Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:H. P. Lovecraft (4th nomination)

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. ‑Scottywong | [talk] || 22:07, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:H. P. Lovecraft[edit]

Neglected portal.

Seventeen selected articles; of these, two are unrated, one is Stub-class, five are Start-class, six are C-class, two are B-class, and only one is a featured article.
Though I'll cut some slack for the creator for actually attempting to maintain the portal, they last edited the portal in late May 2019. They're also the only major contributor to the portal.
Average daily pageviews in the first half of 2019 are 12 for the portal versus 4858 for the parent article, or roughly .247%.

So yeah, I don't think this really meets the golden rule of WP:POG. ToThAc (talk) 03:28, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete, and oppose re-creation per the nom. This portal is about an exceedingly narrow topic and has very low readership, which is a clear fail of 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". Newshunter12 (talk) 05:59, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I won't oppose deletion. I've tried to maintain the portal, but the strongly negative attitude against portals has sapped my will. Too often I see good, creative portals deleted for spurious reasoning, and I figured it would happen to this portal eventually, as it seems destined to happen to all. --Auric talk 11:51, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Auric: I don't think "spurious" is the right word to describe WP:POG; in fact, it's been shown in recent months that portals about narrow topics, abysmally low pageviews, and/or only one or two maintainers are usually left for dead, sad as it may be. ToThAc (talk) 13:52, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I say spurious because it seems the pageviews aguement should only matter if Wikipedia derived some financial benefit from all the clickthroughs.--Auric talk 18:08, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per a variant of WP:BLUDGEON. So let me get this straight: the process is, keep nominating portals after no consensus closures, until the maintaining editor gives up in frustration? (and I know that no consensus permits such renomination, but that doesn't change the fact that this process stinks because we need engaged editors: how does driving them away help the project?). And an editing gap from May to September is "neglected"? (a word that is not found in the WP:POG guideline, by the way) UnitedStatesian (talk) 15:00, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
UnitedStatesian, your argument basically boils down to WP:IWORKEDSOHARD, and WP:BLUDGEON doesn't apply here, since the creator can still take their work to related venues, such as Portal:Horror fiction or Wikipedia:WikiProject Horror instead. Pinging Auric for their thoughts. ToThAc (talk) 16:53, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Except that WP:POG, by requiring maintenance, means that WP:IWORKEDSOHARD is a completely valid "keep" argument in Portal MfDs. And the only problem with your suggestion is (as both you and the maintainer know) that Portal:Horror fiction suffers from even worse issues than this portal, and so is almost certainly going to be deleted. UnitedStatesian (talk) 16:57, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@UnitedStatesian: Then the work and backlinks can go to the next narrowest portal; in this case, either Portal:Biography, Portal:Novels, or both. And like I said, the aformentioned WikiProject is a viable option as well. ToThAc (talk) 17:43, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I expect the same argument will be used when those portals are up for deletion.--Auric talk 18:08, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Auric: Except those two particular portals probably won't be nominated for deletion at press time considering that they at least meet the "broad scope" guideline; even if they are deleted, another user (likely BrownHairedGirl) will find a viable solution for what portal is up next. And as I mentioned twice above, WikiProject Horror is also a viable alternative. ToThAc (talk) 18:31, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Which raises the question: what is the topmost portal, to which all portal content will ultimately flow? Portal:Everything? UnitedStatesian (talk) 18:26, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@UnitedStatesian: Portal:Contents. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:37, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe Portal: Main page.--Guilherme Burn (talk) 19:41, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. WP:POG requires that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers". POG also says 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." This fails on all four counts:

N Broad topic. No. Category:H. P. Lovecraft+subcats contains only .592 articles.
N High readership. The portal's January–June 2019 daily median of only 5 views per day is trivially low. That's barely above background noise.
N Lots of of maintainers. No. Just one.
N WikiProject. WP:WikiProject H. P. Lovecraft is a redlink.

