Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Guinea-Bissau

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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. The keep !votes were mainly based on the notion that the portal has an editor who is actively maintaining it. However, at the end of this discussion, that editor announced that they will no longer be maintaining the portal, which nullifies the arguments to keep the portal. Without maintainers, the argument to delete a portal (per WP:POG) gets a lot stronger. ‑Scottywong | speak || 02:44, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

Portal:Guinea-Bissau


Stillborn portal. Three selected articles. Last updated in 2010. Mark Schierbecker (talk) 17:29, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

I took a look at some of the additions by Northamerica1000, and most are stubs most are start class or worse. This is not the type of content that we should be showcasing. Although transcluding article ledes reduces maintenance, this portal will still need some level of continuous maintenance. The nine years this portal spent without any maintenance shows the likelihood of this happening is very low. Mark Schierbecker (talk) 04:43, 16 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Comment – Hi : Note that while I am not !voting at this time, please note that the portal actually has 25 article selections and 14 image selections, which I personally added on 10 August 2019 as transclusions and image files directly on the portal page. This can be seen by viewing the page's Revision history. To see the actual content that was added, select the edit link on the main portal page and scroll down. Since you have nominated other portals for deletion today, I recommend that you please re-check them, rather than relying on only checking the subpages. North America1000 23:06, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Thank you for taking steps to improve the portal. I still want this discussion to go forward under the new rationale above. Mark Schierbecker (talk) 04:43, 16 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete per the nom. This junk portal has been abandoned for over nine years after being dumped not very long after it was created, save for a burst of one-off additions in 2019 by a passing editor. It clearly fails WP:POG's requirement that portals should be about subjects broad enough to attract large numbers of maintainers and readers. This portal has had over nine years of no steady maintainers and it had an abysmal 10 views per day in June and July 2019 (despite the head article Guinea-Bissau having 1500 views per day in the same period). Portals stand or fall on their merits in the now, not what could someday hypothetically happen with them, and this one falls flat. I am strongly against allowing recreation, as nearly a decade of hard evidence shows Guinea-Bissau is not a broad enough topic to attract readers or maintainers. Newshunter12 (talk) 08:29, 16 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep - Meets WP:POG. In this case low pageviews is a problem with the portal system and not the topic itself. A nation will always be a broad topic.Guilherme Burn (talk) 20:37, 16 August 2019 (UTC)
 * @Guilherme Burn It miserably fails WP:POG as laid out above, and Portal:Armenia, Portal:Sudan, Portal:Grenada, and Portal:Kazakhstan beg to differ that nations automatically meet POG. Nothing automatically meets POG's broadness guidelines. let alone abandoned junk portals about nation states. Newshunter12 (talk) 22:44, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

Robert McClenon (talk) 01:39, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Close this MFD without a decision on whether to keep or delete at this time, to see whether the redesign of the portal by User:Northamerica1000 increases readership of this portal significantly. This is a significant improvement of the portal, essentially a redesign, which corrects one of the problems with portals, that of rot of the sub-pages, and addresses another limitation of this portal, the inadequate number of articles.  As such, it is a useful experiment, and should be used as a useful limited experiment.  However, the lack of maintenance and the inadequacy of articles were only two of the problems with this portal.  The lack of readers is another.  I recommend that this MFD be closed as a Procedural Keep so that the portal can be renominated in 60 days to see whether the new pageview rates are sufficient to support this portal, as well as whether the portal has interim minor maintenance (when this one had been abandoned for years).
 * User:Guilherme Burn says that the low pageview rate is an issue with the portal system and not the topic itself. That is true but useless.  This MFD is about a portal that is in the portal system, not about whether to delete the article on the country (which should not be done), or about any political decision about the future of the country.  The POG, if it is a guideline, says that portals should be about broad subject areas that will attract readers and portal maintainers.  It doesn't just say that they should be about broad subject areas, which it doesn't define.  I have asked several times for the advocates of national and state portals to propose a guideline for the retention of regional portals.  I haven't yet seen a proposed guideline on regional portals.  Maybe their advocates would prefer to whine and distract and blow smoke rather than engaging in constructive discussion.
