Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Armenia

Portal:Armenia

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

Still-born static micro-portal. Apart from formatting tweaks, abandoned since 2006. Fails the WP:POG "broad subject area" requirement.

Created in July 2006‎ by Eupator (talk · contribs), whose last edit to the portal was in November 2007[1].

WP:NOTCOMPULSORY, so editors are quite entitled to move on to other interests, and this creation predates the warning in the lede of WP:POG says "Do not expect other editors to maintain a portal you create". But a portal still has to be maintained by somebody, and this one not been maintained.

Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:Armenia shows a thin set of sub-pages. There are traces of some sort of attempt to have a monthly "editions" structure as was the fasion for portals in 2006–08, but this does not seem to have been sustained for more than one or two months. What we're left with is:

• Portal:Armenia/Selected biography, displaying the same single topic since October 2006[2]
• Portal:Armenia/Selected article, which appears to have 3 topic changes since 2012, and several bouts of vandalism
• Portal:Armenia/Did you know, where the last new addition was in 2013. . Per WP:DYK, "The DYK section showcases new or expanded articles that are selected through an informal review process. It is not a general trivia section" ... but this six-plus-year-old list loses the newness, so its only effect is as a trivia section.
• Portal:Armenia/Armenia news has had sporadic update over the years, with periods of flurry interrupted by periods of neglect (see history). For example, a dose of updates in 2008, then nothing at until 2015. All the currently-displayed content is from 2017.
• Portal:Armenia/New article announcements, barely changed since 2008[3]

Unsurprisingly, this still-born relic was one the portal selected by portalspammer @The Transhumanist (TTH) for conversion[4] in January 2019‎ to a full-automated format which drew its selected articles list solely from Template:Armenia topics. Unfortunately, the whole automation thing was mistaken, because it simply made the portal a redundant fork of the navbox. Most of the newly-created navbox-clone portalspam was deleted in April in two mass deletions of similar portals (one, and two), and the rest in smaller groups. In April 2019 this portal was reverted to a pre-automation format.[5]

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 one has been almost entirely neglected for 13 years, so it has certainly failed to attract large numbers of maintainers. In January–June 2019 it averaged only 24 daily pageviews. That is slightly more than the abysmal median for portals, but only 1/265th of the 6,418 daily views for the head article Armenia.

Like many portals, this one is a failed solution in search of a problem. Per WP:PORTAL, "Portals serve as enhanced 'Main Pages' for specific broad subjects". But the Wikipedia main page requires huge amounts of work; it is maintained by several large teams of busy editors. A mini-mainpage also needs lot of ongoing work if it is going to value over the head article. And in this case, the portal is massively less useful in every respect than the head article Armenia. The portals could theoretically be improved, but portals don't need one-off burst of enthusiastic tweaking they need ongoing maintenance, which takes lots of maintainers. And after a decade, we have the evidence that this topic simply doesn't attract those maintainers, so it fails WP:POG. Time to just delete it. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:23, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

• Keep: It's a portal about a country, so it's a broad subject area by definition. Yes, it may have little activity because of the systemic bias of Wikipedia, but we try to counter it, not reinforce it. The portal needs expansion? Then fix it! The link to WP:NOTCOMPULSORY clearly misrepresents the policy, which clearly says "Focus on improving the encyclopedia itself, rather than demanding more from other Wikipedians." Cambalachero (talk) 00:09, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Please do try to actually read what I wrote, before you reply to it. I linked WP:NOTCOMPULSORY precisely to clarify that I was not to making demands of other editors. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:36, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
    • Yes, I read what you wrote, and also the policy. Your argument is basically "Delete it because nobody is expanding it", which is against what the policy says. Cambalachero (talk) 11:56, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
      • @Cambalachero, you falsely accused me of misrepresenting WP:NOTCOMPULSORY. I challenged that claim, and I am sad to see that your reply sidesteps that misrepresentation. So you have chosen to be are the sort of person who is happy to falsely malign others and to leave those slurs uncorrected even when challenged. Shame on you.

