Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Hellenismos

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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. ‑Scottywong | [communicate] || 22:37, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Portal:Hellenismos

 * – (View MfD)

Abandoned portal. Six selected articles from December 2011, two of which are literally disambiguation pages.

Eleven selected bios, eight of which consisted simply of a single link to an article until December 2011.

Moreover, this portal has nothing to do with Hellenism, which is a modern religion. All entries are about mythology in ancient Greece and Rome, with no attempt made to relate the content to modern religion.

Please check Portal:Hellenism and Portal:Hellenismos for backlinks when this portal is deleted. Mark Schierbecker (talk) 01:13, 16 September 2019 (UTC)


 * Keep Neutral:   Maybe instead of criticizing a page for not being added to lately, you should add to it.  I'm against deleting it.  Actually Hellenismos (Hellenism) is both ancient and modern philosophies & religions (that can be seen as an integrated one.)  The first usage of the term to describe those aspects, and others, overall in Greek culture, dates to the Hellenistic period in the Classical Age.  Some Hellenists say they have traditions that were passed down since ancient times, and other traditions still survive in writing (Hellenic_Polytheistic_Reconstructionism such as Supreme_Council_of_Ethnikoi_Hellenes, and another major such group is Labrys, though without Wikipedia article yet.)  Hellenism--both ancient and modern--is important in studies of ancient to modern paganism because it's often used as the first example of what it's about, such as saying some people still worship, for example, Zeus and The Olympians.  It's not as popular as Wicca (modern revival of Celtic & Germanic and pan-European witch religion, though some people practice Hellenic Wicca) or maybe (not sure) Asatru (Teutonic/Germanic/Norden paganism) but it is probably the first definitive Western pagan religion and has influenced most the others in the West.  Some of the linked pages may have become disambiguation pages later, or perhaps there is more than one entry in each such page that is relevant to the portal, in which case those doesn't matter.
 * Furthermore, my original name for it was Portal:Hellenismos, which was intended to be about ancient philosophy & religion continued to the modern day with reconstructionism, as that is how that term is used. I don't know who changed it to religion but that's not all it is.  Similarly, Hinduism is correctly known as Sanatana Dharma ('the Eternal Philosophy/Law') and actually consists of six main philosophies and several related religions that can all be seen as part of a bigger religion.  What probably happened was someone more focused on emotionalist worship without the more sophisticated philosophies and without knowing much Hellenismos may have altered the portal to make it sound like it's about less than it really is.  Portal:Hinduism doesn't say 'religion' in parentheses because every serious person studying it probably knows the fact of its diversity as philosophies and religions.  The same is true for Hellenismos, which is the variant of the term most-used by adherents and philosophers today to distinguish it from the ancient movement of Hellenism that denotes it happened during the Hellenistic age in Greek culture widespread beyond Greece.  Hopefully this clarification should clear up the intent of the portal.  Perhaps what's needed is for people to recognize this and remove the limiting term 'religion' and restore the original term to distinguish it from the ancient cultural movement (which has its own article.)
 * I'm leaving the above (not all relevant now,) but additional note: part of the confusion was probably that someone moved the portal when the result of the public vote was to NOT move. I've moved it back for what the vote was.  Please research what the changes reflect.  The redirect of Hellenismos to 'Hellenism (religion)' saying it's only modern is inaccurate, and if I recall correctly, the transliterated Greek version of the term used to direct to a page on ancient religion.--dchmelik (t|c) 02:15, 16 September 2019 (UTC)
 * @dchmelik You have been away from portal space (at least editing it) for a long time, so please let me bring you up to speed. A mass portal spammer silently created thousands of automated crud portals that were deleted by massive consensuses at two mass MfD's earlier this year. During that cleanup phase, many experienced editors, who had not participated in portal space before, examined many of the about 1500 pre-existing portals and realized that there were vast numbers of abandoned (often for a decade or more), rotting portals which failed the portal guideline, WP:POG. They began to evaluate them and bring them to MfD. Over 800 portals have now been deleted, such as Portal:Lutherinism, Portal:Eastern Orthodox Church, Portal:United States Navy, Portal:Ottoman Empire, and Portal:Armenia. As I have described below, this portal fails WP:POG on broadness (narrow topic), readership (very few readers), maintainers (none - and it would need a team of regular maintainers to pass), and WikiProject involvement (none). I know it's a bummer to see ones work deleted, but this portal grossly fails the portal guideline and should be deleted. It would be a great help to the clean up effort if you could accept that this portal is not wanted by readers or maintainers, whatever you meant for it to be about, and support deletion. Newshunter12 (talk) 02:37, 16 September 2019 (UTC)
 * This portal is far from a narrow topic: look at the disambiguation page Hellenism, which probably didn't used to be one, but the portal is about most/all things on that page. Hellenismos (redirects to Hellenism (religion)) is simply the tranlisterated Greek term that is translated to Hellenism, so it's incorrect for the transliteration to direct to a religion article instead of the disambiguation also about philosophy and culture.  The main usage of the Greek term is of continued/[reconstructed]/revived (pagan revivalism could use its own article) philosophy & religion both also as part of the wider culture, since the ancient term.  People altered/renamed the portal to remove some of that.  Similar to Hinduism (Sanatana Dharma) all these aspects are combined (so Hinduism could even be seen as disambiguation with at least three or four main definitions, depending what is included, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't have a portal.)  You can't change my mind or that of other pagans/Hellenists but even if some such large portals have been deleted, I'd understand why this and others are deleted.  I haven't added to it in years because there often isn't any new information on such an ancient topic.  It does, however, link to many related WikiProjects--dchmelik (t|c) 03:15, 16 September 2019 (UTC)
 * @dchmelik We seem to be getting side tracked with what this portal is about, which honestly isn't the important part here. It fails WP:POG's requirement that portals be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers." There is a decade of hard evidence that this portal hasn't attracted either, so no guess work is needed. WP: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.". Just being linked to WikiProjects is not enough. One actually needs to be substantively involved with maintaining a portal, and none are here. The portal, as it stands today, is all about ancient Greece and only gets 0.48% of the daily views of the in practice head article, Ancient Greece, which has multiple versatile Navboxes for all things related to this topic. What do we need this abandoned portal for? This portal, like nearly all portals, is a failed solution in search of a problem. Newshunter12 (talk) 03:41, 16 September 2019 (UTC)
 * My issue with relevance is that none of the selections are about modern practitioners. This is an anachronism. All selections would be better suited to Portal:Greek mythology. The Hellenism portal currently looks like the cover of an astronomy textbook that has been pasted onto a book about astrology. Mark Schierbecker (talk) 03:45, 16 September 2019 (UTC)


