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 | [gab] || 03:14, 29 August 2019 (UTC) reply

Portal:Elbe Sandstone Mountains ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Very narrow topic, with a trivially low readership, and poor maintenance.

The topic is the Elbe Sandstone Mountains, a a mountain range straddling the border between the state of Saxony in southeastern Germany and the North Bohemian region of the Czech Republic, with about three-quarters of the area lying on the German side.

This portal uses the mega-navbox format which its creator and main maintainer Bermicourt has imported from the German-language Wikipedia. I personally think that this is a vastly superior format to the predominant one-at-a-time "selected article" style of navbox, but sadly readers seem no more interested in reading this superior type of portal than the horrible old purge-for-new-selection format.

However, this portal clearly 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". It fails all three counts:

1. N Broad topic. Clear fail, because this is a very narrow topic. Category:Elbe Sandstone Mountains + subcats contains a total of only 149 unique articles, of which only 96 are non-stubs. Using AWB for analysis, I found that 18 of those 96 articles are start-class. That leaves only 78 articles above start-class, which fails the POG requirement that "The portal subject area should have enough interest and articles to sustain a portal, including enough quality content articles above a Start-class to sustain the featured content section". None of those 78 articles are GA-class or FA-class.
2. N High readership. Clear fail. The portal's January–June 2019 daily average of only 5 views per day is trivially low. At this level, the background noise of editors checking and maintaining the page forms a significant part of the total readership.
3. N Lots of of maintainers. Fail. The portal's history shows that most of the maintenance has been done by the creator Bermicourt. However, that maintenance has not extended to either the "Article of the Month" (at Portal:Elbe Sandstone Mountains/Article of the Month) or the "Image of the Month" (at Portal:Elbe Sandstone Mountains/Entry), neither of which has had a single edit of any form since May 2011.

Unlike some other similarly-built German portals, this one does not have a "Wanted articles" section. But much of the rest could be a basis for navboxes, so I would happily support moving the portal to the appropriate WikiProject, which is probably WikiProject Germany.

Bermicourt has indicated elsewhere (e.g. at MFD:Portal:Eifel) that portals such as this are primarily intended to assist editors rather than readers. This conflicts with WP:PORTAL, which says that " Portals are meant primarily for readers". BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 15:38, 21 August 2019 (UTC) reply

• Comment to User:BrownHairedGirl – The interior of a portal is a black box. Readers don't see whether it is using the old design with forked subpages or the newer superior mega-navbox design. They see a portal. The design improvement makes the portal more accurate and has other advantages in the long run, but the readers don't notice. (They do notice if a portal has incorrect information on a head of government). Robert McClenon ( talk) 19:01, 21 August 2019 (UTC) reply
• Question for User:Bermicourt – If this is primarily for editors and not for readers, why not move it into project space? Portals are reader-facing. Robert McClenon ( talk) 19:01, 21 August 2019 (UTC) reply
• Question - Is this a toy portal? Robert McClenon ( talk) 19:01, 21 August 2019 (UTC) reply
• Strong keep as the grounds for deletion are narrow, irrelevant and not universally accepted. The guidelines are neither fit for purpose - being over a decade out of date - nor authoritative as they are the subject of a current discussion. Page views are irrelevant while the search engine fails to find them portals and so are no more valid for portals than for categories. Portals are not set up as articles; they are navigation and project tools. And even articles are not deleted for lack of page views. In terms of notability, these are a major mountain range and natural region either side of the Czech-German border. This is just another part of the ongoing campaign by editors to delete virtually all portals in defiance of the community consensus and related ongoing attempts to agree new and more up to date guidelines. Bermicourt ( talk) 20:02, 21 August 2019 (UTC) reply

That contains several misleading statements. The criteria for deleting articles is different because deleting an article is likely to delete unique content from the encyclopedia. In terms of notability in a global encyclopedia this topic is pretty low (e.g. it doesn't make VA5 and even Wikiproject Germany only rates it mid-importance). DexDor ^(talk) 21:50, 21 August 2019 (UTC) reply

