ProleWiki

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ProleWiki
"The proletarian encyclopedia"
ProleWiki logo 2022 english.png
Logo of English ProleWiki since 2022
ProleWiki frontpage 2023.png
Type Collaborative online encyclopedia, wiki
Available in 7[note 1] languages
Founded 30 September 2020
Founder Felipe Forte
Users >200 (total)
~20 (active editors)
Espoused ideology Marxism-Leninism
Support for AES
URL prolewiki.org

ProleWiki is a Marxist–Leninist collaborative encyclopedia founded in September 2020. It is based on the MediaWiki software.[1]

ProleWiki spans several subjects, including information on history, current events, communist parties worldwide, and countries, as well as hosting a library of texts related to Marxism. The site is closely connected to the Lemmygrad community. ProleWiki is available in several languages, but is most active in English.

History

The following is a timeline of major events and developments which have taken place on ProleWiki.

Founding and early development (30 September 2020 – 24 November 2021)

ProleWiki was founded on 30 September 2022 by a user who went by the name of Felipe Forte, as well as other users of the internet forum Lemmygrad. The initial concept for ProleWiki originated as a reaction to the liberal bias found on Wikipedia. The then-sole administrator of ProleWiki, Forte would firstly attempt to attract editors via promoting the project on Lemmygrad as well as various Telegram groups and Discord server. The website faced several spam bot attacks and eventually established an "account request" system.[2]

The site was able to enjoy a spike of editors and general activity in the first few weeks of its existence, which prompted then sole administrator Forte to invite most editors into an administrative group.[3] However, this strategy did not work out because of absenteeism and eventual lack of interest in the project from most of this first wave of editors. Eventually, the administration shrunk down to just those who continued to work in the project – CriticalResist, Jucheguevara and Andassol. This action was done in order to ensure ProleWiki would have a stable and effective administration. Andassol eventually left the administration in 2021 due to a busy schedule.

Ideological conflicts on patriotic socialism (1 August 2022 – 27 September 2022)

The internal condition of ProleWiki would remain relatively stable for most of early-to-mid 2022, with few notable conflicts within the editorship or administration, This status quo would be upset in August 2022 when the inevitable creation of the page on Patriotic Socialism happened. The page noted Patriotic Socialism (with regards to the pseudo-socialist chauvinist ideology found in the United States of America) as being opportunist and revisionist. However, a few members of ProleWiki were Patriotic Socialist, including then-administrator Jucheguevara, and a conflict would start between the (very few) Patriotic Socialist and non-Patriotic Socialist elements within ProleWiki.

This conflict would result in the non-Patriotic Socialists attaining ideological victory over the Patriotic Socialist elements, with the anti-Patriotic Socialist viewpoint of the article persisting and relative peace would remain in regards to that article. A month after the initial conflict, in September, the administration was contacted anonymously with a tip that Jucheguevara conspired with the Infrared collective to make accounts on ProleWiki under false pretences so as to push a patriotic socialist agenda on the wiki.

Following this revelation (and confirmation of the claim), Jucheguevara was banned on 27 September 2022. He was stripped of his powers as an administrator and his account banned from the project.[4]

Banning of Wisconcom (28 September 2022 – 23 October 2022)

Wisc screenshot thermonuclear.png

In June 2022, a user by the name of Wisconcom, who self-identified as a Hoxhaist, would join ProleWiki and began to protest the encyclopedia's stance on China and market socialism in August of that year.[5] After weeks of an incessant ideological conflict within the editorship, the administrators first gave Wisconcom a moratorium to essentially stop discussing or editing topics related to China. Wisconcom was sometimes insulting or being disrespectful to other comrades in the editorship.

While this would permit some internal peace to develop within ProleWiki, ideological disputes would soon develop. After being warned multiple times about his behavior, Wisconcom claimed he "retired" and left the project of his own accord, but returned three days later along with a petition demanding extended user rights over ProleWiki. The administration rejected this petition as they deemed Wisconcom had not earned such privileges through his mere 5 months of being with the project, and further believed him too unstable for such a position due to the combative behaviour he exhibited several times both on Lemmygrad and ProleWiki.[6] Following a few more lengthy discussions about the petition, the administration would proceed to ban Wisconcom from the project due to the total breakdown of any possible dialogue and his past behaviour towards other users.

