Talk:Takis Fotopoulos

Untitled
This page survived an AfD. The discussion can be found here. enochlau (talk) 00:34, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

I deleted "Having contributed only a handful of publications to peer-reviewed journals, and none to mainstream newspapers like The Guardian (see or  for articles that were rejected)" because he has contributed articles to mainstream newspapers in Greece and Turkey. I also deleted "managed" because it was useless, not to say, offending.--TheVel 13:56, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

A cursory reading of the Guardian articles shows to any regular reader of this newspaper that the articles were in fact REFUSED (not rejected) for obvious political reasons, given that the Guardian line on both was opposite to the one supported by Fotopoulos, who has frequently not hesitated in his writings to criticise the reformist line of this paper.It is not accidental that the Guardian never published articles by, say, Murray Bookchin or other significant libertarian writers, particularly if they referred to current political events (Student in Britain) 18:46, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

I deleted, "Although he never got a PH.D." and an inaccurate paragraph about heated exchanges. I replaced it with a more accurate account with links.--john sargis 6:05, 12 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually, I believe it's valid to include Fotopoulos' lack of a PhD degree in this article; In his english-language CV, as posted on his own website, no postgraduate or doctoral studies are mentioned. In the Greek version, however, he does mention that he received a postgraduate degree in Economics from the London School of Economics. Do note, also, that, in the Greek version of his bio, Fotopoulos translates the english term "Senior Lecturer" as "καθηγητής", which is the Greek term for "Professor". Quite misleading on his behalf, no? And I have to note his rather dramatic stance on the whole Wikipedia article about him, as well as the whole AfD debacle shows that Fotopoulos has a serious problem with people cross-checking facts about him and scrutinizing his positions and work. Coming from Greece, I think this has a bit to do with his status as a "Holy Cow" among Greek leftist theorists and I am quite sure he tries to exploit the language barrier to its fullest. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.66.176.47 (talk) 19:47, 11 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Your attempt to discredit Takis failed. john sargis 10:54, 28 January 2012


 * Exactly how did he fail? Mr. Fotopoulos' work consists almost entirely of articles in magazines and websites he owns and controls. That is not the definition of scientific work. Please take your drama elsewhere. SentientContrarian (talk) 07:03, 31 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Did not his activity cease, when chastised by the administrator for being unreasonable? Unless of course his irrationality is now living through you. It seems you do not know the definition of a scientific work. It is more likely that the work of the Journal is revolutionary and not scientific as you suggest it feigns to be. John sargis (talk) 21:20, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

-Influences-

I added Hannah Arendt as part of Fotopoulus' influences and I have an essay/article written by him which could be used as a citation, but I don't know who to cite it myself. If anyone wants to do this, here's the essay:

