Wikipedia:Deletion review/The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy

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The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy[edit]

The result of the debate was: ENDORSE CLOSURE and KEEP DELETED. -Splashtalk 23:32, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The decision of an administrator to delete the Wikipedia entry on the International Journal of Inclusive Democracy seems to be a blatant case of abuse of power by Wikipedia adminitrators enhancing the strong doubts currently expressed in the world press about the reliability of Wikipedia information.

The decision to delete was based on two spurious ‘facts’:

First, that the votes of all users in the discussion, apart from those of two administrators, should be discounted on the flimsy grounds that their accounts “appear to have been created in immediate response to this discussion or to a previous, closely related one, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Democracy & Nature. Thus for purposes of closure, any user with no significant contributions outside these two discussions, and outside the articles being voted upon, shall be considered a sock (and/or meat) puppet”. However, what in fact happened, was that people, who were not registered members, i.e. who have had no previous Wiki accounts, and who contributed to the discussions to delete two relevant entries they considered important by making comments and voting to keep , were led to believe by administrators that their “votes to keep” would be discounted, unless they have an account. They thought, like so many others, that one could come off the “net” and participate. Labeled anon they felt slighted. So they created accounts and made comments and voted to keep. But, again, their votes to keep seemed to be discounted, because they were charged with creating accounts and voting only on the IJID AfD (and some of them previously on the AfD on D&N. Nowhere were the rules brought up by administrators about that policy. These arbitrary requirements are unfair. Furthermore, two members, TheVel and john sargis actually contributed to other issues on wiki. Did the administrators check? No. Their votes were discounted all the same in the final tally 2-0 to delete!

Second, the decision to delete was based on the votes of two other administrators who, ignoring the arguments of all other participants in the discussion who showed in detail why the request to delete the entry was based on the distorted arguments of a well known malicious user (WHOSE ONLY CONTRIBUTIONS TO WIKIPEDIA, AFTER HE OPENED HIS ACCOUNT, WAS TO MALIGN THE DEMOCRACY & NATURE JOURNAL AS WELL AS THE JOURNAL OF INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY) --a fact that obviously did not bother the biased administratoirs who voted for deletion in an utterly arbitrary way and with no argument offered at all from them to justify their decision.

On behalf of the Editoirs of the International Journal of Inclusive Democracy, I would like to request that wikipedia immediately undelete and return the IJID page. Alternatively, the wiki administrators will show that the way they conduct themselves is arbitrary and unfair. Particularly so since it is obvious that the Wiki rules they used to delete our entry are not easily accessible, confusing and not open, or fair. Their arbitrary conflicting sense leads us to believe that even administrators are not always sure about Wiki rules, as they contradict each other with no accountability. To a new member rules are made up. At the same time it is clear that Wiki now is changing its rules because of the scandals of the Siegenthaler affair of 29 Nov. and the Adam Curry affair of 1 December. See e.g. http://www.wikipediaclassaction.org/ and http://news.com.com/Growing+pains+for+Wikipedia/2100-1025_3-5981119.html

Needless to add that if they insist on their arbitrary decision to delete the IJID entry, we shall expose, through our journals and web pages, these facts to the wider public. User:john sargis 7:30, 26 December 20005 (UTC)

Votes[edit]
  • Endorse and keep deleted. Validly deleted within process, as shown by Freakofnurture (talk · contribs) below. - ulayiti (talk) 14:57, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Deleted/Endorse Valid AfD, suspected sockpuppets and novice users discounted within the range of closer's discretion. Xoloz 16:19, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Overturn I vote to overturn and restore the page for the reasons stated above. Ulayiti keeps crossing out my name even after I explained that I forgot to sign in. Are you missing something? Why has xoloz voted twice, above and below? Shouldn't xoloz be discounted? User:john sargis 12:15, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • Note: John sargis (talk · contribs) only has 24 edits, most of them on this page and on the AfD for the article under discussion. In addition, he claims to be the nominator, so the vote should not count. - ulayiti (talk) 22:53, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Endorse and Keep Deleted. Valid AfD, discounting of various new users and anons is well within closer's range of discretion. Xoloz 16:23, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • Note: Vote struck out, as Xoloz (talk · contribs) has already voted once in this discussion. - ulayiti (talk) 22:53, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • Sorry about that. :) This second vote was originally about 10 paragraphs down, under what I thought was a related article. Xoloz 01:39, 27 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Endorse and keep deleted, all keep votes by sockpuppets. Closure was proper. User:Zoe|(talk) 03:00, 27 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Endorse and keep deleted. Sockpuppets, vanity, and wikilawyering, oh my, all fighting a valid -- and really detailed -- deletion process. --Calton | Talk 05:47, 27 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Endorse and keep deleted, per Calton's summary.--SarekOfVulcan 06:40, 27 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Endorse and keep deleted. Not counting votes by extremely new users is an accepted (and necessary) part of the means by which Wikipedia determines consensus. In our experience, when a significant number of brand-new users all show up at once to vote for (or against) something, it's rarely if ever mere coincidence... it's an effort by some person or group to sway the vote. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 18:31, 27 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Endorse and keep deleted per above. — Greentryst TC 15:24, 28 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Endorse and keep deleted. And, by the way, throwing around allegations of abuse by respected admins isn't a good way to win people over to your side. In addition, far from "enhancing the strong doubts currently expressed in the world press about the reliability of Wikipedia information", getting rid of articles like this (or any which at the very best slightly brush the against the outermost borders of notability) will only help Wikiepdia's reputation. Of all the criticisms tossed around about wikipedia, "OMG!!! They don't even have an article on The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy!!!!" will never be one of them. -R. fiend 19:52, 28 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Endorse and keep deleted. -- Jbamb 17:49, 31 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Endorse and keep deleted - Properly closed AfD, whose problems were caused by appellants. There may be encyclopediac merit to the journal, but the appellants have failed to make a clear case, and have shown unintentionally that this journal does not meet usual academic standards. No prejudice against recreation of this article, hopefully by more clear-headed editors. --- Charles Stewart 21:08, 31 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion[edit]

