Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Anarchism/Archive 8

This is an archive of past discussions about Wikipedia:WikiProject Anarchism. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 5

Archive 6

Archive 7

Archive 8

Stub expansion project: almost at our first goal!

80% of articles Start-class or better: 100% complete

(2025/2025)
0 left

We are fast approaching the first major milestone of our stub expansion project, which is to bring the number of stubs down to 20% of our articles. Only ~~~50~~ ~~~30~~ ~~~20~~ ~10 more stubs need expanding, and we'll finally reach that goal! I've been going over some our stubs to try help with this effort, recently what I thought would be a small project to expand our stub on Carlo Cafiero ballooned beyond my expectations due to how interesting I found the subject :P. In order to help focus our efforts, I thought I'd list some biographical stubs that I think are of the highest importance for expansion:

Feel free to adopt any of these for expansion, and to strike or remove them from the list when they have been expanded. I'm sure with a good bit of effort, we could hit this milestone before the end of the year. --Grnrchst (talk) 13:43, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Also now might be a good time for us to go through out stub list and nominate for deletion any that we think don't meet general notability guidelines and/or won't ever be expanded beyond a stub. --Grnrchst (talk) 13:45, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Or merge, as a preferable alternative to deletion!

For some helpful links to find a stub, see the WP 1.0 list and the Anarchism stubs category. I've added a lot of Anarchism book stubs over the years that I'd like to revisit eventually after current projects.

@Grnrchst, when you expand a stub, would you want to post them here for encouragement? czar 17:58, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

I also suspect there are many "start"-class articles that have yet to be categorized as stubs. czar 01:13, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

More than likely, aye. We'll just have to properly categorise these as we come across them. --Grnrchst (talk) 08:29, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't need encouragement, but I'm happy to post my progress here. The other day I expanded the article on Virginie Barbet, who was a collaborator of Bakunin. It's always interesting to read about the early history of anarchist women. --Grnrchst (talk) 08:28, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

I meant for others. :) I've destubbed Ramsey Kanaan. czar 00:55, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

I expanded Renée Lamberet a bit from the French, and added Eugène Dieudonné to take her place, since it seems we have a few other members of the Bonnot Gang in this list. -- asilvering (talk) 19:58, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

It turns out Eugène Dieudonné acted (as himself) in retellings of his penal colony experiences, which was a fun thing to learn. I think we can all spot the theatre kid hiding inside this moustache. -- asilvering (talk) 23:25, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Working on Saul Yanovsky, so many quality sources exist and finally added photo of his gravestone that I visited several years ago! ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 04:42, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Destubbed J. A. Maryson, Pierre Ramus, Moshe Katz (anarchist), La Société mourante et l'anarchie, Soledad Villafranca, Ōsugi Sakae czar
Just noticed that Pouget was destubbed last month by Aleksamil (talk · contribs). Nice work! --Grnrchst (talk) 16:27, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
Thank you so much! Aleksamil (talk) 16:57, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
@Aleksamil, do you want to nominate that for WP:GA status? There's a backlog drive about to start, so it would stand a pretty good chance of getting reviewed soon, I think. -- asilvering (talk) 01:18, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
Haven't really considered it, since it was assessed as a C article. That would be my first GA nomination, so I'm somewhat nervous, nevertheless it sounds like a great idea. I'll nominate it and see how it goes. Thanks for the suggestion! Aleksamil (talk) 12:01, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
@Aleksamil The difference between B and C is pretty fuzzy. I've tended to follow WP:GERMANY's old system, where B-class is "effectively GA without the formal review" and C-class is basically "something obviously missing by GA criteria", but most wikiprojects never had very strict rules to follow and a lot of people simply go by size (I think your article is at about the edge of where most people who do this would upgrade from C to B), or by the default setting in WP:RATER. Rater, fwiw, says 94.1% of B-class or higher. (It's very confident, partly because you used sfn footnotes, haha). -- asilvering (talk) 18:05, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

De-stubbed Dmitrii Bogrov, who was quite interesting to read about. When I started, I was just planning to use one source for the expansion, but got hooked enough to read another and... oh no, they disagree about stuff! A researcher's worst nightmare D: --Grnrchst (talk) 11:14, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
Worst nightmare? But that's when it gets exciting! asilvering (talk) 17:55, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
De-stubbed Fernand Pelloutier, who was one of the first theoreticians and organisers of anarcho-syndicalism. Was harrowing to read about how he effectively worked himself to death... especially ominous when I've just managed to recover from burnout. Anyway, that's another one down. --Grnrchst (talk) 11:59, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Commenting so the archive bot doesn't grab this again. Since my last update I have expanded the stubs on Mikhail Sazhin, Lev Mechnikov, José María Leyva, Christiaan Cornelissen, Gustave Lefrançais and José Pellicer Gandía. --Grnrchst (talk) 09:20, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Destubbed two books (Anarchist Portraits and People or Personnel) and we're at our goal! 🎉

Nicely done, all! Special thanks to @Grnrchst, who put in many of the article expansions. Are you going to continue destubbing after the drive?

