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 keep‎. (non-admin closure) The Herald (Benison) (talk) 17:58, 11 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

International Marxist Tendency (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

No evidence of meeting general notability as an organisation itself, only non-self-published sources relate to a historical organisation that was never in the IMT. Majority of article looks to fall afoul of WP:NOTDIRECTORY & WP:LINKFARM as it's simply a listing of various non-notable organisations' personal websites or instagram pages. Rambling Rambler (talk) 14:22, 4 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Organizations and Politics. Rambling Rambler (talk) 14:22, 4 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• It's bad form to remove most of the article's references and then nominate it for deletion - there were 52 on 1 March and now there's 8, all removed by the AfD nominator. NOTDIRECTORY/LINKFARM doesn't apply here because it's an organisation (that can be solved with editing). I've only checked a couple sources from the last AfD which seem to be more on Mr Woods than the org so won't be !voting yet but a BEFORE search shows it has been at least referenced if not discussed by a couple scholarly articles, and there's a number of sources to sift through. SportingFlyer T·C 15:16, 4 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  I'm sorry if you consider it bad form but the reason why the references dropped so dramatically is because I checked them. Out of the 52 cited prior to a cleanup I did today ~27 were self-published by IMT or one of their subsections. I then went through the remaining ~25 sources and, when it didn't end up either being a dead link or unreliable source, the sourcing would tend to be Synth or circular in nature or quite frankly almost fabricating claims.

  As an example here is a passage on Malala Yousafzai I removed:

  "In 2012, the IMT published an article denouncing the attempted assassination of Malala Yousafzai, saying she is an IMT supporter and showing a picture of her speaking at an IMT school in Swat, Pakistan.^[1] Woods's statement has been used to interpret Yousafzai's politics^[2][3] and to speculate on whether she has a communist or anti-religious agenda.^[4][5] Yousafzai sent greetings to the March 9, 2013, congress of the Pakistani section of the IMT, saying, "I am convinced Socialism is the only answer and I urge all comrades to take this struggle to a victorious conclusion. Only this will free us from the chains of bigotry and exploitation.^[6][7][8]"

  As can be seen here the first source is self-published, the second links to a Stop The War opinion piece that's about controversy around then NUS president Malia Bouattia and I can't find the original, the third source is a Pakistani newspaper of unknown reliability that cites IMT's own press release to suggest Malia Y. attended an IMT school, the fourth is a dead blog called Kashmir Watch that again cites IMT's press release, the fifth source The Hindu is paywalled so couldn't access, and sources six to eight supposedly support the claim that Yousafzai sent greetings to the March 9, 2013, congress of the Pakistani section of the IMT yet none of them actually say this, only that she had sent greetings to a "meeting of Marxists". In fact the piece in The Nation links to wikiquote which then links to the IMT website as the final source of the claim.

  So basically all the evidence for "Malala Yousafzai is an IMT supporter" in the end links back to the IMT website as the source.

  On NOTDIRECTORY/LINKFARM, it does apply here because at present once cleanup was complete all that really exists is a table that functions as a directory/link farm to various social media pages and websites of the IMT. The article basically has no content to demonstrate notability of the organisation itself. Rambling Rambler (talk) 16:32, 4 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  A page on an organisation can't be deleted on NOTDIRECTORY grounds, that doesn't make sense. It would be deleted for failing NORG. A BEFORE search still has to be performed. This is a tough one since it does not appear to have been well covered outside its movement, at least in English. I don't really see anything wrong with the Dawn article, though, unless Dawn is not an RS. SportingFlyer T·C 19:41, 4 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  It does make sense in this case, as at present all the article largely exists as is a directory for various social media pages/websites of the groups different national sections. It's not really an article about IMT as an organisation but where to go for your countries subsection of IMT which gives it the format of a directory/linkfarm. On Dawn, the issue isn't necessarily the reliability of the site (I can't speak to that) but the issue in that it's being used as a supposed RS about Malia in IMT but if you read it the only reference to her and IMT is the line "As an IMT release suggests, Malala Yousufzai attended its National Marxist Youth School in Swat in July this year". The source is therefore still the IMT themselves.

  The complete lack of coverage in English is why I felt it necessary to bring it to AfD. Too much information when trying to find sources for it just end up being a one or two step journey back to their "In Defence of Marxism" site. Rambling Rambler (talk) 20:17, 4 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment Just a note on self-published sources. RR seems to be conducting a wholeseale removal of self-pubished sources on the assumption that they can never be used. In fact, under Wikipedia:Verifiability#Self-published_or_questionable_sources_as_sources_on_themselves they can be used in the following circumstances:

1. the material is neither unduly self-serving nor an exceptional claim;

2. it does not involve claims about third parties;

3. it does not involve claims about events not directly related to the source;

4. there is no reasonable doubt as to its authenticity; and

5. the article is not based primarily on such sources.

Self-published sources cannot of course be used to establish notability but self-published sources (such as in this case websites associated with the IMT) can be used as sources for factual things such as events in the organization's history, the names of its publications, and the positions the organization holds or has held. Wellington Bay (talk) 17:12, 4 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Except I am following that policy. Before I went through line by line and cleaned it up today it was already in breach of point 5 of that list, that the article was primarily based on such self-published sources. While going line by line (as demonstrated in a reply above) it also badly failed points 1, 2, and 3. Many sources used were making claims that were "unduly self-serving", involved third parties, and made claims about events not directly related.

This isn't a problem just with IMT. Wikipedia has far too many articles on fringe political groups/parties where the article is essentially built off of that own groups material. Rambling Rambler (talk) 17:23, 4 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Article was fine before you removed nearly all of its content. Here's a list of non-IMT sources from the past year that prove the organization's notability:

https://www.leftvoice.org/are-you-a-communist-then-lets-talk-about-the-imt/

https://mndaily.com/278982/opinion/opinion-are-you-a-communist-then-fork-over-65/

https://racketmn.com/so-about-those-communist-recruitment-posters-all-over-the-u

https://www.campusreform.org/article/universities-host-marxist-schools-sponsored-by-international-revolutionary-organization/20455

https://www.statepress.com/article/2021/07/spmagazine-radicalized-by-the-pandemic-2020-young-people-socialism

https://www.wispolitics.com/2024/international-marxist-tendency-madison-branch-rally-to-honor-aaron-bushnell-and-fight-u-s-imperialism/

The fact that most of the sources were self-published was fine, see Wikipedia:Verifiability. This article could use a lot more criticism of the IMT- I was a former member and I discovered firsthand that they mostly just sell newspapers and do nothing- but its ridiculous to delete it or purge its contents based off a misinterpretation of the Wikipedia rules.

HadesTTW (he/him • talk) 00:03, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The fact that most of the sources were self-published was fine, see Wikipedia:Verifiability.

Self-published and questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves... so long as: 5. The article is not based primarily on such sources Rambling Rambler (talk) 14:36, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Keep An organisation which has branches in dozens of countries with however many thousands of members in each (though perhaps hundreds in some) is by any and all means notable. Genabab (talk) 21:08, 10 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep per the provided sources. More generally, the IMT is a well-known group on the global left, especially as far as Trotskyists go. I have zero doubt that more significant sources can be found if the effort is put in to do so.--User:Namiba 21:12, 10 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - while the article can be improved, sources exist. For example, Contemporary Trotskyism:Parties, Sects and Social Movements in Britain (ch. 11 "The proliferation of Trotskyist Internationals") by John Kelly (ISBN 9781315671048) and The Twilight of World Trotskyism, also by Kelly. Wellington Bay (talk) 21:15, 10 March 2024 (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.