Leftypedia:Suggestions

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Revision as of 16:15, 1 December 2023 by Capuch1n (talk | contribs) (USSR, human rights, dialectics, United Kingdom)
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This is the suggestion box, a space for general suggestions relating to the content of Leftypedia as well as the site itself.

If you can think of any sort of suggestion, it probably belongs here. Examples of possible topics include:

  • Article topics that you want to see on the site
  • Interesting or rare information that you think deserves a home, but you don't know where to put it
  • Meta-suggestions about policies, administration, and organization
  • Ideas for new site features

Some specific topics may be branched out into their own suggestion-type pages in the future.

Content ideas

Consider these resources/ideas for articles. Find a use for them in at least one article, though they often have a place in many.

Unsorted

USSR

  • Was a model because of rapid growth in face of poverty and immense opposition. More or less terrified capitalists in those countries where workers' movements were strong, may even have compelled them to make more concessions specifically because of the fear of Soviet influence.
  • Characterized by forced military expenditures against Nazi Germany and NATO. Mikhail Kalashnikov: "Blame the Nazi Germans for making me become a gun designer. I always wanted to construct agricultural equipment."
  • Revolutionary Soviet names like Mel/Mels/Vil
  • Siberian tribes didn't know there was a Russian Revolution until the end of the USSR
  • US relations: US did not recognize the USSR until 33, fighting Soviet influence was an integral part of the FBI, the US invaded the USSR in the civil war
  • CIA on Stalin's power
  • Address the claim that Lenin's views were the minority, he manipulated his way to the top, promised cooperation with other socialists but betrayed them and was unnecessarily harsh, doing things like killing intellectuals and clergy
  • Economy: Blackshirts and Reds: "Managers were little inclined … privilege of getting paid less." Other books and articles that bring up problems economies like that of the Soviets had include Alec Nove's The Economics of Feasible Socialism Revisited and János Kornai's The Socialist System: The Political Economy of Communism (although these, like most others, are from non-Marxist authors.)
  • KGB's fake KKK letters
  • Democracy: Mick Costello's Workers' Participation in the Soviet Union, Pat Sloan's Soviet Democracy, or the USSR Academy of Sciences' The Soviet Form of Popular Government
  • Other very important and worthwhile works include Albert Szymanski's Human Rights in the Soviet Union and Is the Red Flag Flying?, Cecilia Bobrovskaya's Rank-and-File Bolshevik, or maybe even Beatrice Webb's Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation? if you're okay with something extremely long, if you want a variety of looks at the USSR's form of democracy and the policies it developed for the working class.

United Kingdom

EU

  • Controlled by Germany and France despite small countries getting a disproportional amount of votes
  • Lenin on "A United States of Europe"
  • Macron wants a European army separate from US. This is difficult because US-made systems continue to dominate in prevalence. US wants NATO countries to spend on their own defense, but not have their own defense policy — just buy more US materiel. Aid to Ukraine makes the country dependent on US systems. France now the 3rd biggest arms exporter. Latest geopolitical tensions mostly benefit the US and the sale of F-35s, etc.
  • Brexit was a victory of US-aligned capitalists
  • Gorbachev described the EU as "the new European Soviet"
  • EU exploit proles, steals educated professionals, wrecks local companies in favor of French and German capital
  • East European companies like Dacia were run by French and German companies
  • In the 2000s the EU's leading nations placed tariffs on East European countries, but also tried to dominate their markets with own brands and franchises
  • Has a different trade policy from the US: wants de-dollarization, trade with Russia, Iran, and China (Ostpolitik).

Human rights

  • Bourgeois rights/parts of the capitalist system are said to be human rights, e.g. right of contract, freedom of capital, donations are free speech (Citizens United, McCutcheon v. FEC), freedom of press (to push their own narrative)
  • Human Rights Campaign says best place to work for LGBTQ+ equality is at places like Raytheon, but also rips at Bernie Sanders for embracing Joe Rogan's endorsement
  • Here's Why You Shouldn't Support "Human Rights" NGOs like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch
  • Liberal conception of human rights is silly: piracy is theft but hiding money in offshore accounts is okay

Video games

  • Games often appeal to and reinforce people's lowest impulses, promote simple ideas that appeal to reactionaries like orcs vs. humans, princess rescue, "fighting the infection", fighting invaders, obsessively seeking a high score
  • Highway of Death in Call of Duty
  • Yuri Bezmenov in Call of Duty
  • "Call of Duty is a government psyop: These documents prove it"
  • Game use for military recruitment
  • Gamergate was the prelude to alt right, catapulted Breitbart whose Executive Chair Steve Bannon became Trump campaign strategist and worked in his administration; Gamergate endorsed by InfoWars, Storm Front, the Daily Stormer. Gamergate featured doxxing, countless death threats predicated on false claims, under the cover of ethics in journalism
  • Link to left-wing games