 * It would have been helpful, and more indicative of good faith, if User:Northamerica1000, or another portal advocate, had redesigned one or more portals a few months ago when the portal critics started asking the portal advocates to review and improve them. As it is, this looks like an exercise in distraction.  But it is better late than never, and I would suggest closing this MFD without a final decision.
 * I concur with the analyses by User:Mark Schierbecker and User:Newshunter12. If this MFD must be closed with a decision, I will recommend a Weak Delete.  However, this has been an extremely useful experiment in seeing whether modernization of an abandoned legacy portal will actually attract readers and maintainers.


 * Comment – I upgraded the portal and was planning to continue to do so, adding more new content periodically, and I added myself as a maintainer at the time. As I stated above, it was significantly expanded on 10 August 2019. However, being nominated for deletion five days later kind of pops the balloon. Regarding the comment from the nominator about the articles, sure, Guinea-Bissau-related articles would definitely benefit from more improvement in general. One aspect is that many feel there exists a Systemic bias on English Wikipedia that may contribute to topics such as this receiving less care compared to other topics. North America1000 01:52, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep, recently updated, so does not fail "not maintained" at the moment. In general, I would suggest we tag abandoned portals with a suitable template and then delete them if they haven't been updated if they have been flagged for attention for a year or so (note that we have articles that have been tagged for updating for more than 10 years, see Category:Wikipedia articles in need of updating, so one year to update a portal is almost immediate in comparison). Something like that could avoid discussing whether WP:HEY should apply to portals. —Kusma (t·c) 09:03, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * @Kusma, Your !vote is based on a straw man: the nomination is not based on the portal being "not maintained" at the moment.
 * I assume that this was an unintended misreading, but the fact is that WP:POG requires that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers".
 * A one-off drive-by update does not satisfy the required large numbers of readers and maintainers, and does not alter the decade-long evidence of the lack of readers and maintainers.
 * And WP:HEY is not a policy or a guideline. It's just an essay, and its test clearly isn't compatible with POG.
 * As to the idea of tagging portals in need of updating ... the portals project has existed since 2006, and in that time it has done precisely nothing to initiate any such process. It doesn't do the basic task for any project of assessing the pages within its scope: Category:Unassessed Portal pages currently contains 655 pages, out of a total of only 830 portals. The "why not tag" argument might have some credibility if there was any systematic tagging being undertaken by the portals project, but that doesn't happen. Instead it has become an old chestnut which is repeatedly raised at MFD as if it was some new idea which could change everything .. whereas it's an old idea which its advocates don't bothered to actually implement. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 17:53, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * My vote is not based on any straw man. I find "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers" to be completely useless. Cheshire is not an intrinsically so much more broad subject area than British Columbia, yet Portal:Cheshire has maintainers and Portal:British Columbia doesn't. If you want to pretend that the difference is caused by one being a "broad subject area, which is likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers", the other not being a "broad subject area, which is likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers", I don't understand what you are talking about. It seems more useful to look at actual maintenance, which is a measurable thing. I do not understand your opposition to tagging of abandoned portals at all, and I don't see what is wrong with attempting to improve outdated content instead of deleting it. —Kusma (t·c) 18:12, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * @Kusma, are you actively trying to misrepresent me? Or just firing off replies before reading?
 * Your assertion my view amounts to opposition to tagging of abandoned portals at all is a blatant misrepresentation. If you correct it, I will happy to accept that was a error made in good faith, but it should not stand.
 * My objection is to the practice by a few editors of hauling out at MFD the idea of "let's tag instead" when they take zero action the rest of the time.  If the goal was to identify pages in need of improvement, the portals like this would have been tagged years ago.
