Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Sustainable development

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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 | [comment] || 03:26, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Portal:Sustainable development


Stillborn portal. Thirteen selected articles created in 2007/08. Selected articles 1-10 were never updated (number six had undetected vandalism). Entries 12 and 13 were created/updated in 2008. Number 11 was updated in 2010.

All 12 selected biographies and 10 organizations have not been updated since 2007. Mark Schierbecker (talk) 02:36, 19 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Comment – This portal was designated as a Featured portal until the featured portal process ended in 2017. The portal has received 2,891 page views in the last thirty days, as of this post. North America1000 03:26, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Note statistical games. Every other editor participating in MFDs lists pageviews as daily averages, which facilitates comparison between periods of different length. It is therefore very odd, and thoroughly misleading, that NA1K has chosen yet again to cite the total number of pageviews for a period, preventing comparison. NA1K has done this before, and has been asked to desist from it, so I don't know whether the repetition is wilful disruption (hoping to mislead by citing a bigger number) or a failure to comprehend simple statistics.
 * Whatever the cause, I urge NA1K to correct their post to show the daily average for their chosen period, which is 93 views per day. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 04:54, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
 * The figure I posted is not a statistic, it's simply a raw, actual number of page views the portal received in the most recent thirty-day period. A problem with relying upon the average page views as a statistic is that this method consistently misrepresents the views a page actually receives, to a lower-than-actual number. For example, when multiplying the average page views of 93 x 30 days, the total is 2,790 views. However, the actual page views are 2,891, over 100 more than using the average. North America1000 05:37, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
 * NA1K writes: The figure I posted is not a statistic.
 * Wow!
 * That number is an aggregation of data over a time period, which is a statistic.
 * The rest of NA1K's post is just an illustration of rounding effect.
 * I am sad that NA1K has confirmed that they simply wanted to present a bigger number. I really hoped that such manipulative silliness was not in play.
 * But I am even sadder that such abysmal understanding of simple of handling numbers is apparently no barrier to participation in building encyclopedia. That depresses me immensely. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 05:52, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
 * "A statistic is any sample quantity". That's from a reference.  A page hit, url and timestamp, is a pageview datum.  The count of pagehits in a day is a statistic for the day.  An average is a statistic.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:01, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I struck part of my comment above. However, I still feel that the actual page views are worthy of consideration as well. North America1000 06:03, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the strikeout, but still: Oh dear. An aggregation of views over a random number of days is neither more nor less the actual page views than a daily average.
 * I feel sad and uncomfortable to have to find civil ways of explaining to an encyclopedia editor some very basic mathematical concepts which my school taught us before puberty. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 06:31, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
 * In the interest of keeping this short so the discussion can move forward in an easier manner, I have initiated a discussion on BHG's talk page regarding the statistics matter. My experience in the usage of statistics is derived from a college-level of experience and applications in performing empirical research. In the context of quickly posting my short, passing comment here, I didn't semantically consider this simple quantification of thirty days of views added together as being a meaningful, advanced statistic, despite the fact that a statistic can be "calculated by applying any mathematical function to the values found in a sample of data". North America1000 07:55, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
 * User:Northamerica1000 - I don't see why a discussion that had to do with MFDs had to be taken off-line to a user talk page, but perhaps you merely were blowing smoke. I took a graduate-level statistics course and was a professional user of statistics for decades, and I think that changing the units is as disruptive as switching back-and-forth between pounds and kilograms or between miles and kilometers.  Robert McClenon (talk) 14:27, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I've replied at the talk page discussion, where I've agreed to the status quo of posting average daily page views when posting in the future; no disruption intended. As such, I struck the content in my first comment as well. As a side note, SPSS rules. North America1000 14:38, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Note on "featured portal" status. It's a pity that in noting this portal's former "featured portal" status, @NA1K chose not to either link to the review process, or to note that it was conducted in June 2007, i.e just over . twelve years ago, when the portals project was little over a year old.
 * The review discussion is at WP:Featured portal candidates/Portal:Sustainable development. I urge editors to read the review, and to note the complete absence of any criteria-based assessment. (It's mostly just variants on "I like it").  By contrast, WP:Featured article candidates/Featured log/June 2007 shows that at the time, featured articles were much more thoroughly assessed, against specified criteria.  The 2007 FA criteria differ little from the current FA criteria.
 * Given the complete absence of rigour in that skimpy 12-year-old assessment, I don't see that it has any relevance other than to illustrate yet again the remarkably consistent lack of rigour applied by the portal project. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 05:14, 19 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete per the nom. While it's true this portal has a much higher viewing rate than most other portals at a median of 89 per day from January 1 to June 30 2019, it still fails other parts of WP:POG, which states portals should be about a "broad subject area, which is likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers." (Emphasis mine) This portal has been abandoned for over a decade, save for a small one off update in 2010.
 * High viewing rates are a big negative when the information being displayed is outdated or inaccurate, such as with this portal. How much damage has been done to Wikipedia's reputation for quality when readers saw this junk portal, we will never know. One off maintenance is not enough to stave off deletion. This portal would need a large team of maintainers to meet WP:POG and it doesn't have it as a decade of hard evidence shows, so it is time to delete it. Remember, crud, even high viewed crud, is still crud. Newshunter12 (talk) 04:53, 19 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete (delete from Portal space, consider MOVE to WikiProject Environment/Sustainability task force/Portal).
 * Worst failure is that it is POV, editor advocacy, not anchored to sources, biased towards editors' biases related to sustainability. As a reader navigation tool, it navigates with a bias towards articles that editors think are more important.
 * For a source-anchored introduction and article-based navigation links, Sustainable development serves better.
 * For a comprehensive, attempted-objective navigation tool, use Category:Sustainable development
 * For a dynamic powerful search, try the Wikipedia internal search engine.
 * If the portal has merit as a Wikipedia editor resource, preserve the contents by moving to WikiProject Environment/Sustainability task force/Portal.
 * Narrow focus portals serve no niche purpose for readers, are an archaic oddity, are POV susceptible, and would be POV abuseable if only anybody cared. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:23, 19 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Comment – This is a poorly maintained but well-viewed (more than 50 daily pageviews) portal. Any proposal to delete this portal should focus on whether it is doing any actual harm, such as presenting incorrect information to the reader.   Robert McClenon (talk) 21:00, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete per nominator and per @SmokeyJoe.