Basic Manual of Style

Harrystein (talk) 16:37, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Notability policy

Much of this website's content is dedicated towards documenting websites which lack any clear notability or relevance to leftist politics. In order to prevent this encyclopedia from being the subject of soap-boxers who are able to freely promote their web content, we should implement a definite notability policy. Thank you. SociusVenger (talk) 17:35, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Hi Wisconcom aka SociusVenger, thank you for your suggestion. We will be discussing a notability policy as the site develops. In the meantime, the policy will be determined on a case-by-case basis. I recommend clearly restating your case for non-notability on the talk pages (not LP:AFD) of the InfraWiki and ProleWiki pages. In addition, it is evident that 72 hours is too short for a small site such as this, so give users time to state their positions.
Finally, I would add that you have proven yourself prone to edit warring and other disruptive behavior on these topics. I have allowed you to remain on the site because you have shown at least a sporadic interest in contributing sourced information to other pages. I wonder how many contributions you have made to pages related to Enver Hoxha and his anti-Khrushchev positions which are not copy-pasted speeches or links to the blogposts of you or your friends. There is no reason for me to let you continue using this site purely to attack people who have banned you from one or two discussion forums out of the entire leftist internet. If you are interested in a website where you call everyone revisionist, I suggest you find another site. Harrystein (talk) 15:44, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for your criticism. Regarding your last suggestion, I apologize if you got that impression of my intentions. I hope to use this site for productive purposes which are meaningful to Leftist politics. I likewise respect the position of this site relating to Left unity. While I have focused on documenting anti-revisionism and anti-revisionist writers in the past, this is largely because those topics are my area of interest and knowledge. I do not intend to abuse this site to extend online conflicts between me and ideologically opposed communities. SociusVenger (talk) 15:52, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Licensing for images and content

User:Jack barn made a good point at Talk:Main Page about the license used on this site. Harrystein (talk) 17:33, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Official names or common names?

For the title of articles relating to countries (particularly contemporary ones), shall we use the official name or common name (e.g. Federal Republic of Germany vs. Germany, French Republic vs. France, Russian Federation vs. Russia, etc.)? I bring this subject up as I have noticed that certain articles (such as United Kingdom) are titled with the short name of the countries, whereas others are titled with the official name of the country. Thank you. SociusVenger (talk) 14:59, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

The important question to me is about what the purposes of a leftist wiki are. People concerned about Marxist historiography and communist rhetoric surrounding the history of the UK are not interested in nitpicking about England, Wales, the British Isles et cetera. Whereas the DDR vs. BRD is clearly an important distinction.
I recommend a practical solution:
1. Pick one option for the short term. My vote is for a case-by-case discussion with a tendency towards redirecting common names to socialist-led states. See what I have done with Yugoslavia: plain name redirects to the full state name. "Germany" should go to the modern BRD (after 1990), since "East Germany" is the common name in English for that state. But if you want to be all "Communist Party of China" vs. "Chinese Communist Party" about it, then maybe we can poke fun at Wikipedia by sending "Germany" to the DDR page - the true Germany, as it were. At least that would be consistent. Lesser-known countries in the Anglo world, such as Albania (sorry) could easily go to the socialist Albania. (with a hatnote for the modern state.) Because how many people will be coming here to read about capitalist Albania over socialist? So it's a practical question.
Other takes:
  • Russian Federation simply titled "Russia", with a "Russia (disambiguation)" for Tsarist and other history. Recent history of Russia is important in modern politics.
  • Entire history of France simply titled "France". I can see an argument for limiting it to 1789-present.
  • "China" = PRC since 1949. History of Chinese states, perhaps ending with the Xinhai Revolution, at "China (disambiguation)".
I realize these are inconsistent. Discussion is merited.
2. Make a list of such redirects/conflicts, such as Albania, Germany, etc. with all redirects and alternate names included. I would be willing to do this myself. That way when the decision is reversed we can just change them all at once.
Ultimately, whatever solution gets picked, title consistency isn't as important as redirects. If someone wants to get to a certain sense of "Germany", they should be able to click a couple of links and hatnotes and end up where they need to be. Harrystein (talk) 15:19, 20 August 2023 (UTC)
I largely agree. It would likely be more preferable to settle this matter on a case-by-case basis. My only (small) disagreement would be that the GDR did not particularly claim to be the sole and true government of Germany in the way that the DPRK does in the case of Korea. SociusVenger (talk) 15:34, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

