Portal:Nanotechnology – The result of the discussion was relist. There is agreement that this was a good close at the time, but a rough consensus that the MfD could benefit from additional discussion with input from the portal's maintainer. – Joe (talk) 20:26, 21 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The following is an archived debate of the deletion review of the page above. Please do not modify it.
This portal was deleted with only two !votes based on the mistaken assertion that the portal had been abandoned since 2012 and had no maintainer. No notification was given to me, the maintainer; apparently, a notification was misdirected to the portal's original creator, who has not been active since 2007, rather than myself.
Given that the basis for the deletion was factually incorrect, this falls under WP:DRVPURPOSE item 3: "significant new information has come to light since a deletion that would justify recreating the deleted page". In addition, given that the discussion received very few !votes, it possibly should have been closed as WP:NOQUORUM, which may also place it under item 1: "someone believes the closer of a deletion discussion interpreted the consensus incorrectly".
Upon undeletion I will promptly fix the issues with outdated information raised in the deletion discussion, which are easily fixed. This request includes Portal:Nanotechnology and its subpages, and Template:Nanotech selected and its tracking categories. Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs) 21:03, 10 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
To elaborate on my last point, the deletion discussion does fall under the letter of WP:NOQUORUM, "a nomination has received few or no comments from any editor with no one opposing deletion", in which case "the closing administrator should treat the XfD nomination as an expired PROD... [and] the article can be restored for any reason on request" (emphasis in original). Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs) 17:31, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Relist for additional discussion including the portal's declared maintainer. There was a {{Portal maintenance status}} template on the portal page identifying Antony-22 as the maintainer, so it was an oversight by the MfD nominator not to notify him. I don't think the closing admin did anything wrong here, but the earlier mistake justifies reopening the discussion so Antony-22 can defend his maintenance activities against the criticisms offered in the MfD discussion. Whether it makes any difference to the final result will depend on how that additional discussion goes. --RL0919 (talk) 21:43, 10 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Agree, failure to notify an active listed maintainer is a critical failure for consensus decision making. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:18, 10 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@SmokeyJoe. See my !vote below. A22 was indeed a listed maintainer, but describing him as an active maintainer is quite a stretch. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 01:41, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Failure to notify an inactive listed maintainer is a lesser-than-critical issue. Still, all stakeholders should be notified, and watchlisting is not always sufficient. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:46, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@SmokeyJoe, it seems to meet that you expressing a personal preference rather than a policy or guideline. WP:MFD#How_to_list_pages_for_deletion says little about notifications, and WP:AFD#After_nominating:_Notify_interested_projects_and_editors is explicit that no notifications are required other than tagging the nominated page: "While it is sufficient to list an article for discussion at AfD (see above), nominators and others sometimes want to attract more attention from and participation by informed editors". So I see no policy basis for treating the lack of notification to a maintainer as being in any way deficient, let alone critical. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 03:06, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
True. We could add it to the rules, to notify maintainers of Portals, like how there are special rules when nomination WikiProject subpages, but it is possible that by the time we agreed to do that, and resolved the possibility of automating it, there will be no more portals anyway. In the meantime, for an very low participation XfD, we usually agree to relist to let a late person have their say. I think the closer should have been asked, and them immediately agreed. It’s very silly to have a megabyte review over a 3 person discussion. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:12, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
We usually agree to relist to let a late person have their say only when they have some statement of fact to contribute that was overlooked - typically, sources that weren't considered, or changes outside of Wikipedia since deletion. I can't recall DRV ever overturning on something so flimsy as "I used to edit this page, and I didn't get a chance to vote", which is what this amounts to. Antony-22: if you've got something to say that would reasonably have changed the outcome at MFD, now's the time to say it. The threshold's pretty low, but I don't see that you've passed it. —Cryptic 04:31, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
We do for sure usually relist if someone comes in just a bit late with something important to say. Antony-22 has not yet said what it is that he might say that is important, but sometimes we like to be nice to people. I see that he did ask User:MER-C at User_talk:MER-C#Portal:Nanotechnology. I am not fully onboard with the quorum talk, but I would have done a quick relist, it would have wasted less electrons than this DRV. Strongly agree with "The threshold's pretty low, but I don't see that you've passed it." --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:14, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I've put more detail in a comment below. But basically my point is that all the content issues raised are ones that could have been fixed very easily by asking nicely. The deletion itself was based on the incorrect statement that the portal had been abandoned since 2012, and that no one was around to take the ten minutes to add a few death dates and update a few employers. Also, the discussion really does fall under the letter of WP:NOQUORUM. I realize that the expectations for portals have been changing over the last year or so, and I can certainly commit myself to bringing on more maintainers and associating with one or multiple WikiProjects. Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs) 16:41, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Antony-22: I don't doubt your assertion that the problems could have been fixed very easily by asking nicely. But the whole point of a maintainer is that they should be pro-actively maintaining, rather than passively waiting for someone else to notify them of long-term problems. And for three years, you hadn't been pro-active. WP:NOTCOMPULSORY, so if your priorities and interests had moved elsewhere, then that's fine and you deserve no reproach for donating your time to something else. But please don't try to have it both ways. You can't be both a maintainer and a not-doing-any-meaningful-maintenance. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 01:00, 19 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Overturn and relist, portal has a named maintainer who has related deleted edits from 2016. (Also seems issues could be fixed relatively easily). —Kusma (t·c) 21:53, 10 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse, as a typical SNOW deletion, but no objection to a relist for more participation. The challenge for User:Antony-22 will be to persuade others why this Portal could help readers better than the article Nanotechnology, and address the many standard portal criticisms including: Never used, no sources, core content compliance problems, redundant to and negatively competing with the parent article. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:16, 10 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The support for a relist is correct as a principle. However, I see no sign of new comments that will change the result. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:17, 19 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Overturn and relist A fuller participation in the deletion discussion would be welcome. Also the oversight to notify the maintainer (prominently listed via the {{Portal maintenance status}} template) is most unfortunate. Perhaps the nominator was having too much "fun" in hastily churning out nominations, whilst engaging in their new hobby, to be bothered? --Cactus.man✍ 00:26, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Overturn This is a case where a failure to notify has led to an unfortunate outcome. If the maintainer had !voted, this would have been at worst a no consensus. SportingFlyerT·C 02:00, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse. The statements made in the MFD clearly showed that the portal had not been (sufficiently) maintained for years. The small number of !voters in an XfD isn't a good reason to overturn an outcome - especially as many editors (including myself) don't bother commenting in cases where the nom has made a good case and no-one has disagreed. DexDor(talk) 11:46, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Relist. Minimal participation and the maintainer wasn't even notified doesn't make for a valid discussion. Restore the portal and reopen the existing discussion for a week. I'm not optimistic the result will be any different, but at least let the maintainer have his say. -- RoySmith(talk) 14:24, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse deletion per DexDor. Notification is optional (if the portal is not on editor's watchlist, how can we expect a talkpage notification to be seen?), and the consensus was clear. UnitedStatesian (talk) 15:11, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Relist as having a named maintainer might change the discussion and it wasn't that well attended to start with. I can't really fault the close though and the rationale for deletion wasn't just based on having no named maintainer, it also noted that large portions of the portal were very out of date. It might be worth restoring to draft space instead if it does have that many factual inaccuracies. Hut 8.5 18:16, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Relist The close was proper as DexDor explains. However, there is no harm to the project if the portal is relisted for more participation WP:IAR. --Enos733 (talk) 19:55, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Relist I do not recall any significant edits by Antony-22. I am fine with relisting. Mark Schierbecker (talk) 21:59, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
After a portal is first set up, subsequent updates to content are made on the subpages, not the main portal page. It's possible you only looked at the main portal page and saw the edits made by the original creator, but weren't looking in the right place to see the more recent content updates by me. Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs) 23:33, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse as one of the Delete !voters. The close was proper. It is not true that the MFD would have been No Consensus if the maintainer had been notified. There were three Delete !votes including the nominator and myself, and no Keep !votes, so that one Keep vote would have still be a Delete consensus, unless a strong policy argument was provided for Keep. I will note that the maintainer could have checked the portal within the week of the listing, or watchlisted the portal, which makes them appear to be a low-priority maintainer. I wouldn't have changed my !vote if I knew that the portal had a semi-active maintainer, because I was persuaded by the errors (which illustrate that content-forked subpages have a tendency to content rot). However, a Relist is a reasonable idea, especially based on Ignore All Rules. Robert McClenon (talk)
The portal was on my watchlist, but I suppose I missed it because I wasn't editing much that particular week and wasn't thoroughly perusing my watchlist, as happens sometimes when real life takes one's attention. A talk page notice would have generated an email, which I would have noticed and responded to very quickly. Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs) 23:27, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse The MFD nominator was incorrect about the date of abandonment, but not about the fact of abandonment. Antony-22's deleted contribs shows that their last 3 edits to he portal were made on 1/ 29 March 2019, 2/ 23 June 2018, 3/ 12 July 2016. One tweak per year is not active maintenance, and the sheer number of factual errors adds to lack of credibility of A22's claim to be a maintainer. So this is not "significant new information", just a footnote.