http://www.democracynature.org/vol5/fotopoulos_inclusive.htm

Violation of WP:OWN by ID members
john sargis needs to learn to respect Wikipedia's rules and stop removing referenced additions that were made to the article. I understand that John Sargis, being a member of Inclusive Democracy (therefore a biased editor), gets upset at the thought that international readers will realize that Mr. Fotopoulos has embarked on a smear campaign against many democratic movements (such as Democracy Now!) and even the Free Software movement, but this has got to stop. NOW. Otherwise, I'm going to end up reporting his antics to the administration of Wikipedia for whatever further actions need to be undertaken against this disruptive behavior. As for the Inclusive Democracy's melodramatic and rather libelous against Wikipedia announcement (basically, we are talking about Mr. Fotopoulos and his few Greek followers) of withdrawal from Wikipedia, I find it rather amusing (to say the very least) to see that they do not honor it. Men of honor stand by their word - at least that's what I thought so far. Elp gr (talk) 18:42, 12 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Elp gr attacked the biography of Mr. Fotopoulos, just by sheer speculation, based on articles that Fotopoulos didn' t even write, as is shown in the talk page of john sargis. In fact all allegations by Elp gr are feeble, based on sheer very personal speculation, without any reliable Secondary sources dealing with Takis Fotopoulos work, as are the references in his biography. These allegations, in fact, seem to be completely biased and not accidental, as Inclusive Democracy has been under attack by a tiny group of bloggers because of Takis Fotopoulos' and others' proposal for direct-democratic and self-managed blogging by the bloggers and internet activists themselves. This libertarian ideal is something users (hopefully, a small minority) like Elp gr don' t desire, for reasons e.g. like the ...easiness to distort Mr. Fotopoulos' biography, due, obviously, to their personal libellous interest. It is indicant that the withdrawal from the Wikipedia mentioned above was also well substantiated, with specific facts that were also certified by Wikipedia adiministrators as well. So, it is more than a lie that Fotopoulos or Inclusive Democracy want Wikipedia "censored".Panlis (talk) 01:07, 13 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Oh please. If you don't like Mr. Fotopoulos and his team's announcements being referenced here, maybe these announcementw shouldn't be written in the first place. After all, they are taken from his own website. As for the "direct democracy in the Greek blogosphere" etc, Mr. Fotopoulos and his team set against internet anonymity and also, in an email (which has now been published online) he sent to another blogger, Mr. Fotopoulos threatened a blogger with continuous harassment until the blogger would end up suing Mr. Fotopoulos, thus providing Mr. Fotopoulos with the blogger's personal information. Why would Mr. Fotopoulos want the personal information of someone who just happens to not agree with him 100%? Ask Mr. Fotopoulos, if you wish. Furthermore, Mr. Fotopoulos, in one of his recent Greek-language announcements, has labeled an important blog/news aggregator (the "You Pay Your Crisis" blog) as an... "instrument of the Israeli Embassy". Also, have you heard the news? It is not the (unpaid for 9 months now) personnel of Eleftherotypia that caused its publication to be "suspended". It was its ownership's mismanagement, which led to its bankruptcy. Elp gr (talk) 03:34, 13 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Well, lies after stacks of lies, just for the sake of vandalism. These articles are taken from the Inclusive Democracy web site, which is not Mr. Fotopoulos' web site, but the Inclusive Democracy web site, that is a whole political organization. Obviously, you can' t even read the labels in a web site and who signs the articles and announcements, so what are you doing in Wikipedia, really? Attributing another person' work to another is a blatant logical fallacy and distortion, by any standard, and this would be sufficient for any kind of slander, as your vandalisms. The same applies to the fact that of course when and if someone smears somebody else repeatedly and does a personal attack without verifiable evidence, through anonymity, based on speculation and hir/her personal interest e.g. in the Left or in some internet business, this could be a good reason for the latter to sue the former for the slanders, although Mr. Fotopoulos has never done this before, as he explicitly stated, in his 71 years of age. Of course slander is by no means a kind of disagreement, as you comfortably present it, but there are standard criteria in rational and/or scientific discourse which define what slander is, like unsubstantiated or poorly substantiated attacks, arbitrary censorship, etc.. And Mr. Fotopoulos justly wanted to defend himself and his work from this sort of insidious and defaming distortion and censorship against ID and himself in some new media like Indymedia and some blogs, as he had every right to do, regardless if this is in the internet or anywhere else in the publishing world.
 * Moreover, he did not proceed with these just (in the context mentioned) "threats", but he proposed, as he had done many times in the past, self-management and direct democratic decision making of bloggers and internet activists themselves, which should abide by some ethics and self-control, as used broadely in every section of serious social activity, in all sort of publications etc..
 * Second, you repeat the same false and malicious arguments that you added to john sargis talk page and to which I replied there. If you don' t want to abide by the rules set by Wikipedia you should not repeat what has been plausibly replied with specific evidence and not distortion, then you could be easily deemed a vandal in Wikipedia. All info about this blog "You Pay Your Crisis", along with specific evidence of what happened, has been posted. So Mr. Fotopoulos did not call the blog "an instrument of the Israeli Embassy" as you repeat, but he just parallelized what the blog implied about Mr. Fotopoulos antisemitism (and what you also implied, just copying/pasting these unsubstantiated claims!), with what the Israeli Embassy thought of him. The "instrument of the Israeli Embassy" moto is what the blogger who censored Mr. Fotopoulos and Inclusive Democracy claimed (links in john sargis talk page), in order to defame him and supposedly turn this blog into a "victim". So, a biased adoption of this "claim" on your behalf, distorting the other' s words is a logical jump and fallacy which is also obviously malicious, with everything this implies for your motives.
 * Last, you repeat the same lie about Eleftherotypia: Eleftherotypia was filed for bankruptcy, as this is a normal legalistic device to avoid proceedings by creditors, but in the meantime there are discussions for the sale of 30% of shares to another publisher who has already agreed to continue publication and at the moment it just suspended publication because of the strike of the stuff, not because of "bankruptcy", as you misconstrue the case.Panlis (talk) 13:38, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
 * OK then, I'll start translating everything that was written. Elp gr (talk) 16:04, 13 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I am adding the following to my reply to the malicious accusations and distorting lies of Elp gr.