Shall we set the next milestone to 85% unstubbed? 90%? Something else? And would anyone be into a cleanup drive for May?

czar 15:54, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Woooo! We did iiiiit! :D I think I'll do some more de-stubbing just to get us safely over the line, so we're not at risk of dropping back down due to new articles or the like. Let's revisit in a couple months for setting a new milestone? Think it would be nice to see a completed milestone on our page for a bit. :) As for cleanup drive, yes, let's do it! --Grnrchst (talk) 08:36, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Template:Anarchism US

Do we need this new side nav? I think we already have an overproliferation/overuse of side navigation templates as is. czar 23:10, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Courtesy ping template creator @Grettoonist czar 23:11, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Czar, I would like to justify the existence of the sidebar navigation for American anarchism I recently created on the basis of significance of the topic and that it conforms to the standards of Wikipedia:SIDEBAR.

I recognise that the issue of over-proliferation of navigation templates is a contentious topic and there can be differing interpretations over the necessary amount for the sake of concise navigation and what subjects may be considered too niche. Yet on an individual basis, I would argue that there is enough specific information and articles on American anarchism: its own article is one of the most comprehensive articles within anarchism by region (not to mention an entire similarly comprehensive article dedicated to U.S. individualist anarchism), and the amount of articles on American anarchist figures, organisations, history and media are close to that of American liberalism, conservatism, libertarianism and socialism, hence why I intended to model a new template based on their organisation of topics. Though not reaching the same height of influence as the previously mentioned American movements, American anarchism is not a particularly obscure or overly narrow subject compared to fascism, individualism or environmentalism in the U.S. While still interconnected with American libertarianism and socialism, it encompasses many broad topics into one coherent subject which warrants the opportunity for easy navigation into other related articles.

However, to address the concerns of @asilvering, I will concede that during the creation of the template in my sandbox, I was contemplating the necessity of citing such broad schools of thought, and should it be considered appropriate to reduce or remove the section, I would support that. Personally, given how templates like American liberalism and modern liberalism have less schools, only focusing on those most integral and specific to their subjects, I believe that the schools of thought section should include only the most notable schools, mainly individualism, but also black, green, without adjectives, etc. which I would argue have had a significant influence in American anarchism.

I am open to any feedback or counter-arguments, but I currently maintain the existence of the navigation template is reasonable due to fitting the criteria that Wikipedia lays out in Wikipedia:SIDEBAR, including the relevance of the articles, the significance of the subject in question (of which the significance of American anarchism is undeniable given its own history, impact on American history, and the contributions of American figures) and compilation of articles into a coherent subject. Currently, it obviously isn't yet featured in any article as I am aware of, but the resolution of this discussion should hopefully determine that.

Yours sincerely, @Grettoonist (talk) 19:04, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

@Grettoonist, regarding the schools, it might make sense to only link the schools that have individual "in the United States" sections? I haven't checked in on them so I'm not sure if that's workable. -- asilvering (talk) 19:55, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi @User:asilvering, thanks for the response. The only anarchist school of thought with an individual "in the United States" sections is individualist anarchism. Therefore, the most appropriate course of action on that issue would be to remove the schools section altogether and have that U.S. individualist anarchism article in the related topics section. With that, I will wait for @Czar to respond to the discussion and until then, and refrain from moving forth on potentially adding the sidebar to articles related to American anarchism. When a consensus is found, that should decide the outcome.

Yours sincerely, @Grettoonist (talk) 21:31, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

