Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:French politics

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) 00:38, 14 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:French politics

Old, long-abandoned non-portal.

This portal was created[1] in August 2007‎ by Petrovic-Njegos (talk · contribs), and its format has been tweaked many times, most notably in a series of 11 edits[2] in June 2013 by @Northamerica1000.

However, as can be seen at Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:French politics, it has never actually gotten beyond a skeleton. It has one featured article, one Featured person, an electoral calendar, a seemingly random set of "topics", and that's it. So it's not a portal either in the sense of offering a good navigational map, or as a way of sampling a a range of topics. It's just a slim single-issue magazine, with no purge button because there's alternative content. Those few sub-pages have rotted:

Portal:French politics/Featured person is about Alain Marie Juppé, but it was last updated in 2007. So it doesn't mention that since then held two senior ministerial posts, as defence minister then foreign; and it says that he remains mayor of Bordeaux, even though he quit two months ago. HIs resignation was noted on the head article on the day it happened[3], but as usual the portalspace content fork was not updated.
Portal:French politics/Featured article has had only minor tweaks[4] since its creation in 2007, and offers a simplsitic and outdated summary of Gaullism which differs significantly from the head article
Portal:French politics/Electoral calendar was updated in 2015 by Ericl (talk · contribs) and in 2018 by WhatsUpWorld (talk · contribs). Both editors are now blocked: WhatsUpWorld as a prolific sockpuppeteer with 20 confirmed puppets, and Ericl for an apparent inability or unwillingness to comply with basic content policies despite years of experience and dozens of previous issues.

So there is nothing here worth preserving.

Obviously, the Politics of France is a broad topic, which in theory could satisfy the WP:POG requirement that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers". In practice, we have the evidence of 12 years of neglect to show that it never has attracted maintainers apart from a pair of miscreant editors who made minor tweaks. I therefore see no resaon to expect that the next twelve years will be any different.

So I say just delete it. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:23, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - Abandoned draft of a portal, 8 subpages, created 2007-08-06 14:29:17 by User:Petrovic-Njegos. ONE article, ONE biography. Fucking Frenchies. Throwing bridges on British Princesses, but unable to have more than one politician! Portal:French politics. Pldx1 (talk) 19:17, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - This is a limited-focus heritage portal by an inactive editor. As the nominator says. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:35, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per all of the above, and can more than adequately be covered by Portal:France. UnitedStatesian (talk) 12:26, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - sufficient scope for a portal. The rest are content issues, which the deletion policy says "are usually not dealt with by deleting the page". WaggersTALK 16:00, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- @Waggers, articles are content, so deleting them removes content.

Portals are not content, so they are not covered by content-based aspects of deletion policy. They are a navigational device and/or a showcase for existing content, so the case for their existence depends on whether they do that well enough to add value per WP:PORTAL: "Portals serve as enhanced 'Main Pages' for specific broad subjects". If they don't do that, they should be deleted, just like we routinely delete redundant or non-defining categories.

In this case, the pseudo-portal has rotted for 12 years. This isn't a content issue; it is a rotten, almost non-existent junk issue. This ia an abandoned shell.

Why do you want to continue this 12-year scam of advertising to our readers that we have a "portal" on a topic, even tho you know that when they visit it they will discover this junk? That's like advertising a car, and taking the buyer to pile of rusted pieces in the scrapyard.

What on earth is the point of wasting the time of readers by trying to keep this rotten junk? If your aim was to discredit the whole portals project by retaining even the most useless and and most long-abandoned pages, then you would be doing brilliantly ... but if you have any other objective, then your determination to let this abandoned relic of 2007 is self-defeating. It seems that you are adopting the never-mind-the-quality-just-count-the-numbers ethos of TTH's newsletters. That didn't end well. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:34, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't referred to any specifically content-oriented aspects of the deletion policy but to general principles that apply as much to portals as anywhere else. This entire nomination is based on what can be seen at the portal; the selected articles, pictures etc and frequency of updates. You can't update a shell or a framework, (other than changing colours and formatting etc) so the argument that "portals are not content" makes no sense in the context of a nomination that is all about the content of a portal. Waggers TALK 16:53, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Waggers, even if DP applied to portals, WP:DEL-CONTENT says very clearly "Disputes over page content are usually not dealt with by deleting the page, except in severe cases".

Like most of the other pseudo-portals which you advocated keeping today, this a severe case. It is a piece of junk which remains unimproved since was abandoned 12 years, and provides readers with a grossly misleading picture of the topic.

Yet you continue to point to WP:DEL-CONTENT as if it placed a total ban on deleting junk pages, which it explicitly doesn't. Please read policies before wandering selectively cherrypicking them. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:02, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

There's no "if"; DP does apply to portals as you know very well. This is not a severe case, it could be remedied with less effort than this deletion discussion is taking. That's why the DP says what it says; these MfDs are unnecessarily disruptive and a far more straightforward solution is right there in the DP. Waggers TALK 07:23, 8 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Waggers, Your relentless wikilawyering by cherry-picking out-of-context parts of deletion policy doesn't alter the fact that deletion policy allows the deletion of pages in severe cases. Your continued denial that this portal is a severe case tells us only that you set abysmally low standards for portals.

Tagging a portal doesn't solve anything. It remains junk, just tagged with a request that someone improve it.

If you genuinely believe that these MFDs are disruptive, then you know where WP:ANI is. I look forward to your complaint that it is disruptive to propose the deletion of 12-year-old abandoned junk; but if you continue to allege that MFDing abandoned junk is disruptive, I may open a complaint against you. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:04, 8 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. This is a broad enough topic. The box neatly linking elections looks useful. There doesn't seem to have ever been rotating content though. There's no specific wikiproject, which doesn't help. Have the 2 wikiprojects associated been notified? Espresso Addict (talk) 16:40, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - This portal asserts that French politics counts only one party (Gaullism) and only one politician (Alain Juppé). But User:Waggers seems totally unable to perceive the buffoonery of presenting this portal as a great navigation tool into all of the wide sum of knowledge gathered by the Wikipedia Community about this topic. One can also consider that this portal doesn't make a mockery of so many people: only ten too confident readers per day (crawling bots included). What did they expected from a portal only endorsed by portal fans, and not by genuine maintainers ?Pldx1 (talk) 22:18, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The portal asserts no such thing. It is merely a stub portal needing a bit of expansion; that's easily remedied and not a reason for deletion. Waggers TALK 07:45, 8 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Needing a bit of expansion: you are too modest indeed. But not intending to be a part of this so small bit of expansion, am I wrong ? Pldx1 (talk) 12:18, 8 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Pldx1, Waggers has been wandering around MFD for the last day or two making a last stand on behalf of the never-mind-the-quality-just-count-the-numbers school of portal-fans, opposing the deletion of both decade-old-abandoned junk and drive-by spam.

But maybe this will be the case where Waggers decides to actually build a portal rather than just demand preservation of relics. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:53, 8 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - Perhaps the following tag should be displayed atop of this marvelous portal (before its deletion) :

Any opinions ? Pldx1 (talk) 20:29, 8 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

- @Pldx1, sadly there are probably still several dozen portals which would merit such a waning; I am finding them faster than I can nominate them.

And if the warning was expanded to portals with up to five pages in all, we would have several hundred portals tagged in that way. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:30, 9 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.