 * It does link several group of modern practitioners (in topics and news sections.) I don't know if any individual practitioners have articles, but there are other modern aspects that could be added (may not have articles either.)  It's clearly not all about ancient Greece, as you could've seen in the original version, and even now with the altered version that only has the introduction redirect to an article about modern Hellenismos rather than past introductions which included ancient to modern... well, maybe even moreso with the current introduction, I mean did you even take a look at the rest of the introduction?  In addition, I now see three of the selected articles refer to modern aspects as well, and several of the selected images are modern art, modern photography, or at least later than Classical (maybe in between then and modern.)--dchmelik (t|c) 03:53, 16 September 2019 (UTC)
 * @Mark Schierbecker With the portal rename, the portal's MfD link no longer brings you to this MfD, so that needs to be fixed now. @dchmelik Please stop dodging this portal's failure of WP:POG by only focusing on the subject issue. Newshunter12 (talk) 03:59, 16 September 2019 (UTC)


 * Clearly I replied to some of what was described with WP:POG. How often would it need to be maintained, or is even a low number of readers now a good enough reason to delete?--dchmelik (t|c) 04:05, 16 September 2019 (UTC)
 * @dchmelik It would need to be updated on a weekly/monthly basis by a team of dedicated long-term maintainers, preferably with deep topic knowledge, and yes, a low number of viewers is a good enough reason to delete. It also lacks an involved wiki-project. Having large numbers of maintainers and readers are not optional requirements. That must be met or a portal will be deleted. This portal hasn't met that for a decade, and if you care about this topic, than improving related articles would be a far better use of your time because people actually read those. Newshunter12 (talk) 04:18, 16 September 2019 (UTC)


