Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Royal Australian Navy (2nd nomination)

Portal:Royal Australian Navy

Portal:Royal Australian Navy (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

All prior XfDs for this page: Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Royal Australian Navy Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Royal Australian Navy (2nd nomination)

This portal never had a chance. After the portal was created over the course of a day in July 2008, the editor never again touched it. Since then the 10 selected equipment articles, four selected articles and three out of four selected bios have gone almost completely without edits.

These pages are in poor condition as one might expect when no one adds links to edit under the subheds. For example, Portal:Royal Australian Navy/Equipment/1 is in all bold because the creator forgot some apostrophes.

The last nomination in April failed to achieve consensus because arguments circled around scope and a potential merge. A merge is not needed here. See: Portal:Military of the United States, Portal:United States Navy, Portal:United States Army, Portal:United States Coast Guard, Portal:United States Air Force, Portal:United States Marine Corps, etc. Mark Schierbecker (talk) 05:11, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

• Close (too soon). The previous MfD was closed with a consensus to keep about six weeks ago. Wait six months before revising a consensus. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:30, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
• Comment - In fact the previous discussion did not reach consensus, I see no problem in ping the participants and starting a new discussion.Guilherme Burn (talk) 12:58, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Ah yes. Implied, but it should have been closed with a bold no consensus. Ping the previous participants yes. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:51, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

@SmokeyJoe and Guilherme Burn: As I was the person who closed it, I'd say it was more of a keep without prejudice to renomination rather than a no consensus. I don't see the harm in having another discussion here. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 15:00, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Ping others participants @Legacypac, Espresso Addict, Pldx1, Qwirkle, RobDuch, Robert McClenon, Nford24, Rjensen, BrownHairedGirl, Vermont, UnitedStatesian, and Waggers:.Guilherme Burn (talk) 15:45, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

• Keep - WP:OSE is not a valid reason for deletion. WP:POG did not appear to be a factor as it was also argued by those to keep that the portal met the broad definition scope. If anything, a merge discussion to Portal:Military history of Australia might be needed rather than deletion. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 13:19, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Note misrepresentation. It appears that Knowledgekid87 has decided to adopt NA1K's practice of strategic mendacity, i.e. basing a !vote on a wilful misrepresentation of the relevant guideline, WP:POG.

The relevant section of WP:POG requires that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers". Knowledgekid87 appears to have adopted NA1K's practice of attempting to deceive other participants and the closing admin by omitting the second part of the sentence.

If appearances mislead, and this was in fact an oversight rather than mendacity, then Knowledgekid87 can demonstrate their good faith by correcting their !vote. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:54, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

• Delete per nominator. This fails 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".

Some editors choose to take a personal subjective view on whether a topic counts as "broad". These personal views rarely helpful, because while its easy to screen out narrow topics, personal views don't help us decide how broad a topic needs to be.

That's why it is important to ficus on the second part of the sentence in POG: "likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers". When creating a portal, some estimation is are needed of likely maintainers and readers. However, when a portal has existed for over a decade, no guessing or estimation is needed, because have long-term data on both points:

• Readers: Abysmal readership figures. Since pageview data became available in 2015, readership has languished well below ten pageviews day, apart from the period when the portal has been under discussion at MFD.
• Maintainers: As the nominator has demonstrated, the portal has attracted no maintainers for a decade.

So if the portalistas want to find a way of adding this to the collection of abandoned junk which they want to keep, they will need to find actual hard evidence that the low readership and the lack of maintainers be permanently ended.

On previous experience, the portalisstas are most unlikely to even try to produce any such evidence. Instead, their tactics will involve a combination:

1. Lying about the text of POG, by pretending that it does not require that broadness be likely to deliver readers and maintainers
2. Word negation, claiming that when it comes to portals "large numbers" doesn't actually mean "large numbers". They claim that it really means "tiny numbers", because so many other abandoned portals on narrow topics also have tiny readership numbers.
3. Distraction, promising to update portal. This is an attempt to sidestep the fact that POG requires ongoing maintenance, not a one-off update as a makework ruse to postpone deletion.
4. Defiance, by insisting that it doesn't matter what POG says, they don't want unread abandoned junk portals to be deleted.

Each of those 4 points of view is of course interesting in its own way (tho mostly for their perversity), but they are all blatant defiance of WP:POG. If editors reject WP:POG, they should propose its deletion or amendment ... but in the meantime, the WP:ILIKEIT arguments should be ignored by the closing admin.

It will be interesting to see which portalistas deploy which of the usual bogus-keep arguments, and indeed whether they manage to devise new counterfactuals. I'm thinking of keeping a scorecard, like bullshit bingo. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:36, 7 August 2019 (UTC)