• @ Bermicourt, I understand that you don't work your work deleted, but your !vote is counter-factual:

1. False assertion: In terms of notability .... Reality: WP:NOTABILITY is a test applied to articles. This is not an article; it is a portal, for which the equivalent tests include breadth of topic.
   If Bermicourt wants to set aside the "broad topic" requirement of POG, he should open an RFC to propose the creation of a flood of narrow portals like the portalspammer TTH created last year.
2. False assertion: Page views are irrelevant while the search engine fails to find them portals. Reality: this is a tedious piece of recurring nonsense, which portals fans should have dropped long ago. The search engine does find portals, if the user searches for portals. See this search for portals containing the word "Europe". If the user searches for articles, they get articles: not categories or talk page or Wikipedia pages or draft pages or templates or modules.
   If Bermicourt or anyone else wants to propose that a search for articles should return pages which are not articles, then WP:RFC is that away. If Bermicourt or anyone else wants to propose that the page view criterion should be dropped because search works as designed, then RFC is in the same direction.
3. False assertion: even articles are not deleted for lack of page views. Reality: as DexDor noted, articles contain unique content. Portals are navigation/showcasing tools, and are assessed on different criteria.
4. False assertion: major mountain range and natural region. Reality: as clearly explained in the nomination, it has only 78 articles above start-class.
5. False assertion: guidelines are neither fit for purpose ... nor authoritative as they are the subject of a current discussion. Reality: if and when an RFC amends or replaces the guidelines, we can use the new guideline. But the fact that Bermicourt and a few other defenders of failed portals don't like the guidelines being applied does not invalidate the guidance. That's a pure WP:IDONTLIKEIT stance.
6. Maliciously false assertion: This proposal is just another part of the ongoing campaign by editors to delete virtually all portals in defiance of the community consensus.
   Reality:
   • Community consensus at WP:ENDPORTALS was not to delete the portal namespace. It was not a consensus to keep portals which clearly fail the guidelines.
   • This is not a campaign by editors to delete virtually all portals. Having discussed this with Bermicourt many times, he well knows that is not my aim at MFD, and he should not try to strengthen his case at MFD by misrepresenting me that way. Such dishonesty is uncivil WP:BATTLEGROUND conduct.
     As I have stated many times, I am engaged in ongoing effort to remove the junk which fails the commonsense parts of current guidelines and has accumulated over 13 years neglect of the portal namespace. An ultimate decision on the future of portals is needed, but deleting abandoned junk doesn't prejudice that decision. In the meantime if Bermicourt wants to advocate and end to the deletion of abandoned junk portals, he is free to open an RFC which should be called WP:KEEPJUNKPORTALS. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 22:34, 21 August 2019 (UTC) reply

• Delete per nom. DexDor ^(talk) 21:50, 21 August 2019 (UTC) reply
• Delete per the thorough and highly detailed investigation of the portal by the nominator, BrownHairedGirl. WP:POG states portals should be about: "broad subject areas, which are likely to attract large numbers of interested readers and portal maintainers." This portal has one steady fan-maintainer, but it fails at least two other planks of POG. It is about an incredibly narrow topic (ex. the head article Elbe Sandstone Mountains had only 51 views per day from January-June 2019) and only has 5 readers a day, which is incredibly trivial, not the large numbers POG requires. A substantial portion of the views at that rate are just a background noise of accidental clicks by readers and maintenance/reviews by its creator. I oppose re-creation, as eight years of hard evidence and common sense show the Elbe Sandstone Mountains are not a broad enough topic under WP:POG, nor does it attract large numbers of readers. It's just a recreation area for the creator. Newshunter12 ( talk) 05:15, 22 August 2019 (UTC) reply
• Neutral – This is a toy portal. It appears to fail the breadth of subject matter and readership tests but is well-maintained. It is really lack of maintenance that is the critical problem with most portals. It would be better to Move this toy portal to project space, but, in the absence of such an action, it can be ignored in portal space as useless but harmless. (Only unmaintained or broken portals are harmful.) Robert McClenon ( talk) 15:00, 22 August 2019 (UTC) reply

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.