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. ♠ PMC♠ (talk) 20:42, 31 May 2019 (UTC) reply

Portal:2010s

Portal:2010s ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Hello everyone, and please take this journey with me as we learn the history of P:2010s.

On 2 April 2012, WhisperToMe ( talk · contribs) created this treasure of a portal. I suspect it had to do with the creation of its French counterpart 3 years earlier.

Either way, we now had a portal with about two years worth of content. P:2010s would languish from that point onwards until 2016 when a plunky young editor came to maintain it. According to Redolta's userpage (the maintainer), he is no longer able to edit Wikipedia, but still lists it among the three portals he updated (including Portal:Grand Canyon and P:2000s). With his last edit to the portal on 26 November 2017, it once again fell into disrepair.

Post-TTH, what does P:2010s look like? Well, for page views it is doing well. It's in the top-50.

Well, for subpages it's doing fine there, too. There is at least 29 selected pictures, 8 articles, 2 quotes 7 DYKs, 1 anniversary month, and 6 biographies.

So why do I think it is worth deleting? That answer comes from what Wikipedia is not: WP:NOTDIRECTORY.

Nothing binds these subjects together other than a loosely-associated decade. I suppose it makes sense to some to put Václav Havel in the same list as Lady Gaga, Kim Jong-un, and Malala Yousafzai (whom are all still alive-- Havel seems to have been selected based on his date of death landing in this decade).

One could make an arguement that the selected articles (with one exception) make a lot more sense, but really though? The War on Women belongs on the same list as the European debt crisis or the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster? Is that particularly useful to any reader?

Furthermore, the head article is rated start-class at the moment by WikiProject Years. The related portals section is also abysmal (includes things nothing clearly explained as related to P:2010s such as Portal:Fashion and Portal:Sexuality... which is odd to say the least.)

With no mainter, an unclear scope, and a state of disrepair...

I therefore recommend we simply, Delete the portal and its subpages*. – MJL  ‐Talk‐ ^☖ 21:31, 22 May 2019 (UTC) reply

• Important Comment. I will note that Portal:2010s/Intro should not be deleted as it was merged into 2010s on 09 July 2018. – MJL  ‐Talk‐ ^☖ 21:32, 22 May 2019 (UTC) reply
• Question. @ MJL, why nominate only 2010s? Is there some particular issue with Portal:2010s which doesn't apply to the other decade portals? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 22:41, 22 May 2019 (UTC) reply

  @ BrownHairedGirl: It suffers the most from recentism. However, primarily I was just being cautious with the nomination. – MJL  ‐Talk‐ ^☖ 22:51, 22 May 2019 (UTC) reply

• Comment - This portal has 116 average daily pageviews. Robert McClenon ( talk) 01:42, 23 May 2019 (UTC) reply
• Question - Can the nominator or someone else explain why this portal, with an exceptionally high rate of pageviews, should be deleted? Is it spreading lies? Robert McClenon ( talk) 01:42, 23 May 2019 (UTC) reply
• Keep - As the (former) maintainer of the portal, I believe that the portal could grow so much more than where it is currently at. Although it is true that the portal has fell into disrepair after my latest edit, it is only a matter of a few edits for the portal to be in better condition. For instance, articles that don't necessarily "fit in" with other selected articles can be replaced with more relevant topics from the decade, such as Hurricane Maria, the 2018 FIFA World Cup, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, or the Nintendo Switch. Furthermore, the scope of the portal is to branch out and connect major topics/points from the 2010s into one portal. With this logic that the scope is unclear, should we delete the 2000s portal as well? The 1990s portal? 80s? 70s? Finally, as mentioned, the 2010s portal has a decent amount of daily views. In fact, it has more average daily views than any other decade with their respective portals, so deleting this portal could cause a "domino effect" of killing off other decade portals as well or even portals with smaller view counts. All in all, I believe that the 2010s portal should not be deleted, because the portal is still quite relevant (it has a decent amount of average daily views), and the portal needs just a bit of tweaks to get it back to normal standards, not a full-scale deletion. I'm sure that many people (myself included) would be very upset to see many hours of editing dedicated to this (top-50) portal wasted by a deletion. Good day. Redolta 📱 ^Contribs 05:19, 23 May 2019 (UTC) reply
• Delete. This is unmaiantained crap, which should ideally be speedy deleted.

I looked at Special:PrefixIndex/Portal:2010s, and checked Portal:2010s/Selected article/1 through to /5: every one of them is an unsourced content fork created in 2012, and no significant change since then. See the histories of /1, /2, /3, /4 and /5.

Worse still, look at the biographies. See the histories of biog/1, biog/2, biog/3, biog/4, biog/5, biog/6. All except /5 (Vaclav Havel) is a BLP, but each was created in 2012 and has hardly been touched since. The neglect is obvious, e.g.