 * I am sorry that you have such difficulty understanding the wording of POG. It is very simple: portals need large numbers of readers and maintainers, so a broad topic is needed.  In this case, the portal is demonstrably not likely to attract large numbers of either.
 * And no, portals are not content, so your argument based on that assumption is misplaced. Portals are a device for navigating and showcasing the content which is in articles. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 18:46, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Ok, what happened from my end is that I suggested to tag abandoned portals and understood that you dismissed the idea as unworkable. I apologise for taking that as opposition to the idea, which I recently raised at WT:PORTAL, deliberately without connection to a specific MFD. (Nobody has replied yet). But back to my question: how do we find out in practice what the difference between Cheshire and British Columbia is in terms of broadness of subject area? —Kusma (t·c) 19:11, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * @Kusma, you ask how do we find out in practice what the difference between Cheshire and British Columbia?
 * Answer: it's not complicated.  The issue here is not breadth alone, but Breadth + LotsOfMaintainers +LotsOfReaders. So before creation, we make an estimate based on experience of similar topics.  After creation, we can review the data and make a definitive decision.  In this case, we have that data, and it's a stark fail.
 * And this case we also have to have regard to the WP:POG requirement that "the portal should be associated with a WikiProject (or have editors with sufficient interest)[1] to help ensure a supply of new material for the portal and maintain the portal" ... because WP:WikiProject Guinea-Bissau has been inactive since at least 2011, when it was tagged as such. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 02:47, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

I see zero reason to believe: or
 * Note that there is a redirect from . Those backlinks will need attention if the portal is deleted. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 16:13, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete per nominator and per @Newshunter12.
 * This is yet another a long-abandoned micro-portal. It should have been deleted long ago.
 * WP:POG requires that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers" ... and we have clear evidence that this portal attracts neither readers not editors.
 * It seems that this MFD nomination has triggered a sudden flurry of editing by one editor. i.e. @NA1K. However, the editor involved has  made a Wiki-career out of frantic last-minuted efforts to save pages from deletion.    That approach may be applicable in article space, where NA1K  learned their technique in WP:ARS's relentless campaign to save stubs from deletion by establishing just enough notability to ensure that they can remain as perma-stubs, and then move on.
 * However, a portal is a wholly different, because portals require ongoing maintenance, and large numbers of both readers and maintainers. A driveby update does nothing at all to resolve the fundamental problem of a lack of readers and maintainers, and after 6 months of portals MFDs, I note that NA1K offers not a single shred of evidence to support the hope that their driveby update solves long-term problems.
 * I note that:
 * NA1K has signed up as a "maintainer" of this portal. However, the credibility of this commitment is severely diluted by the fact that NA1K has also signed themselves up as the "maintainer" of no less than 37 other portals: P:Afghanistan, P:Belarus, P:Belize, P:Biochemistry, P:Coffee, P:Colorado, P:Costa Rica, P:Djibouti, P:Dominican Republic, P:Egypt, P:El Salvador, P:Eritrea, P:Evolutionary biology, P:Food, P:The Gambia, P:Ghana, P:Guatemala, P:Housing, P:Hungary, P:Islands, P:Italy, P:Kuwait, P:Liquor, P:Lithuania, P:Moldova, P:Money, P:Nepal, P:Nicaragua, P:Nigeria, P:Northern Ireland, P:Oman, P:Panama, P:São Tomé and Príncipe, P:Somalia, P:Supermarkets, P:Tanks, and P:Vietnam.
 * that NA1K has the time energy to actively maintain this huge collection, which amounts to 4.5% of all the portals which exist as of today,
 * that NA1K has anywhere near sufficient expertise in this vast range of topics to maintain them properly, even if they have time, or
 * that NA1K has sufficient skill and attention to detail to maintain the portal effectively. I checked the nominator's claim about NA1K adding stubs, and found that of the 25 selected article listed by NA1K when the portal was nominated, no less than six are currently either tagged or assessed as stubs.  A 25% error rate is a clear fail, and even if it has been corrected in subsequent edits (I have not checked), such abysmal standards are a basis for raising WP:CIR concerns, and are absolutely no basis for regarding NA1K a suitable person to maintain the portal:
 * Carlos Gomes Júnior
 * Bafatá
 * LGBT rights in Guinea-Bissau
 * Guinea-Bissauan cuisine
 * Grande de Buba River
 * Bambadinca
 * that any other maintainers have been identified, to give reasonable groups for believing that the portal might start to attract the POG-required "large numbers" of maintainers.