My case is that there just isn't much that users need to navigate between and that it proposes that a set of articles is "a series on Anarchism in the United States" when we have no such article series. The "Principles" makes that grouping look more universal than it is. Principles (intentionally) aren't mentioned in {{Anarchism sidebar}} either, where they would fit better than the US-specific sidebar. The "History", "People", "Organizations", and "Works" sections also are implying a canon where there isn't any. When the selection is arbitrary, a similar issue from which the main navbox and sidebar suffer, it leads to circular editing where editors add and remove entries because it meets their personal fancy rather than represents some representative selection from the category. Ultimately there is no need for readers to browse between the entries here and if they had such a need, we have existing navboxes that already curate between connected topics. czar 13:04, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Czar, I would dispute the extent to which American anarchism can be considered disconnected and disjointed. Although the principles within the movement aren't universally practiced or grouped together, that is the case with the other theories of anarchism within the anarchism sidebar, as well as those of other U.S. political movements like socialism, conservatism or libertarianism. For U.S. anarchism, the individualist-collectivist divide on social organisation and decision-making reveal fundamental differences within anarchist perspectives, and this is true across other regions and the general anarchist movement, where the underlying core principle is rejection of unjustifiable hierarchy and the abolition of the state. If the principles section of the sidebar were to be renamed to "theory and practice", I would consider that to be a redundant difference, but would be fine for that to resolve any potential confusion on whether they are all grouped together. That being said, if people aren't generally confused as to the contradicting principles of general anarchism, recognising them to have been conceived from different perspectives all sharing a broad label and philosophy, I don't personally see the problem with the principles section.

On the idea of a lack of canon, I acknowledge American anarchism to not be as interconnected compared to other U.S. political movements due to the nature of decentralisation and the developments of that particular movement. However, given the history of American anarchism, I'd consider it overly simplistic to say that there isn't some extent of tradition and common ground they share, which are on the level of related U.S. political movements. There are key figures of American anarchism, some of which have been particularly noteworthy within anarchist theory and practice, including Noam Chomsky, Dorothy Day, Emma Goldman, etc. There is a history of the movement, to the point that the central article on American anarchism is primarily made up of a history and timeline of the movement and how it has developed through ideology and the corresponding events of U.S. history, all of which informed the making of the history section. Though without a canonical text of the movement, several writings have influenced and justified and explained how the movement has and should develop, and all those that could be found to have come from an influential figure or were highly prominent were those included in the works section. I understand that it can be fallacious to do something just because something else is doing it and is accepted. However, this is the model of which U.S. political movements sidebars organise their topics, and it's a sound system to use, as these are reasonable categorisations of a broad topic. What does this movement believe, who is in it, what their history is, are all questions people would ask, and having individual sections showcasing who they are is the point of sidebars as informative.

The U.S. anarchism sidebar's purpose would be not to challenge already existing sidebars for relevance and which would be more appropriate for use, but rather to compliment the others by offering insight into a more specific subject. As an example, if one were to understand more about the basics of American liberalism and know where to navigate, the liberalism sidebar on its own would be helpful to an extent, but the sidebar specifically for that subject would be better. And this isn't an invitation for niche, overly narrow subjects to get their own sidebars (and quality control holding the legitimacy of a sidebar to account like here is healthy to prevent unnecessary additions to Wikipedia), and anarchism can be connected to both socialism and libertarianism. But beyond the obvious differences they hold, anarchism in the U.S. has a particular history, prominent figures and organisations, notable texts (all of which were selected from prominent articles and other sidebars, compiling them into a comprehensive navigation source) and is related to other subjects that may have their own sidebars.

Yours sincerely, @Grettoonist (talk) 18:47, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

I think the points about what constitutes canon are exactly what I'm trying to sidestep—it's a form of original research for us to be weighing in on that as editors.

My point is more that readers of Most–Grottkau debate and Dorothy Day (to pick two links from the sidebar) aren't looking for info on the McKinley assassination or the Ferrer Center, even if those are relatively larger moments in US anarchist history. Sidebar navs are meant to navigate between highly related articles, which these are not. (The collection of articles in a sidebar template should be fairly tightly related, and the template should meet most or all of the preceding guidelines.) I can't see an instance in which we'd want to include either this sidebar or the general anarchism one in those linked articles. czar 02:39, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Czar, I should note that the extent of what I believed constituted the content of American anarchism wasn't rather down to any sources compiling them together as canon, but rather the surface level of what articles were linked to the central topic for the U.S. conservatism, liberalism and socialism templates and what their standards for relevant and noteworthy articles should be featured and where. The general structure of schools of thought (formerly), principles, history, etc. were collectively inspired by those templates and the general one for anarchism.

I should also acknowledge that given the decentralised nature of American anarchism as a historical movement, the extent to which events and subjects will be connected will be by default weaker than the other U.S. political movement templates. However, I would still argue that most of the articles directly or indirectly relates to another across the sections. For example, Dorothy Day's article relates to key principles (particularly found in the beliefs section) like social justice, decentralisation (in opposition to Social Security), class conflict, individualism, mentions historical events like the Haymarket affair and Sacco and Vanzetti, as well as Emma Goldman and the socialist movement. In addition, the Battle of Seattle was directly about anti-globalisation, direct action and environmentalism, while the McKinley assassination is related to the Haymarket affair, a notable event in U.S. anarchist history partly inspiring the assassination, and Goldman, whom Czolgosz was reportedly inspired by. (Note: I understand most of the connecting articles are principles, though I assume that's to be expected.) Whatever specific criteria for how the guideline for articles collected in a sidebar template being fairly tightly related, I would argue that most of the articles are safely connected to one another under the broad aspects of U.S. anarchism. I'm not saying anyone has to necessarily go through all articles in the sidebar and cross-reference them with the rest, but the standards the template follows seems to be sound and consistent with other related templates in my opinion.