WP:POG requires that portals should be about "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers". This fails on at least two of the three counts: This is around the lower end of the sort of threshold I would like to apply to all portals, so I'd rate it as marginal. But to avoid arguing the toss, I give it a pass.
 * 1)  Broad topic . That depends on how we assess the complex definitional, scope and POV issues surrounding the topic.  These are addressed in the head article sustainable development.
 * 2) ✅ High readership . Marginal, but I will be generous. The portal's January–June 2019 daily average of 107 views per day places it at 48th place in the list of pageviews for all 821 portals. That's in the top 6%.
 * 1)  Lots of of maintainers . Clear fail. The content has been neglected for years.

So it doesn't pass POG.

Additionally, I am strongly persuaded by @SmokeyJoe's arguments about the POV problems with this topic area. The question of what "sustainable development" actually means in practice is hotly disputed. That makes the topic both a potential target for POV-pushers and a minefield for good faith editors. Similar problems apply in article space, but those issues can be resolved in articles by applying policies such as WP:V, WP:RS, WP:WEIGHT, WP:UNDUE etc. However, portals are (disgracefully) unsourced, so none of those tools are available to guide portal maintainers. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 03:41, 20 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete - As nominated by User:Mark Schierbecker and analyzed by User:Newshunter12. In addition to a maintenance lack, this portal has a neutral point of view problem in promoting its concept, as explained further by User:SmokeyJoe and  User:BrownHairedGirl.  The portal is something of a soapbox in presenting a viewpoint.  A neutral portal will not have much of a reason to be kept, and a non-neutral portal has a wrong reason, the POV, to be kept.  Any re-creation should only be after Deletion Review.  Robert McClenon (talk) 15:05, 20 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Keep - More than a 100 daily pageviews, recent maintenance, broad subject area. --Hecato (talk) 22:00, 25 August 2019 (UTC)
 * A driveby lick of paint because the portal is at MFD is not long-term maintenance. And the POG-required WikiProject involvement is absent. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 04:23, 27 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.