 * that WikiProject Guinea-Bissau might serve as a recruiting ground for the required "large numbers" of maintainers. The project has been tagged as inactive since 2011, and the last post on its talk page which wasn't a driveby announcement was in 2014
 * I also oppose re-creation. We have a decade's evidence that editors don't want to maintain this one. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 17:14, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * PS @Robert McClenon, might my assessment influence to reconsider your !vote? -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 17:16, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * You are being overly critical. Three of these articles are incorrectly assessed as stubs, and only three are tagged as stubs. BTW your alleged link to the WikiProject goes to WP:V. I agree that there is zero reason to believe that the Verifiability policy will help recruit maintainers. It is also well known that "large numbers" of maintainers are not required: no portal has ever had a "large number" of maintainers, at least none that I am aware of. The guideline needs to be rewritten to conform to actual practice, for example we need clear maintenance standards that you can later measure the maintainers against. May I also remind you that you have been "urged ... to focus the discussions as much as possible on pages and policies rather than on editors or perceived groups of editors." three days ago, a statement that you agreed to. I see you violate that promise right here, where your focus is on NA1k again. Could you stop this now? —Kusma (t·c) 17:59, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * @Kusma You are being disingenuous towards  Brown HairedGirl . She is an experienced editor and admin who has done more work on portals and cleaning up this delict area of Wikipedia than any other editor, so the mis-link is clearly not some charade. You want a link to this portal's defunct associated WikiProject? Here you go: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Guinea-Bissau. Nothing she said about NA1K here was a personal attack. They volunteered as a maintainer of this article, so they put themselves out there for criticism or praise in that capacity, which is all BHG did and is clearly relevant to this MfD. Please stop trying to stoke conflict among editors by creating issues where there are none. Newshunter12 (talk) 18:28, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * (ec) @Kusma, I am sure you can do much better than to base your argument on the fact that my sticky ctrl-key meant that my press of ctrl-V produce a misdirected link whose intended target was very clear. Please try to do better.
 * It is interesting that you assert that a "large number" of maintainers is not required, even though the rest of your comment makes it very clear that you know the guideline does require. As you well know, the guideline's stipulation has been upheld at hundreds of MFDs, so your assertion that the guideline does not conform to actual practice is knowingly counter-factual.  Please desist from asserting known falsehoods.  If you want to change the guideline, you know where WP:RFC is.  I look forward to your proposal, but in the meantime I urge you to find the common courtesy and integrity to refrain from rebuking an editor for upholding the guideline as it actually is, rather than how Kusma would like it to be written.
 * I have indeed focused on pages and policies, and in this case I have noted that the alleged maintainer of this page has not demonstrated any reason to believe that their claimed maintenance will resolve the problems with this portal.
 * Despite Kusmas's diligent determination to find a reason to take offence, the reality remains part of the reason why this update fails to solve the problem is that the alleged "maintainer" lacks credibility in that role, for the reasons set out above. If you object to my raising these real problems with this page, please go to WP:ANI and demand that the discussion be censored to remove facts which Kusma finds inconvenient. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 18:32, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Yeah, pointing to your c&p error was cheap, but in a section rather pickily pointing out inadequacies in other people's work, I could not resist, sorry. Back to the points: I don't recall typical portals ever having more than three regular maintainers, even back in 2006 when they were popular. I am very much of the opinion that the guideline has been recently interpreted as being "about broad topics that are attracting readers and have maintainers". At least that is my reading of various MFDs. So the "attract readers and maintainers" is not just a clarification of the type of topic, but actually an additional requirement. If you want, the topics looked broad when they were created ("likely to attract"), but they failed to do so. I am not aware of any guideline that limits the number of portals somebody is allowed to maintain; should any portals be abandoned, we can delete them at that point. —Kusma (t·c) 19:26, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * @Kusma, I agree that attracting readers and maintainers is a requirement. And the words "large numbers" are definitely in there. If anyone wants to propose removing those words, then WP:RFC.