Blood, Sweat, and Lint[edit]

Here's a full history breakdown, in chronological order, of the AFD discussion. It is the same information I gathered whilst deliberating upon this AFD:

  • DisposableAccount (talk · contribs) nominates above-referenced article for deletion (not counted as a vote as he himself is an obvious sockpuppet, of unknown origin)
  • Stifle (talk · contribs) says delete (established user, 2,557 edits, regular AFD contributor)
  • 195.179.14.235 (talk · contribs) says Keep! (has 5 edits, the first of which was at WP:AFD/Democracy & Nature)
  • TheVel (talk · contribs) says KEEP (13 edits, the first of which was at WP:AFD/Democracy & Nature)
  • John sargis (talk · contribs) says KEEP (again in all caps; Mr. sargis has a whopping 23 edits, and his first one was at WP:AFD/Democracy & Nature)
  • TheVel returns and removes part of his own previous comment.
  • Narap43 (talk · contribs), the oldest of the bunch, says KEEP (he has 25 edits and is the original author of both of the articles being considered for deletion, and of a third, equally dubious article, Takis Fotopoulos. Narap also identifies himself as "Webmaster of the International Journal of Inclusive Democracy", making this an admitted vanity entry)
  • 195.179.14.235 votes KEEP for a second time.
  • StudentofLife (talk · contribs) votes KEEP (his/her first and only edit)
  • Sandyshevack (talk · contribs) votes KEEP and states that DisposableAccount is a sockpuppet, though I had already concluded that much (Sandyshevack has 5 edits, all of them to the two AFD discussions I've mentioned)
  • DisposableAccount tells the others to "Get it together dudes"
  • John Sargis fires back at DisposableAccount.
  • TheVel requests that the AFD be closed after five days as an overwhelming keep, despite the fact that the other 99.9% of Wikipedia, including myself, is currently unaware of it.
  • Stifle replies "Comment I think the result is no consensus (once you exclude unsigned votes); that means a keep."
  • Stifle annotates various unsigned and improperly signed comments.
  • John Sargis accuses DisposableAccount of being "Paul Cardan" and further claims the AFD should be closed as keep.
  • Jbamb (talk · contribs) says "Delete per nom" (Jbamb is a legitimate user with 709 edits).
  • Paulcardan (talk · contribs) arrives, says he was unaware of this AFD, and denies having anything to do with either AFD (Paul Cardan is also a new user, with 68 edits)
  • John sargis wants evidence that Paulcardan and DisposableAccount aren't the same person, and complains yet again that this afd still remains unclosed.
  • Stifle replies to sargis, saying he doesn't know why it's still open.
  • TheVel says "This is scandalous! In clear violation of WikiPedia rules the AfD banner remains 10 days after it was put there by a well known malicious user"
  • John sargis votes KEEP for a second time.
  • Tommy silva (talk · contribs) appears, votes keep (all lowercase, unlike the others.) and parrots the same political jargon as John sargis above him. (This is Tommy silva's first and only edit.)
  • Two full days of inactivity pass by.
  • Freakofnurture (talk · contribs) (an administrator with 5,164 edits), sees the enormous AFD backlog, closes several 11-day-old AFDs, including this one, where he examines every history entry individually for a more accurate analysis. Freakofnurture concludes that, despite appearances, only two legitimate editors, Stifle and Jbamb have participated in this AFD, and closes it as 2-0 delete.

Am I missing something? — FREAK OF NURxTURE (TALK) 14:30, Dec. 26, 2005

comment - User:DisposableAccount seems to have been created for the purpose of removing the article International Journal of Inclusive Democracy and related articles. Comments from User:DisposableAccount on that user's user page confirm that the user name "DisposableAccount" is an attempt to make a statement, which is against Wikipedia policy. I think "DisposableAccount" should have been banned, not followed into a vote for deletion. Examination by me of the deleted article indicates that the reasons given by User:DisposableAccount on the original request for deletion were not valid reasons for deletion. The two votes for deletion that were counted and used as the basis for deletion accepted User:DisposableAccount's reasons for deletion, making their votes suspect. Having looked at the histories of the parties of this dispute, I suspect that political views are being used as the basis for decisions about International Journal of Inclusive Democracy and related articles. Having said all that, I think an issue that should have been raised in the original request for deletion is if the International Journal of Inclusive Democracy is noteworthy. My guess is that it is not. Maybe the International Journal of Inclusive Democracy should be mentioned (one sentence) on some Wikipedia page. However, it is not clear that enough knowledgable Wikipedians have reviewed this. Having said that, it is not clear that it is worth while wasting the time of additional Wikipedians on this. Good luck, Freakofnurture. --JWSchmidt 15:25, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Responses[edit]

