Talk:Libertarian socialism

RFC/User Conduct for User:BlueRobe

 * Editors with an opinion about User:BlueRobe's conduct in the disputes above may comment at Requests_for_comment/BlueRobe. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BigK HeX (talk • contribs) 06:39, 6 September 2010 UTC) (UTC)

Relevant discussion on original research re: "Libertarian Marxism"
Talk:Libertarian_Marxism --Grnrchst (talk) 23:21, 13 November 2022 (UTC)


 * It appears the problem with original research has also made its way into this article. In a quick scan I have come across multiple citations that fail verification, entire sections lacking in reliable sources and a few possible cases of synthesis. This needs work. -- Grnrchst (talk) 09:16, 14 November 2022 (UTC)
 * The more I look at it, the more I worry that almost the entire "Notable tendencies" section may need to be axed. It's incredibly long, inconsistently formatted and often unclear how it relates to the article's subject. Many of these sections seemingly only exist to summarise their own articles. One could probably cut this entire section down to a few paragraphs and nothing of particular value would be lost. -- Grnrchst (talk) 12:23, 19 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Ok, I just cut the entire "Contemporary libertarian socialism" section, as it consisted almost entirely of text copy-pasted from the contemporary anarchism article, with the word "anarchism" swapped out for "libertarian socialism". None of the sources made even a passing reference to contemporary libertarian socialism, almost all discussing contemporary anarchism or left communism. This was another bad case of a section only existing to summarise a different article, and in doing so, twisting the text in order to make it seem like it fit here. -- Grnrchst (talk) 10:58, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm still going and I swear I'm trying to be conservative about what I cut, but this article isn't making it easy. It seems at times like stuff is just placed in at random, with no thought for how it fits into the rest of the section it's in, often with citations that verifiably don't even mention "libertarian socialism". I have only managed to come across a couple of instances where the cited sources verifiably discuss libertarian socialism, and these are unfortunately few and far between. One of these reliable sources, cited extensively throughout the article (Ojeili 2001), unfortunately falls victim to excessive quotation. So even the good sources aren't utilised well.
 * If you come across any content removal that you disagree with, please revert it and bring it up here. But as of yet, I'm struggling to find much of this article that is worth keeping. Grnrchst (talk) 19:15, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I strongly disagree with those edits. I think that the better strategy would be to add citation needed tags and to enhance the use of good sources rather than this massive cull. I've moved the old version to my sandbox here and may try to find time to work on sourcing. BobFromBrockley (talk) 14:40, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Like many of the "two word" libertarian articles, they are about a vague term rather than a distinct real world topic that is merely named bu the term. And they become bloated mother-of-all coatracks, mostly about people pondering the term and things related to it. These mostly aren't sources about the term, they are the creators of musings about it. I'd like so see many of these reduced to short articles about the term and applaud any efforts in that direction. North8000 (talk) 18:07, 12 January 2023 (UTC)


 * @North8000: Keeping focus on the term is what I'll aim to do with rebuilding this article. As per my restructuring of the articles on collectivist anarchism, social anarchism and green anarchism, my focus has been on sources that verifiably use the subject's terminology. This should hopefully result in a more focused article, rather than pulling together any old text from random sources that only have a tenuous link to the subject. In any case, it'll be better off than the unreadable omnishambles of misinformation that this article was a few months ago. -- Grnrchst (talk) 18:54, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't have the expertise in those areas to comment much further. The simple case (and the case for most Wkikpedia articles) is when there is a distinct real world topic known primarily by the title of the article. But I think we need to recognize when this is not the case.  Where it is primarily (just) a term, possibly including a view of real world stuff created by the lens of that term. The fact that it is inherently about a concept doesn't change this.   I think that a lot of the "two word" libertarian names/ articles are cases of this.  For these I think it's best to recognize this, and to confine coverage to where the sources use the actual term.  For example, (chosen only for it's simplicity)  Lake Michigan–Huron should be about the concept of combining the two lakes and only where the sources use the term, it should not be coverage about anything else such as Lake Michigan or Lake Huron.  North8000 (talk) 19:14, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Aye I agree completely. I'm coming at this as someone that mainly edits history articles, not having paid much attention to the -ism articles until I recently saw just how much of a state they were in. So if I were to be editing an article about a historical figure and saw that more than 75% of the sources didn't even mention them by name, then I wouldn't think twice about cutting those sources or the text they were cited to. I see little difference here. If most of the article is talking about random, tangentially-related stuff and the cited sources never even use the phrase "libertarian socialism", then it's worthless for an encyclopedic article. -- Grnrchst (talk) 19:24, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Another much more complex example is Right-libertarianism where there was another "tower of babel" complexity added. We had an endless friendly pleasant debate and never resolved it. North8000 (talk) 19:54, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
 * @North8000: I've almost completely rewritten the article, drawing from clearly reliable sources that verifiably reference libertarian socialism. Let me know what you think. Although, to be honest, I'm completely burned out by this subject. It's so vaguely and broadly defined with such little actual scholarly analysis (because it's vaguely and poorly defined) that researching it was a chore. I really just wanted to get this over with.
 * I'm sure there's problems with it, so I trust others to alter the things they find issues with. For now I'm satisfied that there's no longer a problem with original research, synth and poor sourcing. -- Grnrchst (talk) 10:25, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Cool. Thanks for all of that hard work. North8000 (talk) 13:37, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
 * One test that I encourage is to see if the topic exists distinctly independently of the term vs. something that is directly a creation of the term. IMO the former should be be a typical article about the topic and the latter should limit itself to being about the term. I don't know about this article, but IMO there are several "two word" libertarian articles which should be the latter. North8000 (talk) 16:57, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
 * @North8000: In this case, I'm kind of in two minds about it. One could say that libertarian socialism exists independently of the term, but it's also quite broadly defined and I don't think there are many people that identify specifically with "libertarian socialism" but not one of its many "branches" (defined retroactively, as the "branches" mostly precede the umbrella term). As for the term's historical use, Google Ngrams appears to indicate that it wasn't used much at all before the 1940s and only actually took off during the 1960s. This aligns with what I know about the term "libertarian socialism" largely being a product of the New Left, hence why that section is the largest one - having the most sources on it - while the ones before it are relatively short (being retroactively claimed as "libertarian socialist" despite not identifying themselves as such). -- Grnrchst (talk) 17:51, 1 August 2023 (UTC)