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.
This portal is about the Eifel mountain range on border of Germany and Belgium. 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 small mountainy area fails the broadness test, and the January–June 2019 average of only 4 views per day is trivially low.
This portal uses the mega-navbox format which its creator and diligent maintainer Bermicourt has imported from the German-language Wikipedia. I personally think that this is a vastly superior format to the predominant one-at-a-time "selected article" style of navbox, but sadly readers seem no more interested in reading this superior type of portal than the horrible old purge-for-new-selection format.
Strong keep as the grounds for deletion are narrow, irrelevant and not universally accepted. Even the guidelines - which are over a decade out of date - do not refer to readership and, in any case, they are no more valid for portals than for categories. Portals are not articles; they are navigation and project tools. And even articles are not deleted for lack of page views. In terms of notability, the Eifel is a major mountain range straddling 3 countries and over which major battles have been fought. It is a geographical, cultural and historical region of great significance as well as a major natural region. This is just part of the ongoing campaign by some editors to delete virtually all portals in defiance of the community consensus and related attempts to agree new and more up to date guidelines. Bermicourt (talk) 06:20, 21 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@BermicourtWP:POG stands as the law of the land for portals whether any of us like it or not. If you want to change it, than start a successful RfC at the village pump. That some editors whine that POG has actual quality standards that must be met and want to keep every junk portal anyway means nothing, as has been proven repeatedly at MfD in the last six months. As already quoted by BrownHairedGirl, POG states portals must be about: "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers." (emphasis mine). No guessing is needed. Over three years of hard data and common sense tell us Eifel is not a broad subject area under WP:POG and should be deleted.
Your glowing history synopsis on Eifel shows your vote to be what it is - pure WP:ILIKEIT, which is not surprising since you are the creator of this portal. The firm community consensus at hundreds of MfD's over the past six months is that portals failing any of WP:POG's broadness, readership, and maintainer guidelines are to be deleted, not kept. There has never been any consensus to keep every junk portal - there was simply a crude RfC if all portals should be deleted in one go, that was rejected, and has been repeatedly misused by some editors as an excuse to keep any portal no matter the facts. Newshunter12 (talk) 08:40, 21 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Robert McClenon Unless it becomes depreciated at some future point, WP:POG has been and remains the law of the land in portal space. You also shouldn't indulge those editors who whine about portals being held to actual standards by letting them keep crud or personal playpens. Newshunter12 (talk) 17:34, 22 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
User:Newshunter12 - We can take this discussion off-line from this MFD, but the status of the portal guidelines is being contested. I am not prepared to agree that the portal guidelines are the law of the land. I agree that it is sadly ironic that the portal guidelines were quoted incompletely by portal advocates to justify the creation of portals until portal utilitarians began reading and parsing the guidelines more effectively, and now the portal advocates are saying to discard them. If they are not the law of the land, then we should use common sense. My common sense says that toy portals are useless but harmless. If the portal guidelines are still in effect, I still think that properly maintained toy portals are useless but harmless. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:48, 22 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Agathoclea Your vote is underpinned by nothing more than WP:ILIKEIT, which is not surprising considering you are a member of Wikipedia: WikiProject Germany. This portal has only 4 views per day, an incredibly trivial number, and its head article Eifel is so narrow it has only 140 views per day from January-June 2019). POG states portals must be about: "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers." (emphasis mine). No guessing is needed. Over three years of hard data and common sense tell us Eifel is not a broad subject area under WP:POG and should be deleted. Newshunter12 (talk) 08:40, 21 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per the thorough and highly detailed investigation of the portal by the nominator, BrownHairedGirl. WP:POG states portals should be about: "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers." This portal has one steady fan-maintainer, but it fails at least two other planks of POG. It is about a very narrow topic (ex. the head article Eifel had only 140 views per day from January-June 2019) and only has 4 readers a day, which is incredibly trivial, not the large numbers POG requires. I oppose re-creation, as three years of hard evidence and common sense show Eifel is not a broad enough topic under WP:POG, nor does it attract large numbers of readers. Newshunter12 (talk) 08:40, 21 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. We all think our own opinion is common sense, but all you've done is reiterate old POG guidelines from the infancy of Wikipedia because WP:JUSTDONTLIKEIT. Why would portals bother you - they're barely visible from mainspace? Which kinda explains the low pageviews - they aren't articles for readers. And BTW if you imposed the same pageview criterion on articles; many of them would also disappear. Bermicourt (talk) 09:17, 21 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Reply. @Bermicourt, you are entitled to your own opinions, but not to your own facts. The fact is that WP:POG is the current guideline. If you want to propose that it be deprecated or replaced, then you know where WP:RFC is, but unless and until some change is agreed, POG stands.
It is deeply dishonest to accuse another editor of "WP:JUSTDONTLIKEIT" because they uphold the current guideline. Please strike that comment.
I note with great interest that portals they aren't articles for readers. If this page has not been built for readers, then it should be in portal space, because per WP:Portal, " Portals are meant primarily for readers", which is why they are linked from articles. If this one is not intended for readers, then it is thoroughly perverse for you to object to it being moved to project space as I proposed in the nomination. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 14:01, 21 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
keep, well done portal, maintained, not causing any embarrassment to Wikipedia. Number of page views is not an argument for deletion. Should the discussion end up as "delete", a better alternative would be to move to subpages of WikiProject Germany to continue to use the excellent list of red links. No advantage of deleting this portal over keeping it has been demonstrated. —Kusma (t·c) 10:52, 21 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Kusma, your assertion about pageview is factually wrong. 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 portal fails that test on two criteria: lack of breadth and lack of readers. The closer should therefore discount Your !vote as unfounded in the guidelines.