  • Comment:

Why do you use disparaging, predjudiced, vicious, and insensitive remarks about those who vote to keep? Why are you breaking Wiki rules about personal attacks? For example, calling Tommy Silva a parrot, making remarks about those using capital or lower case letters, calling user narap the oldest of the bunch and vain (maybe he was trying to clarify something that you do not know about), whopping 23 edits for Sargis and voting twice. I voted again because Stifle annotated various unsigned and improperly signed comments, and I thought that my vote would not be counted. How do you determine a "legitimate user?" Is it if they are a member of a clique? Is that what wiki is all about? User: john sargis 1030, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

    • Generally speaking, Mr. Sargis, it is within a closer's discretion to discount any voter with less than 100 edits (or with less than 250 edits if the editor has few article edits), and any anon voter. The closer must discount unsigned votes, and may discount all votes from those who vote twice. Personally, I do dislike sarcastic comments directed at newer voters, but given the backlog, I won't censure anyone strongly for that. It is certainly not a defect of process. AfD is not a

vote, senso stricto, and is designed to prevent gaming of the system by hordes of new voters interested in only a few articles. Xoloz 16:29, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • Reply

Although JWSchmidt is right that User:DisposableAccount should have been banned long ago and that the two administrators who voted in favor of deletion should not have uncritically followed him and despite the fact that he correctly pointed out that political views are being used as the basis for decisions about International Journal of Inclusive Democracy and related articles, still, he does not draw the clear conclusion of what he stated, i.e. that Freakofnurture was wrong and that therefore the entry should be restored. Why? Because his “guess” is that the International Journal of Inclusive Democracy is not noteworthy and “it is not clear that it is worth while wasting the time of additional Wikipedians on this”. So, to help him and anybody else on why the Journal IS noteworthy of having a separate entry in Wikipedia, as several other journals already mentioned in it (e.g. International Socialism, Z magazine and many others) here are a few comments:

1. The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy is just the online successor of Democracy & Nature, published by the same Editor, Takis Fotopoulos, and some members of D&N’s editorial Board whereas many of the members of D&N’s International Advisory Board serve also in the same Board of its successor. The fact that D&N was noteworthy journal was recognised by most users in the AfD (promoted by the same people who attempted to delete the present journal) and as a result the entry was kept.

2. Contributiors to The International Journal of Incluisve Democracy include well known theorists of the International Left like David Freeman, David Gabbard, Guido Galafassi, Arran Gare,Serge Latouche, Michael Levin, Peter Mcclaren, Steve Best, Takis Fotopoulos, Rafael Spósito, Jean-Claude Richard, John Sargis and many others. Although some of their contributions have been published in D&N (available only to paid subscribers) they have been thoroughly updated since then.

3. The IJID Newsletter published in conjunction with the journal started in September 2004 and has already published 24 issues covering topical essays on the war against terrorism, the occupation of Iraq and Palestine, the US elections, the Left and similar topics. Several of its articles were already reprinted in the world press, as a quick Google check of its titles shows

4. The editor of the journal , Takis Fotopoulos, is a well known figure of the International Left, as it is shown by the fact that the Inclusive Democracy project, whose is the founder, features as a major topic of the Routledge Encyclopaedia of International Political Economy (2001) and his bio features in the International Authors and Writers Whos’ who (2001/2 edition), The Dictionary of International Biography (2005), The Cambridge Blue Book (2006). Still, the supposedly unbiased administrator Freakofnurture characterised the Wiki entry on Takis Fotopoulos ‘an equally dubious article’!!!. --TheVel 16:31, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Explanation of word choice:

  • "Parroting" [1]: said user repeated the same points written in the comment above his, added nothing new to the discussion.
  • "Jargon" [2]: said user spoke in political terminology comprehensible only to his own "clique" if you will. If it wasn't convincing the first time... why repeat it?
  • "Biased" [3]: Understanding the parroted jargon would be prerequisite to forming any kind of opinion, bias, or alleged political motivation.
  • "Oldest of the bunch" [4]: Refers to the accounts being used, not to the person(s) using them. Narap43 is the oldest account, created September 20, 2005.
  • "Vain/vanity" [5]: Creating or editing an article about yourself, your business, your publications, or any of your own achievements is strongly discouraged.
  • "Dubious" [6]: If this journal is not notable outside its own "clique", of whom Takis Fotopoulos is a central figure, perhaps it begs the question of Mr. Fotopoulos' own notability.

Summary: I've spent much more time than I wanted to on this, yet I stand by my decision not to let the backlogged AFD process be subverted by a ballot-stuffing campaign. The political *AIMS* of your organization are irrelevant to the fact that wikipedia is NOT a propaganda machine or a free web hosting provider to be hijacked at whim by non-notable political movements, however noble their causes may be. — FREAK OF NURxTURE (TALK) 17:26, Dec. 26, 2005

  • TheVel, your account here is also very new. While that alone doesn't completely obviate your argument, it raises a legitimate suspicion that you are here only to support a point of view. Generally speaking, rearguments of content-merit by obviously opinionated new editors are frowned upon at DRV. My advice is that you wait several weeks, rewrite, and resubmit an article for this subject. If it is substantially rewritten (and sourced), it will not be deleted. Another debate can occur at that time, where one hopes advocates of the article will not appear as new editors in droves. When that happens, as here, it justifiably causes WPians experienced in WP:NPOV to be very concerned about the merit of the article. Numerous "new user votes" are, by precedent, counterproductive. Xoloz 16:57, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • The bias of FREAK OF NURxTURE

I’ll comment on just two of your comments above which clearly show your obvious bias:

"Vain/vanity [6]: Creating or editing an article about yourself, your business, your publications, or any of your own achievements is strongly discouraged"

QUESTION: Can you tell us who created similar Wiki entries in the case of journals like Z magazine or International Socialism, if not the people actively involved in these journals or their friends? We do not talk about historical matters here which obviously cannot be proposed by their protagonists but about journals actually existing at the moment!