 * Alright, it just doesn't have a team (so not wiki-project either) and I don't think I'm involved enough anymore to try to make one--anyway, I only discussed changes to the portal with a few or two people in the past then others made changes without talking to me so I don't know what their intentions are or if they're even that interested. The few/two I talked to might not have made major additions; maybe they mainly wanted to do improvements.  I don't want to change my vote, since I dislike the changes since after the portal spammer, but due to that I understand the changes may be necessary. so I could even rescind my vote.  However I want to wait for the duration to see if anyone else who ever edited or was interested in the portal comments and might be interested in starting a team anyway.  Also, is there any way I could save some past version of the portal before or even after it's possibly/probably deleted, for a copy of what I worked on... either to my own sandbox or just downloading for offline usage?--dchmelik (t|c) 04:37, 16 September 2019 (UTC)
 * @dchmelik I don't really know anything about transferring data, but nothing is stopping you from copy-pasting any old version of the portal to a file on your computer. It can't just live in your sandbox on Wikipedia if deleted because then it wouldn't really be deleted, just somewhere else. If you want to wait and see if anyone else comes along, that's up to you, but based on my experiences at hundreds of individual MfD's, that's incredibly unlikely to happen and given that the portal has been abandoned for years, the credibility of such a spur of the moment team to stop an MfD would be questionable, as maintenance needs to be long-term. There is still the critical lack of readers problem. Is it possible you could change your vote to neutral for now until if and when more interest comes? As an aside, could you please tell me what this portal offers that articles don't? Newshunter12 (talk) 04:58, 16 September 2019 (UTC)


 * Most articles on paganism/heathenism (or what's better termed non-Abrahamic philosophies/religions) describe them in an ancient or modern sense only, with separate articles, which is okay for an encyclopedia, but not really how the practitioners think of it and there's some evidence it shouldn't totally be the case for this topic. The main articles on the terms paganism and (though it has been moved, which I agree with) neopaganism maybe refer to each other but the actual usage outside an encylopedia aren't restricted to ancient or modern (except neo is modern, but fewer people use the paleo, meso, neo terminology anymore after the person who came up with it passed away and a lot of people didn't like the implications that their religion was completely destroyed and/or has no history, and they include ancient knowledge in 'neopaganism.')  The Wicca article (or at least history one it links to) probably states that there are claims of ancient secretly passed-down traditions of witchcraft paganism.  However people outside of Celtic and Germanic paganism don't like the terms 'pagan,' 'heathen' as they were insult terms not reclaimed as they're Germanic/English, not in this case Greek.  So I see, there used to be portals on one or more others like Neopaganism, Wicca, Asatru/Heathendom, and it would've been perfectly relevant, if this were still the case, to have one on Hellenismos, as it's usually not Wicca... but it does share a similar aspect with Wicca that people claimed to have secretly passed down traditions.  In that sense there's the claim Hellenismos started as what one person defined as paleopaganism but continued unbroken into mesopaganism and neopaganism... so the case is this also takes Hellenismos outside of those categories, and means articles focusing only on the ancient or modern practice are inadequate.  Maybe an academic of the topic could say the practitioners can't prove they had secret traditions, but as a large amount of historical knowledge wasn't lost in this case, that doesn't matter to me and many people interested or writing about the subject.  One difference is Wicca is a modern rewriting of one or more ancient Anglo-Saxon words like 'wicche,' so though there's evidence some (not all) of the beliefs and practices are ancient or reconstructed or revived, the name isn't as ancient... however with Hellenismos it is.  It was an ancient term used by some Hellenistic ruler used to describe culture, which included philosophy and religion.  This is the same way some Hindus describe 'Hinduism'--culture which includes philosophy and religion.  As this is the case, the current Hellenism disambiguation (Hellenismos used to redirect to, and previously, one or both had articles) lists usage as both ancient religion (in a cultural context which included philosophy) and modern religion so there was nothing wrong with a portal using both such aspects of that term (the only both ancient and modern usage, though past Hellenism(os) edits may have listed both culture and philosophy as ancient and modern versions, but I described, they were or are sometimes seen all as one thing.)  However it seems now most the paganism portals, and even most the religion portals are going away unless followed by a larger number of millions of people in the world, which still isn't the case here.--dchmelik (t|c) 05:34, 16 September 2019 (UTC)
 * @dchmelik I'm sympathetic that you feel Wikipedia's coverage of this topic is inadequate and am saddened that I can't help improve these articles as I know nothing about those religious/philosophical groups and have no passion for the topic, but as WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS states, the purpose of Wikipedia is not to right wrongs you feel are happening in the world. We only follow what WP:RS's say. Given the identity crises this portal already has, it's clearly a failed solution to the problem you would like righted. I'm honestly not understanding why you want this portal kept other then you personally like the idea of a great portal on this topic, but this just isn't it. Portals don't have their own content, so unless the articles change to your liking, this portal can never be what you want it to be, and even if the articles someday get to the type of coverage you approve of, then this portal would still be worthless because virtually no one reads it. Realistically, your best bet is to eliminate this portal and focus your limited time and energy on improving the articles to where you would like them to be. Realistically and sadly, this portal is just wasting the time of everyone involved and will never get to where you dream it could be, as has happened to thousands of other portals in the last 15 years. Newshunter12 (talk) 06:29, 16 September 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete per the nom. This portal has been abandoned for nearly eight years, save portal renaming and one-off updates by passing editors. Since late 2006, the lead of WP:POG has said "Do not expect other editors to maintain a portal you create" ... and this one has not been maintained by Dchmelik, who edited it in sporadic bursts over the years (with year(s) long gaps in between), the last of which was in Feb. 2017 (I see the MfD drew them back as I was typing this), and currently has a self-professed prolonged come and go relationship with Wikipedia. The portal 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 a very low 17 views |Portal:Hellenismos per day from January 1 - June 30 2019 (despite the real head article, which seems to be Ancient Greece, having 3,526 views per day in the same period). This is a steady long term decline from 35 views |Portal:Hellenismos per day from July 1 - Dec. 30 2015.
 * POG also states portals should be associated with a wikiproject, but while WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome is active, the portal is not mentioned on the main page, and the portal has never been mentioned on the talk page. Portals stand or fall on their merits in the now, not what could someday hypothetically happen with them, and this one falls flat. I oppose re-creation, as a decade of hard evidence shows Hellenism (really Ancient Greece) is not a broad enough topic to attract readers or maintainers. Newshunter12 (talk) 02:19, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

