Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Caribbean

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: Keep and improve. There is little practical use moving from the Portal namespace to the Draft namespace, either this is going to be improved on or it is not - suggest revisiting in 6 months if there have not been improvements. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:48, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Caribbean

Abandoned portal. You can tell it is abandoned because:

On October 10 The Netherlands Antilles were dissolved. Sint Maarten & Curaçao became countries within the Kingdom of the Netherlands and Bonaire, Saba & Sint Eustatius became special municipalities within the Netherlands. (this happened in 2010 and looks like the newest news)
September 22: Cuban leader Fidel Castro made his first TV appearance in three months, saying "Well, I'm still here," in an interview taped this week. (BBC NEWS) (an amazing feat for someone who died 3 years ago. "This week" was in 2007.)
a bunch more outdated "news". Good for a laugh but a disservice to our readers.

Portals require a broad enough scope to attract both readers and editors. This does not attract either. 780 views in 30 days by disappointed readers who are getting outdated info vs 98,000+ readers on Caribbean a page with many editors working on it and watching it. Legacypac (talk) 10:57, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:WikiProject Caribbean courtesy talkpage notified. UnitedStatesian (talk) 11:29, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Keep – Meets WP:POG in terms of having an adequately broad scope and availability of content, the latter of which is qualified per the category tree below. Concerns about outdated content can be easily handled by WP:COPYEDITING the portal, such as by commenting-out problematic sections, , and denoting the concerns in the comment and edit summary.

Select [►] to view subcategories

– North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 16:30, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I agree it meets the guideline for breadth of subject matter but your !vote does not address the failure to of the portal to meet the guideline as a topic that attracts readers and editors. Legacypac (talk) 20:45, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Draftify until it can be updated properly. The topic is fine, it's a recognised region of the world with a population of 43 million and plenty that can be covered in terms of history, culture, geography etc. Unless we're deprecating portals entirely (which is a separate issue) then we shouldn't delete this one for lack of scope. Hut 8.5 21:57, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. There's no requirement for portals to provide news. If outdated news is the only flaw, the box could be deleted or hidden until maintainers are available. Espresso Addict (talk) 23:23, 15 April 2019

(UTC)

News is just the easiest area to show how little interest there is in maintaining this. I agree there is scope for a proper portal but maintenance by interested editors is required. No portal is a required portal. Legacypac (talk) 23:55, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete with the following comments:
- - This heritage portal precedes the existence of Portal namespace and was moved to Portal namespace by a script. None of its originators are currently active, which negates a possible reason to keep.
  - The comments do not appear to include an offer to maintain.
  - The area is broad enough to support a portal, but portals are not mandatory even for broad areas.
  - As noted, this portal is obviously not being maintained. An In The News section is not required, but is an indication of an abandoned portal.
  - If this portal is kept, portals about nations in the Caribbean should be redirected.
  - If a decision is made to keep this portal (against my !vote), it should be subject to the provision that it can be renominated for deletion in 60 days if it is not being maintained,

Robert McClenon (talk) 03:12, 16 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - Old portal, 179 subpages, created 2005-07-05 08:48:43 by User:68.220.100.119. Provably abandoned. No prejudice of a recreation as a maintained one. Portal:Caribbean.

Pldx1 (talk) 13:17, 16 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Source article is a level 4 vital article, meaning it is outside the top 1,000; this indicates it does not meet the breadth-of-subject-area requirement of the WP:POG guideline. No indication it would attract a large number of readers. UnitedStatesian (talk) 20:56, 16 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment – I'm against using Vital articles (VA) assessments as a metric for portals on Wikipedia; the selection process at VA is very subjective, often opinion-based, sometimes based upon the simplest of straw polling, and is not reliable or objective. Assessment results often simply depend upon who shows up to "vote". North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 22:37, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I would love to hear which standard you would propose as an alternative. I guess it is much easier to shoot down others' ideas than to proporse some of your own. UnitedStatesian (talk)

@UnitedStatesian and Northamerica1000: Imo, Wikipedia coverage is a good metric, both quantity and quality. Espresso Addict (talk) 05:19, 28 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - has a significant number of related articles so a good candidate for a portal. Might need some work due to the method of creation, but that's not a valid reason for deletion. Waggers TALK 11:01, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
WP:SOFTDELETE or Draftify. This is clearly a broad topic, but the present long-abandoned portal is a disservice to readers. I checked a sample of the subpages, and most of them have not been touched for at least five years, and often twelve.

The discussion above is riddled with extreme euphemisms. For example, some editors say it needs to be "updated", and @Waggers says it needs some work ... which actually means "completely rebuilt from a blank sheet", because a set of 12-year-old content forks is no base from which to start building a portal which might actually add value for readers.