"Dubious [7]: If this journal is not notable outside its own "clique", of whom Takis Fotopoulos is a central figure, perhaps it begs the question of Mr. Fotopoulos' own notability."

QUESTION: Can you tell us how you can raise doubts of Mr. Fotopoulos' own notability on the basis of your spurious argument of the journal’s notability, ignoring the International references on him mentioned above and also the dozens of references to his work in Google? Is it because it so happens that your next move is an AfD on Takis Fotopoulos’ entry??

Summary: FREAK OF NURxTURE YOU ARE CLEARLY BIASED and the reason is obvious when one takes into account that you decsribe yourself as anarcho-capitalist— something that is blatantly opposed to the politics of the journal! So, please, save us of your ridiculous pretence that you are an unbiased administrator. If other administrators let you play this game, this makes absolutely clear the real role Wikipedia play in providing unbiased and reliable information!!!

And finally: Xoloz, thank you for being at least polite. I want also to stress something: neutrality is a bourgois engrossment. How can someone be neutral for example with Iraq's occupation? We should put in the same bug Bush's and resistence's arguments? Given the fact of the monstrous occupation, this neutrality is simple unrighteous. Wiki is full of examples that proves how this "neutrality" favors injustice (e.g. concerning palestine).

The whole idea is wrong... You must know a famous encyclopaideia that asked Kropotkin to write "Anarchy"'s entry, Freud "Psychoanalysis"' and Husserl "Phenomenology"'s...

Neutrality cultivates manipulation and injustice in an unjust and manipulated society... --TheVel 18:48, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment

So, according to Xoloz’s “wise” argument, ALL entries by new users have to be discounted as suspect of bias, even if they have the relevant knowledge on an entry that may help a decision, whereas the administrators are supposed to be unbiased Gods who can decide on whether a political journal or any relevant entry for that matter is worth mentioning in Wikipedia, even if they do not have the required knowledge, and without having to produce any informed argument on the substance of the matter! Obstructionist politics and relatively little informed knowledge on issues of concern inherent in Wikipedia is a cause of great consternation. This is why Wikipedia is increasingly recognized as a source of unreliable information, and obviously we will do everything possible to make this fact widely known, so that people who do not know you and your procedures do not take your ‘Encyclopedia’ seriously! What is stated in Wikipedia:Neutral point of view to which they referred us is completely irrelevant in this case because the point here is not whether (a) or (b) is true or not, but whether an entry to (a) or (b) should be provided in the first place. Who decides that? Who decides here whether the International Journal of Inclusive Democracy is worth mentioning in Wiki? Supposedly unbiased administrators, who may not have any knowledge of it at all and still discount the advice of people with an informed view on the matter because the administrators suspect them as biased, since they are relatively new users-- just because a malicious user (as it was shown to be the case) requested an AfD? Or, alternatively, clearly biased administrators who do not like the politics of the journal? Case in point: FreakofNature claims to be anarcho-capitalist ( capitalist anarchy rampaging people, communities, environment, etc.) so how can FoN claim objectivity, especially since IJID is anti-systemic? FoN claims to hate Bush, but it’s over tactics not ideology. It is clear that in both cases Wiki’s decision is utterly BIASED, so, please, don't pretend to be unbiased because YOU ARE NOT! You continually discredit newcomers, are not open to persuasion, your opinions are not based in good reason and therefore prone to be irrational—not a good way to run an organization. Later, User:john sargis 14:00, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

    • I feel fairly content ignoring Mr. Sargis, who grossly mischaracterized what I said (a "suspicion" does not lead one to discount something automatically, as I would hope Mr. Sargis knows) for the most part. To answer one point, WPians decide what belongs here; generally WPians do not include "fly-by-night" POV visitors, as you seem to be. To TheVel, I can only say that his is an interesting view, and one which I share to some degree at a deep epistemological level as a postmodernist. However, flawed through "neutrality" may be, it is WP's governing concept. The m:King of Wikipedia, if you haven't noticed, leans toward objectivism. If one cannot accept neutrality as a practical goal for the encyclopedia (which I do), one should either leave the project, or expect frustration. Xoloz 19:18, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Xoloz, ignorance is not bliss (content). Do Wikians vote twice, like you Xoloz, in order to stuff the box and pretend objectivity? As far as fly by night, have you checked to verify if I have contributed to other articles? The politics of suspicion leads to fascism. Suspicion is predicated on little evidence or proof that something is wrong. It has nothing to do with being cautious or watchful.User:john sargis 16:05, 26 December 2005(UTC)
    • Voted twice?? I believe I have voted once on two separate articles; however, because the original nominator very oddly refactored the page, I may be mistaken. In any event, there was no malicious intent, and whomever closes this debate is free to discount mistakes. You may wish to see WP:AGF. As for my suspicion, it is predicated on ample evidence that the nominator, yourself, is unfamiliar with WP's policies and goals, and is here mainly to push a POV. Suspicion is quite useful and warranted, I submit, in this case. Your own words, Mr. Sargis, indicate quite clearly that "something is wrong" in your conduct as a new Wikipedia editor. Consistent with WP:DBN, I won't stress this point, but you may wish to consider that the virulence with which you have pressed this case has undermined its chance for success. Xoloz 21:34, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • Oh, and I did check your contributions, Mr. Sargis, when the discussion began. You have less than 50 edits. This is not inconsistent with a "fly-by-night" description. Xoloz 21:37, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The nature of this process[edit]