Following this ban, Wisconcom would start harassing[7][8] the ProleWiki administrators and some individual editors, along with releasing articles[8][better source needed][9] heavily criticizing the site and its community with fabrications.[citation needed] This is the reason this individual and his subsequent ban are noteworthy in the history of ProleWiki.

After being blocked from editing ProleWiki, Wisconcom began making motivated edits to Leftypedia in January 2023 under several sock-puppet accounts, including revisions and deletions of articles related to the People's Republic of China, ProleWiki, Lemmygrad, and InfraWiki.

Ideology

ProleWiki officially adheres to Marxism–Leninism. The site maintains at least critical support of actually existing socialist countries, and views China, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba, and the DPRK as dictatorships of the proletariat.[10]

Structure

Administration

In its founding in 2020, ProleWiki functioned under the leadership of its founder and current administrator, Felipe Forte, but currently is also managed by CriticalResist. Since late 2022, the administrators represent an organ of decision making as well as of guidance towards the established goals of ProleWiki. The editors, once their account has been approved and as soon as they join the project, can request internal referenda and vote on them. Editors are often solicited to vote on new editor applications as well as get involved in the project.

For example, since February 2022 ProleWiki holds a book club that is entirely managed by an editor. This structure of "work groups" allows ProleWiki to rely on its 100% volunteer base (both in the editors and administrators) to help grow and maintain the project by letting them volunteer their time and effort in projects they enjoy. This eases the workload on the administration and lets it act more like a guide or auditor to make sure the principles of ProleWiki, as well as its mission statement, are still being followed.

Ties with external forums and communities

The ProleWiki administration has connections with ideologically aligned communities on the internet, which most prominently include Lemmygrad (from which both of the two ProleWiki administrators, Forte and CriticalResist, hold moderatorship on that site[11]). ProleWiki also maintains some links with communist content creators on Twitter.

Criticism

Stance towards Maoism and Hoxhaism

ProleWiki, as a pro-AES (Actually Existing Socialism) encyclopedia, rejects the concept of social-imperialism,[12] and further claims that Maoism and Hoxhaism are revisionist tendencies which they compare to Trotskyism.[13]

Disregard for the proletariat in AES countries

ProleWiki arguably neglects to document the exploitation of the working class in countries they consider to be AES states. While documenting the economic exploitation of the workers in Western countries, they seldom do so of the East Asian countries of, for example, China. ProleWiki explains this by applying the theory of a Second Cold War between the United States and China. Under this model and learning from the praxis of communists that lived through the first Cold War, ProleWiki holds that when communists publicly criticise socialist countries, they are not giving a nuanced analysis but are adding arguments to the arsenal of anti-communists.

Anti-psychiatry page

In 2021, an editor by the name of AmicChan joined the project and wrote about many topics, with much of those edits going into a page about anti-psychiatry that they had made.[14] This gave rise to a large debate between the editorship as well as the administration, as one side did not want ProleWiki to be seen as an anti-science outlet, while others were open to the idea that communists should question psychiatry as well as document its abuses under capitalism.

Eventually, a productive dialogue was established and the page was split into two, with one documenting Psychiatry[14] and another documenting the movement of anti-psychiatry.[15] Furthermore, a notice was added on the Psychiatry page to explain that the article was undergoing "an ideological dispute over its content" and one should "establish a consensus with comrades before making edits". After these two resolutions, neutrality was brought back to the page and after which ProleWiki has not received any more criticism on this page.

See also

References

Notes

  1. However, most of the site is available in English, with the other language versions scarcely receiving any edits or updates. Some versions of ProleWiki in different languages, such as the Chinese ProleWiki, have not been edited in over half-a-year.