• /1 is about Aung San Suu Kyi. But its current text is unchanged since 2012. It makes no mention of her having been State Counsellor of Myanmar since 2016, or of her Halo having fallen off
• /3 is about Julia Gillard. Its current version says she is leader of the Australian Labour Party ... but she was ousted from that office in June 2013
• /4 is about Kim Jong-Un. It currently says At 28–29 years of age, he is the world's youngest head of state. That was written in 2012, but he was born in 1893/841983/1984, so he is now 35–36 years old, and he may no longer be the world's youngest head of state ... yet in 7 years, nobody has updated that

It is abundantly clear that nobody has checked this portal in years for even the most basic, simple errors in BLPs. Just get rid of this junk ASAP: kill it with fire.

Redolta's response above is clear evidence of why this portal doesn't work.

Redolta notes that the portal has fell into disrepair, and that selected articles can be replaced etc. That's all theoretical. Yes, we could have a wonderful portal on nearly any topic if editors worked hard to build and maintain it. But this is just one of many portals which is not being maintained to a high enough standard to keep it on-topic and up-to-date.

The first para of WP:POG says "Portals which require manual updating are at a greater risk of nomination for deletion if they are not kept up to date. Do not expect other editors to maintain a portal you create."

When this portal was created in April 2012, that section of POG made the same point: " Do not create a portal if you do not intend to assist in its regular maintenance."

Redolta's last portal-space edit [1] was 18 months ago, in late 2017.

WP:NOTCOMPULSORY, so Redolta and every other is fully entitled to edit whenever and wherever they like, and to move onto other things if they prefer. But the portal has to be maintained, and if it is not being maintained, it should not be on display. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 07:03, 23 May 2019 (UTC) reply

Comment: If the lead of the article was automatically transcluded into the portal selection, rather than a maintainer manually updating the description at the portal each time a significant change happened, I think this would cut down on a lot of the maintenance issues. I strongly think leads should be automatically transcluded - much fewer maintenance headaches, and I just don't see why it would need to be any different. WhisperToMe ( talk) 16:34, 23 May 2019 (UTC) reply

Here's an example of a portal transcluding the lead: https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Portal:Connecticut/Selected_article/1&oldid=prev&diff=898449214&diffmode=source - I think this step would make it much, much, much easier to maintain portals. Also I just dealt with Aung San: Portal:2010s/Selected biography/1 ... and I dealt with the other articles cited in BrownHairedGirl's post. They all automatically transclude now. In fact Template:Transclude lead excerpt was written with portals in mind. WhisperToMe ( talk) 17:04, 23 May 2019 (UTC) reply

@ WhisperToMe: As you know, I just tested it out at Portal:Connecticut/Selected article. However, it did not work as well as you may think. Whereas before the leads were all of consistent size by design, now I have to fiddle with each one to get it to the right size. In the case of Ellington, Connecticut, it did not work at all the way I hoped. Further, {{ Transclude lead excerpt}} was designed to replace the /Intro subpage as that would be the most visible. It works less well for selected article subpages because changes to the transcluded article (most especially page moves) will now potentially break the selected content. I think I am going to keep this new system for the selected articles on Portal:Connecticut, but it is not much of a timesaver and requires regular monitoring/adjustments. – MJL  ‐Talk‐ ^☖ 17:43, 23 May 2019 (UTC) reply

@ MJL, all portals require regular maintenance. That's why most of them are so dire, because editors like building them but doesn't enjoy the drudgery of ongoing monitoring them. The changing of this one to transclusion reduces the need for monitoring, but does not remove it.

Also @ WhisperToMe, what you did to Portal:2010s/Selected biography/1 is a half-way house which still leaves the forest of sub-pages in place. It is much much better to get of the sub-pages and instead use {{ Transclude random excerpt}} in portal page itself, with a list of topics. That allows the portal to be monitored by just watchlisting the main portal page. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 19:31, 23 May 2019 (UTC) reply

Thanks for the info! I updated Template:Transclude lead excerpt/doc so people know that template exists too! @ MJL: seems like Template:Transclude random excerpt transcludes the lead regardless of how big it is. WhisperToMe ( talk) 00:11, 24 May 2019 (UTC) reply

@ WhisperToMe & @ MJL: don't forget that the whole business of using portals to display previews of the lead of an article is now redundant, because it is all built into the standard Wikipedia software. For an explanation, see e.f. MFD:Portal:Rice.

So by whatever method you create these preview boxes, you're creating something which adds no value for readers. Before ling it will be deprecated; it is just a matter of when someone gets around to opening an RFC on it. It's sad to see editors spending time building something which is redundant. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 02:49, 24 May 2019 (UTC) reply

• Delete - My question was answered. I asked whether it is spreading lies. Yes. Robert McClenon ( talk) 18:32, 23 May 2019 (UTC) reply
• Delete: unmaintained, selection is puzzling per BHG's analysis, I wonder whether it's too broad. SITH (talk) 11:31, 24 May 2019 (UTC) reply
• Delete this shameful unmaintained draft that pretends that the 6 topmost people of the 2010s were:

1. Aung San Suu Kyi
2. Malala Yousafzai
3. Julia Eileen Gillard
4. Kim Jong-un
5. Václav Havel
6. Lady Gaga

Portals = ever improving ! Pldx1 ( talk) 13:43, 25 May 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.