Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Organizing Committee of Principist Trotskyism (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. As I discussed in a previous deletion debate, there are two types of debate on Wikipedia; those in areas with objective standards, where arguments are to be made with reference to those standards, and those in areas without such standards, where argument is emotive or subjective in tone. It is the latter area which causes the most trouble for administrators, the most debate, the most confusing-looking results, and the most appeals, counter-appeals and counter-counter-appeals to the eventual result. Despite how confusing this result may look given the arguments below, it is not a debate which fits into the latter category. The notability and coverage of articles is something that has objective standards, and the fact that those commentators arguing for "keep" chose to use subjective arguments with no proper reference to our policies does not mean that these standards are to be ignored.

User:Carrite and User:DGG make the argument that the movement as a whole has coverage - and that as such, every element of the area should be included in a dedicated article. Patently, this is not the case. The argument that "because WP:ATHLETE allows for the inclusion of people just because we can verify their existence, the same should be true of companies" is also incorrect; ignoring, for a second, that we cannot prove this organisation exists (at least, neither the article nor this discussion shows as such) the ATHLETE policy exists because we work on the assumption that someone playing for, say, Real Madrid, does have sources on them in reliable sources. It does not mean that anyone, regardless of their athletic level, can qualify for inclusion; it requires a demonstration that they have played to a fully professional level. If we transfer this guideline across (which we have not) there is no reason to suggest that this committee has "played" at a "fully professional level".

User:Mia-etol makes a similar argument, ableit with implicit accusations of some sort of bias, and the idea that keeping this article would be necessary because the alternative is to demonstrate that Wikipedia is biased against marxism. This is not the case; our notability standards are objective in nature. Only if we were to adopt the subjective standards that people here seem to be arguing for would outright political bias really be possible. Our standards require academic or media coverage - any bias, therefore, reflects only the biases in mainstream thinking. The result of this all is that nobody has actually addressed the nominator's concern, as is their job as someone arguing contrarily. Asked to argue whether X=1 or X=2, they have instead tried to prove that mathematics doesn't apply. This is not a productive way to spend time, and it is not a productive attitude to take to discussions based on objectivity. Ironholds (talk) 00:59, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Organizing Committee of Principist Trotskyism (Fourth International)

 * – ( View AfD View log )

No evidence of notability. Superheroes Fighting (talk) 03:26, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions.  —Mia-etol (talk) 10:05, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Organizations-related deletion discussions.  —Mia-etol (talk) 10:05, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Keep - Since this is one of a series of articles of a mass deletion effort, I'm going to state my case once again and will copy-paste it below — it holds for one and all. 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. Carrite (talk) 16:50, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
 * An article should be kept if what it is about is notable, deleted otherwise. It would be silly to keep an article about a group that genuinely isn't notable simply because articles about other groups that might possibly be notable were nominated for deletion at the same time. Further comment on Carrite's remark is hardly required. Superheroes Fighting (talk) 19:45, 31 March 2011 (UTC)


 * * Comment - Per Superheroes Fighting's simplistic take that "an article should be kept if what it is about is notable, deleted otherwise," I offer the following... We are discussing application of the General Notability Guideline as it relates to organizational histories. Here is what Wikipedia says about Policies 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 20 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." Since this was a copy-and-paste mass challenge, this message will be likewise copied-and-pasted where applicable. Carrite (talk) 23:14, 31 March 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) 18:25, 1 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep  I concur with Carrite--historical information of this sort is encyclopedic. Our scope is broad enough to record minor parties. The'yre relatively difficult to judge for notability, without using what are in some cases very difficult to find sources. The reader is best served if they are covered comprehensively, not selectively. just a small religious movements, and I think our general policy has been to be inclusive of those that have a real existence. The guiding policies are WP:V and NOT PAPER   DGG ( talk ) 21:05, 1 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." I question verifiability as well as notability. Edison (talk) 02:40, 5 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete - Article does not meet general notability criteria.--יום יפה (talk) 14:57, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
 * The above deletion debate is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of either this nomination or the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.