 * He writes: "As for the "direct democracy in the Greek blogosphere" etc, Mr. Fotopoulos and his team set against internet anonymity and also, in an email (which has now been published online) he sent to another blogger, Mr. Fotopoulos threatened a blogger with continuous harassment until the blogger would end up suing Mr. Fotopoulos, thus providing Mr. Fotopoulos with the blogger's personal information. Why would Mr. Fotopoulos want the personal information of someone who just happens to not agree with him 100%? Ask Mr. Fotopoulos, if you wish."


 * What Elp gr does not mention above is that this blogger had described TF as suffering from dementia, paranoia etc. and also falsely (as he himself admitted) accused him of personally slandering Castoriadis, which he never did. It was at this point that Mr. Fotopoulos wrote to him and asked him to abandon anonymity and come into the open to criticise him in any publication he liked. He is lying that Fotopoulos just wanted his personal information, which any way, had Fotopoulos wanted to sue him, he could easily find it out


 * He also writes: "Furthermore, Mr. Fotopoulos, in one of his recent Greek-language announcements, has labeled an important blog/news aggregator (the "You Pay Your Crisis" blog) as an... "instrument of the Israeli Embassy."


 * This is a blatant lie. What Fotopoulos wrote was: "I have to point out that this miserable calumny (that we are antisemitists), it was only the Goebbelists of the Israeli embassy who uttered it publicly against us, and it seems that your blog goes along with this." (calumny) Moreover, this was further explained in the dialogue between Fotopoulos and the the blogger of "You Pay Your Crisis" . Here is an article (in English) showing the kind of “anti-Semite” Takis Fotopoulos is!Panlis (talk) 18:31, 13 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Elp gr also disputed the following fact, reverting my addition about Takis Fotopoulos' political activity in Athens: "He was elected as a member of the Administrative Council of the Law students Union in 1958-59, following the first victory of a Left alliance in which he participated against EKOF, an extreme right wing student association controlled by the 'deep' Greek state, which a few years later, in 1963, was responsible for the murder of Left parliamentarian Grigoris Lambrakis and 4 years later of the military coup which led to the military dictatorship (1967-74)"


 * What sort of citation could be given on this? The only citation could have been a negative one if somebody has disputed this entry which was standard in all Fotopoulos' books published in the last 20 years or so. This never happened. And something else: E.g. In Michael Albert' s bio it is written “During the 1960s, he was a member of Students for a Democratic Society, and was active in the anti-Vietnam War movement.” Why nobody asked for a citation on this? Obviously for the same reason Fotopoulos cannot give a citation in his participation to the Greek student movement, although we gave many more details on his activity than Albert’s bio did.


 * Judging from the above, I conclude without any doubt that Elp gr' s activity is highly distorting, in the brink of vandalizing repeatedly the entry, and this has been also rightly implicitly or explicitly spotted by other users and administrators of Wikipedia as well. The addition of the WP:NPOV in the entry, is therefore redundant and disruptive and another indication that this user is not bonafide at all and would probably like to vandalize the entry, as he already repeatedly arbitrarily altered it, misconstrued the words of others in the talk pages, altering facts, and s/he added the need of extra citations to verifiable facts per se, as was shown above.


 * So, I assume it is prudent to demand the immediate removal of this Header, along with the removal of the Header on additional sources in a BLP.Panlis (talk) 19:27, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, the templates are not so bad for a little while - they at least show editors that there is a bit of dispute and work required to improve the biography. If you want to calmly lay out any issues you have with the current content on the talkpage and if you have any reliable sources to support anything that is uncited currently that would be beneficial. Rather than carrying on the previous dispute, we rather focus on content. - Thanks -   You really can  20:03, 13 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Hello. Other editors and I have already done significant improvements and provided citations for everything, even for those demanded by this biased user (many more than those provided by other -non disputed for neutrality- Wikipedia bios), so I cannot see why a tag disputing the neutrality of the article should stay just because one user, who was shown to be utterly biased, did so, and therefore I think it is high time that this tag is removed, as there is no dispute anymore.Panlis (talk) 12:46, 14 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Following my and other editors' efforts to achieve consensus (making lots of improvements, even to meet demands by user Elp gr) and, as in fact a consensus has already been achieved among everybody else (even among the people in the biographies talk), apart from this obviously biased user, I now proceed to the removal of the tag.Panlis (talk) 21:31, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Seems like a reasonable position.   You  really  can  21:33, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

