Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Royal Australian Navy (2nd nomination)

 __NOINDEX__
 * 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) 05:38, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Portal:Royal Australian Navy


This portal never had a chance. After the portal was created over the course of a day in July 2008, the editor never again touched it. Since then the 10 selected equipment articles, four selected articles and three out of four selected bios have gone almost completely without edits.

These pages are in poor condition as one might expect when no one adds links to edit under the subheds. For example, Portal:Royal Australian Navy/Equipment/1 is in all bold because the creator forgot some apostrophes.

The last nomination in April failed to achieve consensus because arguments circled around scope and a potential merge. A merge is not needed here. See: Portal:Military of the United States, Portal:United States Navy, Portal:United States Army, Portal:United States Coast Guard, Portal:United States Air Force, Portal:United States Marine Corps, etc. Mark Schierbecker (talk) 05:11, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Close (too soon). The previous MfD was closed with a consensus to keep about six weeks ago.  Wait six months before revising a consensus. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:30, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment - In fact the previous discussion did not reach consensus, I see no problem in ping the participants and starting a new discussion.Guilherme Burn (talk) 12:58, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Ah yes. Implied, but it should have been closed with a bold no consensus.  Ping the previous participants yes.  —SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:51, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
 * As I was the person who closed it, I'd say it was more of a keep without prejudice to renomination rather than a no consensus. I don't see the harm in having another discussion here. &#8211; MJL &thinsp;‐Talk‐☖ 15:00, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Ping others participants .Guilherme Burn (talk) 15:45, 7 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Keep - WP:OSE is not a valid reason for deletion. WP:POG did not appear to be a factor as it was also argued by those to keep that the portal met the broad definition scope. If anything, a merge discussion to Portal:Military history of Australia might be needed rather than deletion. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 13:19, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Note misrepresentation. It appears that Knowledgekid87 has decided to adopt NA1K's practice of strategic mendacity, i.e. basing a !vote on a wilful misrepresentation of the relevant guideline, WP:POG.
 * The relevant section of WP:POG requires that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers". Knowledgekid87 appears to have adopted NA1K's practice of attempting to deceive other participants and the closing admin by omitting the second part of the sentence.
 * If appearances mislead, and this was in fact an oversight rather than mendacity, then Knowledgekid87 can demonstrate their good faith by correcting their !vote. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 15:54, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I really hope someone eventually brings this issue to WP:ANI as you continue to target editors personally by calling them liars who deceive to get what they want. This can be seen as a personal attack, and needs to be stopped. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 23:50, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Knowledgekid87, please remember that WP:CONSENSUS is a core policy. The portalista tactic devised by NA1K of systematically misrepresenting the guideline is a sustained attack on consensus-formation which may indeed end up at ANI. However, those engaging in such deception should reflect on WP:BOOMERANG before doing so.
 * Anyway, I note that Knowledgekid87 has not taken the opportunity to correct their misrepresentation of POG. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 00:43, 8 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete per nominator. This fails 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".
 * Some editors choose to take a personal subjective view on whether a topic counts as "broad". These personal views rarely helpful, because while its easy to screen out narrow topics, personal views don't help us decide how broad a topic needs to be.
 * That's why it is important to focus on the second part of the sentence in POG: "likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers". When creating a portal, some estimation is are needed of likely maintainers and readers.  However, when a portal has existed for over a decade, no guessing or estimation is needed, because have long-term data on both points:
 * Readers : Abysmal readership figures. Since pageview data became available in 2015, readership has languished well below ten pageviews day, apart from the period when the portal has been under discussion at MFD.
 * Maintainers : As the nominator has demonstrated, the portal has attracted no maintainers for a decade.
 * So if the portalistas want to find a way of adding this to the collection of abandoned junk which they want to keep, they will need to find actual hard evidence that the low readership and the lack of maintainers be permanently ended.
 * On previous experience, the portalistas are most unlikely to even try to produce any such evidence. Instead, their tactics will involve a combination:
 * Lying about the text of POG, by pretending that it does not require that broadness be likely to deliver readers and maintainers
 * Word negation, claiming that when it comes to portals "large numbers" doesn't actually mean "large numbers". They claim that it really means "tiny numbers", because so many other abandoned portals on narrow topics also have tiny readership numbers.
 * Distraction, promising to update portal. This is an attempt to sidestep the fact that POG requires ongoing maintenance, not a one-off update as a makework ruse to postpone deletion.
 * Defiance, by insisting that it doesn't matter what POG says, they don't want unread abandoned junk portals to be deleted.
 * Each of those 4 points of view is of course interesting in its own way (tho mostly for their perversity), but they are all blatant defiance of WP:POG. If editors reject WP:POG, they should propose its deletion or amendment ... but in the meantime, the WP:ILIKEIT arguments should be ignored by the closing admin.
 * It will be interesting to see which portalistas deploy which of the usual bogus-keep arguments, and indeed whether they manage to devise new counterfactuals. I'm thinking of keeping a scorecard, like bullshit bingo. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 16:36, 7 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete - In previous MfD few keep voters bothered to justify their votes, while there are analysis showing that the topic is narrow and doesn't meet WP:POG.Guilherme Burn (talk) 17:02, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete per BrownHairedGirl. This portal's decade of abandonment since inception means there is a decade of hard evidence that this portal fails WP:POG's requirement that portals be: broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers. The Royal Australian Navy is clearly a very narrow subject area, as were the now deleted portals for the far larger U.S. Army, etc. Portals stand or fall on their merits in the now, not what could hypothetically be magically done with the portal someday, and this abandoned junk has been luring readers to a backwater time suck a decade. Newshunter12 (talk) 17:41, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete this junk portal.Catfurball (talk) 19:44, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete After some thought I can't see this portal going anywhere. Nford24 (PE121 Personnel Request Form) 23:48, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
 * DeletePortal:Royal Australian Navy – Portals on military services have lousy pageviews, and so are not capable of attracting large numbers of viewers and of portal maintainers. This portal has 6 daily pageviews between 1 Jan 19 and 28 Feb 19, while Royal Australian Navy had 745. The argument that the subject area is narrow is just as off-the-mark as abstract claims that the area is broad.  Breadth should be proved by pageviews and maintenance.  By the way, the misinterpretation of the key sentence of what may or may not be WP:POG is not a lie.  It is a strange semantic error, because the portal defenders really believe that the qualifying clause is a non-qualifying clause.  That doesn't make it a useful argument.  The useful argument is to Delete.  Also, the subpage architecture is bad.  If anyone wants to create a portal with a modern architecture that will get maintainers and readers, Deletion Reivew is to the right.  Robert McClenon (talk) 00:58, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment. This thing is not a navigation tool, but the remains of an abandoned cadaver. ANY TEXT in the provided snippets is exactly unchanged from 2008. There are some picture replacements by the usual bots, not by a human user. Oh, yes, there is ONE biography snippet that dates from 2012 (so recent)... but this one is excluded by the max=3 parameter (too recent, may be). And the Anniversaries that only occurs during the Winter season. This has already been said during the first deletion discussion. But nothing has changed since. As usual, the keep !voters cannot be compelled to start working while the rest of the world don't see any reason to become the peones of the portalistas. Since this thing has no readers, there is no damage to let it rot in oblivion. But opening an ANI thread to examine what the Australian Navy has done with the tax payers' money wince 2011 could be a great idea. Pldx1 (talk) 10:23, 9 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.