Mr Sargis, I would like to point you to the fact that this is not the proper process to discuss the notability of your journal. The purpose of Deletion Review is merely to review whether the original act of deletion was done according to Wikipedia policy. The AfD debate had a clear consensus for deleting the article, as anonymous and new users' votes were discounted, in perfect accordance with policy. If you want to question the policy, I suggest you take your case somewhere else, for example to the Village Pump, which has a section for discussing existing policy.

I have refactored the discussion to show all votes in one place, to ease the job of the closing admin. Please place all future votes there, and please restrict any future discussion on this page to whether or not the article was deleted according to policy. I suggest you actually take a look at the relevant policies, instead of discrediting them as somehow 'wrong'. And please do not assume that everyone is against you because of some political motives, since that is called argumentum ad hominem and is not a very convincing debating technique.

Xoloz (talk · contribs) did indeed vote twice in the debate, but that is a very understandable mistake, given the confusing and huge nature of this debate. I have struck out his second vote in the 'Votes' section above. I've done the same with your second vote. - ulayiti (talk) 22:53, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment: It seems every 'mistake' your side makes "is very understandable" (eventhough you had to correct the double voting only after I had to bring it up two {2} times), but the mistakes we, as new users make, are held against us. So, you are not discussing the notability of the journal (although another administator above thought that this was the only perhaps viable reason because the reasons offered by the mover of AfD were rubbish –and still these were the reasons on which the ONLY two votes to delete were based. Then you tell me not to assume that everyone is against us because of some political motives, despite the fact that the administrator who took the decision to delete the entry (supposedly based on legalistic arguments on who is eligible to vote etc.) was shown to have a clear political agenda against us . What a hypocrisy! OK, if your desire is to delete the entry to the IJID as well as any other entry to the Inclusive Democracy project which presumably is not consistent with the Wikipedia aims then we cannot stop you despite the poverty of your arguments. Our initial enthusiasm for your 'Encyclopedia' has been displaced by your political agenda, which JWSchmidt also has observed, and your inability to be objective. We don’t care anymore about your ‘Encyclopedia’. You clearly showed what Wikipedia stands for and what its hidden political agenda is… User:john sargis 19:40, 26 December 2005(UTC)
    • Dear Mr Sargis, the notability was discussed in the AfD, and you should have been making these points then instead of trying to stuff the ballot. If you insist that we've got a political agenda against you, you should have a look at my political views page. You'll find that I agree with you guys politically, but frankly I think you're giving all of us a bad name with your behaviour here. The deletion decision was based on completely non-political reasons, and I would have taken the same decision. - ulayiti (talk) 14:57, 27 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • Ulayiti, I think Mr. sargis and his affiliates are implying that I have a political agenda against a non-notable political organization and journal whose existance I was unaware of until the evening of December 25, 2005. Furthermore, I have noticed that, as of today, the main Wikipedia article addressing their political views (Inclusive Democracy) has been deleted as a copyright violation three times at two different locations that I am aware of ([7], [8]). It continues to be reposted, yet I will refrain from speedily deleting it myself to avoid further personal attacks and outlandish allegations of bias. — FREAK OF NURxTURE (TALK) 15:54, Dec. 27, 2005




  • Final reply on "neutrality" argument:

Even if one makes the dubious assumption that neutrality exists or can be practiced on political issues, one may ask how exactly you showed any ‘neutrality’ in the case of the journal when you ignored all the arguments put forward by many users in favor of keeping it (because they were relatively new users!) and yet you had no problem in relying for your decision to delete the entry on the arguments of a well known malicious user who should have been banned long ago according to one administrator?