I am terribly sorry to interrupt, but the vast majority of the sources and references provided for this article are from publications and websites directly controlled by Mr. Takis Fotopoulos himself (the "Democracy & Nature" publication, the "Inclusive Democracy" websites etc) and there are aspects of Mr. Fotopoulos' biography that are mentioned only on his own websites or have been copied verbatim from his own website on other websites friendly or affiliated to him. This article looks a bit too much like the one on Jamie Zawinski. I will also have to add that I do not see any mention of criticism on his positions; in articles about other scholars, philosophers etc, we usually do see sections with criticism of the subject's views, positions, even actions. To my eyes, this article looks a bit too much like an attempt by people who are - more or less admittedly - followers of Mr. Fotopoulos to write a hagiography about him. In my eyes (and I must say I was not really aware of Mr. Fotopoulos so far, until I ran into this article while studying various other articles on Libertarian Socialism), this article does not look as neutral as Wikipedia would require. SentientContrarian (talk) 06:23, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
 * On Mr. Fotopoulos' own website, I have found this announcement, dating from 2006 and it is full of accusations against Wikipedia and its administrators. Now, This does not sit particularly well with me; it seems like Mr. Fotopoulos and his followers do not like Wikipedia's principles, rules and policies. SentientContrarian (talk) 06:34, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
 * First of all it is not that Mr. Fotopoulos or "his followers" (an unfounded claim)dislike wiki rules, etc., but that those rules and procedures are not evenly distributed across all biographical pages, since "Fotopoulos and his followers" defeated the first attack against it, and it seems some administrators can be fooled by the rhetoric. Second, you are a liar or a wannabe administrator since you state the attack "against Wikipedia and administrators does not sit well with me". Maybe you should expel it. John sargis (talk) 21:54, 2 April 2012 (UTC)


 * There is also another issue, now that I think about it all again. Since this article consists of material that comes either from primary sources (i.e. Mr. Fotopoulos' own websites) or from sources closely affiliated with him (and possibly under his direct or indirect control), it fully justifies an NPOV tag, because such articles are always written in favour of the subject, what with users Panlis and John Sargis being admittedly biased in favour of Mr. Fotopoulos. Were this particular article written about a company and/or its products, it would immediately be labelled as "corporate fellatio". Therefore, I am forced to put the NPOV tag on the article again, even if it causes great chagrin to the followers of Mr. Fotopoulos. Wikipedia has very specific rules and requirements: articles must be based on secondary, reliable sources and they must be neutral. Articles that are based exclusively on primary sources and sources affiliated with the subject simply do not qualify as encyclopaedic, especially articles written almost exclusively and controlled by followers and supporters of the subject, since they cannot be neutral at all - pure, simple logic and reason here. And I am appalled at all the ridiculous internet drama caused by Mr. John Sargis and Mr. Panlis in previous parts of the discussion. Such drama has no place in Wikipedia and does not portray them or their political/ideological leader in a good light; in fact, it makes them worthy of derision. Also, being Greek, I shall take the time this weekend to read the "Inclusive Democracy" announcements that user Elp Gr was referring to. SentientContrarian (talk) 07:01, 31 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I don' t think the bias belongs to the article, but rather belongs to the supposed "objective" and "neutral" findings of SentientContrarian. His methods are more or less the same with the defamatory methods used by Elp Gr, in almost a strikingly similar way. This is not accidental: SentientContrarian writes in his user details that he has "a strong dislike towards articles that read like they were created by someone's fan club". Can SentientContrarian tell us for how many (and for which) other wiki entries he did the same, because it seems that he created his user account (just a few days ago) only to continue his vandalism of Takis Fotopoulos' entry, which he began as Elp gr but dismally failed to complete at the time?


 * Regarding his "findings": First of all, a biography article, according to Wikipedia rules, is not a market product presentation, as this user more or less claims, and there is even a provision in the guidelines that even the living person can contribute him/herself to his/her own biography (something that is not the case here). But let' s see SentientContrarian' s claims:


 * 1) "the vast majority of the sources and references provided for this article are from publications and websites directly controlled by Mr. Takis Fotopoulos himself (the "Democracy & Nature" publication, the "Inclusive Democracy" websites etc)"


 * This is not true. Out of the eleven (11) references of the article, only 3 are from primary sources, and especially in a biography article this is absolutely legitimate, as they refer to what the living person to whom the biography belongs, have significantly contributed in times. All the rest are from secondary sources.


