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: no consensus. Based on my reading of this discussion, it seems like the key arguments for deletion are that the portal topic is too narrow, that there are only a few page views and that in its current form the portal is selective in a non-NPOV way. The counterarguments are that the topic might in fact be broad enough to justify a portal, that the portal can be fixed and that the deletion arguments are not grounded in policy. These are all in principle valid points, but the keep camp appears to have a better argument in terms of how many people agree with it. We currently do not have any policy or guideline which describes when portals may be kept or not beyond the very general site-wide policies. In the absence of arguments and !vote numbers that clearly favour one side of the discussion, this is a no consensus case. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:29, 12 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Portal:Maryland was the subject of some undiscussed edits in October 2019 by User:Northamerica1000 in order to improve it. The edits were reverted by User:BrownHairedGirl, and what is being discussed now is the pre-October version. This US state portal had an average of |15 daily pageviews in the first half of 2019, which is unchanged from the |15 daily pageviews in the first two months of 2019. During the first half of 2019, the article Maryland had 3180 daily pageviews.
A portal that consistently has only 15 daily pageviews is not providing a useful service to readers who wish to navigate articles about the state or to see a showcase of articles about the state. The effort applied to portal maintenance would be better applied to improving articles to GA or FA standing, or to improving of categories or lists.
The intended Portal Guidelines were never approved by a consensus of the Wikipedia community, and we have never had real portal guidelines. We should therefore use common sense, which is discussed in Wikipedia in the essay section Use Common Sense and in the article common sense. The portal guidelines were an effort to codify common sense about portals, and we should still use common sense. It is still a matter of common sense that portals should be about broad subject areas that will attract large numbers of viewers and will attract portal maintainers. (There never was an actual guideline referring to broad subject areas, and the abstract argument that a topic is a broad subject area is both a handwave and meaningless.) Common sense imposes at least a three-part test for portals to satisfy common sense: (1) a broad subject area, demonstrated a posteriori by a breadth of selected articles (not only by an a priori claim that a topic is broad) (the number of articles in appropriate categories is an indication of potential breadth of coverage, but actual breadth of coverage should be required); (2) a large number of viewers, preferably at least 100 a day, but any portal with fewer than 25 a day can be considered to have failed; (3) portal maintenance, (a) with at least two maintainers to provide backup, with a maintenance plan indicating how the portal will be maintained (b) the absence of any errors indicating lack of maintenance (including failure to list dates of death in biographies). Some indication of how any selected articles were selected (e.g., Featured Article or Good Article status, selection by categories, etc.) is also desirable. Any portal that does not pass these common-sense tests is not useful as a navigation tool, for showcasing, or otherwise.
Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:Maryland/ (before the reverted edits) shows 6 biographies and 6 general articles, and a lot of calendar events. The biographies, and articles 2 through 5, were forked in 2007 (by a now-banned user), and have had only minor edits. Articles 1 and 6 were written as subpages in 2007, and do not correspond to articles in article space. They do not "rot" because they do not get out of line with the articles, because there are no articles, and so no routine review process.
Examination of the (reverted) efforts to renovate the portal shows that it would have displayed 22 Featured Articles, 30 Good Articles, and 21 selected articles (with no explanation of how the 21 articles were selected). That might have been an improvement, although it should have been discussed. It is very unlikely that any improvement in the portal would increase the viewing rate by a significant factor.
