Talk:ProleWiki/archive1

Patriotic socialism and banning of anti-revisionists

ProleWiki does not "actively promote" patriotic socialism, and patsocs are specifically prohibited on its Principles. You also claim that they banned over 25 anti-revisionists, but the ban logs only show Wisconcom and one other user from 2020. The other banned users were mostly either spam bots who never edited or patsocs. Also, do you have any evidence that the majority of editors supported you? Antifa1917 (talk) 00:30, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

I sourced my claim in that instance. Your site has promoted Patriotic Socialism for most of its existance (or at least allowing clearly Patsocs in the project), including letting them promote the "degrowth" conspiracy theory. Your site only banned them once they became a threat to the personal power of the administration, and the admins on ProleWiki merely framed it as an ideological purge simply to gain popularity. They don't care about ideological content, merely defending so-called "AES". Lastly, I see you have shared this article with the Lemmygrad community. Wisconcom (talk) 00:36, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

The other administrators did not know Jucheguevara was a patsoc until just before he was banned. You also have no source showing that 25 anti-revisionists were banned because most of the entries on the banned list were bot IPs that had never edited. Antifa1917 (talk) 00:41, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

I invite you to read the message history on the Discord server. Jucheguevara expressed Patsoc views many times, and the de-facto leader of ProleWiki, Forte, even defended his views (such as when Jucheguevara claimed that the economic mode of communism represented a petite-bourgeois utopia with billionaires and private ownership). Regarding ProleWiki's great purge of anti-revisionists, I am operating on what my sources indicate. I am using relible sources, and these reliable sources assert that, therefore it is true that ProleWiki mass-banned anti-revisionists. Wisconcom (talk) 01:31, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

What reliable sources do you have that 25 anti-revisionists were banned? The banned log only has two banned Hoxhaist accounts: H. Vilaverde and Wisconcom.Antifa1917 (talk) 22:53, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Hi Antifa1917, as an admin of prolewiki I would very much like to weigh in. While we were somewhat aware Jucheguevara was a patsoc (we didn't know the extent of it), we believed we could bring him out of this reactionary movement. Additionally, this manifested after he became an administrator and at that point he had access to our funds and other accounts. Forte half-heartedly agreed with Jucheguevara on some things exactly because he was an admin and it was difficult for us to argue about this head-on, we believed it would be more effective to take it slowly. Obviously we were wrong, as Jucheguevara conspired with the Infrared community to infiltrate Prolewiki, after which he was finally banned.

Regarding the banned accounts, like you pointed out, bans are public and show that we have only ever banned around 4 people on the wiki (the two you mentioned, jucheguevara, and another patsoc). The first you mention, Vilaverde, was banned very early on in Prolewiki's life (2 months after it was created) and while I did not necessarily agree with the ban at the time, it's over 2 years old at that point. --CriticalResist (talk) 15:41, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

So you were aware Jucheguevara was a Fascist and reactionary the whole time but did not care because you could "convince" him into correct Marxism? This is a clear lie. You only care about defending "AES", not advancing the goals of revolution and Marxism. Wisconcom (talk) 16:40, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

would you care to explain why you deleted my topic in the talk page? --CriticalResist (talk) 16:46, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Anti-psychiatry

I don't think it's fair to say ProleWiki is in support of anti-science movements even generally. The top of the Psychiatry page says "This article is currently undergoing an ideological dispute over its content; be critical of the information presented, and make sure to establish a consensus with comrades before making edits.", and there is a lot of pushback to anti-science in the talk page. You should also clarify that they are endorsing a particular big pharma conspiracy theory because there are many. Another part that needs rewording is "and that most professionals working in those fields are members of the bourgeoisie and "bribed" by this "big-pharma" plot", because there really are hidden deals and gift-giving campaigns that big pharma carries out to influence physicians. Also from my understanding, Autism is more established as having a material cause than ADHD, whose origins are more controversial and said to be more culture-bound; some researchers contend it is based on a genetic malfunction with neurotransmitters, whereas some others pretty much root it in being a result of living in modern capitalist society. So perhaps leave out ADHD from the last sentence. Capuch1n (talk)

As an administrator of prolewiki, I can weigh in a bit on this topic. The psychiatry/anti-psychiatry page was created by a single user that clearly was biased against the field when they made that page. Ultimately, through discussion, we managed to come to a compromise and make the page much more neutral and not as one-sided. The idea that "many editors push anti-scientism" is also wrong -- like I've explained, the anti-psychiatry "movement" on prolewiki is the work of just one editor.

