Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Terrorism

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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) 23:39, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Portal:Terrorism


Stillborn portal. Last updated when Osama bin Laden was still at large and ISIS was a start class article.

Sixteen selected articles. One is from March 2013, 12 are from February 2010 and three are from December 2009. None have ever been updated.

Ten unchanged bios from December 2009. Portal:Terrorism/Selected biography/8 received a minor edit in October 2011. George W. Bush entry outdated. Mark Schierbecker (talk) 22:00, 26 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. Also an unduly narrow topic for a portal. bd2412  T 03:47, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete per the nom. This portal has been abandoned for over nine years, save for a few one-off updates by passing editors. It clearly fails WP:POG's requirement that portals should be about subjects broad enough to attract large numbers of readers and maintainers. This decrepit portal has had over nine years of no steady maintainers and it had a low 62 views per day from January 1 to June 30 2019. WP:DYK states: "The DYK section showcases new or expanded articles that are selected through an informal review process. It is not a general trivia section" ... but this nine-year-old set has nothing to do with new or expanded articles, so its only effect is as a WP:TRIVIA section. 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 over nine years of hard evidence shows terrorism is not a broad enough topic to attract readers and maintainers. Newshunter12 (talk) 03:59, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete - This is a heavily viewed but unmaintained portal, and is presenting out-of-date information due to its use of forked subpages. I concur with Mark S and NH12.   There is no short-term reason to expect that a re-creation of this portal will address the problems.  Any proposed re-creation of this portal using a more modern design, and taking into account the failures of many portals, can go to Deletion Review.  Robert McClenon (talk) 01:28, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Correction to nomination. The portal last updated nine days ago, when the news section automatically updated. UnitedStatesian (talk) 06:44, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment - Whether the portal updated depends on exactly what you mean by an update. In my view, it doesn't really count as an update in August but a design improvement in May.  You, User:UnitedStatesian, know that in May you semi-automated the News feature to retrieve pages marked as current events using a regexp of "Terror".  That is an improvement that should be made in most portals that have an In The News feature and are worth keeping.  (I reserve the right to !vote in the future in which portals are worth keeping.)  You made the portal semi-automated with respect to news.  Thank you.  That doesn't mean that this portal should be kept.  It does mean that any portal that should be kept that has a News feature should have it semi-automated if possible, with possibly the ability to do manual updates also.  Robert McClenon (talk) 23:35, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment - If you haven't applied that improvement to any of the four portals that were closed last night as No Consensus, please look at them and decide whether that feature is feasible in them. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:35, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I think it is feasible in all 4. 1 is already done, three left to go. UnitedStatesian (talk) 02:05, 29 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Strong delete per nominator: the lack of maintenance clearly fails POG. and oppose re-creation, for my reasons below.
 * Additionally, this is a very poor choice of topic for a portal. Terrorism is a highly-contested term, included on Wikipedia's list of words to avoid, with its own special shortcut: MOS:TERRORIST. See also Definitions of terrorism, which opens

"There is no universal agreement on the definition of terrorism. Various legal systems and government agencies use different definitions. Moreover, governments have been reluctant to formulate an agreed-upon and legally binding definition."
 * The major points of dispute include:
 * whether state actions which meet other criteria should be labeled as "terrorist"
 * whether violent resistance to tyranny should be labeled as "terrorist"
 * whether definitions should distinguish between civilian and military targets, and between human and inanimate targets
 * In both the article and category and namespaces, Wikipedia's stance on how to handle these highly-charged complexities have been hotly-debated, with numerous pieces of guidance agreed and some contentious practices ended: e.g. Portal:Terrorists has been WP:SALTed since 2012, following a WP:CFD in 2009.
 * I have checked Portal talk:Terrorism and Portal talk:Terrorism/Archive 1, and I find precisely zero discussion of how to apply all that guidance to the portal, let alone any assessment of how the selected topics have been chosen to achieve NPOV. That is scandalous neglect.
 * A highly-charged and highly-controversial topic such as this needs much more diligent scrutiny, which this woefully-neglected portal has never had. Luring readers away from the well-scrutinised head article to this neglected page does a huge disservice both to the readers and to wikipedia's hard-won reputation.  Kill with with fire, and WP:SALT if there is any attempt at re-creation. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 00:25, 2 September 2019 (UTC)


 * Comment - I concur with User:BrownHairedGirl that this portal has an inherently contentious subject matter, and that Wikipedia should not have portals on subjects that are likely to result in point of view disputes. We need neutrally written articles on those topics, and it is difficult enough to achieve neutrality when many editors are not neutral.  Portals in such areas result in unnecessary battleground editing.  Robert McClenon (talk) 23:03, 2 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.