Note that WP:POG has several other criteria which were clearly not met, such as the need for multiple maintainers and lots of readers and for an associated WikiProject.
So the error makes no material difference to the portal's status, and should not alter the outcome of the MFD. This woefully neglected portal has wasted the time of readers for years, and factually misled many of them. The fact that A-22 now seeks to assert himself as the architect of that neglect, after his culpability was mistakenly overlooked, does not justify wasting more of the community's time on the unpleasant exercise of demolishing A-22's claims. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 23:48, 11 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse per BrownHairedGirl. I was one of the delete voters at the MfD and my vote would not have changed based on knowing that an editor, who for all intents and purposes long ago forsook this portal, had a bout of MfD induced nostalgia and wanted it kept. The portal was riddled with serious errors for years, which demonstrates Antony-22 was not a serious maintainer of this portal and even if they had been, did not require notification. Newshunter12 (talk) 03:31, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Failure to notify an individual isn't usually reversed by deletion review; we'll overturn if a page itself isn't tagged for deletion, and for images and templates sometimes if the tagging's not visible in article or article talkspace, but "I edit this page and didn't get a user talk notification" isn't the sort of significant new post-deletion information that WP:DRVPURPOSE is talking about.I'll extend some benefit of the doubt since this was a minimally-attended deletion discussion, and I don't get the overall impression that individual portals get well-scrutinized at MFD. On the other hand, I can't find any nontrivial maintenance to the portal's content by the nom here since his updates to subpages of Portal:Nanotechnology/Selected biography on 7 November 2015, unless you count adding "Welcome to the nanotechnology portal", changing links to reflect the split of Nano/Bio Interface Center out of University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science, or merely swapping which bio is on which subpage. (I don't.) So while I'll grant that the statement "no maintenance in six years" was incorrect, there's no reason to think that the correct "no meaningful maintenance in four years" would have changed the outcome, especially given the other issues raised at the MFD. Endorse. —Cryptic 04:11, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Relist A poorly attended discussion that had some factual errors and a notification issue that might have turned the tide. Seems like it's worth a relist. Hobit (talk) 06:03, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
As the closing admin, I defer to the outcome of this discussion. MER-C 13:43, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. Several people have referred to "serious errors", but the issues pointed out were a couple of missing death dates and a couple of employers that needed to be updated. This would have been barely ten minutes of work if someone had just asked nicely, and certainly isn't reason to delete. Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs) 16:17, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Antony-22: This tends to be mostly an issue with BLPs. I am not a huge fan of {{Transclude lead excerpt}}, but I recently decided to use it for pages as this one to avoid embarrassment related to long outdated info on BLPs (especially, to catch any deaths). —Kusma (t·c) 16:27, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) (Comment continued) I believe the last time I updated the content selections was in late 2016, so it's perhaps a valid criticism that that's a bit of a longer time than is ideal. For what it's worth, I had prepared updates to the selected biographies (mostly based on a few recent nanotechnology-related Nobel prizes), but hadn't gotten to implementing them yet. So again, this could have been fixed by nicely asking instead of jumping immediately to a deletion discussion.
