The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellany 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 debate was Delete. The consensus below is firm: this portal violates NPOV, a core policy, and cannot be retained. Xoloz 15:31, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Military history of the Christian West

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The portal and its subpages were tagged for speedy deletion as attack pages (CSD G10). Strictly speaking the portal doesn't really qualify since I believe the portal was created in good faith. Still, it is grossly inappropriate and its deletion can't come soon enough in my opinion. It is POV beyond reason as one can clearly see by looking at the selected quote or the DYK section. Even the lead sentence of the portal clearly announces that the focus is on Christian victories... Note that even the portal's title is potentially inflammatory. Pascal.Tesson 16:52, 11 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Question If you take away the anti-Muslim bias, what of the core raison d'être is left to salvage? A military history of the western hemisphere from 33AD onwards, which is already comprehensively covered in various wikiprojects elsewhere? ROGER TALK 18:39, 11 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Surely you mean portals, not wikiprojects, Roger? Carom 19:28, 11 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I was referring (rather obliquely, I'm afraid) to the way that, for instance, the French Wars of Religion (ie Catholic -v- Protestant) are part of both the French wikiproject and the military history one (with contributions and watching briefs from both). ROGER TALK 20:39, 11 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Similar question: why should we salvage this portal? What basically you're asking is that we rename the portal, rewrite the intro, rewrite the quotes section, rewrite the whole DYK section and then make sure that the portal is maintained by a group of editors who understand what NPOV is. I don't quite see the difference between that option and deleting the portal until some responsible editor comes in and starts from scratch. Many of the articles which the portal features are indeed of fair quality (although Reconquista for one has recurring pov disputes) but they're already featured in portal maintained by a more active group of editors. This portal, on the other hand, is a POV nightmare because it is by design focused on Christian victories. I don't think that this is, as you imply, a knee-jerk politically correct reaction. It's a knee-jerk, "NPOV is one of the founding pillars of Wikipedia?" reaction. Pascal.Tesson 19:12, 11 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
My point is simply that if this Portal is to be deleted, it should be because it is useless and redundant, not over accusations of racism. That's all. I'm really not super passionate about any need to keep it, only a need to not have certain things be the reasons for its deletion, as they are inappropriate accusations, I think. (Consider this - Would a portal or wikiproject of Muslim military history be automatically discriminatory against Jews and Christians just by existing? No. It depends on the content.) LordAmeth 23:05, 11 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There have been no accusations of racism (tho' Islam isn't a race anyway) simply objections on POV and OR policy grounds. I agree that the portal name comes with as little or as much baggage as we individually wish to attach to it: however, the combination of an unfortunate portal name with highly selective choice of content - ie restricted to Christian military victories over Muslims - conspire to create a portal which is probably irredeemably unencyclopedic. In this context, discussions over whether daniel3 acted in bad faith or is simply a bad editor or whether or not the objections are based on a politically correct subtext are irrelevant. ROGER TALK 07:17, 12 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If you don't mind me asking, if you don't think it's entirely appropriate to delete it, and you don't think it's practical to salvage it, what is your view? ROGER TALK 20:39, 11 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don't want to read Carom's mind here but I think his main point is that this should not be speedy-deleted. Pascal.Tesson 20:46, 11 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think you're probably reading it correctly. :)) ROGER TALK 20:57, 11 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
(after edit conflict) Pretty much. While I agree that this portal is problematic, and I'm not convinced that anything can be salvaged, I'm equally not convinced of the wisdom of rushing to delete a large number of component pages. Additionally, most of the underlying pages don't seem particularly problematic in and of themselves, and could be renamed if there was a consensus to develop a new portal with some of the same elements. Carom 21:04, 11 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That's what I was wondering (hence my question) ... that you're absolutely neutral on this and will go along with consensus? ROGER TALK 06:10, 12 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Quite. Carom 02:39, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The sockpuppetry thing is news to me. What's that all about? Pascal.Tesson 19:36, 11 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This is what is all about. This is the Case:DAde or DAnieldeutchland's case. -- FayssalF - Wiki me up® 20:04, 11 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
FayssalF initially raised the concern on the MilHist talk page (in this discussion), and then opened a request for Checkuser here. Carom 19:53, 11 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for mentioning that Carom. This is one more sign of what i am talking about ---> "This portal should also not be deleted because the Portal:Military history of the Ottoman Empire is allowed.Daniel3 15:42, 11 July 2007 (UTC)"
There are tens of Military portals but only the Ottoman one was singled out. Adding "West" to the title is pointy in contrast w/ the "East" Ottoman. -- FayssalF - Wiki me up® 19:57, 11 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
But wait, who's going to develop and maintain this portal? If you look at the contribs history of daniel3 and DAde, it's pretty clear that this is a case of sockpuppetry. Moreover, I have gotten into an argument about images daniel3 has uploaded which has resulted in accusations that I [1] and the rest of Wikipedia [2] are anti-Mormon. I'm not sure what's the point of keeping a portal which is currently a POV nightmare, has a title with the words "Christian West" when that expression is rarely used in contexts which are not polemic, which is created as a soapbox and for which the sole editor is likely a sockpuppet of an editor banned for disruptive POV pushing. Sure, we could transform this into a portal about the history of crusades. That would be great. Except it only makes sense if this is done by a group of editors who are actually knowledgeable about the subject and have long term objectives for the portal. There are gazillions of good ideas for portals but without a dedicated group of editors, portal-stubs are useless. Pascal.Tesson 20:22, 11 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that it is, as you put it, snowing - as far as deletion goes. But I submit that there is no consensus to salt the page. --Tim4christ17 talk 17:25, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, but it's a dreadful title. What next? Military History of the Muslim East? Addhoc 17:35, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps. (I agree it's a bad title...but I don't see any reason to prevent its usage - you never know, someone may find a good use for it.) --Tim4christ17 talk 19:55, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Let me go out on a limb here: I claim that no reasonable editor will ever find a good use for the title Portal:Military history of the Christian West. Even the terminology "Christian West" is of very limited use and the title inevitably has a POV undertone. Pascal.Tesson 20:10, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
True, but to my understanding, pages are only salted if they are repeatedly re-created, and that we don't preemptively salt pages. (And yes, it would be a preemptive salting since this page will have only been deleted once). --Tim4christ17 talk 20:21, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, salting is just a waste of time. (in fact, we should keep it open: that way if anyone recreates it, it'll be pretty obvious that we're dealing with another daniel3 sockpuppet) Pascal.Tesson 20:28, 14 July 2007 (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.
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