"Delete this portal because it is abandoned junk" has been the rationale endorsed for deleting many hundreds of the abandoned junk portals which the portals project has left lying to around for a decade to waste the time of readers. WP:POG explicitly warns that "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" ... and this is permitted WP:DEL#REASON #13 says "Any other use of the article, template, project, or user namespace that is contrary to the established separate policy for that namespace". So your assertion that this contravenes policy is simply wrong. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:49, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

• Keep I concur with Cambalachero on that we are talking about a country which is broad in scope. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 00:45, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
  • @Cambalachero and Knowledgekid87: POG is very clear that being arbitrarily assessed as a "broad subject" is insufficient. A portal must also be "likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers". The 13-year history of this portal shows that it is not likely to attract readers and maintainers. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:33, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
    • Do you want a rationale? Very well. A country has a national history, culture, politics, military, geography, economy, society, etc; the sum of all of the is quite a broad topic. More so for Armenia, whose history goes back to the ancient times. Cambalachero (talk) 17:56, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

• @Cambalachero, that is all entirely true, and also utterly irrelevant.

The undeniable fact of all that history and so on has been equally true at every point in the last 13 years since the portal was created. And the clear evidence of the last 13 years is that it has not been enough to attract the large numbers of readers and maintainers which are required by policy to make a viable portal. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:06, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

So there is a time limit on how long something needs to be out there for it to be a "viable" portal? - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 23:29, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

• Delete concurring with analysis by User:BrownHairedGirl. I urge those who think that certain levels of regions should have portals to discuss at WP:POG2019RFC. I have been urging the supporters of regional portals to propose language, but all that they seem to do is whine. Write the definition. In the meantime, delete without prejudice to a new portal that does not use subpages. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:03, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

• Tangential question for User:Robert McClenon: why is the subpages model for portals a problem? UnitedStatesian (talk) 04:21, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
• The last time I checked, WP:SUBPAGES remain allowed on English Wikipedia for portals. The "Allowed uses" section on the page states, "Portal subpages—for Portal-specific templates and content.". North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 06:44, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
• That's a red link. Cambalachero (talk) 11:56, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

• Comment – No prejudice against future re-creation of a curated, maintained portal with an adequate amount of content. The topic itself meets the WP:POG criteria for topical broadness relative to the amount of coverage it has on English Wikipedia. See Category:Armenia and its subcategories for an overview of available coverage about the topic. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 06:35, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

• @NA1K, it is utterly extraordinary that your comment makes no mention or acknowledgement of the fact WP:POG explicitly ties the question a topics' breadth to readership and maintainers. WP:POG requires that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers".

As you know, evidence was presented at MFD that this portal has neither readers nor maintainers, but you plough on as if the guideline didn't exist or the evidence had not been presented. This section of the guideline has been drawn to your attention many dozens of times, yet you plough on as if it did not exist.

What on earth is wrong with you? What are you trying to achieve by continually misrepresenting both the guideline and the discussion?

Your campaign of deceit and misrepresentation is is completely transparent, and it is shameless. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:41, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

• Comment – I went ahead and commented-out the News section of the portal, since the content is outdated at this time. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 06:41, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

• Delete - Per WP:TNT. An excellent opportunity to create a portal with new concepts.Guilherme Burn (talk) 16:54, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

• @Guilherme Burn: Yes, a new portal from scratch would be feasible, hence my "No prejudice against future re-creation" comment above. Another idea is to simply improve this existing portal, which would preserve the links to it (see Pages that link to "Portal:Armenia). Otherwise, the links will likely be deleted by a user using Auto Wiki Browser, and a new portal creator would have to re-add them later, which is very laborious and time-intensive, as well as a monumental waste of time. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 16:59, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

@Northamerica1000: Would a "Delete with not remove links to the portal" vote be possible?Guilherme Burn (talk) 17:19, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

@Guilherme Burn: I don't know, but you are welcome to post your opinions. For more context, see this example diff (and the subsequent discussion) where I made a request for the nominator here to retain portal links for another portal that was deleted. They just continued to delete the links after my request anyway. So, if this portal is deleted, it appears that the links will then be deleted along with it, quadrupling the work involved in a re-creation of this portal. This obviously serves to deter users from re-creating a portal, and if it were to be re-created without the addition of links to it, it would likely receive low page views, thus qualifying for deletion again. A truly unnecessary vicious circle that impedes content creation. Good luck, and welcome to Wikipedia. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 17:28, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

• @Guilherme Burn: I have no doubt that with less than a day's work, it would then be possible to create a new portal which is massively better than this. However, please note that an one-off makeover is not a solution. Portals are not viable unless they generate large numbers of reader and maintainers, and a one-off makeover simply restarts the path to rot and decay.

In this case, we have clear evidence from the last 13 years that this topic fails WP:POG, because the hard data of 13 years of non-maintenance and low readership is that this is NOT a topic for which a portal is "likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers".

That's why this is very explicitly not a TNT nomination; it is a straightforward nomination to delete.