There is no short-term reason to expect that a re-creation of this portal will address the problems. Any proposed re-creation of this portal using a more modern design, and taking into account the failures of many portals, and including a maintenance plan (since lack of maintenance is a problem with most portals), can go to Deletion Review. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:15, 22 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per the nom Robert McClenon. Long abandoned Bonsai portal on a narrow topic. States, counties, and villages do not need a portal, and seven months of MfD has shown many dozens of these portals that failed because they, like this portal, were not about topics broad enough to attract readers and maintainers. The undiscussed and usually exceedingly poor one off update NA1K performed on this portal and dozens of others means nothing, as it is not sustained maintenance or by a topic knowledgeable editor. Has very low views, and the news section all dates to 2007. The vastly more viewed B-Class head article Maryland, which also has many rich and versatile navboxes, are all readers need for exploring this topic. Newshunter12 (talk) 21:45, 22 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@GMG Page views have been a core part of many hundreds of portal MfD's in the past seven months. Portals do not have their own content and their only utility is as navigational devices. The logical core measurement of this utility and topic broadness is page views (a useful portal on a broad topic would have a large number of readers and maintainers), and there is a very strong relationship between a portal with low page views and a portal that has been rationally abandoned by editors (because it adds no value to exploring the topic over the head article + navboxes). Newshunter12 (talk) 23:04, 22 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Okay. But a page that has 15 views per day doesn't really need to updated all that much does it? Regardless of what the portal wars have given us, page views have never in any other context been a legitimate measure of educational usefulness. Neither has the number of people maintaining a page. It seems the only relevant statistic here is how many viewers clicked through to another page, which I don't know that anyone has examined. GMGtalk23:14, 22 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Many portals were deleted earlier this year for failing to comply with WP:POG, which mandates high page views and maintenance. Indeed, one version defined a broad subject as one well viewed and maintained, leading to the bizarre deletion of "narrow" portals such as Culture. Although POG is now recognised as a failed proposal, a Woozle effect set in, with early results being cited as precedent for deleting similar portals. Certes (talk) 00:02, 23 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
too broad a topic to actually be useful as a portal Given that this portal is nominated for being too narrow, certainly looks a lot like a group of users opposed to portals in principle using any argument available to delete them. GMGtalk22:19, 23 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Strong keep, page views are not a good argument for deletion per WP:ATA, no matter how many times this assertion (unsupported by any policy) is repeated. The effort applied to this MfD would be better spent fixing typos elsewhere. The portal has an updated version, so I fail to see how the outdatedness of the currently displayed version is relevant (you could have just reverted to NA1k's version to fix this). Some of the many GAs and FAs from Portal:Maryland roads could be used as extra quality content if that portal ends up deleted. So yeah, broad subject area, recently updated, deletion would lose the valuable resource Portal:Maryland/On this day that isn't duplicated anywhere else. Deletion would clearly make Wikipedia worse. —Kusma (t·c) 13:52, 23 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep' POG is a failed guideline, and page views are not IMO a good measure for deletion. Attempts to obtain community-wide consenssu to delete mall or most portals have failed, but those who favor such an outcome seem intent on deleting them one at a time. I see no valid reason for deletion here. DES(talk)DESiegel Contribs15:19, 23 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - The fact that an editor reverted another editor's potential improvements strikes me as odd as the changes were not controversial.WP:ATA states that numbers can not be used as a factor for deletion. Yes they are an indication that something may be wrong, but views can depend on a number of factors. I do not see the nominator taking into account things like poor linking, excluded from smartphone view, and Wikipedia not being a popularity contest. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 16:51, 23 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Knowledgekid87:poor linking doesn't apply here. This portal has links from 1719 articles, from 982 categories, and from 10521 talk pages. It is more collegial is editors make some attempt to check the numbers before making assertions which are easily disproven. Having done link cleanup for hundreds of portals, those figures place in the upper quarter of the portals which have been deleted at MFD, so the question is why such a well-linked portal is so spurned by readers.
As to exclusion from smartphone view, that applies to all portals (and also to all categories and navboxes). If and when a decision is made to display some or all navigational elements in mobile view, and if portals are part of that, then all portals will get more visible links. So the current exclusion doesn't explain why this portal gets only 15 views per day, putting it in the 68th percentile of all portals ranked by pageviews. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 18:41, 29 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
In this case though NA1000's changes go back to April 15, 2019.[1] The amount of time between his series of edits and BHG's revert based on "undiscussed change" was almost half a year. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 19:11, 23 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Untrue. @Knowledgekid87, please check your facts before making demonstrably false assertions. I reverted to a version which was 11 days old[2]: Reverted on 16:45, 12 October 2019 to Revision as of 16:49, 1 October 2019.
I did not catch the fact that you did a partial revert (my apologies), but 11 days is still a bit to undo someone's changes per WP:SILENCE. In my humble opinion it should have just been taken to the talk-page for discussion in retrospect. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 20:40, 23 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Knowledgekid87, I'd accept your apology if you also struck the incorrect assertion.
As to WP:SILENCE, I see nothing there to support the claim that a mere 11 days is enough to assume implicit consensus on a very low traffic page, especially when the edit summaries gave so little info in what was actually done. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 21:44, 23 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Note to closing admin. I don't want in any way to prejudge the outcome ... but if you close this discussion as delete, please can you not remove the backlinks? I have a bot (BHGbot 4) which allows me to easily replace them with links to the next most specific portal(s), without creating duplicate entries.
Frankly I can't tell because I don't know most of those names, except Spiro Agnew and of course Poe. The selection is much wider so it's naturally broader too; whether it's also more balanced is another matter. Nemo22:21, 25 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep it's quite difficult to improve portals when editors who oppose the existence of portals will seize any excuse available to revert the improvements and will then argue for the deletion of the portals that other editors were genuinely attempting to improve. This type of gaming is not acceptable and should not be rewarded. Lepricavark (talk) 18:45, 25 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - Discussions are being held to define which topic is broad to support a portal. For now, in the absence of a guideline I will maintain the understanding of recent MfDs that second level country divisions are not considered broad topics.Guilherme Burn (talk) 20:57, 25 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No rush is being applied here. Over the course of many months, thousands of person-hours have been committed to the one-by-one examination of hundreds of portals. Nemo10:41, 26 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep on the grounds of capricious and arbitrary standards with no apparent basis in policy and no broad community consensus. Page views has nothing to do with deletion policy and never has. The "effort applied" standard would work equally to everything ever written about the Kardashians and professional wrestling, but we don't delete those either, much to my dismay. The words used in the nomination are "use common sense" but what it actually says is here are some completely random standards I made up one day, so let's use those as if they are policy.
