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: delete. — JJMC89 (T·C) 03:18, 17 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Lagos[edit]

Portal:Lagos (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Abandoned portal on a city. WP:POG requires that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers." This portal has neither large numbers of readers and no maintainers. The portal has essentially been abandoned for over five years, save some passing one-off updates. Since late 2006, the lead of WP:POG has said "Do not expect other editors to maintain a portal you create" ... and this one has not been maintained by Eruditescholar, who has made four small edits to the portal since May 2016, the most recent in May 2018, which is when they last touched portal space. The page view count is abysmal. From January 1 - June 30 2019, there was an average of 9 views per day to the main page (while the head article Lagos had 2,327 views per day in the same period.) This is a steady long-term decline from 17 views per day from July 1 to Dec. 30 2015.

Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:Lagos shows of the 12 articles, nine were last meaningfully updated in 2014-15, one in 2016, and two in 2019. Of the 12 biographies, 1-5 and 8-9 were updated in 2019 by a passing editor, all but one being automated. All had been untouched since 2014-15. 6-7 and 10-12 have been untouched since in 2014-15. The one panorama is from 2014. The four DYK's all date to 2013, and the fourth is partly in broken English. All 20 pictures in the gallery were added or last updated in 2013-14. The manual news section, which has full dates for each entry, spans from 2009-13 with four entries, and was last edited in 2013.

WP:POG also guides that "the portal should be associated with a WikiProject (or have editors with sufficient interest) to help ensure a supply of new material for the portal and maintain the portal.". However, Wikipedia:WikiProject Lagos is inactive (one human post after 2016 and there has never been an editor to editor conversation on the talk page). This wikiproject also appears to have never had anything meaningful to do with this portal, as there has never been any mention of the portal on the talk page by an editor.