 * 2) "this article consists of material that comes either from primary sources (i.e. Mr. Fotopoulos' own websites) or from sources closely affiliated with him (and possibly under his direct or indirect control),"


 * Same applies here.


 * 3) "On Mr. Fotopoulos' own website, I have found this announcement, dating from 2006 and it is full of accusations against Wikipedia and its administrators. Now, This does not sit particularly well with me; it seems like Mr. Fotopoulos and his followers do not like Wikipedia's principles, rules and policies"


 * SentientContrarian obviously misred the article, because the article mentions that it was Wikipedia administrators who revealed and proved that there was a serious defamatory activity by specific users against Inclusive Democracy articles. This claim, once more, constitutes a distorting reversal of reality. Panlis (talk) 13:50, 31 March 2012 (UTC)


 * All you did was mention that someone critically assessed Mr. Fotopoulos' work. No mention of what they said about his work or anything. Please read a few more articles about philosophers and scholars and come back, okay? Oh, and you "Inclusive Democracy" people should refrain from using sockpuppets. Such actions are not appreciated here - The Church of Scientology tried to do this, and they were duly banned. SentientContrarian (talk) 06:43, 1 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Furthermore, I'm halfway done reading the Greek-only rants of Mr. Fotopoulos and his team on the Inclusive Democracy - Greek announcements part of the "Inclusive Democracy" network's website. Besides being ridiculously long, they are full of unfounded allegations against a great number of people and movements that (Indymedia, Democracy Now!, Mother Jones, Free Software Foundation, Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting) Mr. Fotopoulos chooses to attack - for whatever reason. And then, there is an awful lot of internet drama. Engagement in internet drama and flame wars is not the kind of action that fits a real academic. You see, for someone to be an academic, it takes a lot more than the typical qualifications (an MA/MSc and a PhD - does Mr.Fotopoulos have a PhD, by the way? - and a considerable number of peer-reviewed articles in real scientific publications; articles newspapers and on websites and magazines controlled by the author simply do not count, whether the Greek scholarly community likes it or not); it takes a certain ethos. To continue on this particular subject, I must inform you that what I see here is a repeated violation of WP:OWN. SentientContrarian (talk) 06:55, 1 April 2012 (UTC)


 * You jumped to this article a few days after your subscription, repeating similar arguments with those of Elp gr whose disruptive activity was exposed. You didn' t answer to my questions in the first place, but you raise more demands, although I also added some additional secondary sources to meet your demands. Your claims have been largely answered in the discussion above with Elp gr, and they are unfounded. It seems that the "alternative Left" you support has been criticized by the political organization of Inclusive Democracy and by articles by other authors, but not even by Fotopoulos himself. Even if this is the case, which may very well explain a defamatory campaign against Fotopoulos and Inclusive Democracy in the past months, that has been revealed with well-documented facts in the Greek webpage of the organization, as referenced in the discussion with Elp gr, it is a wonder why you think a talk page is a forum to solve political debates. I am wondering who really cares about what you personally consider "rants" etc. without a shred of proof, and when you refer to unproven claims of yours about "unfounded allegations" against a "great number of people and movements" etc. I am sorry, but this is more of a rant of yours in a talk page. Panlis (talk) 12:03, 1 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Don't make assumptions regarding my political views; I could be a Libertarian socialist, I could be an anarchist, I could even be a supporter of the right wing. Without the slightest evidence, you jump to conclusions about others' motives and views. That's not good faith. Furthermore, why is it that none of you Inclusive Democracy people are so hostile to (a) people with views different from yours, (b) people who point out weaknesses in an article? Every wikipedian will immediately tell you that the addition of a tag (wP:NPOV, WP:OWN, you name it) is an invitation for improvement; it's a marker that says "hey, can anyone help out here and make this article better?". On the contrary, you get extremely defensive, confrontational and downright rude. If you act as a (self-professed?) representative of Mr. Fotopoulos, you are not portraying him in a good manner. Think about it. And also, drop this "everyone who is not in my camp is an enemy" attitude; it's very George W. Bush and totally at odds with a movement that has the term "Democracy" in its name. SentientContrarian (talk) 14:33, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
 * No one has to make accusations, when it oozes from you. There are right-wing Libertarian socialists and non anti-systemic anarchists, so what are you trying to say? Either way you are an apologist for the System. Please point out a weakness in an article or ID perspective. But please can you first explain this bit of irrationality? "Furthermore, why is it that none of you Inclusive Democracy people are so hostile to (a) people with views different from yours, (b) people who point out weaknesses in an article? " John sargis (talk) 22:25, 2 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Certainly seems a sensitive soul. I made a minor modification to show that the contract for Democ and Nature was ended by the publisher, hence the journal was taken online only: even this was removed. The editing is "undemocratic"110.33.174.215 (talk) 07:04, 12 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Is the big "democrat" above aware of the fact that the publisher (Taylor & Francis) is a significant transnational corporation and its interests are therefore defined by commercial and/or political considerations? Second, unless he is an executive of the same corporation can he inform us how does he know who ended the contract and why? Unless he has answers to these questions rightly his comment, which obviously aimed to discredit the journal, was deleted. 94.66.59.123 (talk) 09:49, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