To provide an example, even Encyclopedia Britanica never put in the same bag the arguments of imperialists and Zionists that Arafat was a terrorist and those of everybody else that he was a freedom fighter. Still, the Wikipedia entry mentions that for some he was the former and for others the latter! Is this your neutrality ‘as a practical goal for the encyclopedia’??? This is really post-modernism... --TheVel 01:31, 27 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • Votes*Comment Talk about stuffing the ballot box! It looks like a gang move. All this because "you" sided with the nominator whom "you" deemed should have been banned! And 'you" claim objectivity and neutrality? What a sham! Also, the page with the alledged copyright violation was vandalized with pornography. We've asked for an investigation and trace of the IP. We've heard nothing yet. Are "you" going to investigate or be an accomplice (if you do nothing)? Another scandal for wiki? User:john sargis5:04, 28 December 2005(UTC)
  • Comment Once more dear 'neutral' administrators you are caught distorting the truth. As regards Ulayiti’s comment, the points about the notability of the journal were indeed discussed in the AfD by almost ten users BUT WERE THEN IGNORED (along with their votes, as relatively new users) by two (2) ‘neutral’ administrators who backed the opriginal motion, without any comment of their own . The result of the vote is then taken for granted in the present discussion despite the fact that another (truly neutral) administrator argued here that the mover of the original motion should have been banned long ago for his malicious actions! It was on the basis of these two (2) votes that you managed to pass your ‘neutral’ judgement! Furthermore, it is a joke (or indicates the depth of your political knowledge!) to argue that you agree with us politically when your political views, as described in your page, are at the opposite end of those held by us. You are a supporter of the present system of market economy (with some regulation of it) and representative ‘democracy’ ,and we are in favor of a marketless, stateless direct democracy! A similar joke applies to the non-neutrality of FREAK OF NURxTURE who describes himself as ‘anarcho-CAPITALIST’. Mr FREAK OF NURxTURE , we perfectly understand why you have never heard of us because we are sure you have never heard anything else in your life apart from capitalist organizations and journals. However, even establishment publishers like Routledge and Taylor & Francis have put in their authoritative encyclopedias long entries about Inclusive Democracy and published our journal for many years respectively. Does this ring any bell? To us, it simply means one of the following: either Wikipedia is a completely biased encyclopedia of the reformist Left pretending to be ‘neutral’ or is run by ignoramuses. User:john sargis 5:50, 28 December 2005(UTC)
    • Wow. Actually I don't bury my nose in political journals of any kind. I do hold the belief that governments are inherently bad, and financial cookie jars for "the greater good of all" are a logical fallacy. And yes, I realize this may sound unwiki-like, but (unlike your organization) I don't use Wikipedia to push my views. This is one of the ways an encyclopedia differs from the real world. Also, Mr. Sargis, in the real world, I wouldn't lift a finger against your political agenda. Please direct any further accusations and attacks to my talk page, or the talk page of whomever they pertain to. Be specific and to the point, or they won't know what you're talking about. — FREAK OF NURxTURE (TALK) 12:16, Dec. 28, 2005
    • Just a brief comment on what you wrote above which was revealing indeed. You write: "(unlike your organization) I don't use Wikipedia to push my views". So, when the much more authoritative Routledge Encyclopedia of International Political Economy published a long entry on Inclusive Democacy they did it because Routledge were suddenly converted to our project and not because--unlike Wikipedia--they are keen to include entries on any new theoretical and political development... What hypocricy! Member of the ID Network 13:42, Dec. 28 2005
      • The article under discussion here is about your journal, and it was deleted because it's too insignificant to have an entry in an encyclopaedia. Even Routledge doesn't have an article about the journal. If you want to create an article about 'any new theoretical and political development' that has an article in Routledge, you're quite free to do so, provided it is not a copyright violation. (Hypocrisy is spelt with an s, by the way.) - ulayiti (talk) 13:53, 28 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • Thank you for the spelling lesson, but,unfortunately, I am not a computer freak like you and I do tend to make lots of typing errors. Of course, Routledge does not have an article about the journal, as it also does not have articles about many other journals which have separate Wiki entries(Z magazine and Z communications, International Socialism etc).However, Taylor & Francis, who published the predecessor of the present journal (D&N) up to a couple of years ago, did not find it insignificant at all, unlike you, the Wiki 'experts' who admit that you "don't bury your nose in political journals of any kind"!) As it was noted above, the two journals share the same Editor, most members of the Editorial Board and equally significant contributors, the only difference between D&N and the present journal being that the latter, following a growing trend, is published free on line to secure acceess to many more readers than the former.Member of the ID Network,14:58, 28 Dec.2005 (UTC)

Arriving at a decision[edit]

  • Comment Nothing in the above discussion indicates to me that the mess of an AfD was closed improperly, although it does suggest that evidence that the journal was in fact legitimate may have been ignored in that discussion. For the benefit of this review, can we put the recriminations behind us and gather together the evidence that the journal is legitimate, which I would count as:
    1. evidence of a peer review process, and
    2. evidence that articles published in this journal are cited in journals whose status is not in doubt.
    --- Charles Stewart 15:26, 28 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Criteria:

The criteria set by Charles Stewart constitute of course only a small part of the number of criteria one may use in assessing the legitimacy of a journal, particularly one functioning in the ideological space of the antisystemic Left as the present one. Other criteria could also be for example whether the composition of the Editorial Board (Editorial Committee and Advisory Board) consists of significant writers in the field (a criterion that the journal more than satisfies), how well known are the writers whose contributions have already been published (also a criterion the journal well meets). Furthermore, one wonders whether other journals mentioned above meet the criteria required by Charles Stewart. However, as we do not want to give you the right to argue that we avoided the question, I carried out a brief research on these criteria and here is the result of this research:

You compare Z magazine to your publication at some point. Z magazine has thousands of subscribers. Can you claim that the same holds in your case? Llbb 02:50, 29 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

1. As regards the peer review process, the Notes for Contributors are as clear as they could be on this. I quote from the relevant paragraph: “We also welcome contributions which do not necessarily share the ID perspective, if they are considered by the editorial committee and the international referees associated with the journal to be of general interest and useful in promoting a fruitful discussion on important issues concerning the anti-systemic Left”. The internal organisation document of the journal on the SUBMISSIONS’ REVIEW PROCESS determines the details of the involvement of the Editorial Board and external referees in this process.