The closer should note that you are badgering everybody who has a different opinion from yours, and that you are actively preventing WP:POG from being improved to conform to actual reality (I tried to insert something about actual maintenance, but you reverted to the version asking for likely maintainers and likely pageviews only, in contrast to your nomination statement that seems to be based on actual pageviews). I will unwatch this page now and would prefer if you do not ping me, as arguing with you is significantly decreasing my enjoyment of Wikipedia, and seems to be completely pointless as you do not seem to be interested in anything but steamrolling the opposition with your pre-made opinion. —Kusma (t·c) 16:43, 21 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Kusma, I will ping you, because I want to ask you to please not misrepresent reality. You well know that I have opposed your undiscussed and unilateral edits to the guidelines, and asked you to discuss your proposed changes and seek consensus before implementing them. If you have a problem with WP:BRD and.or WP:CONSENSUS, please start an RFC change them ... but until then, your position amounts to a desire to apply your own unilateral rewrite of the guidelines, rather than the actual guidelines which are in use. That unilateralism is an attempt by you at what you call steamrolling the opposition, so your attempt to pin that label on me is an uncivil piece of projection.
I have no desire to decrease your enjoyment of Wikipedia, but I will not refrain from challenging XFD !votes which are based on a rejection of established guidelines. If your enjoyment of Wikipedia is diminished by your unwillingness to seek consensus, then only you can remedy that situation. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 17:52, 21 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per above arguments. Actively maintained portal. I'm not convinced by arguments pointing to low numbers of page-views. Many current Wikipedia articles would fail that criteria if we went based off of that.--WaltCip (talk) 12:52, 21 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@WaltCip, this is not an article. It is a portal, which is not content a tool for navigating and/or showcasing content, and as such its long-standing guidelines at WP:POG require a broad topic, large readership and maintainers. Hundreds of portals have been deleted at MFD in recent months for failing those criteria, and your !vote simply ignores the established guidelines. It should therefore be discounted by the closer. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 13:46, 21 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - I see no net gain over the deletion of this maintained portal, I stand by my statement that WP:POG has several ongoing discussions on the talk-page and is currently disputed. I understand the rationale for deleting abandoned portals, there needs to be a consensus though on where the line is drawn. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 14:49, 21 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Knowledgekid87, the reality is that WT:Portal/Guidelines has currently two or three active discussions in which the same few editors unsuccessfully push variants of the same basic proposition: to retain or re-create more of the unread and/or unmaintained and/or narrow topic portals which still count as too high a proportion of Category:All portals. If and when they gain consensus at an RFC for any of these proposals, we can assess portals against the new guidelines, but until then the guidelines stand, despite ongoing grumbles from one corner.
Comment to User:BrownHairedGirl – The interior of a portal is a black box. Readers don't see whether it is using the old design with forked subpages or the newer superior mega-navbox design. They see a portal. The design improvement makes the portal more accurate and has other advantages in the long run, but the readers don't notice. (They do notice if a portal has incorrect information on a head of government).Robert McClenon (talk) 18:42, 21 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Strong delete - A(Portal:Germany) ⊆ B(Portal:Countries) and B ⊆ C(Portal:Geography), A set of three subportal levels. This is the number of subportals that makes sense. This is a narrow topic and not meet WP:POG. Per Wikipedia:The Problems with Portals Broad Subject Area Is Arbitrary, but some areas can be considered unquestionably narrow if we think that the consensus about the number of portals in wikipedia have been defined, and that number is less than ten thousand. When was this defined? When the creation of portals went beyond five thousand and portals began to be created for second level country divisions, especially Indian ones, and the community decided that this number of portals was too far from the function of the portals. Exponentially, wikiproject portal intended to create portals up to vital articles level 5, about ten thousand portals. And the topic in question is not even at the vital articles level 5. It may be questioned that some countries second level divisions are more vital than some countries (by their population, GDP, etc.) but portals are a navigation system and I see no sense in a navigation system that does not respect a logical hierarchical level. For example categories hierarchy, Category:California is below Category:GrenadaGuilherme Burn (talk) 23:51, 21 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral – This is a toy portal. It appears to fail the breadth of subject matter and readership tests but is well-maintained. It is really lack of maintenance that is the critical problem with most portals. It would be better to Move this toy portal to project space, but, in the absence of such an action, it can be ignored in portal space as useless but harmless. (Only unmaintained or broken portals are harmful.) Robert McClenon (talk) 13:05, 22 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Just a note, you just made that essay less than 24 hours ago. In my opinion calling portals "toys" can be insulting to those who have put their efforts in maintaining them over time. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 14:44, 22 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
User:Knowledgekid87 - It might be a better use of your time to argue with those who disagree with you rather than arguing with those who do not disagree with you. I wrote the essay because it characterizes multiple portals by User:Bermicourt that do not meet the criteria for portals but are well-maintained. I have no issue with editors maintaining toy portals, whether for project reasons or as an exercise. Argue with those who want the portal deleted. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:21, 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.