 * I was not suggesting some numerical limit on how many portals an editor can assign themself as a maintainer of. I was addressing the  immediate question of whether the arrival of NA1K at the portal had made it into something which meets POG. And the forest of portals which NA1K claims to maintain dilutes the credibility of their commitment to any one of those portals. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 21:01, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Interestingly, the "large numbers" have been in there from the start, and the discussion about how many portals we should have has been going on since at least 2006 (some people said 30, and said "narrow" topics like Cricket shouldn't qualify). Anyway, I would like to see a clarification of the guidelines so they reflect what happened in recent MFDs, but I don't have the energy to go through another portal RFC. I thought we could just figure out what the actual, in-the-field rules are at MFD, and then write a descriptive page that codifies that. But perhaps I was wrong. In any case, the portal guidelines need a complete rewrite so they describe what people actually do and what is expected from portal maintainers. —Kusma (t·c) 22:06, 18 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Comment – I'll just say that the major expansion I performed was before the nomination for deletion. I had no crystal ball predicting that the portal would be nominated for deletion five days later. I haven't !voted here, and am calmly resigned to whatever consensus arrives at this discussion regarding the portal. North America1000 17:19, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment I agree with  Brown HairedGirl   that the evidence clearly shows NA1K is inadequate to be the sole maintainer of this junk portal and that it should not be kept because of some drive-by edits, of which no evidence has been provided that such changes have ever revitalized an abandoned portal. This portal has been abandoned for over nine years, so there is over nine years of hard evidence that this portal is not wanted by large numbers of readers or maintainers and so fails WP:POG. Newshunter12 (talk) 18:48, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep. There is a maintainer now and on-going editing. Concerns of outdated content are not really relevant anymore. --Hecato (talk) 20:00, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * @Hecato Over nine years of abandonment and decay are not erased by some drive-by edits. As described above by BHG and conured by me, the evidence shows NA1K is a wholly unqualified maintainer for this portal, which has had no maintainers for nearly a decade. WP:POG also states portals should be about a "broad subject area, which is likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers." This barely read junk portal clearly fails POG with or without some drive-by edits, as over nine years of hard evidence shows. No guesswork needed. Newshunter12 (talk) 21:05, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * The user in question offered to be a maintainer, so your concerns of drive-by editing are misplaced. The portal has attracted a maintainer. And I think the portal is "likely" to attract readers if it was properly expanded and made more useful, which can happen over time. There is no deadline. Only copyright violations or outdated misleading content that is unlikely to be updated anytime soon would demand deletion rather than editing to fix the problem. Lack of quality and the sidelining of portals as a feature are potential explanations for the lack of interest by readers and editors. I do not share your assessment of that user's ability to perform the act of maintaining this portal. As far as I can see their past record shows no lack of commitment to this project or portals as a part of it. The number of portals maintained does not discredit them, most modern portals require very little maintenance. And the editor in question appears to be well-versed in the technical and editorial maintenance of portals. --Hecato (talk) 21:45, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * @Hecato Please see WP:LISTEN. Countless MfD's with the same facts and circumstances as this one have been closed as delete. Newshunter12 (talk) 22:10, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Countless MfD's with the same facts and circumstances as this one have been closed as delete. Yes, countless portals have already been deleted by the same three or four brigading editors who vote delete no matter what (and repeatedly stated that they are against the concept of portals in general). The existence or non-existence of maintainers, the quality of the portal content or the number of pageviews appears to be entirely circumstantial and have so far not swayed any of their !!votes in either direction. Sorry if that is not really a convincing consensus to me. To me it appears to be a way to get rid of most of the portal space through the backdoor of poorly attended MfDs. In violation of the (now several) previous RfC's which came to the conclusion that the portal space should not be deleted. Regarding the MfD of this particular portal I have said my piece above and maintain my position. --Hecato (talk) 22:34, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Pile of blatant misrepresentation there, Hecato. I am not against all portals, and have voted to keep in the rare cases of an MFD where a portal does not fail the guidelines, and so has e.g. @Robert McClenon and @UnitedStatesian.  But since Hecato has been around for only a few weeks, they will have missed most of that.  And regardless of how long they have been around, they have had to time to know that a) there was only one RFC on the future of portals, i.e. WP:ENDPORTALS, and b) it was asked a crude binary question of whether to delete all portals, and answered "no".  It was not asked whether to retain all of the sea of abandoned junk, and the retain-abandoned-junk brigade should long since have found the manners to stop pretending otherwise.
