Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Libertarian National Socialist Green Party


 * 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 no consensus to delete. (defaults to keep) W.marsh 20:15, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Libertarian National Socialist Green Party

 * – (View AfD) (View log)

This "group" does not exist. The article mentions more than once that it might be a joke, and says that they only thing "they" apparently do is run a website. The talk page is full of people asking over and over for reliable sources, but no one answers. From reading the talk page, it apparently survived a VFD back in December 2003 or January 2004, but sourcing was a lot looser back then. These days, it fails WP:Verifiability and WP:Notability. — coe l acan t a lk  — 12:40, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete, as nom. — coe l acan t a lk  — 13:00, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep. Either the "Party" is not a joke (yes there are people like that out there) or enough people believe it is real or at least proscribe to its platform for it to not make much difference. These has been enough coverage of the group in the media esp with the Red Lake High School massacre and Jeff Weise, an adhereant, for the article to pass the requirements of notability and verifiability by relaible sources. If the actual party is inteneded as a joke (ala Landover Baptist Church) that needs to be addressed within the article but the subject itself does not meet deletion criteria. WP:BOLLOCKS is not a policy (too bad though). NeoFreak 14:41, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment Media coverage of the group:   (intent to run in elcetions in Maryland, Bill White has done so}   (mention in "domestic terrorism article). That's just 3 or 4 minutes on Google. NeoFreak 14:58, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I forgot to answer these earlier. These links are completely unacceptable. The first, I have already dealt with in my reply to WMMartin below; it contains a single sentence that Weise posted messages on nazi.org, and then it quotes from their press release. Completely trivial, and nothing to write an article from. The second, a CNN transcript, has two sentences, one saying Weise posted there, the other with some CNN commentator saying essentially "I browsed the website!" The third has no content at all, it's just a list, no hint of a reliable source whatsoever, and it's on a K-12 teacher's website (nothing scholarly, for sure). The fourth, an MTV link, has one sentence and again quotes from the nazi.org press release. The fifth is a Yahoo Answers link that contains a cut and paste of Wikipedia's Bill White article! The links themselves are very strong arguments for just mentioning the site at Jeff Weise and Bill White (no real need for a merge, even), and at the very best leaving this page as a redirect to Bill White. I wouldn't see much to gain from such a redirect, but others here seem to think that's better, and I'm not dismissing that opinion; I just don't share it. — coe l acan t a lk  — 18:33, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Note also that the fact that Bill White has run in elections has nothing to do with nazi.org, as he did not run as their representative. He runs in elections but never for them, and he's not even a member, he just picked up the opportunity to advertise himself as Public Relations for nazi.org after Weise's incident; this is all very clear upon reading White's article. — coe l acan t a lk  — 18:40, 17 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Weak keep, though it hurts. Alf photoman 15:10, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep per User:NeoFreak. I've seen some strange combinations of political ideologies, but this one beats them all.  -- Black Falcon 17:59, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete Pretty much sounds like something made up...somewhere. As stated in the article, "The LNSGP at present has no intention of gaining ballot access or fielding political candidates". I'm sorry, but if this party has no intention of running in election and is not registered as a party with the applicable electoral authority of any jurisdiction, this "party" pretty much verges on being speediable as a non-notable club. Any relevance this "joke" may have in regards to other articles referred to in this AfD can be mentioned in those articles. Agent 86 18:20, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment. This group, like most extreme political groups, is not notable because of their performance in elections, just the oposite. It is their influence on the fringe and youth (like Jeff Weise), the nature of their message and their underground activity and imapct on popular culture that makes them notable. This "club" has recieved quite a bit of news coverage and it is both verifiable and notable via these channels. Remember, popularity is not an indicator of notability. NeoFreak 18:38, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree that popularity does not equate notability. My comments are founded in the lack of substance behind this group, and the ongoing assertions that it is, at best, not serious and at worse, a joke. Agent 86 19:46, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Wether the subject is