What does this mean? Mention specific articles that were published for the first time in your publication and the names of the relevant "international referees". Anonymity holds only UNTIL the paper is published.Llbb 02:50, 29 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

2. As regards the second criterion, although it is absurd to demand significant evidence of citations with respect to a journal which is only one year old (!), still, the relevant evidence is already growing. I’ll mention the following citations I just found from a brief research of mine:

• http://www.altpress.org/direct_d2004.htm (The authoritative Alternative Press Index still cited in its last published volume (2004) the journal’s predecessor, i.e. D&N, but they informed us that the 2005 edition will cite the new journal)

The Alternative Press Index is authoritative only in the sense that it cites ALL magazines/journals that are alternative. It says nothing whatsoever about the impact/popularity of any of them. And the fact that the "journal’s predecessor, i.e. D&N" was cited is irrelevant. "D&N" was respectable, as was shown in the AfD on it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Democracy_%26_Nature and by the fact that it was published by a respected publisher. None of these things hold for your new zine. Llbb 02:50, 29 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

• Monthly Review, 30/10/05 http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/agm301005.html

This is not "Monthly Review" (http://monthlyreview.org/) as you are trying to present it. It's simply the "MR Webzine" (http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/about.html). There's a big difference. Llbb 02:50, 29 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

• The article ‘Kerry and the Left’ (Journal’s Newsletter 1/11/04) was cited in Baltimore Independent Media Center: otherpress/1029

Being cited in an Independent Media Center article means absolutely nothing. The newswire is OPEN and absolutely everything can be cited on it. There is no peer review process involved. Llbb 02:50, 29 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

• The article ‘The Ukrainian Crisis and the Transnational Elite’ from the Journal’s Newsletter (27/11/04) was reprinted in the Turkish daily ZAMAN (30/11/04) http://www.zaman.com/?bl=commentary&alt=&trh=20041130&hn=14291

On the link you provide it says "Mr. Fotopoulos has penned down this article exclusively for Zaman" therefore it is obvious that this newspaper did not REPRINT the article, but was under the impression that the were publishing an original article. Llbb 02:50, 29 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

• Extracts from the article The Myth of the Clash of Fundamentalisms (Journal’s Newsletter 23/10/04) was published in A postcolonial Iraq watch Tuesday, April 05, 2005 (together with articles by Chomsky et al) http://www.indymedia.nl/nl/2004/10/22418.shtml

Again, being cited in an Independent Media Center article means absolutely nothing. The newswire is OPEN and absolutely everything can be cited on it. There is no peer review process involved. Furthermore, almost all the articles on your newsletter say "The above text is based on a translation of an article which was first published in the fortnightly column of Takis Fotopoulos in the mass circulation Athens daily Eleftherotypia on **/**/**", i.e. they are just reprints of texts already published elsewhere. Even this "Athens daily" you mention has a one-line entry on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleftherotypia and you expect Wikipedia to have an entire entry on a newsletter that merely republishes some of its articles? Llbb 02:50, 29 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

--TheVel 18:29, 28 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The series of replies by Llbb were created in one edit, Llbb's first and only edit thusfar. Sockpuppetry won't be tolerated on either side. — FREAK OF NURxTURE (TALK) 06:39, Dec. 29, 2005
I'm satisfied wrt. the first point. I'll need a bit of time to check the material you provided wrt. the second point, but this is the sort of material I was after. Thanks. --- Charles Stewart 18:36, 28 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
AMENDMENTS

The date for the article ‘Kerry and the Left’ is: 2/12/04

Also, the link for A postcolonial Iraq watch is: http://jelloul.blogspot.com/2005_04_01_jelloul_archive.html

You must be joking!!!! You are citing a reference in a BLOG as proof of peer-review processes? You must be out of your mind. Look up Blog and then go get a life. Llbb 02:50, 29 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

--TheVel 19:19, 28 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

COMMENTS ON A SOCKPUPPET

The well known sockpuppet Paul Cardan, a.k.a. DisposableAccount clearly turned up with yet another name here to continue his Goebbelian distortions and dirty tricks. Briefly:

1. As regards the submissions’ review process, we are not going to submit to his Gestapo service the personal details he requires. Once he establishes the social-fascist regime he desires he may apply others to this sort of interrogation, but not us.

2. It is clear that he has never seen the Alternative Press Index , apart perhaps from the internet summary. The Index does not just cite all publications but also provides abstracts of the most important articles and D&N has featured very frequently in these abstracts . As regards the respectability of a theoretical journal, this is not of course something that is determined by whether it is published by a respected capitalist publisher. Particularly so, as far as an antisystemic Left journal is concerned—this would be a contradiction in terms! All major Left publications today are self-publications (including of course the growing number of new theoretical journals on line) exactly in order to avoid the restrictions imposed by profit maximisation. Z-magazine is also a self-publication and as far as comparisons of number of readers go (this is what matters for an online journal), thousands of vistors visit everyday our website, as confirmed by our webserver statistics.

3. As regards Monthly Review, we got the point. Yes, Monthly review magazine has no relation at all to Monthly Review Press Books and the reviews of its books by leading writers in MRZine! Goebbels will be once more proud of you.

4. The same appllies to Baltimore Independent Media Center and Iraq Watch. Yes, every article under the sun is reproduced there and not those that the relevant editorial committees deem important enough for reproduction!

