Talk:Socialist Party USA/Archive 1

message: I've protected this page with reservations as the dispute seems quite minor. I'm just doing it to encourage the parties to resolve the matter on this talk page. Will look in again in a few days. AndyL 23:05, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Protected

message: Does the Socialist Party have an international affiliation? --Revolución (talk) 01:56, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: International affiliation?

message: I think the basic discussion on the platform is pretty good, and hits on the major divides in the party's internal life.  What else is appropriate for the page?  Could someone point to a model political party entry? Cadriel 14:15, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: What more do we need?

message: The "Multi-Tendency Tendency" link has been removed before, and I'm removing it again.  It is a parody of the sectional infighting in the SP that preceded the 2005 convention, and does not function as an active tendency. Cadriel 14:01, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've never seen nor heard of it doing anything other than having a Web site that's been officially repudiated by the SP as a whole.  Also, please discuss why you dispute the neutrality of the article (and sign your posts on talk pages).  For the moment I've removed the NPOV tag because it was easiest to revert all at once and not piecemeal.  If it is defended it can be replaced.  -David Schaich Talk/Cont 02:31, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Other tendencies may not be very active, but they aren't jokes or hoaxes (except perhaps for the "Black Socialist Party", which I've never heard of).  Checking the "Multi-Tendency Tendency's" Web page, I see that it's "Draft program" for 2005-2006 has a blank list of principle authors, and the main names mentioned in its "Directory" and on other pages are Chico, Groucho, Karl, and Harpo Marx.  Apparently it "is assured to win big at the 2005 Convention".  Do you have any evidence to show it isn't a (rather dated) joke?  -David Schaich Talk/Cont 02:56, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

text: My point was that not only is it a joke, it's a rather old joke, which nobody's felt motivated to bother with for nearly two years now. -David Schaich Talk/Cont 03:26, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Multi-Tendency Tendency

message: Why didn't they have a Presidential candidate in 1984? Шизомби 01:27, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: They were hoping to work with the Citizens' Party, if I remember correctly. --metzerly 01:52, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: 1984

message: Would redeagle688 care to explain the reason for nominating this article for a non-neutrality check?
I can; the article is promotional, and not *about& the SPUSA. The function of an encyclopedia is to document and not to foist propaganda. Time and again, links that are not popular with the most dominant political factions within the Party are deleted, even if they are factual. For example, the Party has an affiliate in Oregon. That affiliate is not popular with the SPUSA for having lampooned a "political discussion" and maintains records that the SPUSA finds embarrassing on its web page. The SPUSA has cut links from its own web page to Oregon; fair enough. The information in Wikipedia should be neutral and factual: the disagreement between SPUSA and its Oregon affiliate is not that Oregon is/is not a chartered local, but that the information archived on the Oregon website is factual but embarrassing to the current elected officers.
The introductory explanation lays out characterizations between various factions and ascribes motives to different sides; those may or may not be accurate for some individuals, but certainly a general case can not be made from a few people.
Many of the affiliates maintain local publications, which are banned (I guess?) by the SPUSA censors, because their links go up... and come down... and go up... and come down... There is no disagreement over whether these are publications from chartered affiliates -- the publications popular with the current officers are the ones that, mysteriously, do not get deleted over and over again.
Wikipedia does not belong in the political arguments within the Party -- the article should document facts, and not the opinion of whatever the current dominant faction is. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 172.192.34.36 (talk • contribs) 02:33, 12 February 2007  (UTC)
:I too initially wondered why the links to thesocialistparty.org were being removed.  After restoring them a time or two, I inquired here, as you can see below, and was satisfied by the answer: that this Web site is the work of one individual who, although connected to the SP, used it primarily to harass other members.  Apart from that, the site has no connection with the Socialist Party USA, the subject of this article, and as a result no need to be included in it.  You can address these deliberations below, where they've been sitting for eight months or so without comment. -David Schaich Talk/Cont 02:42, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I was not discussing the Socialist Party of Oregon, I was discussing the Web site in question, which to my knowledge is the work of one individual.  This person does happen to be a Socialist Party member, but other than that the site has no connection to the Socialist Party USA, indeed has been officially repudiated by it, as mentioned below.  That is what makes it special.  Note that the Socialist Party of Oregon's article has been linked from this one for some time.  This shows that the issues with this site don't have to do with the SPO itself. -David Schaich Talk/Cont 03:06, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

text: This is not censorship.  Wikipedia has guidelines on external links, which require, among other things, that they be kept to a minimum and limited to those directly related to the subject of the article.  As I've had to argue repeatedly in various sections of this page, thesocialistparty.org is not connected to the Socialist Party, except as the work of a member. -David Schaich Talk/Cont 03:33, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

text: I'm just working with the decision of the Socialist Party, copied and linked below, to make clear that it is unconnected with this site.  Mainly, though, I'm just tossing unsigned tags after every single one of your posts and putting in a couple sentences while I have the edit window open.  Please, please, please sign your posts.  -David Schaich Talk/Cont 04:04, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why nominated for check of neutrality? 

