User:Cullen328/sandbox/Platypus


 * Keep I am not a single purpose account, have not been canvassed and am most certainly not a sock puppet. I never heard of this group until yesterday, although in the spirit of disclosing conflict of interest, I was a member over 20 years ago of one left group mentioned in the article. I have participated in over 1500 deletion debates and have over 20,000 edits here. However, well over 99% of my edits have nothing to do with left politics.


 * I saw this deletion debate discussed on the Reliable sources noticeboard, where the question was raised by the nominator as to whether the Weekly Worker and the Workers Vanguard should be considered relaible sources to establish the notability of a Marxist group. In my opinion, these are exactly the kind of specialist publications that are appropriate for establishing notability and sourcing articles on left and Marxist groups. Many of the articles I have written are biographies of mountaineers, and I know which mountaineering journals have a good reputation. Significant coverage in such mountaineering journals establishes notablity for mountaineers. Similarly, based on what I've read about them (and I read several issues of one of them many years ago), these two communist publications have a longstanding reputation for seriously analyzing and critiquing the ideology and work of other left and Marxist groups. These publications each have a strong point of view, but not an identical one by any means. A point has been made that much of the coverage in the Weekly Worker consists of an exchange of letters. Those familiar with the editorial policies of such left publications will be aware that a lengthy exchange of letters back and forth is indicative of serious political attention showing notability, and can't be compared to a trivial letter to the editor of my home town paper complaining of problems with garbage pickup on my street.


 * The article on Naomi Klein from the The New Yorker called OUTSIDE AGITATOR: Naomi Klein and the new new left] includes at least a dozen sentences about Platypus. This is significant coverage in a major mainstream media outlet. Lest the nominator argue that the article is not primarily about Platypus, please note that the General notability guideline helpfully advises us that "Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention but it need not be the main topic of the source material". Although the article is in serious need of cleanup, it seems clear to me that the topic is notable as we define the term here on Wikipedia. Worthy of note is that the coverage is from several countries, and is not geographically localized.


 * Since I have disclosed my extremely peripheral and outdated conflict of interest from several decades past, let me ask the nominator a question, though it will require some exposition first: You were the first to mention a letter critical of Platypus initiated by Richard Seymour though I am sure that you meant to link to the article about the British Marxist who styles himself as "lenin" as opposed to the American professional football player. Jean-Pierre Serre, a new user and arguably an SPA, has claimed that the nominator is a signatory to the Open letter about the Platypus Affiliated Society which I would characterize as a political declaration of war calling for the Platypus group to be ostracized on the left. The signatory in question is on record in his own blog calling Platypus "the most dangerous cult in the left". It seems to me that there are three possibilities here, and because I take outing seriously, I won't mention the person's real life name. The first possibility is that this claim by Jean-Pierre Serre is unacceptable outing, and that nothing more should be said about the matter other than a warning to cease outing. However, I note that the nominator has not made any complaints of outing, and that the nominator has previously voluntarily linked to the real world name, and also edits in the left politics topic area. Nominator, please complain now if outing is the case. The second possibility is that, as the nominator points out, the name in question is "rather common" (even among Marxists living in New York City, I suppose), and that the nominator is an entirely different person than the one who signed the open letter. If either possibility one or possibility two is true, then I apologize in advance to the nominator for this line of argument. The third possibility is that the nominator is, in fact, a signatory to that letter, and has a clear political vendetta against the subject of this article. If so, either the nominator should withdraw what is thereby exposed as a fundamentally flawed and biased nomination, or the closing administrator should take careful note of the blatant conflict of interest. So my question to Cerejota is clear and direct: Are you a signatory to the Seymour letter?


 * I am also compelled to point out the violation by the nominator of our core policy regarding Biographies of living people in this debate. The nominator has called the Platypus group "notorious: basically internet trolls". This personal attack against members of this group is unsupported by any reliable sources, and I remind the nominator that BLP policy says that "BLP applies to all material about living persons anywhere on Wikipedia, including talk pages, edit summaries, user pages, images, and categories." Accordingly, I request that the nominator redact this personal attack immediately.


 * Since the nominator has made at least twelve comments so far in this debate, and has also told other editors about Arguments to avoid in deletion debates, let me comment that experienced AfD reviwers find it somewhat disruptive when the nominator feels compelled to chide, chastise and lecture everyone who wants to keep the article, repeating the same points over and over again. The relevant essay is Avoid repeated arguments. Let's count on the closing administrator to separate policy based arguments from less relevant ones, and to make an appropriate decision.