Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Lusatia

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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. MER-C 16:19, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Portal:Lusatia


Abandoned, almost unviewed portal about the informal geographical region of Lusatia, on the Polish/German border. It's basically a big to-do-list which belongs in project space.

This is one of a number of similar portals created by Bermicourt. These portals are adapted from the German-language Wikipedia (in this case de:Portal:Lausitz, and they share the structure and layout of their German couterparts.

The main feature of these portals is that they don't use the absurdly cumbersome and obselete selected-subpage model adopted by most old portals. Instead, these portals consist of grouped listings of artcles within the topic area, a structure which User:Britishfinance helpfully descrbed as "mega-navbox".

Bermicourt has been kind enough at various points to explain the the reasoning behid these portals, and for a while I was inclined to think that maybe they were the future of portals. They display far more links than the selected-subpage portals, and the loss of the excerpts in the sub-pages is irrelevant, because the Wikimedia software now provides built-in preview for ordinary readers. Why create piles of content-forked excerpts when the software generates those previews on the fly?

However, in practice this mega-navbox style of portals doesn't seem to be working any better than the redundant-forked-subpage style. The pageviews for this one are still abysmal (5 vews/day in January–June 2019), so this portal clearly has not met 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".

As to maintainers, it's two years since the portal was created, but:
 * 5 of the 9 tabs at the top of the portal are redlinks. (They don't display as red, but they lead to non-existent pages)
 * Portal:Lusatia/Welcome Text, Portal:Lusatia/Article of the Month and Portal:Lusatia/Image of the Month were all last edited on 21 July 2017, which is the day the portal was created
 * Portal:Lusatia/Content had a minor edit on the following day: 22 July
 * Portal:Lusatia/Lusatia/Society, Portal:Lusatia/Lusatia/Geography, Portal:Lusatia/Lusatia/Sights, Portal:Lusatia/Lusatia/Art and Culture are all unchanged since Bermicourt created them in April 2018‎.
 * Portal:Lusatia/New Articles is self-updating, but blank

The recent discussion at WP:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Elbe-Elster Land was of a similar portal: a mega-navbox, about an informal region of Germany. Bermicourt's argument there was that the portal was primarily of use to editors rather than readers, because the mega-navbox style provides redlinks for missing articles. The blankness of Portal:Lusatia/New Articles suggests that a set of redlinks to encourage article creation isn't working well, but even if it was working, it doesn't need a reader-facing page.