If the vote is to delete, I won't recreate it, but I don't think you should ban people interested in the topic from recreating it if they're going to maintain it.--dchmelik (t|c) 03:56, 16 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment As I described, the portal was later altered by people who don't fully understand that the topic is not only religion, but culture & philosophy & religion (similar to Hinduism which combines all three, well actually several/many philosophies and three entire categories each including several/many religions that some see as unified.)  This is why maybe neither the deletion nominator nor the person who voted understand the notability.  I described it above.  The original portal described these aspects and linked to pages on ancient & reconstructed/revived religion, and Hellenism (which Hellenismos should be redirected to) that describes/lists these aspects.  One of you thinks it's only modern; the other of you think it's is really actually ancient... you're both partly correct and partly wrong, and disagree with each other, so I think neither of you know the notability.  However I see that notability may not be the issue after the portal spammers.
 * @dchmelik I oppose re-creation because a decade of hard evidence shows that is not going to happen or this portal wouldn't be in the state that it is. Portals in general have been an abysmal failure by any sane measure, as the facts show. They also don't have their own content (only articles have content), so nothing is being lost by deleting this abandoned portal. Newshunter12 (talk) 04:04, 16 September 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete - After I reviewed this nomination, I was not entirely sure about the subject matter of the portal and was going to wait and study it further, and then the issue was complicated by moving. Now that both the portal and the MFD have been renamed to the name that is consistent with the RM, I have reviewed it further.  It wasn't clear whether this was about the historical Greek religion, or about the Neopagan religion.  (That would have been a reason to vote !Delete if not resolved.  We don't need portals whose subject matter is uncertain.)  It is about the Neopagan religion, which is a revival of the historical religion, but most of the content is about the historical religion that is being revived.  (An argument between User:dchmelik and User:Newshunter12 doesn't change anything, and I agree with what NH12 says anyway.)  (There are often questions about how accurately neopagan religions have revived the historical polytheistic religions, but the historical Greek religion is probably the best documented of all ancient religions.)  It has two main problems, low readership and no maintenance.  It has 15 average daily pageviews in the first half of 2019, as opposed to 392 for the head article (which is usually not enough to support a portal).  There are 18 articles, which have not been maintained since 2010 except for moving. It isn't clear what dchmelik wants to save, since portal subpages should not contain unique content if they were forked from articles.  I see little reason to try to re-create a portal that failed to gain 20 daily pageviews.    Robert McClenon (talk) 21:04, 16 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete this junk portal forever.Catfurball (talk) 23:34, 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:Greece + Portal:Religion), without creating duplicate entries. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 03:14, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete and oppose re-creation - as has been explained, it fails POG. It is exceedingly unlikely that in the future, conditions would be any different. -Crossroads- (talk) 06:10, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete, and oppose re-creation. Low readership + almost maintenance = clear fail of 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".
 * 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", but there has never been a WP:WikiProject Hellenismos (or any permutation thereof).
 * The lengthy discussion above shows that intended scope of the portal is at best unclear, and might be better described as "disputed". It seems that this dispute is long-standing.  That is absolutely no basis for building a portal. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 08:03, 24 September 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete and oppose re-creation Abandoned portal. TrynaMakeADollar (talk) 00:44, 26 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete - As it is long abandoned and has a very low readership, there is no demonstrated usefulness to keeping it. Kaldari (talk) 19:16, 27 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.