This fail-all-criteria portal isn't an aid to readers. It's just a hobby portal, and it shouldn't be in reader-facing position. Delete it, or move it to project space. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:23, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Does this mean you support starting such a Wikiproject?--Auric talk 19:51, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Auric: No. See WP:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject H. P. Lovecraft, and please desist from WP:POINTy conduct. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:47, 13 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Please don't assume that I do anything out of spite. I hadn't though about actually creating a WP until you mentioned it, but you made it seem like a good idea. I shouldn't have to ask an admin to WP:AGF, but please do.--Auric talk 10:17, 13 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Auric: WP:PRJCRE says "A WikiProject is the people, not the articles or the pages that help the people work together, so this is the most important step. You must find people who want to work together on the project with you."

I see no evidence that this has happened here, and the time between me posting the link and you creating the project was too short to recruit others. A one-person WikiProject is just a set of pointless pages.

Maybe, you were not being POINTy; but if so, you were acting recklessly, contrary to the WikiProject guidelines. Five days after you created the "project", you are still the only listed participant. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:42, 17 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete people shouldn't have portals period.Catfurball (talk) 19:49, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, maintained portal with some neat ideas (the selected stories with links to Wikisource are great, we should encourage this kind of content). Last deletion nomination was only a couple of months ago, with significant opposition to the idea the topic was "too narrow". WP:POG, written as a "how to create a portal" page, does not have a "list of necessary criteria" as mentioned above; this is just something the people interested in deleting portals like to claim. The harm done by deleting this portal clearly is larger than any possible gain from deleting it. And per UnitedStatesian. —Kusma (t·c) 20:23, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Kusma: are you seriously saying that is untrue to assert that WP:POG requires that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers"?

Really really really? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:22, 21 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

That is what the page states (but recall the history of that page, which used to be the portal MOS, not the portal keep/delete criteria; we have never had a page written with that intention). It does not actually state anywhere that a portal has to have any maintainers, or that it has to have any readers. Unlike WP:POG, recent MFDs have indeed established a rough consensus that portals be maintained and have some readers. Unfortunately WP:POG have not been updated to reflect that consensus. —Kusma (t·c) 09:37, 21 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Kusma: Lemme see if I understand you right.

You agree that POG does say those words, but disagree that it means that a portal needs to have any readers or maintainers. If not, what's the point of the words?

You don't explicitly say whether you agree that it says that portal has to be about a broad topic, and I don't want to assume either way. But I hope at least that much is accepted. If so, are you really saying that that the life and works of one mid-rank author (significant in his genre, but a v long way from a Yeats/Tagore/Proust/Marquez/Frost, let alone a Shakespeare/Dickens/Austen) is a "broad topic"?

And given that you do explicitly agree that "recent MFDs have indeed established a rough consensus that portals be maintained and have some readers", surely all this textual pedantry is moot?

Yesterday, it a discussion at WP:VP/PR#Proposal_to_delete_Portal_space, you wrote in a thoughtful and civil reply to me[1] that "On the whole, portals are probably not worth the amount of debate that we have about them". I agree that they are taking up too much of the community's time, but it seems to me that your !vote here is an excellent example of why we end up having so much debate about them.

It reminds me of how, back in Feb/March 2019, enough portal enthusiasts objected to the proposed speedy deletion process for TTH's portalspam that the proposal fell just short of 2/3 support and was narrowly closed as "no consensus", so even tho there were two mass-deletions we ended up having a few hundred MFDs to remove pages which TTH&co rapidly-created at sustained rates of up to 1 every 90 seconds, some of them "just for the heck of it". --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:43, 21 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