Like the now-deleted Portal:Elbe-Elster Land, this portal has failed as a portal. Time to delete this one too. Any bits of it which the Wikiprojects want should be moved to the Project pages. Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:38, 28 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Strong Keep. As I've explained before, page views are no more relevant to a navigation page and project tool than they are for categories. But for those wanting an overview of the topic and for project editors creating and improving articles they are invaluable. This is nothing more than an ongoing crusade to delete all portals - which is your goal as you've now made clear at the village pump - contrary to the community consensus. Lusatia is an important historical and cultural region, far more notable than Portal:Elbe-Elster Land. Bermicourt (talk) 21:00, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Stop telling lies, @Bermicourt:
 * As Bermicourt well knows, WP:POG requires that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers". Hundreds of portals have been deleted by consensus for failing that requirement. You are well aware of both the guideline and its applications, so your statement that page views are not relevant is a blatant lie: i.e. it is a deliberate falsehood, a wilful misrepresentation of the guidelines.
 * As Bermicourt well knows, WP:Notability a criterion for articles, not for portals.
 * Average daily pageviews per portal in April–June 2019.png Bermicourt well knows, my experience of months of analysing portals has not led me to advocate delete all portals or to make that my goal. What it has led me to believe is that there should be an RFC to consider a proposal that the long tail of underused portals should be culled, which as you well know is not the same thing as delete all portals.  Culling the tail does not run counter to the community consensus at WP:ENDPORTALS, and even if it did, a new RFC could set a nee consensus.  Your wilful misrepresentation of my goals is a straightfowrard lie, designed to discredit me and to undermine this discussion by making an ad hominem smear.
 * I am truly saddened by this. Bermicourt ha long been one of the more open and intelligent creators of portals, with whom I was able to have open and productive discussions at many points in the last five months.  I took great care in this nomination to praise Berimicourt's contributions, so I am very saddened to see that in response Bermicourt has chosen to lower himself to the gutter-level of the most mendacious portalistas, and respond with a bunch of malicious lies.
 * That a despicable way to respond to a fellow editor, and a despicable way to approach a consensus-forming discussion. Shame on you, Bermicourt; I really thought that you were so massively better than that. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 21:45, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Shame on you for an unfair personal attack. A different point of view is not a lie and expressing it is not "despicable". Portal topic notability is clearly important and has been a factor in other discussions, even if you'd prefer not to use it because its not part of the massively out-of-date guideline you keep quoting, a guideline whose status is so questionable it is the subject of a discussion going on even now at the village pump. You are normally fairer, reasonable and more open-minded; please can we return to that. Bermicourt (talk) 06:40, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
 * @Bermicourt, as you well know, lack of page views is not just a long-standing part of the guidelines. It has been a factor in the deletion of hundreds of portals over the last five months.
 * So you statement that page views are no more relevant to a navigation page and project tool is plain false, and you know it is plain false.
 * Please distinguish between the actual guidelines and your own desire to retain abandoned, unread portals just because you created them. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 10:03, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
 * My view that page views are irrelevant is not 'false'; it's my view. The guidelines were written a long time ago and are clearly inadequate. That's also my view. Judging from the village pump discussion, editors are even questioning whether they even have the status of guidelines as well as questioning the purpose of portals i.e. the guidelines themselves, so it appears there are other editors out there who agree with me. I accept that you disagree and that's your right. You've also said for a long time that you are not pro-portals and it's been useful to you to use the existing definition because "broad topic" can be readily applied to very low numbers of portals; you're also pretty fixated about page views; again that's handy because it assumes portals are about huge readership of broad topics; an assumption that, if used as a hard criterion that we all agreed on, would sweep all portals away which achieves your aim. But it's just another assumption; a POV that needs testing and consensus achieving. The community consensus was that portals should neither be deprecated nor deleted. Given that, we should work towards a consensus on their purpose and guidelines that reflect consensus. As we engaged in that, the only fair thing to do is to put a hold on more creation or deletion so that we honour and respect each other and waste no-one's time. You are an administrator and, normally, a voice of reason; why don't you champion that? I'd back you as you know. Bermicourt (talk) 16:54, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
 * PS I haven't abandoned portals; I had a plan to update a couple each month, including creating more articles behind them. But I'm just not wasting any more time working on them while their entire future is doubt thanks to a handful of deletionists with their tails up after TTH got his wrist slapped for mass creation. :) Bermicourt (talk) 17:02, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I am sad to see you doing this.
 * As you well know, the outcome of WP:ENDPORTALS was that a proposal to delete all portals was rejected.
 * That RFC was not asked whether it was appropriate to delete any portals, so it didn't answer that question. One of the saddest parts of the sorry portal saga in the last 15 months has been the way that portalistas first misrepresented ENDPORTALS as a licence to create thousands of spam portals ... and then try to misrepresent it as a mandate to oppose deletion of any portals.
 * If you want to propose that POG be amended to endorse the retention of "abandoned portals with almost no readers", then you know the way to RFC, where can propose WP:KEEPTHEUNREADPORTALS.  But in the meantime there is the clear consensus of many hundreds of MFDs that "abandoned and unread" are valid deletion criteria for portals.
 * As to the deletion-makes-other-portals-become-abandoned line, please just look at the timelines. The culling of portalspam began in March 2019.  The culling of abandoned portals began in April/May 2019.
 * Blaming the cleanup process for the abandonment of this portal for the 12 months before cleanup began is at best a highly creative reinterpretation of cause and effect. At worst ... well you can put your own labels on a narrative which inverts chronology. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 02:34, 30 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete. This clearly fails POG. The portal creator says "for those wanting an overview of the topic and for project editors creating and improving articles [such portals] are invaluable" - I disagree as the article is a better overview than the portal is (and that's likely to become even more so in the long term as any updates are more likely to be made to the article than to the portal) and assisting "project editors" is what wikiprojects (including task forces etc) (not portals) are for. A portal shouldn't be linked from articles etc until it is ready for readers and this one isn't - for example, clicking on the "Info" link one gets  { |- |1 |Lusatia (7/2017) | X |Bermicourt (D + P + S) |First created Jul 2017. Being expanded Apr/May 2018. |Yet to be reviewed. |[1] |edit |}  - what's a reader supposed to make of that? The section titled "SISTER PROJECTS" that is mostly links to portals, not wikiprojects, shows that the portal creator appears to not understand (or care about) the distinction. DexDor(talk) 18:54, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete - I do not see a broad enough scope for this one. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 03:08, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment – No, no, no, User:BrownHairedGirl. Please stop the personal attacks on User:Bermicourt.  Please reread Assume Good Faith for perhaps the one-hundredth time.  I don't think that he is lying, and it isn't necessary to assume that he is lying.  He is making statements that are demonstrably untrue, that you are trying to get rid of all portals, as opposed to the large majority of them that are crud.  But there is no reason to think that he is lying.  He is only lying if he makes statements that he knows to be untrue, as opposed to statements that you and I know to be untrue.  The portalistas have come to believe their own claims about a war on portals.  (Well, there really is being battleground editing.)  Most of the untruths are not lies.  Please assume good faith.  They have misled themselves.  It is frustrating to argue with people who believe incorrect information.  But we must avoid accusing them of lying when they are just wrong. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:59, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete – I concur with the analysis by User:BrownHairedGirl. This portal does not use subpages, but it appears that it does not even have its own navbox.  It simply invokes two categories of portals, which appears to mean that it is relying on other portal maintainers.  This appears to be a non-design in place of an unsound design.  It has an average of 5 daily pageviews, as contrasted with 200 for the article.  If the purpose of the portal is for editors as a to-do list, it can be in project space and can be a to-do list without the glitter of a portal.  But maybe portals are glitter.  Not every navbox-like portal is worth keeping.      Robert McClenon (talk) 03:59, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete per the excellent analysis and investigation of this portal by BrownHairedGirl. It clearly fails WP:POG since it has an incredibly small readership and non-existent base of maintainers. Complete crud like this also hurts Wikipedia's hard fought reputation for quality - how is a reader supposed to trust our encyclopedia when there is rubbish like this lying around for them to consume? It wastes their time and ruins their trust in Wikipedia's information. Newshunter12 (talk) 05:26, 5 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.