Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Assam

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 * 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. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 06:10, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

Portal:Assam

 * – (View MfD)

Abandoned portal on the Indian state of Assam, a topic where en.wp has very poor coverage.

This portal has very low readership (only 10 views per day). Created in 2013, then abandoned apart from the creation of a further sub-page in 2016 and the usual 2018 layout tweaking to the main page. The total number of sub-topics is only 12, little over half the WP:POG minimum of 20. (Yes, I do know that after 6 months of specifying a bare minimum of twenty, POG was reverted to an earlier version which makes that a fuzzy target. But I hope that unlike the reverter, editors will exercise WP:COMMONSENSE and recognise that even 20 articles is a woefully small set to provide a decent sample of any non-trivial topic, and that a mere 12 is a risible waste of time.)  There is a set of 15 fake DYKs, and a very poor 3-year old news page.

This portal was created on 14 November 2013 by, whose last edit to the portal was in November 2016 (see 's Parikhit phukan portal-space contribs). Parikhit phukan has made no edits to Wikipedia since January 2017.

Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:Assam shows a modest set of sub-pages:
 * Selected article/1, /2, /3, /4, /5, /6, /7, /8, /9, /10, and /11 were all created in 2013. /12 was added in 2016. Since creation there has been technical edit to /3 and a grammar fix to /8, but the other ten are entirely unchanged,
 * /Did you know/1 and /Did you know/2 were both created in 2013. Some of their contents were later split out into /Did you know/3, /Did you know/4, and /Did you know/5 by, who added no new items.  I checked a sample of five of the fifteen entries, and found none which had any evident conection to WP:DYK.  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 a six-year-old list of genuine DYKs loses the newness, so its only effect is as a trivia section.  In this case, we have fake DYKs, factoids which have never been part of the WP:DYK process, where text and sources are carefully scrutinised.  They are just random factoids which usurp the good name of WP:DYK to create a WP:TRIVIA section.
 * Portal:Assam/In the news, contains two items, both added in 2016. The first item is dated and linked, and the second is neither, but appears to be a sub-point of the first.  The topic is 2016 Indian banknote demonetisation, which has no special relevance to Assam (it belongs in an all-India newspage) ... and in any case, it's a 3-year story presented as "news".

This neglect is presumably why the portal was "restarted" in Jan 2019 by @The Transhumanist (TTH). This "restart" converted the portal into an automated clone tool, which drew its all its selected articles from the navbox Template:Assam, and made the portal just a bloated version of the navbox, just like the navbox-clone portalspam which was deleted in April in two mass deletions of similar portals (one, and two). So in April 2019, @UnitedStatesian wisely reverted the portal to a pre-automated version. That restored the portal to its abandoned state, from which it has not been rescued.

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 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". This fails on at least three of the four counts:
 * Broad topic . Assam has a land area slightly only less than the island of Ireland, but a 2011 population of 31 million.  However, en.wp coverage is thin: Category:WikiProject Assam articles contains only 1767 articles, and the table at Category:Assam articles by quality shows that only 1 of those articles is of GA or FA class.  WP:POG requires that articles by "high quality, either a featured article, a good article or one which deals with its subject substantially or comprehensively" ... but even if the 14 B-class articles are used, the set here is still too small to present a balanced set of topics without severe compromises on quality.
 * High readership . The portal's January–June 2019 daily average of only 10 views per day is trivially low.
 * Lots of maintainers . No. See above.
 * WikiProject involvement . No. WP:WikiProject Assam has been tagged as inactive since 2015, and shows zero interest in the portal.  Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Assam has never been archived, and contains zero mentions of "Portal:Assam".

After all these years of abandonment, it's time to just delete this portal. Given lack of suitable articles, the scarcity of readers, the departure of the creator, the complete lack of interest from other editors, and the lack of suitable content, it fails all the key criteria for a portal, so I also oppose re-creation. Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:09, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Note to closing admin. I don't want in any way to prejudge the outcome ... but if you close this discussion 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. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 03:10, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete per the thorough and highly detailed investigation of the portal by the nominator,  Brown HairedGirl . 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 an over five year long abandoned Bonsai portal and damages Wikipedia's hard won reputation for quality. I oppose re-creation, as over five years of hard evidence shows Assam is not a broad enough topic under WP:POG to attract readers or maintainers. This portal is a solution in search of a problem. Newshunter12 (talk) 07:14, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

Indian Portals

 * Delete as per analysis by BHG - Very low readership, not enough articles, no maintenance of articles. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:31, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete this worthless junk portal.Catfurball (talk) 23:29, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete and oppose re-creation per analysis by BrownHairedGirl. -Crossroads- (talk) 05:53, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
 * 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.