satire or ideology is not the concern. That is an issue to be addressed in the article. The only thing I can assume you mean by "substance" is "notability" as that is the criteria for the worth of a subject's substance on wikipedia. The issue is wether the subject meets the criteria for deletion which it does not; It meets the requirments of WP:N and there are reliable sources to prove it. I'm not sure I understand policy you find this article in violation of. NeoFreak 20:04, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment. WP:BOLLOCKS may not be policy, but WP:HOAX is, and it's grounds for deletion (though not speedy). Bill White has a history of grabbing attention for himself by claiming to be "public relations" for whatever made-up white power slogan he can get his hands on, and there's no evidence that this "group" amounts to anything but its own name. If we're going to argue notability from Bill White, then the page should simply redirect to Bill White (neo-nazi), like Utopian Anarchist Party already does (another of his toys). Jeff Weise was never a party adherent, he was a webforum member of this and many other non-notable white power forums. There is no evidence that the "party" has any members, and all they have going for them is well-parked web domain real estate, nazi.org, and a silly name meant to associate themselves with two somewhat-successful United States third parties. Note that all the notability they may have picked up has only been for Bill White or for Jeff Weise and his webforum posts. No notability for any "Party", and so no notability for the supposed subject of this article. — coe l acan t a lk  — 20:34, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Jeez, I just read over the article again and it even says: "It does not have actual members like the Democrats, Republicans or Greens." That says it all: WP:HOAX. — coe l acan t a lk  — 20:38, 15 February 2007 (UTC)


 * In order to delete something on the grouds of it being a hoax you have to prove it is a hoax. Simply saying "it sounds like a hoax to me!" is not acceptable esp when the subject has garnered this attention from reliable sources. Like I said this is all to be hashed out in the article itself. I'm not saying the article is good one way or the other, I'm saying that the subject itself meets all the requirements for a article on wikipedia. Barring real evidence that it is a hoax (not having "real members" like the two major political parties could mean it is impossible to register as a member of the party which still makes it an ideological group, not uncommon or grouds to label it a hoax) this doesn't meet a single portion of the criteria for deletion. Not one. NeoFreak 21:12, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I believe you know it's logically impossible to prove that something doesn't exist. However, one of the article's external links, this from Reason (magazine), explains what was found through some investigation of the forums. That article makes a coherent case for it being a hoax, as it is apparently a joke site of Craig Smith's, who doesn't even touch it anymore. — coe l acan  t a lk  — 21:21, 15 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I understand that it might or might not be a joke. For the sake of argument let us say that it is. With all the events surrounding this topic the subject retains it's notability. If you have issues with the verifiability of some statments in the article then go ahead and change the article. The subject itself though, and it effects, are documented and verifiable, therefore the article is alright. I'm not sure if I'm making myself clear, it's kind of a fucked up way to argue notability I suppose. NeoFreak 21:32, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * No, you're making sense, but I just don't think the sources argue for any notability of the "Party". The fact that Bill White argues it's real is evidence that it's not real, just like the Utopian Anarchist Party. And like that other hoax, the notability supposedly attached to this is at most enough for a redirect to Bill White (neo-nazi), imho. A little off-topic but I loved one of the comments on Reason.com: "This should be a warning to any teen in a lunatic fringe party: don't do a school shooting--Bill White will just hog all the glory after you're dead." — coe l acan t a lk  — 22:07, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * That's an outstanding quote. I suppose the difference is that the "Party", which in all probability is not an actual entity, does not warrant an article under WP:HOAX and WP:V with the first policy cancelling out the primary "reliable sources" which could be used to establish the second. With that in mind I would still say the subject of the article is notable and verifiable in popular culture, all things considered. If there is not enough material to substain a rewritten article with this in mind I would not be opposed to a redirect and merge to Bill White (neo-nazi) and a mention in the two realvent school shooting articles. I just worry that the topic has touched to many stand alone articles and merging it would result in navigational pains. NeoFreak 22:32, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Weak keep Merge Someone please convince me that this isn't notable. I know the Bill White situation... but It's just that I don't think it has to be a Hoax and so it still might be notable. MrMacMan 06:30, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