Secondly, wisconcom makes two claims here: "The leading ProleWiki administrator and founder, Forte, himself is a self-declared supporter of the anti-psychiatry movement, and has even "invited" editors from anti-psychiatry communities on Reddit and Lemmygrad to promote their denialist views" and none of them are true. I work a lot alongside Forte and at most he said some of the criticisms were not necessarily wrong, and that we should keep an open mind as communists and be ready to critically examine things we hold as true (in the context of determining whether the psychiatry page deserved a page on prolewiki or not). He also did not invite editors from anti-psychiatry communities simply because we do not know any. The anti-psychiatry community on lemmygrad had two users, one of them being the editor wisconcom references here. The source added at the end of these two arguments simply links to the psychiatry page on prolewiki and is therefore out of topic. --CriticalResist (talk) 16:49, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

This article is slander as part of a targetted campaign against Prolewiki by a single user

Hello everyone, apologies for the somewhat clickbait title but I didn't know what else to put.

I'm an administrator on Prolewiki and I was made aware of this article. I have read the page entirely as well as the discussions, and I would like to offer our side to show that this article is soapboxing, and Wisconcom is highly untrustworthy (and was banned from prolewiki on this basis).

For a brief background, Wisconcom joined prolewiki as an editor (we have a vetting process over there like many discord servers do) and was allowed to edit for a few months. He was eventually banned from the project however for being overly combative with his comrades during debates, especially on the topic of China. He was given a few warnings but kept doing it and eventually started showing concerning signs that he wanted Prolewiki to be something it was not, even pretending he had support from other users (that never materialised), and essentially vying for an administrator position within our project while working from the shadows, it seems. This made him very untrustworthy and he would get combative when called out, and thus he was banned as people were starting to feel demoralised having him around. He recently admitted to wanting to be made admin by "couping" prolewiki and removing the current administrators (how he will achieve this I have no idea).

I have some screenshots of his past behaviour but I wouldn't even know where to start compiling them into something coherent. This has been going on nonstop since november of last year. He is clearly obsessed about prolewiki as even after he told us two or three times that he would stop bothering or contacting us, he consistently comes back within a week to harass us more.

As you can see from the sheer size of this article, wisconcom has an obsession against us after we banned him and thinks it is his god-given right to keep editing on prolewiki (even "demanding" we let him back in).

Going into the article itself, please note the following inconsistencies or lies that Wisconcom has written into the page. I hope these sufficiently show that Wisconcom is using Leftypedia as a soapbox to spread silly lies on Prolewiki -- he has done this on twitter (before deleting it after I called him out), on his substack, on Rational Wiki, and even created his own fandom wiki to that end (one of the only few pages there is a very detailed one on Prolewiki). I am using the latest revision at this time (january 27, "founding and early development") for this list.

1. "ProleWiki is infamous among most socialist circles" -> this has obviously no citation because there is none. We have more than 2000 subscribers on Twitter, which includes non-Marxist-leninists such as anarchists or hoxhaists (like what wisconcom claims to be). I have no idea where he pulled the "most" from.

2. "with most of its editors being militant Dengists and those who are not often getting banned" -> Prolewiki does say in our principles that we support China as AES. However, we have accepted users that had nuanced opinions on China and definitely would not fall into the category of "Dengists".

2a. Add to this, Wisconcom has talked about the "many" banned users in the discussion page too. Prolewiki uses Mediawiki too and so you will quickly know that the block list is public on this software. We have banned four users in total for various reasons, with most of them being spambots (not counted in the users).

3. "Depite claiming to maintain nearly 90 fully active editors as of January 2023" -> we do not claim this anywhere (focusing on the "fully active editors" part). There is a widget on our front page that shows the number of created accounts, which is at 90 currently, but we have never said anywhere that they were all active. We readily admit around a dozen editors are active, and "active" editors can be seen on its special page (although it shows accounts that have taken at least one action, no matter what it is, in the past 30 days) will confirm this.

3a. I am also unsure why he chose to represent this in such an aggressive manner ("Despite" and then "in reality") as if it was something to be ashamed of?

4. "The site is greatly connected to other ideologically-aligned communities on the online left, such as Lemmygrad and GenZedong" -> I have no idea where he gets this from. While Prolewiki was started by a Lemmygrad user and we moderate our own community there, we have no more ties with Lemmygrad than that between the two projects. Likewise, we do not interact with GenZedong. This is not new however, and wisconcom has this deeply strong idea that we work with Genzedong but has never been able to prove it.