Also, nanotechnology is a fairly broad subject, as it overlaps physics, chemistry, and even molecular biology, and any or all of those WikiProjects could adopt this portal. This would take a bit longer than the time allotted for a deletion discussion, but I can certainly commit myself to bringing on additional maintainers if this deletion review succeeds. Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs) 16:17, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Members of topic wikiprojects generally take very little interest in portals. Nanotechnology may overlap those topics (and others), but it's smaller than any of those 3 topics. DexDor(talk) 21:11, 13 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
To be fair, these are all topics better discussed at a relist. SportingFlyerT·C 21:36, 13 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Relist. Clearly it would be fair to the maintainer to allow them to state their case, and they should have been notified in the first place. — Amakuru (talk) 16:17, 18 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse. I previously closed this discussion and undid this closure per a request on my talk page. But since I've now read all of this discussion, I might as well give an opinion as an editor. The closure should be endorsed, as it reflected consensus and did not have any procedural defect. That few people participated is immaterial; this is not unusual in XfDs. The argument that relisting is appropriate because the "maintainer" was not notified strikes me as particularly weak. Wikipedia recognizes no privileged role for editors with respect to any page; see WP:OWN. The participation, or not, of any particular editor is therefore also immaterial. Besides, how well is this "maintainer" doing their job if they didn't watchlist the portal page and didn't notice the deletion request? Not very well, it seems, which is probably also a reason, on the merits, to delete this page as unmaintained. Sandstein 16:18, 18 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I thank you for your discretion. I realize this is a tough close because it's right on the line between consensus and no consensus, despite having a very clear majority for relisting. This might be a situation where, according to #Closing reviews, "in some cases, it may be more appropriate to treat a finding of 'no consensus' as equivalent to a 'relist'."
I'd also like to point out that WP:NOQUORUM has an absolute criterion of "few or no comments" other than the nominator; it is not relative to what is typical of a certain type of XfD. Also, as I stated above, the portal was on my watchlist, I just happened to not look at it that particular week. Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs) 17:16, 18 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I count 9 out of 21 votes being to endorse, which is clear no-consensus territory.
And "I didn't check my watchlist" is a creatively novel DRV rationale. Regardless of the outcome of this particular DRV, I sincerely hope that DRV never allows XFDs to be overturned on that basis, because the result would be procedural mayhem.And if you want to change DRV's guidance for closers into "no consensus→relist", WP:RFC is thataway. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 00:53, 19 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This is by no means just "I didn't check my watchlist". The original deletion decision was based on demonstrably incorrect information; it should have been closed under WP:NOQUORUM procedures; and, well, I'm just quoting DRV's guidance for closers at the top of this page. Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs) 02:58, 19 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
"I didn't check my watchlist" is one of the bases of your request.
The "demonstrably incorrect information" is that one of many points in the nomination was a mis-statement of the period of abandonment as seven years rather than three. That is not a material difference. -BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 05:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse – One of the WP:POG requirements is that a portal be maintained, which means having editors to maintain it. In that context, the argument that this MfD was procedurally defective because the maintainer wasn't notified actually supports deletion, not a procedural keep. If the portal had maintainers, they would have noticed that it was nominated for deletion. That no maintainer opined in the discussion more or less proves that there are no maintainers, and thus the portal should be deleted. WP:NOTAVOTE applies here, and it's not unusual for an XfD to have only a few editors opining; that doesn't make it procedurally defective. The end result if this is relisted is not in doubt: deletion. So, the close should be endorsed. – Levivich 18:15, 18 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - I am striking my agreement to a Relist, because on review I see that this would establish the precedent that a maintainer or author could ignore an XFD in order to game the system and see if the XFD discussion was closed as Keep or No Consensus, but appeal if it is closed as Delete. The maintainer should have been aware of the nomination. A maintainer who is not aware of a nomination in seven days is not really a maintainer, and that was one of the reasons for the MFD. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:54, 19 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'm really not trying to game the system or help others to do so here. This is a case where the deletion was made based on incorrect information that wasn't corrected due to a misdirected notification; it shouldn't create any precedent outside those narrow circumstances. Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs) 03:07, 19 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
A couple wrinkles here - first, portals are spread across multiple pages, so it's possible to not notice that a portal has been nominated for deletion if you've only worked on the sub-pages, and second, the XfD was poorly attended enough that another voice grounded in policy could have potentially swayed the discussion from a delete to a no consensus. Clearly anyone who wants to keep an article would be better off !voting keep than ignoring an XfD. Furthermore, there's no proof the XfD was willfully ignored. SportingFlyerT·C 05:53, 19 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
In this case, at least, A22 has a number of edits to the main portal page (most recently on 29 March 2019, to add "Welcome to the nanotechnology portal" to the top). However, I don't think that having missed the nomination edit on one's watchlist is real evidence of being unmaintained - heck, I've got 36000 pages on mine, enough of which are bluelinks that I wade through about two hundred entries a day - so much as needing to have the portal MFD'd and deleted to get the nominal maintainer to notice that the death dates are three years out of date. —Cryptic 17:25, 19 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The above is an archive of the deletion review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it.