Dearest cart and horse you seem to have gotten things the wrong way round. In the absence of a community consensus for a deletion policy, go find a community consensus for a deletion policy. Don't instead roll a few 20-sided die and decide that those are the standards we should be applying, 100 views, 2 maintainers, 6 partridges, 2 pair trees, and a business proposal filled out in triplicate with quarterly wage reports. And especially when you are not even consistent in applying your arbitrary and capricious standard across discussions: any portal with fewer than 25 a day can be considered to have failed but we should delete this one anyway.
If this is par for the course on portal deletions, then no wonder this is so controversial, because we can't even be consistent in applying our capricious and arbitrary standards. GMGtalk19:50, 29 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete – subnational regions like states and provinces are too narrow to make good topics for portals, as has been shown time and again over the past year. This is no exception. The "in the news" items are from 2007. That makes WP look outdated when readers see things like that. Narrow topic leads to lack of maintenance which leads to poor content which leads to harm to the encyclopedia. There's just no maintenance of this portal: the only two editors to edit the portal page in years are both currently prohibited from editing portals (one temporarily, one indefinitely). – Levivich04:41, 1 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. I don't really see what the problem was with NorthAmerica's change that required reversion, but regardless, this topic has proven too narrow to be a useful portal. Since a few editors have protested using page views as a proxy for this - just stating that I agree with the rationale that as Wikipedia tools, Portals have different standards than the actual content. No "real" website would ever keep or maintain a navigational page that nobody uses; by definition, that isn't a navigational aid at all, just a distraction. SnowFire (talk) 23:10, 11 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I don't consider 38 people per day "nobody", and actually, the portal is the most popular of the meta-pages related to Maryland that I could find, including some navigational ones: [3]. —Kusma (t·c) 10:56, 12 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I would argue these pageviews are more instructive: [4], which shows vastly more pageviews for Maryland and two random spinoff articles on History & Sports in Maryland. All dwarf the portal, which is a similar spinoff mentioned in See also of the Maryland article as well other pages. None of this would matter if this was an authentic, encyclopedic topic, but as a meta aid-to-readers? I could imagine a lot of things to link in the See also page that might be of interest to readers, but this Portal clearly isn't used by readers. SnowFire (talk) 16:25, 12 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
If you go for desktop only (which is the fairer comparison, because navigational aids work very different in mobile, and links to portals are mostly hidden), I'd rather say that the portal and some of the subarticles are comparable in number of views. [5] —Kusma (t·c) 16:37, 12 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, and improve based on Northamerica1000's work. The Wikiproject appears active and tracks just over 15,000 articles with around 140 being assessed as GA, A-class or featured. This seems plenty to support a portal. Espresso Addict (talk) 05:53, 17 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Most of the articles I create only have a dozen or so pageviews a day and that doesn't make me think I'm wasting my time. No one has ever suggested I should write more popular articles (and yet none have been sent to AfD). Almost everyone does not care at all but I hope a few people may appreciate them. For people interested in Maryland the topic is amply broad. I don't see the benefit in only allowing administrators to look at this portal. Thincat (talk) 11:55, 19 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. After almost six weeks' discussion (and two weeks since any discussion at all), there's no clear consensus for deletion, and IMHO no working guideline which applies. Expression of "common sense" relies on the nominator's purely subjective standards (1) "actual breadth of coverage", (2) "a large number of viewers, preferably at least 100...", and (3) "with at least two maintainers..." and "the absence of any errors..." (my emphasis). It's telling when confronted with an indication a portal was substandard, one editor did not argue but worked to improve the portal, another reverted the potential improvements characterizing the changes "sneaky" when all such changes were identified in edit summary and the improvements themselves were clearly available on the mainpage code in subsection lists. The changes were reverted because they didn't meet the reverting editor's personal standards. Now we're discussing the substandard version of the portal. I'm not used to this sort of OWN in AfD discussions. Editors are not required to discuss improvements before making them; BOLD has clear application here, though R and D have their place as well. On a personal note, I'm grateful that this assertion won't be followed by a wall of text from one particular editor, who is busy dealing with the consequences of their many rash words. Given the respite, I've been working to improve portals to accommodate reasonable critique given in previous portal MfDs. BusterD (talk) 23:36, 1 January 2020 (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.