I was a contributor to D&N, and on the board of another journal at the same company, that is how I know. It was not a capitalist plot to discredit anybody or anything. These days I also prefer to run open access journals, which I agree are more ethical. 110.33.174.215 (talk) 11:50, 13 June 2014 (UTC) http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Democracy_%26_Nature&diff=prev&oldid=585795957
 * I was not just a contributor to D&N (who obviously cannot know the exact reasons T&F did not renew the contract) but a member of the Editorial Board, who presumably has a much better knowledge than you from "inside" whereas your knowledge is obviously based on gossiping and hearsay. Of course there was a sort of capitalist plot that T&F will not exactly advertise, so that you could hear about it! The journal was not dropped due to low subscriptions, but because of threats by several subscribers in the US (university libraries mostly) to end their subscriptions because of the strong anti-war on terrorism line taken by the journal at a time which was characterized by several Left US academics at the time as the 'new McCarthyism'. I know for instance that the D&N editor had received several hints by the publishers at the time about the "strong language" used by the journal in general and his articles in particular on these issues. I presume you were on the Board of a systemic journal at the time that was not attacking Bush's (and the neocons') policies on Iraq, Afghanistan and "terrorism". This is why you ended up with the distorting conclusion that the journal was dropped because of low subscriptions (and in the meantime you found the chance to declare the system innocent of capitalist plots!) which discredits the journal, and rightly was deleted.John sargis (talk) 23:37, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Linkfarm, list of publications, and other problems
The article contains an inordinate amount of links to Fotopoulos' own website. Worse, it contains huge lists of his publications. WP is not a place to publish your list of publications and we usually only list the 3-5 most important ones in a bio. Some of the entries just seem to be dfferent language versions of each other and should be combined as one entry. Books published in Greek will have only a limited reach, so removing those is a sensible first step at pruning the list. Chapters in books are rarely very important in somebody's career, so unless there is evidence to the contrary, these can go, too. As for the "further reading", the first one is published in a copyrighted work, so it the original link was a copyvio, which is why I removed it. That encyclopedia barely mentions Fotopoulos, so this link may be at its place in the article on inclusive democracy, but has not much function here. The same goes for the second one, "The Inclusive Democracy project – six years on", also is about ID and could be cited there, but has not much to seek here. And, in fact, this goes for each and every one of the entries in that particular section.

The article suffers from more problems. Several references seem hardly pertinent. The current refs 2 and 3 are just author-provided blurbs that get posted on websites without much editorial checking and I would not use such stuff except as a source for the most trivial stuff (as actually is done here). Reference 4 is not a source, but an unsourced statement (and rather trivial at that: being a member of an administrative council of a student union is not really a notable feat). The link in ref 5 is dead (sourcing a pretty trivial factoid). A better source is needed for ref 6, which is just a link to a search result, something we're not supposed to do. Ref 7 sources what it is supposed to source (although it is already a quote in that source, so sourcing it to the original editorial would be better). The remaining references are to book reviews. In short, we have a dearth of independent in-depth references. The book reviews establish notability, but most of the last paragraph of the ID section seems to be somebody's opinion and is unsourced. The article also suffers from unnecessary aggrandizing ("one of the most widely circulated newspapers", "important activists, theorists and scholars"), which is not very neutral and, as far as I am concerned, diminishes the subject (if we need this to show how notable the subject is, then apparently the answer is "not much", a neutral presentation is far more effective in showing somebody's importance).