4a. (continued) "and is dependent on these external sites for their recruitment of editors and preservation of the ideological line of the site" -> again, no idea where he pulls this from. As we make all editors go through vetting, their answers appear on their user page when their account is created. The very first question asks how they discovered prolewiki. Thus it is absolutely possible for wisconcom to look at every editor and the initial revision of their user page. Most users I would say come to prolewiki after they discovered us on twitter. One or two come from Lemmygrad, and none come from Genzedong (how would they even?).

5. "ProleWiki often serves as a "gateway" for Communists to be indoctrinated into chauvinistic and revisionary ideology, with the site actively promoting "Patriotic Socialist" and other social-chauvinist points of view and allowing users of those persuasions into the project" -> this is a very strange thing to say because first, accusing people of chauvinism is a very serious accusation. Secondly, we have a page on patriotic socialism and it is absolutely not kind towards this movement. Thirdly, I have personally talked to wisconcom about patriotic socialism and we fully agreed with each other on this topic (on the discord, during the time he was still an editor). His only proof for this is two essays which we decided to leave up because our essays section is more free-form and open. If we deleted them, wisconcom would accuse us of censorship probably.

6. I'm going to finish up here with the "founding and early development" section so that this topic doesn't become too long (I fear it already is):

6a. "Forte would also create a number of fake accounts and spambots on the site to boost SEO engagement to make the site more visible to unknowing newcomers" -> Well, you have mediawiki too, you know just how much spambots love it and you probably faced similar attacks in the early days of Leftypedia. This is actually why we started the vetting process originally, just to stop the spambots.

6b. "but in truth existed as part of Forte's plot to slowly turn ProleWiki into a pro-CPC propaganda outlet via preventing non-revisionist Marxists from joining.[6]" -> This is a strange thing to claim because Prolewiki is all in Forte's name, as he pays for the hosting and registered it. He could do anything he want to prolewiki if he wanted to, he doesn't need a "plot" to "slowly" (covertly) turn Prolewiki into something else.

6c. "claiming that the previous democratized administration was suffering from "absenteeism". However, these adminstrators were greatly commited to their positions," -> I was there when we had a very large administrative circle, open to anyone who wanted in (I was recruited as an admin during that time in fact), and I can assure you this is completely wrong. I don't even know how Wisconcom would know this, because this group lived only on a Telegram channel which he was never a part of. The administrators were absent and lost interest in the project pretty quickly after an initial hype phase.

6d. "as the other adminstrators were begining to question the pro-China ideological line of ProleWiki.[9]" The source shows just one editor making a hasty edit on the page about China. This is certainly not "administrators" plural and the user in question was in fact never an administrator (his account was created in december 2021, long after we reformed the administration circle).

The rest of the article is just as soapboxy and agenda-posting as the first parts of it. Wisconcom makes lots of claims that he would have no way of knowing about (as he was not on prolewiki at the time these things supposedly happened) and if you ask him to prove it, he will say he "talked to people" but never elaborate.

I am not too sure about what Leftypedia considers objectionable content or not, so I will leave the administrators here to take a decision about this page or this user. I hope I was able to shed some light on this page though, and on the motivations of this particular user.

Sorry if this was long, and thanks for reading. --CriticalResist (talk) 15:33, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

I am sorry to make this even longer, but I finished reading the article and I have to react to the "The "great purge" on ProleWiki (23 October 2022)" subheading. Wisconcom is making himself look more important than he is in that section, and completely lies to make himself look like a blameless victim. He never had popular support for an administrator position (we never knew about his wishes to become an admin before the petition, he never talked about it). He never had support for the petition either: he posted it and it went into oblivion, with just Forte and me reacting to it. This is easily proven because he is unable to cite any actual source for his claims here: he only cites a statement Forte made on the blocking of Wisconcom which, as you can see, did not generate any response from this "anti-revisionist faction" nor did Forte mention other users in that statement.

I can assure you that within the discord server, most editors dislike Wisconcom because they understand his unhealthy obsession with the wiki (of which they are tired) and his attempts to infiltrate us (he keeps trying to make alt accounts on prolewiki). Likewise, the part just above about "repeatedly losing debates within the community to the anti-revisionist faction"... Wisconcom was the only member of this "faction" and he never "lost" a debate because he would keep shrinking into a deeper and deeper hole with more and more nonsensical arguments (he even quoted the Economist to discredit China, a journal that Lenin said "speaks for the British millionaires") and even personal insults if it got too far and he had no way out. He never listened to any argument made against his position and remained steadfast.

Wisconcom claims to hate the current state of prolewiki, a project which he never helped start, never helped promote or strengthen (he only ever edited and he was not the most prolific editor), yet he wants to become an administrator so he can turn a project that was never his to reflect his personal bias of "anti-revisionist marxism". --CriticalResist (talk) 16:02, 28 January 2023 (UTC)