Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Early modern Britain

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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. —&thinsp;JJMC89&thinsp; (T·C) 02:24, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

Portal:Early modern Britain

 * – (View MfD)

Mini-portal with very low readership, on the the topic of Early modern Britain, i.e. the island of Great Britain from about 1500 to about 1800.

Created as, and moved in 2016 to its current title Portal:Early modern Britain.

It has been abandoned (or at least severely neglected) since 2008 with very low readership. Only 5 selected articles + 6 selected biog = 11 articles, which is barely 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 11 is a risible waste of time.)

This portal was created on 16 August 2008‎ by, who also created the sub-pages. However, their last edit to any part of the portal was a few hours less than a fortight later, on 30 August 2008 (see their portal-space contribs). Since late 2006, the lead of WP:POG has said "Do not expect other editors to maintain a portal you create." I will AGF that despite being the creator of another portal (Portal:Medieval Britain) and editor of many others, Kaly99 somehow managed to remain unaware of that prominent guidance.

Whatever the reasons for the creator's rapid abandonment, portals need ongoing maintenance, and this one hasn't had it. Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:Early modern Britain shows a modest set of sub-pages:
 * Portal:Early modern Britain/Selected media (with 4 sound files), Portal:Early modern Britain/Selected picture (with 5 pics) and Portal:Early modern Britain/Selected quotes (5 quotes). These are pretty adornments to a portal, but do noting to enhance its fulfilment of the 3 principles set out in WP:Portal.
 * Portal:Early modern Britain/Selected article with 5 articles. All created in August 2008‎ by Kaly99.  The only subsequent edits to any of them have been the 2016 page moves, and disambiguation/date- unlinking to 2 of them. Otherwise, they are unchanged.
 * Portal:Early modern Britain/Selected biography with 6 articles. All created in August 2008‎ by Kaly99.  The only subsequent edits to any of them have been the 2016 page moves, and disambiguation/date unlinking to 2 of them. Othwerwise, they are unchanged.
 * Portal:Early modern Britain/Did you know, with 4 items, all added in August 2008‎ by Kaly99.  The first two are sourced from WP:DYK, but the last two have no connection to WP:DYK, i.e. they are fake DYKs. 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 even the two genuine items in this eleven-year-old list lose the newness, so its only effect is as a trivia section.

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 three of those four counts:
 * 1) ✅ Broad topic . Yes.  This was a highly eventful period in the history of Britain: the tumult of the Reformation in the 16th century, revolutions and civil war in the 17th century, and in the 18th century the Union with Scotland, the development of empire and birth of the industrial revolution.  A lot of this is well-documented on Wikipedia.
 * 2)  High readership .  No. The portal's January–June 2019 daily average of only 6 views per day is trivially low.  It's barely above background noise.
 * 3)  Lots of maintainers . No.  See above: everything abandoned when  the creator moved on after only a fortnight .. eleven years ago.
 * 4)  WikiProject .  No. Neither Talk:Early modern Britain nor Portal talk:Early modern Britain are tagged with the banner of any subject WikiProject.  I can find no link to the portal from any Wikipedia talk pages, neither to "Portal:Early Modern Britain" nor to "Portal:Early modern Britain".

In theory, this is a broad enough topic to sustain a portal. But in practice, we have over a decade of nobody even building a half-way useful portal on the topic, let alone maintaining it. A mere 11 articles in all is a risibly tiny selection, far too small to give a meaningful overview of the era. Readers will be much better by being directed to the under-developed head article Early modern Britain than to this debris of a hit-and-run job. And editors would do much better to expand that article from its C-class state to the FA status which the topic deserves.

After 11 years of uselessness, it's time to just delete it. And given the total lack of interest, I oppose re-creation. Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:56, 16 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:United Kingdom), without creating duplicate entries. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 09:59, 16 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete as per analysis by User:BrownHairedGirl - The portal daily pageview rate of 6 is no better than the noise level observed by BHG for an arcane measure. The head article has 165 daily pageviews in the first half of 2019, which is normally not enough interest in the topic to support a portal, but most of those interested in the topic (which is the topic of British history) follow the English Wikipedia's very extensive selection of articles about British history (one of the English Wikipedia's strongest areas).  No maintenance since 2010 except a move to comply with capitalization standards.  In view of the lack of support for and interest in this portal (perhaps because the articles are good), there is no reason to consider re-creation.  Robert McClenon (talk) 15:44, 16 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 decade-long abandoned micro-portal and damages Wikipedia's hard won reputation for quality. I oppose re-creation, as over eleven years of hard evidence shows Early modern Britain 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) 06:37, 17 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.