 * If Hecato genuinely believes that the system is being gamed, then they know where ANI is, and should present their evidence. In the meantime, a !vote based on a rejection of the guideline and of an RFC, and on ABF against editors should be discounted by the closing admin.
 * Hecato is a relatively new editor whose time in Wikipedia has been dominated from the outset by a battlefield conduct of misrepresentation.  That misrepresentation is illustrated in their assertion that !votes have not been swayed by the facts.  If they have any actual evidence of that, they should take it to ANI, and quit disrupting MFD by this sniping and hurling of demonstrable falsehoods.
 * As to the editor who claims to be a "maintainer" of this portal, their incompetence with this portal is evidenced above, and there is zero evidence that they have any expertise in the topic of Guinea-Bissau. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 02:23, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Interesting that you feel addressed. Yes the matter should be taken to a higher place, as the countless times it has been brought up by various users in the portal guideline talk and the village pump seem to have had no effect. The deletion of portals debate appears to pop up regularly, not just in that one RfC.
 * And I am merely responding to people who ping me to critizice my !vote. And I believe they brought this to a meta level first. Me explaining my !vote and stating the truth as I see it is not disruptive editing or battlefield behavior, unlike your countless insults and character attacks against people who disagree with your ideas of deleting around 90% of the portal space (was that the figure?). Also my 1,063 edits on Wikipedia are luckily for the most part completely unrelated to this unpleasant matter. Most of my time is spend in the article space improving articles, though I also participate in many community discussions unrelated to portals. Having to deal with this "portal cull", as you called it in the past, is entirely unpleasant and I must say lowered my appreciation of Wikipedia and its community immensely. I would rather do anything else. --Hecato (talk) 07:17, 19 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Comment - Of the selected articles, I count:
 * Two GA class
 * Five C class
 * Nine Start class
 * Seven Stub class
 * Three unrated, possibly Start class
 * One Disambiguation page (Bissa), where all four linked articles are stubs.
 * WP:POG requires that selected articles be "of high quality, either a featured article, a good article or one which deals with its subject substantially or comprehensively." At least 3/4 of these articles fail just that one criteria. I have not checked the GA or C-class articles against the other criteria, but I suspect that some would not pass scrutiny.


 * After disqualifying the stubs and start class articles, this portal falls far short of the required 20 relevant transcluded articles required by WP:POG. Mark Schierbecker (talk) 20:27, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Nb. I removed the dab page from the portal. It was added in error. North America1000 20:43, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * If this portal survives, I think it is worth adding something encouraging editing so there will be more content in the future, in the spirit of Countering systemic bias. —Kusma (t·c) 20:46, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * @Kusma If you wish to Counter systemic bias, editors should be guided from elsewhere to the article Guinea-Bissau, which is something readers actually use, as the statistics show. Guiding them to work on this portal a decade of evidence shows no one wants is like putting a box of vaccines in a cupboard - something valuable and limited goes to waste. Newshunter12 (talk) 21:15, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * You seem to misunderstand me. I am suggesting to guide editors to work on topics related to Guinea-Bissau, not on this portal. —Kusma (t·c) 21:41, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * @Kusma Good to know but my point still stands - this portal is a bridge to nowhere. Newshunter12 (talk) 22:10, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * @Kusma, so why lure anyone away from the articles, to a portal which has been unmaintained and unwanted for a decade?
