Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/3 abandoned draft portals by Chnou

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) 01:22, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

3 abandoned draft portals by Chnou

Portal:New Spain (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Portal:Kingdom of France (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

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

All three are abandoned drafts, each created in late 2010 by Chnou (talk · contribs), and abandoned since.

Links

1. Portal:New Spain (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) — Head article New Spain — sub-pages: Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:News Spain
2. Portal:Kingdom of France (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) — Head article Kingdom of France — sub-pages: Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:Kingdom of France
3. Portal:Normandy (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) — Head article Normandy — sub-pages: Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:Normandy

Two of three offer a limited selection of images:

1. Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:News Spain includes only one selected picture, and one selected panorama
2. Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:Kingdom of France includes only one selected picture, and two selected panoramas
3. Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:Normandy includes three selected picture, and one selected panorama

In terms of text content, in each case there is is one of everything: one selected article, one selected biography, one news page, and one DYK page. All have been static for years.

WP:POG#How_often_to_update? recommends that the selection of articles should be updated at least monthly, preferably weekly. But latest change of topic in any of these pages was in 2012. Even on a monthly cycle, that's 80 successive missed updates.

It's also notable how the lack of scrutiny of these portals has allowed them to be used in inappropriate ways:

• Portal:Kingdom of France/Kingdom of France news is all about a pretender to the French throne. This is blatant POV-pushing of the WP:FRINGE theory of the Legitimists
• Portal:New Spain/New Spain news is about Antonio Ramon Villaraigosa, a former mayor of Los Angeles. There is not even a suggested connection to the 1521–1821 Viceroyalty of New Spain

These are all unarguably broad topics. But their abandonment as drafts means that for a decade they have abysmally failed to deliver anything remotely resembling the guiding principle of portals, as defined by WP:PORTAL: "Portals serve as enhanced 'Main Pages' for specific broad subjects". In each case, the head article does a vastly better job both as a navigational tool and as a topic sampler.

It is theoretically possible that editors may yet appear to build and maintain portals on these topics. The evidence of the past decade of neglect demonstrates that this is highly unlikely, but it is theoretically possible ...

So I propose that all three portals and their sub-pages be deleted per WP:TNT, without prejudice to recreating a curated and maintanied portal in accordance with whatever criteria the community may have agreed at that time. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:21, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

Discussion (3 abandoned draft portals by Chnou)

add your keep/delete/comment here

• Delete - As stated by BHG. These are abandoned heritage portals. We need a re-creation review process, but this is not VPP. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:29, 9 May 2019 (UTC)
• Keep and update. Broad enough topics for a portal, can be salvaged through editing and issues highlighted with tagging, so deletion is not necessary to clean it up per WP:ATD. WaggersTALK 12:34, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
  • By salvaged, @Waggers 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.

The notions which Waggers suggests of editing and tagging are implausible to the point of fantasy, because:

1. 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
2. Category:All portals currently contains 1,331 portals, of which 1,074 are in Category:Unassessed Portal pages. That's 81% 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
3. Building a decent portal which would actually add value to readers takes time and research, and knowledge of the topic. Waggers has not identified any editor with the skills and commitment to build and maintain a portal on this topic.

For the last 2 months, I and other editors have worked in good faith to try to clear out the automated portalspam created in the last year, and ten the abandoned junk which has accumulated over a decade of neglect. It has been my hope throughout that this would leave a core of portals which add some value for readers, and could be built on. But if members of the portals project are going to oppose the cleanup of abandoned junk without a mechanism, plan, or topic-skilled editors to fix them, then it may be time to abandon this approach and simply propose mass deletion of most portals. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:15, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

• Delete: WP:PORTAL is clear: portals are meant to be mini Main Pages. This means that they require regular updates via an automated process or an active maintainer. These portals do not have them. They fail their reason for being. SITH (talk) 11:44, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
• Delete all 3: The subjects of these portals do not meet the breadth-of-subject-area requirement of the WP:POG guideline. UnitedStatesian (talk) 18:46, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

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.