In the meantime, it is disruptive to continue to waste the time of readers by luring them to a page which has been abandoned for 12 years.

Notions that leaving it live will trigger improvement are implausible to the point of fantasy, because:

There is no tag to identify long-term abandoned portals, and no category to track them, because the WP:WPPORT has never throughout its history engaged in any systematic quality-monitoring of portals .
Category:All portals currently contains 1,331 portals, of which over 1,000 are in Category:Unassessed Portal pages. That's about 80% of portals to which to no assessment rating has ever been assigned. The portals project has simply never done basic monitoring of quality, let alone tracking of specific problems, which is why hundreds of abandoned portals have rotted for up to 13 years
Building a decent portal which would actually add value to readers takes time and research, and knowledge of the topic. No particpant in this discussion has identified any editor with the skills and commitment to build and maintain a portal on this topic.
Anyone who wants to build a decent portal on this topic may find parts of this abandoned relic to be valuable, which is why I advocate soft deletion or draftifying ... but I would prefer outright deletion to leaving this live. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:43, 11 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Keep This is a portal for an entire region of the world! I find you all are too aggressively deleting important portals. Yes, it's abandoned-- should we accelerate the decline of Wikipedia by removing it? Rather than destroying abandoned portals, why not set up a system for improving portal quality? Why not reach out to people who might help? It's clear there needs to be more outreach for a new generation of Wikipedians-- I pray there will be something left for them to build on. Tiredmeliorist (talk) 00:05, 17 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- @Tiredmeliorist, the portal meets the scope criterion of WP:POG, but it abysmally fails the core point of POG, its lead, which currently reads bear in mind that portals should be about broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers. Portals which require manual updating are at a greater risk of nomination for deletion if they are not kept up to date. Do not expect other editors to maintain a portal you create.

Sadly, some editors continue to misrepresent POG as some sort of licence to litter Wikipedia with abandoned portals, just because the scope is broad enough. POG is very clear that scope is a necessary condition, but an insufficient one: the portal must also be maintained.

It's all very easy to say "set up a system for improving portal quality". But with over 1,000 portals in poor shape, and few editors working on them, that improvemnt can never catch up with decay. If someone wants to create a portal on this topic which actually adds value and meet the core principle of WP:PORTAL — "Portals serve as enhanced 'Main Pages' for specific broad subjects" — then they can create a new shell in seconds. But a long-abandoned portal like this one has nothing worth incorporating into a new portal, and it is grossly unfair to readers to keep on luring them to a portal which simply wastes their time. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:37, 17 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

- @BrownHairedGirl Thank you for responding. As a newcomer, I was unaware of how poorly setup the portal system was-- but I personally like the portals themselves. And an outdated one like this isn't "luring" or deceiving anyone-- we all know what Wikipedia is after all. It might even spur someone to become involved and update it! As Espresso Addict, Waggers and others have said, this is a notable topic, after all. It's not something a bot created 12 years ago. And as a newb, I would much rather build off a skeleton page like this than start from scratch.

What is actually happening here is that all these portals are being taken down by an elite cabal of deletionist Wikipedians without much input from anyone else. Unless someone is sitting on the page, you guys will overrun it with deletion requests simply because it is "unmaintained." I had no idea what was happening until I saw the Anthropology portal was deleted the other day. Who knew? Well, apparently BrownHairedGirl and Robert McClenon that's who -- same people who recommended this for deletion.

How about we get some more input before destroying all the portals?? --Tiredmeliorist (talk) 04:50, 17 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Oh dear. Elite cabal, eh? As in editors who launch a public discussion, based on the long-established portals guidelines?

Presumably I am being managed by the illuninati and lizards.

Your reason for keeping amounts to your statement that I personally like the portals themselves. Which is pure WP:ILIKEIT. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:55, 17 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Whether there is a cabal behind any large virtual community has, since the early days of Usenet in the early 1980s, depended on what was meant by a cabal. Therefore the statements "There Is No Cabal" (WP:TINC) (and "There Is a Cabal") have always had some degree of dry on-line humor (that was sometimes missed, and taken to be either entirely serious or entirely unserious, both of which missed the point). However, the usual concept of a cabal, in virtual communities and the Internet, has implied a group that were acting more or less out of view, either secretly, or in a sort of open but quiet corner. Deletion in Wikipedia is not and cannot be done by a cabal. Deletion has done via MFD, which is a public Wikipedia forum, and some of the large deletions have been further publicized via central notice. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:08, 18 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

