Talk:Bioregional democracy

message: Is this for real? It looks like a cia front... really! -max rspct 12:24, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Bioregional Revolutionary Movement]]

message: I added a rewrite tag to this article.  Aside from the fact that some of the prose tends to make my brain congeal, it seems more like a number of sections on ecoregions, but headed by a very confused introduction.  Within the first paragraph two terms "bioregional democracy" and "Bioregional State" are used which seem to have somewhat variant meanings.  This awkwardly twinned concept is then defined as "a set of electoral reforms", but then "a movement", in the subsequent two sentences.  An opening paragraph should be able to concisely convey the concept of what the article will cover.
The second paragraph gives a "best known example" of the "Great Lakes Commission", which certainly seems to fall under "watershed cooperation", but doesn't seem to be an obvious example of "electoral reforms", or a movement notably denoting "local jurisdictional dominance".  At first glance, the GLC appears (and says as much on its website) to deal with communications, policy research and advocacy.  It does not "govern" the watershed - there is a separate bilateral International Joint Commission involved in this, which is established at the national level in both countries.  I'm not sure that "giving up some sovereignty" would be an appropriate description of this.
The opening concludes by indicating there are "more profound" forms of this concept, and continues on with a number of theory-based sections which seem to have only had passing introduction with the opening, which doesn't mention bio/ecoregions by name at all - I'm not sure if the article was a Frankenstein merger of various bits and pieces, but as a reader coming across it, the current format is distinctly unhelpful.  Even within the later sections, there is a distinct lack of answers to basic questions such as who is actually using or promoting some of these terms and concepts, how common such usage might be, etc.  
Are there any active editors on this article?   - David Oberst 06:04, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Cleanup tag added

message: I've decided to be bold and tear apart this article.  Some major points:
*There seems to be very few references to the term "bioregional democracy" that aren't somehow related to this wikipedia article.  Unless good citations for common usage of this term for some specific concept to base an article on, or usage as an umbrella term to base some sort of disambiguation page on, it may not be necessary to keep this article at all, depending on what happens to the various parts.
*The intro.  As i mentioned above, the intro seems to be an unsourced and (on the face of it) poorly argued chunk of text with little relation to the rest of the article.  The first paragraph might survive in the "umbrella" scenario (minus the "electoral reforms" bit), but the second on the Great Lakes Commission seems ready for the scrapheap.
*Ecoregions - the most coherant bits of the article all seem to deal with ecoregions.  There is an existing stub article, Bioregionalism, which seems to be in need of major expansion.  Contrary to "bioregional democracy", there does seem to be quite a number of references to this term, and the article should probably be expanded to include the history of the term, a bibliography, etc. I'm collecting what references I can, and if I can expand it, bits and pieces of this article might find a home there eventually.
*Ecoregional consensus - this section lacks any citation for the term or justification for the text as written, which includes no explanation of the nature of the "consensus", and reads like disconnected notes from some other article.  The only references to "eco/bioregional consensus" that I can find are a couple extremely non-notable mentions in passing for a "Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg", who "facilitated bioregional consensus training for local ecological groups.  I've tagged this with {importance}, and will likely delete it if nobody else comes along with support.  [section now deleted]
*Bioregional State - I've tagged two sections which appear to deal with the book/webpages "Toward a Bioregional State" by Mark Whitaker.  I've created a stub article Bioregional State (which used to be a redirect here) as a possible new home for anything related to this.  "Bioregional State" as a phrase seems to have no usage outside of Whitaker.  Whether Whitaker's stuff is notable and non-WP:NOR enough to survive as a separate article would be a question for another time and place.
*Bioregional Revolutionary Movement - I removed this section, based on the non-notable  Bioregional revolution article now nominated at AfD.
*Language and Biodiversity - I'm not even sure where to start on this section.  It looks like some citations from linguistics have been wrapped in the phrase "bioregional democracy", but whether there is something useful here that could be moved elsewhere may take some detective work on someone's part.
Anyone with suggestions, comments or dissents, please come forward. - David Oberst 04:50, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Complete rewrite started

message: I've put a dated delete tag on the article.  To some extent this is to see if it brings any editors out of the woodwork, but also from a difficulty in trying to find parts to salvage.  The two sections I tagged as possibly moving to Bioregional State may in fact have just had that phrase wrapped around some previous text, and in any case Bioregional State itself might wind up as  a non-notable article, and I really don't want to dig into the whole thing. - David Oberst 02:50, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: My suggestion would be to move any salvagable bits from this article or from Bioregional State (i.e. the Whitaker citations) to Bioregionalism, and then have this article and Bioregional State redirect to there. Bioregionalism is a movement of several decades duration, an a substantial amount has been written about it (although the article doesn't yet do the movement justice); this article, however, may have crossed the line into original research. Tom Radulovich 16:43, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree that this article should be deleted, as it contains a lot of substance and on whole it adds value to the encyclopedia.  Also, I question the value of information learned by adding a tag to bring editors 'out of the woodwork'.  Such a test presumes that articles must be defended by keeping articles on your watchlist forever 'in defense'.  Requiring such is counterproductive to the spirit of Wikipedia.  In principle, the presumption behind your 'out of the woodwork' test does not assume good faith. BruceHallman 17:02, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Delete tag added