Miscellaneous to-do list

  1. Standardize spacing in editing (such as whether to put an empty line between headings and text, and whether to put spaces between text and equals signs (==Text== vs. == Text ==))
  2. Improve the CSS of the main page, and in this figure out whether all CSS should be directly in the source of the page or whether the CSS should be divided among templates, like on ProleWiki and such. The new front page should look good at different zoom levels and resolutions as well as containing a short guide on how to contribute to the wiki. And maybe find another place to put the "MediaWiki setup info" section.
  3. Probably merge the community portal into the main page because there's not much on both pages
  4. Offer periodic (monthly?) backups of the site available for torrent and download
  5. Deal with the spam filter not allowing edits to be posted that include links with, for example, "socialism" in the URL
  6. Make level 5 and level 4 headings look distinct
  7. Have a collapsible template for long quotes
  8. Figure out what license is appropriate. Some kind of Creative Commons one instead of the current GNU FDL one?
  9. Figure out whether Leftypedia should be hosted on its own domain and what service/country should be used so as to minimize censorship
  10. Improve search engine optimization?
  11. Prevent the visual editor automatically adding "" to the end of every article?
  12. Figure out dark theming. Should users get a dark theme they can enable in user preferences? Or should there be a button on the page that enables it?
  13. Allow the uploading of .svg and .pdf files
  14. Have relevant articles linked in the OP of cyclical Leftypol threads (e.g. Russia, Ukraine, USA) — Preceding unsigned comment added by capuch1n (talk • contribs)
I thought I would add my take on these. They are all good points and To-dos.
TL;DR: Maybe make a post on /meta/ asking for help with these issues, starting with the easiest fixes?
Thoughts
::1. Standard editing spacing. Doesn't seem high priority but if editors want it we can implement. I can adapt to whatever newline solution is picked but personally I edit with a newline before a header, and none after. == Header == vs. ==Header== doesn't bother me when editing source, but for the record, VE defaults to the first option.
2. Main Page style. My impression is that standard stylesheets are the way to go if you want things to scale well. I also have been thinking about adding mobile functionality; my understanding is that CSS would facilitate it. I don't know who put that MediaWiki thing there or why, but it should go unless someone says otherwise.
3. Merge Community Portal and Main Page. I say make front page more inviting and useful, but leave the Community Portal. The Portal is too busy and overwhelming for a front page, in my opinion. To my mind, Front should be for people who want to read or begin editing; Portal or similar space should exist for people who are ready to help and want direction. Maybe call it "editing portal" if you want. Front page should have links to useful shit, featured/"good" pages, maybe even news from /lp/ Newsanon? You know, like a real Wiki. Pictures too.
4. Periodic backups. Support 100%. Don't know how to implement.
7. Collapsible template for long quotes. If we implement this, it should be used only when absolutely necessary. Priority should lean towards shortening the damn quotes, paraphrasing when possible, and providing a reflink so people can go read the whole context. That's just my opinion. This site is supposed to make theory accessible, after all. But for the record, the template would take two seconds to make.
8. Copyleft license. I guess we should ask User:Jackbarn about this, since they raised the issue.
9. Domain hosting. wiki.leftypol.org was just intended to bring the old site back from the dead, right? I'm neutral one way or the other. I will say -- is maintaining a separate site more expensive or difficult? Maybe down the road.
10. SEO. I will look into how to do it. Do you have any starting ideas?
11. Fix VE. I don't know if we can edit the MW Visual Editor without a huge fuss. I'm truly sorry about that issue, and it definitely needs fixing.
6, 12. Header CSS; Dark theme. These are related to broader question of Skins. I suggest:
  • Add dark mode skins and option button. Put the button in the actual interface/menu, at the top or left somewhere.
  • Discuss default/main site skin. Decide if we wanna look fancy.
  • Once default skin is added or decided against, change header and other CSS at MediaWiki:Common.css. Start with this Stackoverflow post.
5, 13. Spam filter; Filetypes. Per what Disc said in the Matrix... we need to ask a dev to disable the entire filter for now (manually moderate for spam in the interim) until we figure out what the issue actually is. Really what we need is a sympathetic dev, or someone who will nag the devs, lol. SVG seems like an easy starting request.
14. Put Pedia articles in /lp/ OPs. That would be amazing. First step: make a decent starter article. Next: post it in the general and gain the approval or interest of Anons. Then: only ask the devs to do it when there is real interest. My Ukraine article is actually intended for this.
Harrystein (talk) 18:30, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

NSFW/NSFL policy

I have added a graphic image to the WIP Anti-communism sidebar template. It seems to me to be appropriate for the topic as well as for the wiki. What should the policy on graphic images be? Do you approve of my choice of image? Harrystein (talk) 01:10, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

In my opinion, content on Leftypedia should not be censored so long as it is meaningful to the subject at hand. In the case of the image on the anti-communism sidebar, it accurately displays the nature of anti-communism (mass-killings, fascistic terror, etc.) and additionally blends in well with the black color on the border. SociusVenger (talk) 03:26, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Manual of Style: Anti-Semitism

Antisemitism or anti-Semitism? Antisemitic or anti-Semitic? Vote now on your phones. If you don't care, I will pick one. Harrystein (talk) 19:51, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

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