Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Limited recognition

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. MER-C 12:30, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Limited recognition

This portal is an interesting collection of intros from country pages that all (or nearly all) have their own portal. The only thing that ties them together is their failure to (yet) become universally recognized counties.

The mainspace equivalent head article is actually a redirect Limited_recognition which goes to a list page. Generally we don't build portals based on list class pages, and in this case the diverse circumstances of status really only allows a list article because there is so little in common between the 16 places on the list.

There are just two selected bios but one of them is a poet Kosta Khetagurov that was born and lived in present day North Ossetia which is part of Russia, not South Ossetia the breakaway state which would be within the scope of this page.

The page is maintained but I'd argue that as there is only 16 places on the List of states with limited recognition there is a limited scope here. Legacypac (talk) 22:34, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - I appreciate your commentary, but I believe it is misguided; Portal:Limited recognition is not based on one list class article, but based on an entire WikiProject with hundreds of articles in its ever-growing scope (a project which was originally started in 2004 as "WikiProject Unrecognized Countries"). As you mentioned, our portal is maintained, but the others (as you noted that many - but certainly not all - of these subjects have their own portals) are not. In fact, the reason for having one portal that intends to cover all of these countries together - their histories, their geography, their cultures, etcetera - is because this is a much less limited scope than trying to make a portal for each of them; it's hard to get much information from countries that you can't find on the map, but the collective information covering all of them is certainly enough to warrant a project and portal. Note that Ossetia-related subjects (much like Cyprus-related subjects) tend not to be divided; there is only one WP:WikiProject Cyprus and only one WP:WikiProject Ossetia. WikiProject Ossetia is inactive, and it is in the scope of WP:WPLR. WP:WPLR (which maintains Portal:Limited recognition) is de-facto the only project explicitly working on subjects relating to the Ossetian culture at this time. As you can see on the portal page, we have a very lengthy to-do list which includes several planned upgrades to the portal. It's not particularly easy to find new content about the subject on a regular basis; this portal aims to provide a large amount of easily accessible information about these unrecognized states because they're infamously hard to find information about. It has admittedly been a very slow process, and I wish we had a few more volunteer editors in our project to help, but I certainly don't see a case for deletion. As far as the portal guidelines go, the portal seems to meet the desired criteria. Brendon the Wizard ✉️ ✨ 23:23, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - Portals are best used to handle non-controversial topics. Per WP:PWP "Portals may contain uncited/unclear/biased information" its a problem in this case.Guilherme Burn (talk) 01:11, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, sadly. I am personally fascinated by the question of how nation-states are born and recognised. It's easy to think of states as permanent fixtures, but in reality they come and go, and some struggle to reach adulthood. So congrats to @BrendonTheWizard and the other good folks at WP:WPLR who are developing Wikipedia's coverage of this topic. I'd prefer if their scope was broader and included wholly unrecognised states such as the 1919–1922 Irish Republic, but that's their call, and I can see definitional problems if the wholly unrecognised are included.

However, I see a number of problems:

Limited Recognition is really just a subset of the wider topic Diplomatic recognition. If there is going to be a portal in this area, I think it would be much better to cover the whole topic.
The lack of any head article apart from the intro to the list forms a poor basis for a portal, because there is nowhere for a reader to go to get a good overview of the topic. The result is an anecdotal portal focusing on examples of an ill-described issue rather than on the issue itself. The current portal doesn't even give prominence to existing articles on key concepts such as Declarative theory of statehood, Constitutive theory of statehood and Jus legationis.
Neither Limited recognition nor Diplomatic recognition are even Level-5 WP:Vital articles. There is no current consensus for any formal requirement to meet any VA level, but I repeatedly see that portals on topics of VA-4 and lower levels suffer even worse sustainability issue than the too-often-neglected Va-3 and higher topics.
The focus on current states with limited recognition skews the portal towards WP:RECENTISM.
The weirdly titled "Current state biographies" section is just the general articles on those states. There isn't even a single standalone article on the limited recognition of country x. That means this isn't really a portal about limited recognition; it's a just collection of states which happen to have limited recognition.

So, I'm sorry, but I don't think there's either anything here worth keeping, or any solid basis for further development. The editors involved would do much better to improve the articles. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:31, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I take full blame for the scope of the portal being evidently unclear. The scope can be found here. While I agree that more information regarding the declarative and constitutive theories should be added, I would also like to note that the opening section of the portal does in fact state these theories by name and briefly explains them. More importantly, I would like to stress that - per the scope - this portal's purpose is not to simply explain the recognition itself or serve as a diplomatic relations portal. It serves as a portal for information about the states with limited recognition themselves. This is because our portal page would, ideally, serve as an easily navigable portal to access the information that our project provides, and our project's goal is to lessen the deficit of information regarding said states. I concede that the current title is therefore poor, and "Portal:States with limited recognition" may be more accurate title. The title of "Limited recognition" was chosen because WP:WPLR (formerly WP:URC) has been debating for years how we can make an accurate, scope-encompassing, concise title. "WikiProject Unrecognized Countries" was decided against because it didn't properly fit the scope. It was changed to "Wikipedia:WikiProject geopolitical entities not recognised as states" which obviously fails WP:CONCISE. As one can see on our project page, our scope actually goes slightly beyond current states with limited recognition (as it has for the last fifteen years), so I'm not sure what to do about the title. I maintain that it is preferable to have a single project and portal for these states, as the individual countries' projects and portals are unmaintained, inactive, and abandoned, which only worsens the chronic lack of up-to-date reliable information about said countries on the encyclopedia. Your critiques are well-considered, and #2 in particular is certainly going to be addressed regardless of whether the portal is kept or later recreated and approved (assuming a lack of prejudice against it being redone in the future). Brendon the Wizard ✉️ ✨ 02:58, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@BrendonTheWizard:, there is already a well-built navbox {{States with limited recognition}}, which provides much better navigation than the portal. I wish those of you working on this important topic every success, but your energies would be very much better spent on improving the articles than on this portal which gets only 14 pageviews per day, compares with 1,163 per day for the List of states with limited recognition. That sort of viewing level is common for portals; readers just don't want them and don't need need them. The head articles are better navigational hubs. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:49, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - I concur with the analysis by BrownHairedGirl. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:43, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I love the topic and actively seek to learn more about these almost states. Even visited Kosovo in December. But I'm struggling with the title and scope here. The portal is pulling 450 giews in the last 30 days which is good for a portal, but I'm afraid this is not as good an introduction as the article with links to each entity. Legacypac (talk) 06:01, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - Maintained portal, 32 subpages, created 2018-04-27 18:14:57 by User:BrendonTheWizard. The rationale given for it's scope seems to be: individual portals are in poor shape. This is a true fact, even for the Portal:Palestine. But this is not specific to states with limited recognition. Portals are dying, all of them. Portal:Limited recognition has 14 views per day in the last three months. And helps nothing. Who will key "Portal:limited recognition" when seeking for Taiwan or North Cyprus ? Pldx1 (talk) 10:08, 23 April 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.