~~Procedural Keep~~ for now, reserving the right to change my !vote, based on good arguments by User:BrownHairedGirl and others for deletion, but a solid case by User:UnitedStatesian for a Procedural Keep. Three MFDs in six months, two of which were closed procedurally and one of which was inconclusive, are enough. Very little harm if any is done by keeping this portal longer before reviewing it again, and harm is done to the limited efforts to take a reasoned attitude toward portals by bludgeoning the discussion of this portal. (I don't see much reasonableness by long-time portal advocates and can't expect it. User:UnitedStatesian is a former portal critic who has become a portal advocate. The critics of portals need to be reasonable, since reason may be in short supply with regard to portals.) Robert McClenon (talk) 20:56, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- @Robert McClenon, the solution to any risk of forum-shopping is simply to ping the participants in the previous discussions. After a a series of botched discussions, it would be perverse to procedurally keep a portal which you seem to agree fails POG, just for the sake of a few pings. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:18, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination reopened as per BrownHairedGirl's request here. Pinging Robert McClenon, UnitedStatesian, Auric, and Newshunter12 so they may continue participating in the discussion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ToThAc (talk • contribs) 13:24, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete, no grounds for "procedural" keep – The nomination history of this portal is misleading, and I think that may be driving editors to perceive a procedural flaw where there is none. Although this is titled the "4th nomination", it's actually only the second, brought four months after a "no consensus" close. Re-nominating a page four months after an NC close is completely 100% procedurally proper, and done all the time. The first nomination was actually a bundled nomination that was a procedural keep only because it was an improper bundle. The second nomination resulted in no consensus back in May. The third nomination was a bundled nomination that was a procedural keep only because it was an improper bundle. This is the "fourth" nomination, but it's really only the second individual nomination. So the history is: procedural keep (improper bundle), no consensus (individual), procedural keep (improper bundle), and this one (individual). It just makes no sense to "procedurally keep" this individual nom, when there were two prior noms procedurally kept for being bundled. Since I've written enough about this, I don't want to spend too much time repeating the solid grounds of the delete !voters above, with which I agree: the portal is not broad enough, doesn't have enough readers or maintainers, and isn't supported by a WikiProject. Individual authors (like most if not all bios), in my opinion, are unlikely to make good subjects for portals. – Levivich 18:48, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- To add: If we procedurally keep this nom, what will happen is there is 100% guaranteed to be another nom in the future. (After all, that's what procedural keep means.) A procedural keep on the basis of "too many noms" is counterproductive. If we don't want too many noms, then we should vote substantively on this portal, right now, instead of voting based on procedure. A definitive consensus–based on substance and not procedure–is what will prevent this portal from being re-nominated again. – Levivich 18:52, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - Yes, User:Levivich, there was one valid nomination and two invalid bundles. My point is that making too many invalid bundled nominations is undesirable and interferes with the cleanup of portals that need cleaning up. There are still at least a few hundred portals that need deleting. We don't need to bludgeon this one. Wait a few months. I know that there will be another nomination. Just leave the portal alone for a few months first. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:44, 19 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with you about invalid bundles, but what I don't understand is why wait a few months. How is waiting a few months better than deciding now? What is the difference? Consider that, if we wait a few months, all the editors who spent time at this MfD will have to again spend time (or other editors will have to spend time in their place) in a few months. The "procedural keep" argument is that we should spend more time on this later because we've spent too much time on this in the past (due to improper bundles). It makes no sense to me. – Levivich 00:48, 19 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - Not meets WP:POG Simply based on the consensus of dozens recents MfDs about bibliographic portals.Guilherme Burn (talk) 19:39, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete as per conclusion about biographical portals below by User:BrownHairedGirl. I had reserved the right to change my !vote and have seen a solid substantive case. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:36, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for considering it at least.--Auric talk 10:14, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Biography Portals[edit]

Note on biography portals: After the deletion today of Portal:Jane Austen, this is now the last remaining portal on any individual (see Category:Biography portals)
Here's an incomplete list of previously deleted portals on individual people, excluding all of the many many dozens of biographical portals which were just automated spam created by @The Transhumanist (TTH) and his loyal disciples:

Politicians

Religion

Writers

Individual musicians

It's clear that there is now a stable consensus at MFD against keeping a portal for any individual. All but one of the writers listed above is of vastly greater significance than Lovecraft, as are both the politicians and religious leaders, and at least some of the musicians (e.g. Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson).

The word "fancruft" is overused at XFD, but that's what this portal is. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:18, 21 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

That is a very interesting list of names of people, including who appear to be the most significant in the short run, e.g., Barack Obama and Donald Trump, and those who have had the greatest influence on recorded history in the long run, Jesus and Muhammad. Thank you, User:BrownHairedGirl. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:32, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per others here, WP:POG is flawed and needs broader consensus. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 17:49, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete and oppose re-creation per analyses above. -Crossroads- (talk) 19:17, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - too narrow in scope to be useful as a portal. Kaldari (talk) 19:11, 27 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.