Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bolshevik Current for the Fourth International


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   delete. The "keep" arguers do not cite policy other than WP:IAR, which seldom makes a compelling case at AfD in the absence of evidence that accepted policies are somehow in conflict with each other. I do not see how this article is necessary for understanding the articles Diego Garcia or Lee Harvey Oswald, as one editor suggests. On the other hand, the simple fact that there do not seem to be reliable, independent sources to support this article is essentially unchallenged, and is given further credence by the article's being unedited during its nearly three weeks at AfD. Chick Bowen 05:00, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Bolshevik Current for the Fourth International

 * – ( View AfD View log )

No evidence of notability. Superheroes Fighting (talk) 04:37, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete - I created this years ago, when standards of notability were less clear. I can only find two Google Books hits; one a brief listing in Spanish, the other a French source which calls it obscure. Warofdreams talk 11:50, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Organizations-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 16:47, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 16:47, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

 Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:35, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep - These articles are part of a series of articles about the various trends within Trotskyism - a political tradition of some relevance with significant presence in a large number of countries,e.g. 5 people with roots in various threads of the tradition (at least one of them fairly obscure) were recently elected to the Irish parliament (the Dáil) - blanket elimination of the more obscure smaller organisations (or sometimes only apparently obscure because they aren't represented in English-speaking countries) will seriously distort Wikipedia's coverage of this political tradition. We should be careful not to take decisions based on our political opinions or prejudices or to allow ourselves to be seen to be yoked into a political campaign (even if this may not be deliberate on the part of the proposer). While there may be a case for consolidation of some of the articles into longer more inclusive ones and some of the articles may require more referencing - if necessary in other languages - I think it would be a serious error to delete any of these articles. I'm adding this opinion to all the organizations proposed for deletion. Mia-etol (talk) 18:39, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Keep - Part of a mass deletion campaign against articles on small Trotskyist political organizations. I've previously made a defense of 20 like articles based on one of the five pillars of Wikipedia, "Wikipedia does not have firm rules" — also known as "Ignore All Rules," or, in layman's terms, "use common sense." (continued)
 * To wit: "This is an encyclopedia. Certain things are considered automatically encyclopedia-worthy at Wikipedia: degree-granting universities, secondary schools, numbered roads, towns, species of plants and animals, and so on and so forth. In my earnest belief, political parties and their youth sections passing the standard of WP:Verifiability should automatically meet the standard of encyclopedia-worthiness, without regard to size or ideology. These are the subject of serious scholarship. The Hoover Institution, closely linked to Stanford University, in 1991 published the 25th annual edition of its Yearbook of International Communist Affairs, recording the history and activities of left wing parties like this. The scholar Robert J. Alexander authored an 1100 page volume called International Trotskyism, 1929-1985: A Documented Analysis of the Movement, published by Duke University Press and held by something like 180 libraries worldwide. There have been monographs written on Trotskyism in America (Constance Myers, The Prophet's Army: Trotskyists in America, 1928-1941, Greenwood Press, 1977; Breitman, LeBlanc, and Wald, Trotskyism in the United States: Historical Essays and Reconsiderations, Humanities Press, 1996) and Trotskyism in the UK (John Callaghan, British Trotskyism: Theory and Practice, Basil Blackwell, 1984). Yes, little sects such as this are tiny; no, you're not going to find stories on them in the New York Times. But they are the subject of scholarly inquiry and deserve notability per se on that basis, just like insects and professional football players are instantly notable if their existence is verified. There is no point to this mass deletion effort. It will annihilate information to no good purpose — serious information that BELONGS in a comprehensive encyclopedia. It's time to Ignore All Rules to defend the quality of the encyclopedia and further, to amend the inadequate current notability guidelines for such organizations. And no, I'm not a Trotskyist and I don't play one on TV, if there were a similar series of attacks on right wing fringe parties I'd say the same thing. * *  *  We are discussing application of the General Notability Guideline as it relates to organizational histories. Here is what Wikipedia says about its policy and guidelines: "Wikipedia policies and guidelines are developed by the community to describe best practice, clarify principles, resolve conflicts, and otherwise further our goal of creating a free, reliable encyclopedia... Although Wikipedia does not employ hard-and-fast rules, Wikipedia policy and guideline pages describe its principles and best-known practices. Policies explain and describe standards that all users should normally follow, while guidelines are meant to outline best practices for following those standards in specific contexts. Policies and guidelines should always be applied using reason and common sense." This effort to annihilate such articles that SHOULD be in an encyclopedia by the rigid and draconian application of ill-fitting GUIDELINES violates common sense. 'Ignore All Rules' means nothing more or less than 'Use Common Sense to build and improve the encyclopedia.'" Carrite (talk) 01:05, 5 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete per failure to satisfy the applicable notability guideline, WP:ORG. There is no guideline providing "Inherent notability for tiny splinter political parties lacking multiple reliable and independent references with significant coverage." Edison (talk) 02:27, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment - Nor is there an ironclad rule requiring such deletion. Guidelines are........ guidelines. Carrite (talk) 03:17, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep I go along with Carrite in accepting a relatively low threshold for articles about political parties of the left, right and center. In the case of the faction-ridden Trotskyist movement of the far left, understanding that movement is essential to understanding artists such as Diego Garcia and Frida Kahlo, understanding paradoxically the neo-conservative movement around the National Review and James Burnham, the early history of the Teamster's Union in Minnesota, Lee Harvey Oswald who killed President Kennedy, the anti-Vietnam war movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the cult around Lyndon LaRouche and the politics of Sri Lanka.  Encyclopedic understanding of this bizarre (in my opinion) political movement is important to an understanding of the political history of the last century.  Keep such articles, and equivalent articles on far right movements. Cullen328 (talk) 04:58, 5 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete per nom and Edison. Didn't The Life of Brian settle once and for all that the left will endlessly splinter and recombine into less and less interesting or notable forms? There is absolutely no need for us to indulge a "series of articles about the various trends within Trotskyism"; cover it briefly at the parent article if it needs to be covered at all. - Simon Dodd { U·T·C·WP:LAW } 17:08, 5 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete - Article does not meet general notability criteria.--יום יפה (talk) 14:55, 6 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Comment While I am in favor of having articles about minor political groups, RS requires that we have some third party sources that provide a description of them.  Some of these sources may be difficult to access, but there are are editors who have access to them.  In the meantime, If the article is deleted, then of course it can be brought back provided rs are found.  TFD (talk) 16:39, 13 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep listed at marxists.org.   appears to be SPS by the group, which is RS for stating the positions of the earlier group.  And I favor minor international political groups representing "interesting" political positions having articles.  Realistically, it at least should be an interesting footnote in the Fourth International article under, possibly, "successor organizations."  Collect (talk) 14:11, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete, Fails WP:ORG. Sources provided do not provide significant coverage of this organization. A search for other sources doesn't come up with much, therefore fails WP:N. Auseplot (talk) 22:17, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
 * 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 article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.