This long abandoned decaying portal fails WP:POG on at least the three counts of very low readership, no maintainers, and no WikiProject involvement. It's time to just Delete it. Newshunter12 (talk) 06:51, 9 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. I have not studied the lengthy article-related statistics tied to your basis for deleting this portal but I will reveal some thoughts on this proposition. This portal happens to be one of the very few (if not the only one) that covers an African city. The Portal is also very much related to the Lagos WikiProject which I also initiated some years ago. At the time, I was much more active as a Wikipedia editor than I am currently. Several articles related to the Lagos Wikiproject have been created since then especially by other Nigerian editors. Articles which merit being featured on the Portal exist but have not been included for readers. I agree that the Portal has not been updated for some time. The long duration has made it look like it has been abandoned but that is not the case. As the creator, the onus is on me to ensure that it is updated regularly. As a conciliatory measure, I would recommend that this Portal be given more time for improvement, tentatively to see results. Eruditescholar (talk) 10:21, 9 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Eruditescholar For all intents and purposes, you abandoned this portal at least over three years ago in 2016, so spur of the moment promises of maintenance at MfD hold no weight. About 800 other portals have been deleted on the same grounds in the past six months, such as Portal:Vienna, Portal:Houston, Portal:Ottawa, Portal:Washington D.C., and most likely Portal:Paris will soon join that list. At nine views a day, this portal has only 0.39% of the daily page views of B-Class Lagos, which is just a background noise of bots, accidental clicks, etc. This portal, as with nearly all other portals, is a failed solution in search of a problem. Please reconsider your vote, as your time would be far better spent improving Lagos, which readers actually use. It's also important to point out that portals don't have their own content, so no content on Africa is being lost. Newshunter12 (talk) 17:39, 9 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I have observed that many articles on African topics generally struggle to get updated citations after creation. I presume the small presence of editors who focus on that area compared with their foreign counterparts (or those who edit on topics outside Africa) is the main reason for this. This situation is more conspicuous because of the prevalence of resources such as affordable internet, mobile phones, digital tablets, computers, etc and reliable citations which facilitate their editing. My maintenance plan for the Lagos Portal will generally entail addition of related articles, improvement of existing ones using a bimonthly routine editing schedule. Eruditescholar (talk) 13:03, 9 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Eruditescholar: If this portal is deleted in the end, be sure to mention this maintenance plan in a deletion review, as well as how you intend to drastically improve the portal's readership in the long-term. ToThAc (talk) 17:34, 9 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@ToThAc: Alright, Noted. Thanks for your recommendation. Eruditescholar (talk) 04:13, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
WP:POG requires that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers".
I have not analysed the extent of en.wp's coverage of the city of Lagos, so I can't venture an assessment of how this meets the broadness criteria. However, the evidence of the last 6 months of MFD scrutiny of portals is that it is exceptionally rare for any city portal to meet POG. So I would need some extraordinary evidence that the city of Lagos is an exception.
In any case, regardless of theoretical broadness, this portal clearly fails three other tests: it has few readers, almost no maintenance, and has no active WikiProject.
I note Eruditescholar's request for time to work on the portal. However, I also note that Eruditescholar does acknowledge that they are no longer so active, and http://en.wikiscan.org/user/Eruditescholar bears that out: only 559 edits so far in 2019. I'm sure that their offer to work on the portal was made in good faith, but it doesn't look plausible. Portals don't just need driveby fixes when nominated for deletion; they need ongoing maintenance, and I am not persuaded that Eruditescholar's currently revived interest is actually going to be sustained. In any case, POG requires multiple maintainers, and there's no sign of other maintainers.
So that adds up to a solid grounds for deletion, and for not re-creating it. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:12, 10 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Eruditescholar I listed five portals on large Western cites (four capitals) that already have been or are on the path to deletion for failing WP:POG: Portal:Vienna, Portal:Houston, Portal:Ottawa, Portal:Washington D.C., and most likely Portal:Paris and you're trying to claim this MfD is about discrimination and racism against Africa? Give me a break. You dumped this portal back in 2016, as did hundreds of other portal-creator fanboys from all over the world, and now want your old playpen kept after actual scrutiny has arrived, despite its glaring failure of WP:POG. If you were actually interested in this portal, you wouldn't have left it to rot years ago, so please stop wasting our time with claims of discrimination and supposed passion for this abandoned by you junk. Newshunter12 (talk) 05:11, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Newshunter12 The fact that about five other western city portals have or are involved in this deletion discussion doesn't rule out the end result of eliminating the only African city portal on Wikipedia. There are several city portals that are up and running and not included in this list to name a few: Portal:Berlin, Portal:Tokyo, Portal:New York City, so the inclusion of the other cities make it look like this discussion is not targeting to exclude the Lagos portal alone. Even though we are discussing portals here, they comprise articles so I deem it uncalled for to eliminate some city portals while leaving others to run on the basis of WP:NEGLECT and WP:NOBODYREADSIT. Readers use portals for various reasons and it is difficult to ascertain their usefulness based on page view statistics alone. Besides, a portal with low page views could be improved to attract more readers. I don't concur that these portals should be deleted based on readership and page view statistics alone. Every user's circumstance is different so you cannot speak for me and imply that I neglected the Lagos portal. If that was the case, I wouldn't have created more Lagos related articles and contributed to this discussion. -Eruditescholar (talk) 08:57, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Eruditescholar WP:NOBODYREADSIT is not a guideline or policy, and it's also about articles, not portals. The only thing that matters here is the portal guideline, WP:POG, which this portal fails as explained in the nom and by delete voters. You don't seem to understand that portals have mandatory quality standards that must be met, that for 14 years junk portals piled up with no one applying these standards and that for the past six months outside editors have been actually applying the guidelines to portals such as this. Also, edit histories don't lie about what has been edited and what hasn't. If you want essay reading material, I suggest you read WP:OSE. Newshunter12 (talk) 09:39, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Newshunter12 I am well aware that WP:NOBODYREADSIT only applies to articles; I only used it to support my notion as regards portals since they have a lot in common. Nobody knows everything. I'll reveal that I wasn't aware of the maintenance rules as regards portals until now. I guess it's probably too late for me to make corrections on the Lagos portal to meet WP:POG. Eruditescholar (talk) 12:37, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Eruditescholar, the problem here isn't simply a portal which needs corrections. The real issue here is that a portal needs to be on a very broad topic, and it needs the ongoing attention of multiple maintainers. A once-in-5-years burst of activity by one editor on a narrow topic doesn't resolve those failures.
I also strongly contest your assertion that articles and portals and have a lot in common. In reality, they have little (if anything) in common. Articles and portals are chalk and cheese: articles are the actual content of the encyclopedia, but categories and portals are just navigational tools. If someone waved a magic wand and deleted all categories and portals in a big puff of smoke, and we'd still be left with a fine encyclopedia ... but if we deleted articles, we'd have no encyclopedia.
The comparison with Portal:New York City is spurious. Category:WikiProject New York City articles has identified 19,608 articles in its scope, but Category:WikiProject Lagos articles has only 877 articles in its scope. That's 22 times more NYC articles than Lagos articles. WikiProject NYC has 56 FA-class articles + 338 GA-class ... but WikiProject Lagos has 1 FA-class article + 4 GA-class. So NYC has 79 times as much recognised content as Lagos, a gap of almost two orders of magnitude.
If and when WikiProject Lagos becomes active and generates NYC-style quantities of high-quality content, the comparison will be valid ... but until then, the comparison is between a midge and elephant. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:09, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@BrownHairedGirl. In my opinion, I still consider the WP:POG guideline for portals too stringent to make diversity evident. My listing of the New York city portal along with that of Tokyo and Berlin has nothing to do with comparison in terms of quality articles. I only intended to highlight the fact that these three city portals come from different continents with different cultural settings, albeit in the developed world. These portals were able to progress due to their related articles and maintenance by the numerous editors involved, not mentioning the availability of resources, devices, support system, etc. to make their efforts come to fruition. On the other hand, in my own case, I made a bold attempt to solely create the Lagos portal and initiate the related WikiProject. It was challenging at first but I was able to overcome and progress gradually with the support of few editors, mostly Nigerians to create these articles. So there really is no need to compare the Lagos WikiProject with New York city WikiProject because the number of editors involved and their locations are different. On a general note, it's a reality that we haven't been at par with our counterparts in these other cities in terms of regular active editing because of the constraints that we've been facing. The Lagos wikiproject has the potential of increasing its scope of article coverage because I am sure there are hundreds of articles yet to be created. Eruditescholar (talk) 19:48, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Eruditescholar, I think you miss the point of portals. They are not some sort of device to promote diversity, or rewards for good works like your wonderful efforts in improving coverage. They are navigational aids which work only when there is lots of content and lots of maintainers.
I wish you well in expanding and deepening coverage of Lagos, but there is a very very long way to go before this topic would make a viable portal. the loss of the portal will not impede that work, because like nearly all portals it has abysmally low viewing figures. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:07, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Catfurball: If cities shouldn't have portals, then there's no need for this discussion. The administrators have the power to reach a consensus to delete all city portals in Wikipedia.Eruditescholar (talk) 19:48, 12 September 2019 (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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