, in one of your edit summaries you refer to Karl Marx. That is actually an excellent article to take as an example. I guess we can agree that at this point, Marx is enormously more notable than Fotopoulos. Nevertheless, the Marx article only contains a "Selected bibliography", not a complete one. The "further reading" section exclusively contains works about Marx, not by Marx. And while the lead states that "Many intellectuals, labour unions and political parties worldwide have been influenced by Marx's ideas", note the absence of words like "important" in this phrase...

--Randykitty (talk) 08:48, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

I happen to know of Fotopoulos’ work but I believe I can keep a neutral point of view on the matter. I am not a “fan” of his but just happened to be a reader of Democracy and Nature and other Inclusive Democracy editions. So I will try to reply to Randykitty’s Comments.

1) “The article contains an inordinate amount of links to Fotopoulos' own website. Worse, it contains huge lists of his publications. WP is not a place to publish your list of publications and we usually only list the 3-5 most important ones in a bio”

-This is common practice in wp biographies. Noam Chomsky even has a separate entry called Noam Chomsky bibliography. Also both Cornelius Castoriadis and Murray Bookchin have long lists of publications, as they should. Or, as an example of a lesser figure see the Sophia N. Antonopoulou lists. This is what an encyclopedia is all about: to inform the public in detail about the work of writers, the films of film makers and so on. Who is going to assess who the most important ones are? Some editors argue that there is no time and a lack of editors to fully comply with Wikipedia rules for articles, but they do have time to “nitpick” articles to death. when it comes e.g. to the three related entries: Democracy & Nature, Takis Fotopoulos and Inclusive Democracy.

2) “Books published in Greek will have only a limited reach, so removing those is a sensible first step at pruning the list”

-As the writer is a Greek living in the UK it is far from peculiar that many of Fotopoulos’ works are in Greek (unless someone wishes to introduce racist criteria to Wikipedia entries). Furthermore, all other WP entries on Greek writers are also full of lists of their books in Greek., without (fortunately) drawing anyone’s attention.

3) “Chapters in books are rarely very important in somebody's career, so unless there is evidence to the contrary, these can go, too.”

- What Randykitty called “chapters in books” are in fact important contributions by Takis Fotopoulos to other books, mainly in English, which of course constitute a clear indication of the writer’s notability (even the latest edition of Marx’s manifesto hosts an extract from his work). Clearly it is an honor for a writer to be invited by editors of books to contribute to them and readers have every right to know about them.

4) “As for the "further reading", the first one is published in a copyrighted work, so it the original link was a copyvio, which is why I removed it. That encyclopedia barely mentions Fotopoulos, so this link may be at its place in the article on inclusive democracy, but has not much function here”

-This is a complete distortion of the facts. Had any editor actually read the Routledge Encyclopedia they would have easily seen that the long entry on Inclusive Democracy is signed by Takis Fotopoulos himself, as is the normal practice for living persons whose work is hosted in any encyclopedia in the world. Therefore there is no copyvio. Another distortion is that Fotopoulos is barely mentioned. He is of course mentioned in the list of contributors (vol. 1), like every other contributor to this Encyclopedia of International Political Economy in which entries are mainly classified by topic, not by writers.

5) The same goes for the second one, "The Inclusive Democracy project – six years on", also is about ID and could be cited there, but has not much to seek here. And, in fact, this goes for each and every one of the entries in that particular section., Or, as he put it clearly in the “Revision History page” these references were “not particularly about Fotopoulos, but about incl. democracy”.

-As anybody who has any idea what the topic is all about will know, the Inclusive Democracy project is intrinsically linked in all literature with the name of its creator, Takis Fotopoulos, in exactly the same way, for instance, that the social ecology project is linked to Murray Bookchin, its creator. Yet nobody thought of separating the two, as Randykitty does. Some dead links etc. can of course be corrected.

6) The rest of the ‘problems’ mentioned relating to references are indications of bad faith. Randykitty finds the references mostly trivial, whereas in fact - as can easily be determined by checking the history page - they are references provided by editors in reply to requests for evidence that e.g. TF really took part in the Greek student movement, or in the anti-junta movement, or is indeed the author of a book etc. In other words, the references play the role of footnotes, as in all similar WP bios. Other comments are factually untrue--some further examples follow below. In fact the above, as well as the following points, on top of some editors (unsuccessfully) attempting to have the relevant Democracy & Nature entry deleted four times, cast very serious doubt as to whether the real aim is to improve the entry or actually to diminish its significance, so that editors could then proceed to ask for the TF entry to be deleted on the grounds that Fotopoulos supposedly lacks notoriety (according to political criteria disguised as editing criteria). Here are some examples:

7) The highly significant comment (in bold) by Jean-Claude Richard - a well- known French anarchist writer - in a French theoretical journal of anarchism on TF, was deleted: "’(Towards an Inclusive Democracy) (...) places Takis Fotopoulos in the line of a Kropotkin or a Reclus.’", Jean-Claude Richard (Revision as of 16:03, 25 September 2015

8) All references to interviews and talks in videos and audios were deleted, despite the fact that they were all fully documented and are a common feature in many other WP bios (see e.g Chomsky’s bio) -- unless of course only a few selected editors/administrators are to decide which interviews and talks and by whom, on any topic under the sun listed in Wikipedia, are notable and which are not ‘’→‎Interviews & Talks: remove, only listed exceptionally in biographies if especially notable)’’. (Revision as of 16:04, 25 September 2015

9)The all-significant inclusion of Takis Fotopoulos in a famous video by Oliver Ressler - who interviewed the main thinkers of today - which was shown in major exhibitions all over the world, was deleted. This is not a “brief essay”, (referring to the booklet accompanying the video)  which “can be used perhaps as reference in Incl. Dem. Article”. The result of this deletion therefore  as well is to artificially diminish the notability of TF entry even more rather than to improve the entry as was supposed to be its aim,. (Revision as of 16:11, 25 September 2015 Polimihanos (talk) 23:04, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Improvements to the entry are undone by Randykitty
When some 10 hours ago I tried to make a major restructuring of the bibliography in the TF entry, spending several hours in the process which for a non-professional administrator/editor like me is particularly difficult, my only motive was to improve the entry. But then, within a matter of hours Randykitty threw all this work to the dustbin because he ‘democratically’ decided that this was “not an improvement”, without bothering to give any explanation, let alone a proof, for it. Here is what I tried to do so that bonafide editors and administrators can express their view on the matter.

First, taking the point mentioned in a very generally defined tag that the bibliographical list was “poorly defined, unverified or indiscriminate”, I completely restructured the bibliography to make the list much more rigorously defined and less “indiscriminate”, as requested by the tag. Particularly so as there was indeed room for improvement as regards the previous classification of works under three very generally defined classification criteria (books/books published in Greece/contributions to other books). So, I replaced these very general and often incorrectly applied criteria with the much more rigorous criteria (following Cornelius Castoriadis’ entry) of ‘original English/original Greek and selected translations of TF works’. In fact the other relevant bibliographical lists I visited Murray Bookchin, Hannah Arendt, et. al. follow the same kind of classification and I presumed this is what Wikipedia requires. I hope that no ‘clever’ administrator/editor would come back with the convenient wiki rule that WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS is not a good argument. Surely, this rule, as any other rule in general, may be used or abused and it is obviously abused when its provisos are not taken into account, e.g. that “When used correctly, these comparisons are important as the encyclopedia should be consistent in the content that it provides or excludes”.

Second, in the process, I corrected many errors, like avoiding the too general classification of works as just “books”, or “books published in Greece” by creating a much more accurate classification of works as “translations of other books” and also by introducing a new basic criterion of classification according to the original language in which each piece of work was originally written (as per the Castoriadis’ entry again).

Third, I corrected several typos and other minor errors as with respect to TF's latest work in Greek.

Yet, Randykitty, within a matter of a few hours, had completely undone the new classification. As for any bonafide administrator and editor the restructured entry is far better than the previous one, it is clear that unless he can show in detail why this is not so, providing also concrete evidence about it, one could reasonably assume that his motive is not to improve the entry. I hope therefore, that he will not just undo the new classification without any proper explanation as obviously this would be a case for the dispute resolution procedure to be followed, so that other administrators could also express their views on the matter. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.120.27.17 (talk) 16:06, 8 October 2015 (UTC)


 * I can't understand what the issue is with the IP user's edit that could justify the repeating reverts by Randykitty. I think that the IP made a major improvement and was also helpfully complemented by Kosmal and I would like to know on what grounds these reverts take place. Moreso when they are explained with disturbing maxims like "this is not an improvement" and "see extended dialogue in the Talk Page" (which points to a dialogue above that took place before the new improvement and still was not responded by Randykitty). Polimihanos (talk) 17:51, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Topic ban violations by John sargis
On this article, as well as the articles on Democracy & Nature and Inclusive Democracy, John sargis has violated his topic ban. I remind that, as per this discussion, he and Panlis had been topic-banned from all articles related to Inclusive Democracy, broadly construed.