It is sad (but completely unsurprising) to see the serially mendacious @North America misrepresenting the discussion on my talk page about deleting backlinks.

NA1K could, if they had chosen, link directly to my reply. Instead NA1k choose to link only to their question and to give a false summary of the discussion.

NA1k deliberately misrepresents the discussion by failing to note that the context was NA1K's intention to re-create a newly-deleted page which would be subject to WP:G4 speedy deletion, and the closer's refusal to endorse NA1K's desire to simply ignore the MFD consensus.

The substantive issue wrt to backlinks to portals is that leaving them in place clutters the tracking categories which are used to detect errors in portal linking. I have probably done more than any other single editor to create and maintain links to portals, and I remove the redundant links precisely to facilitate that work by removing the false error reports which they generate.

NA1K is well aware of this. However, because NA1K is a shamelessly deceitful serial liar, they chose not to mention that when replying to GB. The liar NA1K instead chose to try to deceive GB by misrepresenting my cleanup work as some sort of disruption.

GB ... please read the discussion yourself, at User talk:BrownHairedGirl#Please_keep_Wyoming_portal_links_in_place.

As to NA1k, their intensely and serially mendacious conduct becomes ever more despicable. NA1K approached me on my talk, and I engaged in civil dialogue, taking the time to explain my actions despite NA1K's persistent assumption of bad faith. In this reply[6] I explained why I see the removal of backlinks as a necessary maintenance task.

NA1K replied to that comment, but did even acknowledge that I had explained why I was removing the backlinks. If NA1K had any concerns or disagreement about my explanation, they could and should have responded; but they didn't.

Instead of continuing the discussion there, NA1K has now posted here, intentionally misrepresenting my actions and my reasons, and linking to their own post in such a way that my response is not visible without considerable further effort.

Let me blunt about this. The sort of calculated mendacity in which NA1K is engaging here cannot be mistaken as accidental; the misrepresentations are too severe, too calculated and too persistent to be accidental. They happen not by error or oversight or even by incompetence, but as only a part of a deliberate, sustained smear campaign by the serial liar NA1K to malign my good name and to achieve by deceit and misrepresentation what NA1K has not been able to achieve by open consensus-building: the retention on Wikipedia of a vast collection of abandoned junk portals which readers do not read and which editors don't waste time maintaining.

NA1K's web of lies, deceptions, distortions, misrepresentations, subversions and strategic omissions is a despicable way for any human to behave in any context. NA1K's despicable conduct here will not earn them fame or cash, which are the common motivations elsewhere for such abysmal conduct. But even in this anonymous cash-free space of Wikipedia editing, the ethics revealed by this liar-admin NA1K is the ethical framework of the fraudster or confidence trickster. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:46, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

@BrownHairedGirl and Northamerica1000: I believe this space is not ideal for this discussion, but I would like to emphasize two points. 1 - If we not maintain portals about a historical country like this and maintain portals for each institution, city or war of English-speaking countries, it is better to end all portals. 2 - There is no direct evidence that link to the portals in the articles increase their visualizations, P:NUDE is an example of a newly created portal, linked in only 60 articles that is in the top 50 of pageviews.Guilherme Burn (talk) 19:29, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

• @Guilherme Burn: WP:ENDPORTALS was closed with a result stating, "There exists a strong consensus against deleting or even deprecating portals at this time.". North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 19:34, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

• As the serial liar NA1K well knows, but chooses not to mention in this play of their mendacious game of selective quotation, WP:ENDPORTALS posed a simple binary question of whether to immediately delete the entire portal namespace: Should the system of portals be ended? This would include the deletion of all portal pages and the removal of the portal namespace.

The answer to that crude binary question was no. A less deceitful editor than NA1K would refrain from quoting the closing statement out of context. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:23, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

• @@Guilherme Burn: I agree that incoming links are a poor indicator of portal page views. I noticed this most starkly when I linked about 100,000 categories to Portal:Years, and found that it produced no detectable increased in the abysmal pageviews for that portal.

You are of course quite entitled to your view that we should either have portals for all of a certain set of topics, or delete the lot. Personally, I think that's mistaken, simply because the evidence of the last 13 years is that hundreds of the portals which fall into that set have attracted neither readers nor maintainers. It seems to me that portals which fail to add value, or which serve factual errors (as so any abandoned portals do), degrade Wikipedia, and waste the time of readers and editors.