 * Like most (tho not all portals), the defenders of this one are doing a truly excellent job of illustrating that even if isn't left to rot again after this drive-by maintenance, it is a solution in search of a problem. That may not be what they intended. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 22:16, 18 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Comment – User:BrownHairedGirl asks me whether I will reconsider my !vote based on her analysis and change it to a Delete of Portal:Guinea-Bisseau. Maybe, but I had already considered similar points in advising to keep it for a few months after the improvements and review it in a few months instead.  I agree that BHG's arguments are persuasive that User:Northamerica1000 is extremely unlikely to turn this portal around and to bring the portal view rate up to 25 pageviews daily, and that these improvements are a low-probability effort.  However, why not use this as an opportunity to demonstrate for once and for all that most failing portals are not likely to be improved enough to be worth keeping?  One of three things will happen when this MFD is closed.

1.	The portal will be deleted. In that case, the portal will be deleted, and portal advocates will continue for the next few months to whine that we are deleting portals that should be given another chance.

2.	The portal will be kept, and the improvements by NA1k will result in it becoming a high-interest portal that will be kept. This is the least likely outcome, but will be a pleasant surprise if it does happen, and will be an example for future portals.

3.	The portal will be kept temporarily, and the improvements will have little effect on the portal. The portal can then be deleted in November 2019 or December 2019, and the argument by the portal platoon that portals should be kept and improved rather than deleted will be even more thoroughly discredited.

At this point, I think it is best to allow the improvement of the portal to be an experiment that will fail, with the failure being a useful experimental result. I am willing to consider an argument that more immediate deletion is necessary. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:51, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
 * @Robert McClenon, the problem with that is that we already know that the claimed "maintainer" has demonstrated very low competence wrt this portal, has spread their limited talent very thinly, has no record or evidence of expertise in the topic area, and shown neither any other maintainers nor any path to recruiting them. Community energy is not infinite, and setting us up for second round of discussion is a big drain of that energy for the sake of a highly improbable development.
 * Note that WP:POG says the portal should be associated with a WikiProject (or have editors with sufficient interest)[1] to help ensure a supply of new material for the portal and maintain the portal". WP:WikiProject Guinea-Bissau has been inactive since at least 2011, so both those tests fail. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 02:34, 19 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Comment – User:Hecato – See the recent WP:AN discussion and take note that saying things that are not true results in being identified as an editor who says things that are not true. I am willing to take your word that you are acting in good faith and have memories of editors having written things that were never actually written.  I have never said that I oppose the idea of portals.  I am not aware of User:Mark Schierbecker or User:Newshunter12 having said that.  Also, the participation of MFD regulars in MFD discussion is not brigading, which is a form of canvassing.  If you don't want to be accused of saying untruths, verify your claims before posting them.  Robert McClenon (talk) 01:51, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment @Robert McClenon @ Brown HairedGirl  Robert, I know you mean well by being reluctant to go full delete on this portal at this time, but you ought to for these reasons. Most of the updates NA1K made to this portal were on August 10. The most recent page view data shows the updates you think might turn this portal around have already failed to do just that. The page view rate for August 11-14, so after the updates and before the AfD started on the 15, was the same as before the updates. Nothing got revolutionarily better. There is also too much room for abuse here. The view rate is not a double-blind study, any editor can just click on the portal as many times as they want to drive up the view rate, which is why it skyrocketed on the day of the changes and during the AfD. There is too much room for abuse here to have any kind of scientific reading of increased traffic. The portal fails on its merits today and should be deleted at this MfD. Newshunter12 (talk) 02:35, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Nb. Some of the articles added to the portal do not have a link to the portal yet. Part of maintenance is adding links to relevant articles, which I normally perform, but since the portal was nominated for deletion, I guess I'll wait. I'm of the view that when visible links to a portal exist, which readers can actually see, the portal may then realize more page views. North America1000 02:43, 19 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Question for User:Northamerica1000 - What is the intended value added to the encyclopedia by improving Portal:Guinea-Bissau? How will readers of the encyclopedia benefit from the portal?  