message: Over the last several months there has been a considerable amount of spam related to Socialist Party USA. Large numbers of links have been created to this page across a range of categories which are not specifically related to SPUSA, and several editors (myself included) have been removing them. Examples of this spamming are Left-libertarianism, Pederasty in the modern world, Sexual apartheid, Prison Activist Resource Center,  Prison reform, National Postal Mail Handlers Union, Labour movement, Black Power.
Although SPUSA undoubtedly has a political opinion on these topics, so do the myriad of other political and social parties across the world. Linking SPUSA to these articles is simply unworkable, and in the end makes for confusion and additional work for editors who must remove the links.
I am posting this here because the link spamming is being done by an anonymous editor/editors, and there is no practical way to directly contact the person. I would hope that this note starts a conversation which eventually involves those who are adding these links, and that we can find a solution to this problem.--Bookandcoffee 19:03, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Link spam and www.sp-usa.org

message: I felt it was necessary to clarify SP generally rejects what is commonly defined as democratic centralism, rather than democratically controlled centralist elements per se, since it actually functions through a combination of centralist and autonomist elements, in a democratic way. SP USA isn't an "absolutely horizontal" organization in practice nor theory, and neither do various party tendencies (be they Luxemburgism/"Gramscianism", Debsianism etc.) reject certain democratically controlled centralist elements. Furthermore, even in the narrower sense of the term, it wouldn't be true to claim Socialist Party completely rejects democratic centralism, so for example Walt Brown,  who is anti-abortion, delivered a pro-abortion message (in accordance with the party platform) when he was running as the party's presidential candidate. This obviously doesn't undermine the genuine, strong democratism of the party's theory and practice.  —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 89.172.34.227 (talk • contribs) 21:09, 12 August 2006  (UTC)
:I still think it's important to have a link to the page where the SP specifically rejects Leninism and "democratic centralism".  The "commonly defined as" is good to include, and clarifies the SP's use of quotation marks in the linked page.  I also expanded the paragraph to mention some of the controversy over the Statement of Principles, but I'm still debating over whether to mention Walt Brown specifically. -David Schaich Talk/Cont 20:22, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I know I've not contributed, but as a member and local officer, I think David_Schaich is right on the money here.  Not being "absolutely horizontal" is a looong way from democratic centralism. The SP rejects democratic centralism explicitly, even if a contributer believes (perhaps rightly, perhaps not) that it doesn't always practice what it preaches.  My concern is that the change was actually made to remove the word 'Leninist' from the things the SP rejects.T L Miles 19:32, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Democratic centralism

message: Is Next Left Notes still affiliated with the Direct Action Tendency?  I was under the impression that it has now become an organ of the revived SDS.  —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.32.172.179 (talk • contribs) 17:57, 1 September 2006  (UTC)
:Yes, you seem to be right.  It describes itself as "now an unofficial organ of SDS/MDS".  The bigger question is whether or not DAT is still an active tendency... I'm under the impression that it's been pretty much defunct since most of its leaders headed off to the new SDS.  I'll be bold and remove NLN, but leave the DAT for now.  -David Schaich Talk/Cont 20:22, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Having searched without success for any sign that the Direct Action Tendency still exists, I've removed it from the article.  Its domain name is for sale and all Google hits are a year or two old. -David Schaich Talk/Cont 19:44, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Next Left Notes? 

message: Just a warning that I'm going to be making some substantial changes to the article in the near future.  It started when I decided that the paragraph about the National and Organizing Conventions would fit better in the "History" section than in the "Platform and principles" section, and quickly spiraled into something larger (though still under control).  I think the new version will be an improvement in many respects.  Leave a note here if there are any major problems with it.  -David Schaich Talk/Cont 02:46, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Recent changes

message: Heya, I'm local Sec of the Greater NYC local.  We DID vote to endorse Howie, ignorant of the brouhaha around him with the NC.  I, personally, was also ignorant of the NC rules stating that the State party would have to take it up with the NC to endorse a SP member running on another line.  Therefore we rescinded the endorsement, though individuals did endorse Howie (myself included) as there's no restrictions on that.
Technically, therefore, the Central NY Local couldn't have officially endorsed Howie either.
Some might find this pedantic I know, but it is the system the party works under.
Soli,T L Miles
:I'll fix up the article, though I'll keep it sort of vague since I don't think it's worthwhile to try to untangle this here. -David Schaich Talk/Cont 03:15, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Howie's Endorsement by two NY State Locals 

message: An anonymous user just removed all mention of the 1972 Presidential elections in the three-way split in the SPA out of which the SP USA was formed, in favor of Shachtman's 'critical support' of the Vietnam War.  While the Vietnam issue was important, I believe that actually occurred in 1970, and was the reason David McReynolds left the SPA.  The '72 elections were important because they saw the three groups each back a different candidate (Nixon, McGovern, and Spock) before going their own way.
For now I've incorporated information about both Vietnam and the '72 election, but I want to make sure that my understanding of the history and timeline is correct. -David Schaich Talk/Cont 20:04, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for clarifying. -David Schaich Talk/Cont 15:52, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: History check