User:Tiredmeliorist - There has been a cabal, however, not deleting portals, which cannot be done quietly. Deletion is noisy. The creation of portals, or of any other pages, can be done quietly. New pages are checked quietly via New Page Patrol, but its purpose is primarily to maintain the quality of articles and to screen out spam, advertising, undisclosed paid editing, libel, copyright infringement, patent nonsense, biographies of living persons violations, hoaxes, and other stuff that does not belong in the encyclopedia. There has been a cabal that I call the portal platoon, consisting of a few editors led by The Transhumanist (the platoon leader), organized as a WikiProject (some of which are quiet and active, as this one has been), which created thousands of low-quality portals simply because they liked portals or because creating portals was fun. Some other editors, including User:BrownHairedGirl, User:UnitedStatesian, User:Legacypac, and myself only noticed the thousands of portals a few months ago. Since then, we have been actively seeking as much input as we can about low-quality portals, and have been, with notice and discussion, identifying and deleting low-quality portals, both automated portals created by the portal platoon, and old long-abandoned portals. 'How about we get some more input'? We did get input, via the usual notice and discussion. If you want any particular deleted portal relisted, that can be done. We have sought input much more than the portal platoon, a cabal, who created thousands of portals without input and with no real reason. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:08, 18 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Robert McClenon: Thanks, I appreciate the discussion (and clarification on the word "cabal", lol) --Tiredmeliorist (talk) 02:30, 19 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Further Discussion of Portal:Caribbean, Portal:Anthropology, and Portals

Comment to User:Tiredmeliorist - You propose getting some more input. We did, for two-and-one-half months, and are continuing to get input. The major discussion of portals began on 1 March 2019, with the awareness by some of us that thousands of portals had been created without discussion. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Archive307#Thousands_of_Portals. All of the portals that have been deleted have been discussed for at least seven days before deletion. The portals that have been deleted fall mainly into two classes. The first is automated portals, which offer no advantage over what they are based on, normally a single navbox or a single list. The second is portals that have been abandoned without a portal maintainer for extensive periods of time. Portal:Anthropology was an abandoned portal, and Portal:Caribbean is an abandoned portal.

If you think that Portal:Anthropology was deleted too quickly, you can ask for review at Deletion Review. It appears to have been a proper close after at least seven days, but I would not object to a temporary undeletion and a Relist. (I don’t know what other editors will say.)

I personally am agreeable to having this portal, Portal:Caribbean, relisted for one more week. It was nominated for deletion on 15 April, so that it has been open for discussion for a month now, but we are not trying to rush the deletion of portals. (A cabal of editors whom I characterize as the portal platoon were trying to rush the implementation of thousands of portals, but that is not the subject now, and we are not trying to rush the deletion of portals.)

The guidelines for portals have always said that portals should be about broad subject areas that will attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers. The Caribbean and Anthropology are both broad subject areas, but we have found that broad subject areas attract readers for the articles, but (perhaps contrary to expectation) not for the portals, and that many portals have waited years for portal maintainers. See the essay on waiting for portal maintainers. Portal:Caribbean attracted an average of 24 daily page views between 1 January 2019 and 28 February 2019, while Caribbean attracted 3,531 page views during that period. Portals fail to attract readers and portal maintainers. Robert McClenon (talk) 10:48, 17 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - The thing named Portal:Anthropology was not a portal, but an abandoned draft, with only ONE biography, etc., i.e. the shameful ONE of each pattern. Comparing with the one under discussion, is only painting Portal:Caribbean under worse colors than necessary. This one was a portal circa TEN years ago. Now, Wikipedia:WikiProject Caribbean is believed to be semi-active, politically correct version of "not different than dead". No one from this project said even one word here to defend this portal here. Today, you have added your name at the WikiProject. Great move ! But if you are the only survivor, I am not sure that your best move will be trying to mesmerize this defunct portal (30 views per day during the last three years, and even less recently). Moreover, I don't have the impression that, you, supposed to be a member of an active cabal of keep-people, are so much active at revisiting all these abandoned snippets but, maybe, I am wrong. Pldx1 (talk) 11:52, 17 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - @Robert McClenon, Pldx1, and BrownHairedGirl: Wow, I was not aware of all this... thanks for clarifying. Ok, nonetheless, these were legit portals. I think you guys got over-zealous deleting everything that TTH touched. Indeed, nobody disputes that the Caribbean has potential for a portal (we're talking about a region with 100+ individual islands, most of which have pages). The issue primarily seems to be that it’s outdated-- which is completely WP:SURMOUNTABLE. On the other hand, I personally don't have the time nor skill to maintain a portal, nor do I have the time or skill to battle you over this. Perhaps portals are too much work for what they are-- it's just distressing to see them disappear so quickly. --Tiredmeliorist (talk) 22:24, 17 May 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.