I understand that portals are considered technically neat, but how will this particular portal benefit readers of the English Wikipedia?  Robert McClenon (talk) 13:15, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I enjoy improving Wikipedia content for Wikipedia's WP:READERS. The portal was in very poor shape before I expanded it. It would still benefit from more improvements, which I was planning on doing. Since it's here, it would be counterproductive to work on it much to then watch that work disappear. While the portal was not receiving grand page views, it was receiving some, and those readers should have something useful to read to learn about Guinea-Bissau. That's what Wikipedia is all about, to provide knowledge to the public. I would have preferred to have had lots of Featured and Good articles available to expand the portal with, but they don't exist at this time. Fact is, though, I have not !voted at all in this discussion either way, and I am remaining neutral. Keep in mind that I expanded the portal before it was nominated for deletion. Perhaps I should rush and spend many hours trying to get 30 Guinea-Bissau articles up to FA and GA class, then my additions would be better perceived. Also, I added content about Wiki Loves Africa in Guinea-Bissau to the portal (see Wiki Loves Africa 2017 in Guinea-Bissau and Wiki Loves Africa 2015 in Guinea-Bissau). I though this was a great thing to add to the portal. I found the content at Commons, and it is certainly aligned with Wikipedia's/Wikimedia's encyclopedic goals. It is also worth mentioning that systemic bias is a very real thing on English Wikipedia; perhaps that's why there are so few FA and GA class articles available. As I stated above, I am fine with whatever consensus occurs herein, and I am choosing to pass on !voting. If the portal is deleted, oh well, that's the way it goes. The article will still be there, right? North America1000 13:22, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Repairing Low-Readership and High-Readership Facilities

 * Comment – Some editors have recently begun nominating portals for deletion that have not been maintained but have medium or even high numbers of readers. I have not had time to assess most of these nominations, but will comment that low-maintenance high-readership portals should have a much higher priority for the effort to improve and maintain them than for any effort to improve any facilities that have been long-time low-readership. Any investment of time in improving a low-readership portal is misdirected and would be better spent on improving high-readership and medium-readership facilities.  Robert McClenon (talk) 19:56, 19 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Weak Delete – I am changing my !vote on Portal:Guinea-Bissau to delete it rather than wasting effort trying to increase its readers when there are also unmaintained portals that already have readers. I also note that NA1k appears to be very overstretched in declaring themselves as the maintainer for more than 30 portals that have been nominated for deletion.  I don't understand why rescuing those portals is so important, but perhaps I never will understand that.  Robert McClenon (talk) 19:56, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Nb. Regarding the notion of, "declaring themselves as the maintainer for more than 30 portals that have been nominated for deletion", I have no problem with any delete !votes, but note that I decided to maintain this portal before it was nominated for deletion, not after. Here's the diff. I still do not possess a crystal ball predicting that the portal would be nominated for deletion five days later. It is okay to improve Wikipedia's content for the encyclopedia's WP:READERS at any time. North America1000 09:55, 21 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Comment – I have withdrawn from being a maintainer for this portal (diff). The edits I performed were principled and of integrity. I tire of the derision. Maybe someone else will maintain it. Cordially, North America1000 19:35, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Thank you for withdrawing. Editing requires both good faith and good judgement.  Repeated bad judgement makes the good faith questionable, because good faith involves recognising one's limits. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 14:46, 22 August 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.