The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was (speedy) kept. This is silly - we don't AfD articles for being poorly written. If the article sucks, tell people to improve it on the talk page. If they don't, do it yourself. If you need advice, ask a WikiProject. Non admin. —Giggy 14:17, 30 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Democratic socialism[edit]

Democratic socialism (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

This might seem as an odd AFD posting, as the article is seemingly well written and somewhat referenced. However, I had in December 2007 asked at the talk page that the actual definition of the concept be clarified, a posting that received no response from the main authors of the article. To state that 'Democratic socialism' constitutes a separate political tendency is an OR or Original Synthesis construction, and I'm troubled how the existence of the Democratic socialism article is used to label very disparate political movements as 'democratic socialist' in several articles on wikipedia. Notably the key sections of the article are unreferenced or referenced by fringe views. Some examples:

• "Directly contrasting this is what some theorists call State socialism or state capitalism in which a non-democratic state controls the means of production instead of the workers (as in, for example, the Soviet Union during and after Stalin's era). Some authors see democratic socialism as sharing many political ideas with social democracy, while others see them as radically opposed. Nevertheless, democratic socialists often share political parties with social democrats, such as the British Labour Party in the 1980s. Democratic socialism is the second-strongest current of socialism in terms of political success in free elections, immediately following social democracy" is completly unreferenced.
• The 'Common ideas' section is unreferenced.
• The 'Definition' section included contradictory definitions of the term.
• The history section is largely unreferenced. On what basis various political figures have been labelled 'Democratic socialist' is unclear or OR. What is really the essence of the sentence "In Latin America there has been a dramatic rise in support for democratic socialism since the 1998 election of Hugo Chavez as president of Venezuela."?
• In conclusion, I don't dispute that the term 'democratic socialism' is widely used in political life. Often it is used as a direct euphemism of Social democracy. Moreover the term can be used by any socialist movement that feels a need to highlight its democratic credentials. Much of the passages of this article could be included in the Socialism and Social democracy articles instead. Soman (talk) 11:32, 30 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Very strong keep We don't delete articles for being badly written. Some of it is verifiable, so we can't delete per that either. If you see NPOV or unverifiabl sections, remove them, we don't need to delete the whole bloody article--Serviam (talk) 14:08, 30 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Absolutely keep Most of the same problems listed above adhere to many other ideological labels, such as anarchism, liberalism, republicanism and others. Ideological labels tend to almost invariably with time drift all over the map in terms of what they are used to describe, and as such contradictory definitions are to expected, rather than be a source of surprise. It is *wrong* to clarify that which is inherently muddy, as that will present a false picture. That said, (but of course) the article can be improved. -- Cimon Avaro; on a pogostick. (talk) 14:21, 30 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.