Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Kerala

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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) 06:15, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

Portal:Kerala

 * – (View MfD)

Mini-portal on the Indian state of Kerala. Abandoned since 2008, apart from two sub-page additions in 2015 + one in 2019 and the usual formatting tweaks to the main page. There is a 12-year-old stale "news" page, and a set of eleven-year-old stale DYKs. Few quality articles in its scope; WikiProject is inactive; no maintainers; and only 12 views/day. It has only 11 selected articles, barely over half the POG moinimum 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 even that low number 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.) Redundant to the head article Kerala and the comprehensive navbox Template:Kerala

This is one of en.wp's oldest portals. It was created in June 2005‎‎ by, whose last edit to any part of the portal was in July 2005 (see DuKot's portal-space contribs). This was over a year before WP:POG warned "Do not expect other editors to maintain a portal you create", so the abandonment should not be criticised.

The /News and /DYK sub-pages were created by DuKot. The first ten of the eleven /Selected articles/Archive, plus the first 7 of the 9 Selected pictures/Archive were added in 2006 by, whose last contribution to any part of the portal was in 2008 (see Thunderboltz's portal-space contribs).

The only maintenance since then has been by, who in 2015 added /Selected article 11 and /Selected pictures/Selected picture 8. In 2019, they added /Selected pictures/Selected picture 8, and some fake DYKs to Portal:Kerala/DYK.

Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:Kerala shows a small set of sub-pages: /Selected article 11 was added in 2015 by Arunvrparavur, and is wholly unchanged since then.
 * 11 selected articles, listed at /Selected articles/Archive. The first ten were created in 2006, since when the only one to have had any non-technical edits is /Selected article 8, which had a minor clarification in 2013.  Note that  since 2006, the subject of /Selected article 2 has been Kerala, which is pointless duplication since that's the article in the portal's lead.
 * /News/News last had any addition of new content in Dec 2007, and nothing has been removed since then. So there's a list of 16 items dating from 2007, all dated only by month+day (e.g. "May 4"). In October 2012, an IP added a visible note "The events on this page have only month and day. Year is missing! Some one please add the year"  ... but seven years later, nobody has either removed the stale news or added the year.
 * /DYK contains 7 items. The fist three were added added in 2019 by Arunvrparavur, appear to be fakes: I have found no trace of them ever being part of WP:DYK. The remaining 4 all date from 2008 or earlier, and I have been able to verify a DYK origin for only two of them (Kumarakom Bird Sanctuary and Kettuvallam).  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 the two genuine eleven-year-old entries lose the newness, so their only effect is as a trivia section. And the remaing five fakes are and always have been trivia.

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 all four counts:
 * 1)  Broad topic . No. Category:Kerala articles by quality shows only 1 FA, 11 GAs, and 2 A-class. That set is too small to sustain a portal, let alone ensure a balanced set of topics.
 * 2)  High readership .  No. The trickle of edits since 2008 is close to abandonment. 12 views per day is very low.
 * 3)  Lots of maintainers . No. V little maintenance since 2008.
 * 4)  WikiProject involvement . No. I have just tagged  WP:WikiProject Kerala as inactive, because the last discussion on its talkpage was in 2014.   The project shows zero interest in the portal.  I searched Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Kerala and its archives, and found only one mention: a 2006 notice of portal peer review.  Nothing in the 13 years since then.

This portal was created in good faith in the very early, experimental days of portals. But it has been almost abandoned since 2008, with no fixes of the decade-old problems. There is no active WikiProject to support it, and almost no interest in reading it. Readers would be massively better served by being directed to the GA-class head article Kerala. Time to just delete this portal. Since the problems are deep-seated and long-standing, I oppose re-creation. Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:24, 20 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) 03:27, 20 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 portal and damages Wikipedia's hard won reputation for quality. I oppose re-creation, as over a decade of hard evidence shows Kerala is not a broad enough topic per WP:POG to attract readers or maintainers. This portal is a solution in search of a problem. Newshunter12 (talk) 03:49, 20 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete - Low readership, no maintenance, not enough articles. Robert McClenon (talk) 14:25, 20 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete. Not maintained, abandoned portal.--Darwinek (talk) 19:52, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

Kerala

 * Comment - This is not a complete list of Indian state portals, but no Indian state portal so far has had more than 16 average daily pageviews, and most have been poorly maintained (if maintained at all). Robert McClenon (talk) 14:25, 20 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete''' this state doesn't need a portal.Catfurball (talk) 22:53, 23 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete and oppose re-creation per detailed analysis by BrownHairedGirl. -Crossroads- (talk) 03:39, 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.