 * If nazi.org is notable on its own, then there will be third party coverage out there, independent of the situations involving Bill White and Jeff Weise. There is no such coverage. There is no notability for nazi.org except as it pertains to these two individuals, and so it should not have its own article but should simply be mentioned in those individuals' articles. The point of WP:N is that "In order to have a verifiable article, a topic must be notable enough that the information about it will have been researched, checked, and evaluated through publication in independent reliable sources. [And] In order to have a neutral article, a topic must be notable enough that the information about it will be from unbiased and unaffiliated sources; and that those interested in the article will not be exclusively partisan or fanatic editors." The problem with this article is that because all the sources are really about Jeff Weise and Bill White, the coverage of nazi.org is all trivial. There is not enough non-trivial coverage to write a verifiable, npov article about nazi.org. This is a controversial topic, which is why it's extremely important that the content of the article be verifiable, however, with the triviality of the sources, this is impossible. So the article can never be encyclopedic. The best mention that nazi.org can get is passing references in the Bill White and Jeff Weise articles, because it gets no substantial coverage in the third-party sources that we would need to write an article from. — coe l acan t a lk  — 07:20, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Alright, take content and merge to The Bill White or Jeff Weise articles. This info should go somewhere so please don't delete. MrMacMan 12:17, 16 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Clear Keep, with No Merge. Like some of the other participants in this discussion, I found it easy to identify acceptable sources/references in support of this article ( http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/03/22/school.shooting/index.html, http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1443462,00.html, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4557742, http://www.artsandlettersmagazine.com/FeaturedStoryHMathewBarkhausenIII.html, and http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:EVpX0Y_z8GsJ:ai.arizona.edu/hchen/slide/ICDAT-DarkWeb-Oct2006.ppt+%22libertarian+national+socialist+green%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=74 were all available through Google without trouble ). The last reference I list was to a slideshow that appeared to have been presented at an academic conference on monitoring dubious/terrorist activity on the internet; this group appears to have been specifically studied by academics. Whether the group actually "exists" or not - one suggestion is that it started as a joke but attracted enough people that the joke was subverted - is not relevant: as the Reason Online article cited by this article points out, we here appear to have an example of the Thomas theorem. In any case "non-existence" is not a problem for us - we have plenty of articles on James T. Kirk, the United Federation of Planets and so on. What does matter is notability, and that seems clear: we've got references, including academic ones and news stories, and the group/website appears to have had an impact of some sort on the real lives of people. coe l acan has, unfortunately, muddied the waters by talking about "nazi.org": we should ignore this sidetrack. Our focus should be on the specific subject of the article. Although it may be difficult to make the article NPOV, and we need to be careful not to let our own opinions and ideas enter the article as OR, the subject of the article itself is notable. WMMartin 15:09, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
 * You're muddling the waters, WMMartin. The "Libertarian National Socialist Green Party" is nazi.org and nothing more. Your google cache of arizona.edu link states this quite clearly: it's about the nazi.org forum, and they didn't study the "Party", they simply used that webforum as an example of how a "hot thread"-detecting metric works. That citation says absolutely nothing about the "Party", what they "do", what they're about, anything. It's only the briefest of trivial mentions of nazi.org, in a computer science case study of a generic algorithm. The fact is that all these links you've come up with are trivial, and thus they all fail WP:N (which says the sources must be non-trivial), because you can't write an article from them. Let's actually look at the links you've provided (the reader is strongly encouraged to actually click on these links and follow along). Besides the google cache of arizona.edu, you've got something from artsandlettersmagazine.com, which has two sentences, both saying that the "Party" issued a statement: they "refused to wring hands over a 'tragedy'...", etc. Does this tell us anything we can write an article from? No, it belongs in Jeff Weise's article, because it doesn't inform us at all about the "Party". Let's look at your NPR link. It's about Weise, again, and it says that he posted lots of messages to lots of (other non-notable) neo-nazi web forums. It's got one sentence, at the very end, which says that Weise posted some messages to nazi.org. What does this tell us about the "Party"? What information here can we write an article from? We can certainly add the short reference into Jeff Weise's article, but that's it. Again, because you seem to have overlooked this, the point of WP:N, which asks for non-trivial coverage, is that "In order to have a verifiable article, a topic must be notable enough that the information about it will have been researched, checked, and evaluated through publication in independent reliable sources. [And] In order to have a neutral article, a topic must be notable enough that the information about it will be from unbiased and unaffiliated sources; and that those interested in the article will not be exclusively partisan or fanatic editors." There's no non-trivial coverage yet to use. Let's look at the Guardian link, which is again that exact same issued statement that was in the artsandlettersmagazine link. It's just direct quotation from nazi.org, but no independent investigative reporting, no verifiability here. As http://www.nazi.org/nazi/policy/weise/ demonstrates, it's a press release, expressly forbidden by WP:N, which clearly says: "The "independence" qualification excludes all ... press releases". There's nothing more in the Guardian link besides a reprint of the press release, so this is both trivial and not independent. Still failing our simplest notability requirements. What about CNN? One sentence that says Jeff Weise posted there, again, fine for his article, and then more reprinting of the nazi.org press release. There's absolutely nothing there, in all of those links, to write any kind of wp:verifiable article from. And the fact that nobody has actually bothered to investigate them is evidence that nazi.org is in fact non-notable; no journalists or academics are interested in them enough to study them and write anything approaching a wp:reliable source, because they have no notability whatsoever outside of the Jeff Weise and Bill White articles. — coe l acan t a lk  — 20:46, 16 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Weak Delete. A website is not a political party.  They have run no candidates, have held no conventions, no membership to speak of, no major role in any significant protest movements, no publications outside of their own website.  They do seem to have gotten some attention in outside articles but only because of the utter weirdness of the idea or speculation whether this is a joke, so does not completely fail WP:ORG but doesn't clearly pass WP:ORG either.  Notability is a judgment call in this case and I would suggest applying the same criteria here as to other non-notable upstart and web-only political parties, such as the United States Pirate Party, Dragomiloff 02:44, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
 * keep If people treat this party as real, then it is real as a concept, and since it is obviously N judged by the  comments above--even of those who were arguing for delete. If there were any doubt about N, it no longer exists, after   Jeff Weise who  is widely known to have supported   their principles.  it is the sort of think which goes into WP. In fact, articles like this  should be thought of  as essential parts of WP--it is good that there be some relatively reliable guide for web users who come across this  for the first time. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by DGG (talk • contribs) 01:23, 18 February 2007 (UTC).
 * I'll assume you weren't being intentionally disingenuous in saying that my words really amount to "keep". Even with honest intention, it's certainly not a fair argument. I believe I've been perfectly clear in the reasons why this article fails notability, and you haven't addressed those reasons. Simply, without reliable sources to write an article from, we cannot create a "relatively reliable guide" for anyone to read here. In addition to non-notabilty, the article fails Verifiability, and it fails hard, as I've demonstrated above. Discuss the sources if you like, but as the case currently stands, we have no verifiable content whatsoever except "Jeff Weise posted some messages and Bill White distributed a press release." And no one is showing up with better sources. — coe l acan t a lk  — 04:28, 18 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep Just from a vexillological point of view, to be able to see the flag because it is so unusual. Keraunos 13:17, 18 February 2007 (UTC) The flag perfectly symbolizes the concept of ecofascism. Keraunos 13:22, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep - Firstly, I have no affiliation with this group. Secondly, I've run across their page several times during my Internet travels over the years. And it seems that I'm not the only Google search for the phrase "Libertarian National Socialist Green Party" turned up 10,100 hits. They seem to be somewhat notable. (if, for no other reason, the laugh factor) And most importantly, somebody just mentioned this site on the message board that I administer. I came to Wikipedia to get more information about the "party", and luckily there was a page here. Don't delete it. -- Big Brother 1984 19:02, 21 February 2007 (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.