5. Concerning Zaman, the correspondence is available to show that it was the newspapers’ initiative to put down that the article was penned exclusively for Zaman—something very common for dailies in this part of the world, which wish to promote significant articles by foreign authors as their own ‘exclusive’ successes. However, the article does provide references to our website and therefore an elementary research by the newspapers’ staff would have revealed to them that the article was a word-by word reproduction from the Journal’s Newsletter. No space therefore to create a false impression, as the little Goebbels presents it!

6. As regards the Athens daily , your Gebbelian tactics have been put at work once more here since you ‘forgot’ to mention that the articles by Takis Fotopoulos which are published in the Newsletter are not just ‘reprints’, as you describe them. The originals are in Greek and therefore their English translations constitute original texts for the English-speaking world. Furthermore, for those with a rudimentary knowledge of English it is obvious that an article BASED on a translation etc of another article is not one and the same thing. Even more so this is obvious for those with a knowledge of both languages (like you!) who could easily see that the articles published in the Newsletter are usually significant expansions of the articles published in the Athens daily with many more references etc.Finally, the Newsletter does not publish only articles by Takis Fotopoulos, as he distorts the facts once more, but also by several other significant writers of the International Left.

--TheVel 10:38, 29 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I also want to ask the administrators: why did you allow this messing up of my previous message and do not collect all his comments in one comment???--TheVel 10:53, 29 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

ANNOUNCEMENT FROM THE EDITORIAL BOARD OF D&N AND IJID[edit]

1. We, the members of the Editorial Board of Democracy & Nature (D&N) and its present successor The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy (IJID) have, over the last few days, witnessed a concerted attack against the journal by an alliance of sockpuppets (who have been created by a disgruntled ex-member of the journal with a vendetta against us) and some administrators who are either apolitical (not in the sense of party politics but in the sense of a fundamental lack of understanding of politics in the broader sense) or who do not hide their hostility towards the Inclusive Democracy political agenda. This ‘unholy’ alliance has attempted to delete all Inclusive Democracy entries in Wikipedia and in some cases it has already succeeded in doing this.

2. The reasons for which Wikipedia have attempted to substantiate their AfDs range from silly WP copyright violations (from our own webpages!-- which, if applied to all WP entries, would lead to most of them being eclipsed) to arbitrary ‘assessments’ of the notability and significance of our entries. Such ‘assessments’ are given either by administrators who do not have any expertise on the topics they are assessing, or by others following their own political agenda which is at the opposite end of the political spectrum to the Inclusive Democracy project.

3. We find it humiliating, to say the least, to be subjected to this pseudo-democratic process which defames not only our journals, which have been honoured to have had as contributors and members of their Editorial Boards well-known writers such as Steven Best, Murray Bookchin, Pierre Bourdieu, Cornelius Castoriadis, Noam Chomsky, Takis Fotopoulos, Andre Gunder Frank, Serge Latouche, Harold Pinter-- and many other equally important writers who do not have similar WP entries—but also our subscribers who have, in the past, included such notable institutions as Michigan State University, University of Maryland, University of Wisconsin, London School of Economics, University of Massachusetts, Stanford University, Simon Fraser University, Hamburg Library, University of New South Wales, University of Canterbury, Kent; Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal; Harvard College Library,Iinternational Institute of Social History, Amsterdam; Formazione ii Biblioteca, Palermo; Bath University and many others. Furthermore, we find this process equally humiliating to the authors of hundreds of references and citations to D&N and IJID in books, journals, magazines, and electronic media.

4. Finally, we find appalling the fact that, through Wikipedia’s so-called assessment process, self-anointed administrators with no guarantee at all of any expertise in the fields they assess use their wide-ranging powers to decide which pieces of knowledge and information are appropriate enough to be included in Wikipedia. These powers include discounting the votes of registered users who are not long-established--even if their expertise is much more relevant to the topics assessed than that of the administrators, as the irrelevant comments of these administrators frequently show. These built-in fatal errors in assessment—only some of which have been mentioned--could go a long way in explaining the growing literature in the world press on the low standard of knowledge and information provided by Wikipedia.

5. When we created the WP Inclusive Democracy entries, we were functioning as bona fide users thinking that we were helping the development of a free and supposedly democratic encyclopaedia that could function as an alternative source of information to the established encyclopaedias. We were utterly disappointed when we discovered the irresponsible and completely unreliable way in which knowledge on important matters is supposedly created by this supposedly alternative encyclopaedia, which clearly will never reach the standards of the established encyclopaedias because of the fatal structural flaws mentioned. Therefore, the sooner it is disqualified as an authoritative source of knowledge, the better.

6. In light of the above we have decided the following:

a) to withdraw with immediate effect ALL the Inclusive Democracy entries from Wikipedia, including those that have been challenged only on account of trivial Wikipedia copyright violations, as well as those like the entry on the founder of Inclusive Democracy, Takis Fotopoulos, which has not been challenged by anyone during this whole process. b) to demand the banning of any new entry on the following topics: Inclusive Democracy, Democracy & Nature, The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy, The International Network for Inclusive Democracy and Takis Fotopoulos. We reserve all our legal rights in case any future entries on these topics are created in Wikipedia without our explicit and written permission.The Editorial Committee of The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy john sargis 20:55, 1 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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