keep it. The closer correctly weighed the consensus. The only !vote which came anywhere close to IDONTLIKEIT was that by Catfurball, who didn't explain their reasoning. So even discounting that one, there was still a clear consensus to delete.
There are no guidelines on which portals should exist, so at MFD editors have been consistently applying WP:COMMONSENSE criteria:
A very broad topic
High readership (not as much as the head articles, which usually have readership in the thousands, but preferably over a hundred, and if not then close enough to make acheiving that target a plausible goal)
Active maintenance by multiple maintainers
Plenty of high-quality articles within scope
Active support from an active WikiProject
There are comments above by a few uncritical fans of portals, who engage in their usual smear-game of denouncing as IDONTLIKE any set of reasoned criteria, while asserting without either reasoning or evidence bizarre assumptions of their own.
This DRV is just another round of wikilawyering by editors who don't even try to establish any basis for asserting that an almost-unread, long abandoned pseudo-portal with an absurd design serves any purpose for the small number readers to whom it serves long-outdated content.
These would-be-wikilawyers consistently miss the simple core issues here: that WP:COMMONSENSE is policy, and unless there is a consensus-based guideline, then editors are bound by policy to apply common sense. If any of the objectors actually believe that there should be a guideline to support keeping unread, unmaintained, unsupported, badly-designed portals on narrow topics, then they should open an RFC to propose that. But unless and until they get a consensus to establish WP:KEEPCRAPPPORTALS as a guideline, then policy is to apply WP:COMMONSENSE. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 16:28, 21 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - with respect, BrownHairedGirl, comments such as "smear campaigns" are unfair and unhelpful. I disagree that you and others have been using "common sense" arguments - every MfD you start with a comment saying "I don't want to pre-judge the outcome" and a request to keep backlinks when the page is deleted. I'm supportive of an AfC about the merits of keeping portals, but the one-by-one deletion approach is not helpful. Bookscale (talk) 09:59, 22 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Reply. If you choose to ignore the the substance of reasoned arguments, and instead smear them as IDONTLIKEIT, then expect that choice to be noted.
It's strange to see an objection to the existence of an explicitly non-prejudicial proposal for how to handle backlinks. The alternative is for that decision to be made without discussion, and or in a less prominent place, which would not fit well with the principle of consensus.
And finally, as above, if you want to open an RFC to propose that we to establish WP:KEEPCRAPPPORTALS as a guideline, then feel free to make that proposal. But in the meantime, you have made no rationale to explain why you think readers would be helped by keeping an unread, unmaintained, unsupported, badly-designed portal on a narrow topic. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 12:21, 22 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
User:Bookscale - The note by User:BrownHairedGirl about backlinks is always separate from her !vote to Keep or Delete the portal. What are you suggesting other than common sense arguments about Keeping or Deletion? What are you suggesting about backlinks other than a discussion about redirecting? However, User:Bookscale doesn't appear to be taking issue with the close, but re-arguing portals in general, and that isn't what DRV is for. Robert McClenon (talk) 13:52, 22 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse – nobody !voted "keep". I see three well-reasoned delete !votes. It's as well-attended as any other MfD. Not sure how this could have been closed in any other way. – Levivich 18:36, 21 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment as User:Levivich says, there were three reasoned delete !votes including the nominator, and an WP:IDONTLIKEIT !vote, and there weren't even any WP:ILIKEIT Keep !votes, just comments. That is enough for a consensus. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:10, 26 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Relist because I'm feeling in a WP:IAR mood today. I agree that the XfD was closed properly, but there's no harm it letting people talk about this for another week. The most likely outcome is it'll still get deleted, but at least that'll provide some closure here. As for BHG's and Levivich's comments, Nobody !voted to keep it, it's true that nobody wrote keep in bold letters at the front of a new paragraph with a bullet in front of it, but it's clear that Bookscale was arguing to keep it. -- RoySmith(talk) 00:12, 23 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse as participant. Most of the relist voters' claims that the delete votes in the MfD should be disregarded, or that it somehow goes against a community consensus, are entirely unsupported. Sadly we do not have a GNG for portals, so we use common sense, as pointed out; else we would be unable to vote keep or delete on portals. There is no community consensus to not delete individual portals that have failed. The purpose of this is to examine the consensus of the MfD. No reason to relist if the consensus was correctly ascertained. -Crossroads- (talk) 04:50, 23 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The point is that no consensus was established either way. Most of the !votes rely on applying a community consensus about portals in general that simply does not exist. Similarly there is no agreement on what "common sense" means regarding portals in general - to most of those in favour of deleting large numbers of portals it is "common sense" that a portal on a "narrow" topic that doesn't receive many views is "failed" and/or "unsuitable" as a portal topic. However to those who do not subscribe to that view of portals in general none of that is "common sense" at all in the same way that it is not "common sense" to delete a niche article that simply needs work. There was almost no discussion of the merits of this portal specifically independently of other portals and/or portals in general and certainly far too little to arrive at a consensus for anything. Thryduulf (talk) 15:42, 23 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
On the contrary, the nominator and the first two !voters to delete did specifically address the failings of the portal under discussion. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 17:48, 23 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Could you please explain what you think would be an acceptable basis for deleting a portal? If no such basis exists in your mind, then you're just promulgating a nonexistent KEEPALLPORTALS with a thinly veiled ILIKEIT. The votes did not appeal to any community consensus; consensuses to delete, and sometimes to keep, are established at each MfD, which are public and duly notified. The comparison to poor articles is inappropriate and this has been explained countless times. Articles are content, thus even flawed ones typically add some value. Portals are not content, so if they are broken and little used, there is no sense keeping them and wasting time on them. -Crossroads- (talk) 17:54, 23 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse: Let this be a note to ALL portal advocates: Nobody's saying that all portals should be deleted, just that there are too many poorly-performing ones, and those should be deleted. This portal was one of them. ToThAc (talk) 14:57, 27 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The above is an archive of the deletion review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it.
