Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Uttar Pradesh

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. There isn't any strong consensus on whether this portal should or shouldn't be re-created, and furthermore, it really doesn't matter if there was. If there was a consensus to salt the portal, that's the only type of consensus that would prevent re-creation. Otherwise, anyone is free to re-create it, as long as the re-created article doesn't qualify for WP:CSD#G4. And if it's re-created, anyone is also free to nominate it for deletion again. If it's re-created and deleted over and over again, eventually it will be salted, but usually most articles don't get to this point. ‑Scottywong | [chatter] || 04:14, 28 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Uttar Pradesh[edit]

Abandoned portal on the India state of Uttar Pradesh. It has low pageviews (an average of only 13 views per day in January–June 2019), but the crucial issue is that was abandoned in late 2011 and is now a broken mess of redlinks.

The portal was created in 2007, and built using the then-popular monthly-edition format. This involved creating for each month a new dated page for each of Selected article, Selected picture, Selected biography, and news.

This was sustained sporadically until late 2011, then stopped entirely. The precise point of cessation is hard to determine without a lot of burrowing, because a complete set of blank pages was created up to December 2011, and in the final few years some pages got content on some months but not on others. See the listings at Portal:Uttar Pradesh/Selected biography/2011, Portal:Uttar Pradesh/Selected picture/2011, Portal:Uttar Pradesh/Selected article/2011.

The result is that Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:Uttar Pradesh/ lists a daunting total of 640 sub-pages.

However they are not much use to the portal, because it looks for the current month ... and Portal:Uttar Pradesh/Selected biography/2019/August, Portal:Uttar Pradesh/Selected picture/2019/August, Portal:Uttar Pradesh/Selected article/2019/August are all redlinks. So those boxes in the portal display only a redlink.

This is not readily fixable, because the archives consist of decade-old content forks. It would take a lot of work to convert this to a more modern excerpt-transclusion format, and for 8 years nobody has done that. The only relevant post on the talk page, was in June 2015 by User:25 Cents FC, who noted the abandonment and expressed a desire to make this a featured portal[1] ... but there was no respose, and User:25 Cents FC's sole portal-space edit was not to this portal/[2]

There is also a set of anniversary pages, one for every day of the year: see Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:Uttar Pradesh/Anniversaries/. However, the set is of limited value, because a significant proportion of the pages just say "no event". For example Portal:Uttar Pradesh/Anniversaries/January has 14 "no event" days, and Portal:Uttar Pradesh/Anniversaries/February has 11 "no event days".

Given the long-term neglect, it is unsurprising that in February 2019‎ @The Transhumanist (TTH) chose it as one of his portals to "restart" in an automated format.[3] However, that just made it an automated redundant fork of the navbox Template:Uttar Pradesh, like the 2550 newly-created portals deleted by overwhelming consensus in two mass deletions (one, and two).

So in May 2019 I (BHG) reverted[4] the portal to the last non-automated version.

And so it remains, as broken as it was in January 2012, but with Portal:Uttar Pradesh/Uttar Pradesh news (last updated in 2011) still displayed but now even more out of date.

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 fails on at least two of the three counts:

Y Broad topic. On a theoretical level, yes. With 200 million inhabitants Uttar Pradesh is the most populous state in India as well as the most populous country subdivision in the world. OTOH, the evidence from hundreds of portal MFDs in recent months is that sub-national regional portals rarely thrive.
N High readership. Clear fail. An average of only 13 views per day in January–June 2019, which is a slight decline on the 2015–2018 average of 14 views per day
N Lots of of maintainers. Clear fail. Abandoned since 2012.

Additionally, WP:POG 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." But WikiProject Uttar Pradesh is inactive, so there is effectively no available WikiProject.

So this abandoned and broken portal fails WP:POG on three crucial points: low readership, no maintainers, and no active WikiProject to support it. Time to just delete it ... with prejudice against re-creation. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:12, 21 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Weak keep. I get the argument about a lack of maintainers; it's one I've supported elsewhere. But we're talking her about a region which, if it were a country, would be the sixth most populous in the world. Unlike Portal:Jharkhand, this is for a region with a long, long, recorded history, and massive cultural and political influence. There's enough content within its scope that it could almost be left to run itself, if someone does a little tidying of the format. Vanamonde (Talk) 02:36, 21 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Vanamonde Broadness in practical terms and broadness under WP:POG are two very different things. As countless other MfD's have shown, sub-national regions very rarely meet the guidelines of POG and BHG explained how Uttar Pradesh crashes and burns when it tries to clear the guidelines, which aren't optional. The GA-Class head article Utter Pradesh got 5157 views per day from Jan-Jun 2019, while this portal got 11. The head article also has multiple versatile navboxes. Readers are already getting excellent and comprehensive Uttar Pradesh coverage elsewhere, save the poor souls that get lured to this abandoned junk. Portals do not have their own content and are only useful for their utility, and that even something as vast as Uttar Pradesh has a crud portal speaks to how portals in general are a failure. This portal is a failed solution in search of a problem. Please reconsider your vote. Newshunter12 (talk) 06:46, 21 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per the thorough and highly detailed investigation of the portal by the nominator, BrownHairedGirl. Portals stand or fall on their merits in the now, not what could someday hypothetically happen with them, and this one falls flat. It's a useless time suck that lures readers to abandoned junk, and has rotted for a decade, though like a flickering light bulb, it's hard to pin down when exactly it flamed out. The GA-Class head article Uttar Pradesh got 5157 views per day from Jan-Jun 2019 and has several versatile navboxes, while this portal got 11 views a day and has been abandoned for a decade. This portal is a failed solution in search of a problem. I also oppose re-creation, as a decade of hard evidence shows Uttar Pradesh is not a broad enough topic under WP:POG to attract readers or maintainers. Newshunter12 (talk) 06:46, 21 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete as per analysis by User:BrownHairedGirl, without prejudice to re-creation using an improved design that does not rely on subpages. "Tidying of the format" is not what is required. There is plenty of content, but what has been created is a tangled forest that needs to be removed with fire. If someone wants to create a mega-navbox-style portal, that would be better than trying to fix this mess. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:02, 21 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment to Closer - If closing as Delete, please indicate what the consensus is on possible re-creation (since there is disagreement). Robert McClenon (talk) 00:58, 23 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Note to closing admin. If you close this as delete, please can you not remove the backlinks? I have an AWB setup which allows me to easily replace them with links to the next most specific portal(s) (in this case Portal:India), without creating duplicate entries. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:27, 25 August 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.