If you still think that we should consider that proposal, then why not open an RFC to propose it? But unless and until such an RFC is passed, what we have is a clear guideline that topics need to be likely to attract large numbers of readers and maintainers. Do you agree that this portal has failed to do either? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:23, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

• Comment to closer – User:Guilherme Burn pinged me and asked me a question, so I provided a reply and some context. It is unnecessary to rewrite the entire discussion at BHG's talk page here, so I provided the initial diff of my query to the user, along with stating in parentheses above to also read "the subsequent discussion". Rehashing the entire discussion here is unnecessary; people can read. Curious how BHG doesn't demonize other !voters here who have stated a preference for the portal to be retained per its broad topical scope ("It's a portal about a country, so it's a broad subject area by definition", and "I concur with Cambalachero on that we are talking about a country which is broad in scope"). Furthermore, my comment is just that, a comment, it's not even an !vote. I think BHG needs to calm down, and certainly needs to stop bludgeoning comments I make with long tirades of personal attacks. I know fight bait when I see it, and it appears that BHG eagerly wants me to state, "I'm not a liar, I'm not a liar!", and then reply further based upon their WP:BAITING. No. I'll close by stating that there is no lying or deceit in my commentary here or elsewhere whatsoever. It comes across that BHG is unable to counter views that are contrary to theirs in a constructive manner, and instead resorts to ad hom attacking those they disagree with. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 19:22, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment to closer, As North America well knows, I don't "attack" editors with whom I have honest disagreements. When people discuss in good faith, I sustain my assumption of good faith.

However I do object to NA1K's sustained pattern of strategic mendacity, and per WP:SPADE I call it out for what it is.

It is notable that liar NA1K resorts once again to blatant lying, even in this note the closing admin. Here's one example: NA1K writes: comes across that BHG is unable to counter views that are contrary to theirs in a constructive manner. But as noted above, I did give a series of substantive, civil reasoned responses to NA1K's questions about removing backlinks[7]. My complaint above is that the liar NA1K chose not to mention that, and chose instead to misrepresent my position ad my actions.

Now NA1K responds to my compliant with another demonstrable lie. It takes an extraordinary level of mendacity to double down on a lie like that.

The only WP:BAITING here is NA1K's persistent and sustained lying about guidelines and about other editors. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:01, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

You are attacking NA1K at least twice in your statement (belittling again with "x knows by now", and calling them a liar) which again is akin to WP:PASSIVE. I am not the only one who is bringing this up as an ongoing issue and it might eventually have to be addressed at WP:ANI. Please stop resorting to calling people liars and base your arguments on why they are wrong. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 23:24, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

I have explained why it is wrong. NA1K's strategy of attempting to deceive other editors by repeating known falsehoods is lying, and per WP:SPADE I am calling it what it is on each occasion when NA1K deploys this strategy. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:00, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

• Delete as "after a decade, we have the evidence that this topic simply doesn't attract ... maintainers, so it fails WP:POG" is better reasoning than "It's a portal about a country, so it's a broad subject area by definition." (what definition is that even referring to?). DexDor ^(talk) 06:19, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
• Delete Some countries are broad enough subject areas for portals, but to extend that to argue "Every country is a broad enough subject area" is a faulty argument; see WP:WAX. (Unsigned comment by User:UnitedStatesian DexDor ^(talk) 14:09, 2 August 2019 (UTC))
• Delete per nom's analysis. Nobody is maintaining it, and I don't see anyone volunteering to do so. Not every country needs a portal. -Crossroads- (talk) 16:47, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
• Keep per Knowledgekid87 and Cambalachero's reasoning. It is about an entire nation with a rich history and sizable population. It is a broad subject area. Unfortunately due to mass deletion of portals the window of broad subject gets downsized to whatever has not been deleted yet. Next will be continents. --Hecato (talk) 18:29, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Note to closing admin: the WP:ILIKEIT !vote by Hecato has no basis in policy or guideline. It entirely ignores 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". Per the detailed evidence above, the portal on this has attracted only trivial numbers of readers and maintainers for over a decade. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:14, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

I do not know what you are going on about, I did not say that I like it. I said it covers a broad subject area. Which it does. --Hecato (talk) 08:32, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Hecato, I am sorry that you are having difficulty in understanding that one sentence of WP:POG. The issue is simple: POG requires that we don't judge "broad" by an individual editor's personal view of whether a topic is "broad". (That's the WP:ILIKEIT issue).

POG sets criteria for judging the broadness, viz. whether the topic is "likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers". And this one demonstrably does not. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:54, 3 August 2019 (UTC)