That being said, I do concede that because they aren't strongly connected as they could be, I would be okay with either removing certain articles that are less tightly related or substantial, or even the transformation of the template from sidebar to footer, as the project page for sidebars did mention this as an appropriate alternative in case the articles aren't as tightly related: "Navigation templates located in the top-right corner of articles (sometimes called a "sidebar" or "part of a series" template) should be treated with special attention, because they are so prominently displayed to readers. The collection of articles in a sidebar template should be fairly tightly related, and the template should meet most or all of the preceding guidelines. If the articles are not tightly related, a footer template or navbox, located at the bottom of the article, may be more appropriate." I am open to any feedback related to how it should be judged what counts as tightly related articles and if the template falters, or the adequacy of these propositions.

(Note: Apologies for a late reply.)

Yours sincerely, @Grettoonist (talk) 00:21, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

My point is more that readers of Most–Grottkau debate and Dorothy Day (to pick two links from the sidebar) aren't looking for info on the McKinley assassination or the Ferrer Center I'm actually not so sure about this and I think this might be a delusion we enter into once we start editing the encyclopedia and our reading behaviour changes. I can say that I now basically never use templates for navigation, with the exception of Authority Control, a thing I assume both most readers and most editors of wikipedia completely ignore. However, I remember that I used to use them all the time while browsing out of interest. In fact, I remember reading the anarchism one in particular, and thinking "wow, these are in much better shape than I recall" - this was actually part of what motivated me to join wikipedia as an editor! I've also had friends who don't edit wikipedia but know that I do ask me specific questions about various sidebars/nav templates, so I'm sure I'm not just an odd one out here. (At least, not among people who read encyclopedias for fun.)

On the canon issue, I agree that we want to be skeptical there. We don't want to make something "a thing" when it isn't one, since Wikipedia's prominence almost guarantees that it will become "a thing" if we do. We should try to source lists of, say, related people, to non-wikipedia reference works wherever we can. -- asilvering (talk) 16:22, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

@Asilvering: But did they contribute to the article? Readers looking to browse between connected topics in anarchism have the the navbox already.

I use templates to navigate all the time, but the sidebar is geared towards random browsing within a category, not towards focused browsing between highly related topics (for instance, Template:American Revolution sidebar and Template:History of the United States sidebar).

My main contention is that the articles being tagged with this new US Anarchism template are not major articles like American Revolution—they're much smaller in scale and impact and now each of them has a blaring sidebar in their top right. czar 16:09, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

I think there's a reasonable case for it, but the broad stuff like "schools of thought" that aren't actually about anarchism in the USA specifically should probably go. Those articles definitely are in enough navigational templates already. -- asilvering (talk) 04:22, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

The "principles" section too strikes me as something that isn't specific to the US. --Grnrchst (talk) 12:24, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

Also why is The Ego and Its Own in the works section? It was written by a German who never set foot in the United States. --Grnrchst (talk) 12:25, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Grnrchst, apologies for I didn't notice new messages on this section, so I would like to explain the legitimacy of the principles section, as well as including The Ego and Its Own in the works section. First regarding the principles, my two main arguments for retaining the section is that these principles are common with American anarchism, as are the same with other U.S. political movement templates like that of liberalism, conservatism and libertarianism. And that some of these principles directly spawned out of American anarchist theory and praxis. The history of U.S. anarchism shows the influence that direct action, specifically propaganda of the deed has had from within the growing labour movement, directly tied to anarchist communism. The 1999 Seattle WTO protests were caused by the anti-globalization movement that U.S. anarchists often subscribe to, or at least a current of alter-globalization critiquing the capitalist system. The notion of freethought was a significant development in how U.S. anarchism viewed religion and authority, and Freethinker settlements were prominent throughout Texas and Wisconsin. Libertarian socialism informed the beliefs and advocacy of the Libertarian Book Club and League, and there are many more examples. The vast majority of these principles are not unique only to American anarchism, and I can understand disputing the principles section in the sidebar, but obviously not all anarchist movements follow the same patterns, theories and tactics as the rest, so American anarchism have been dominated by these ideas when one looks at the movement's history.

Not to mention how some of these principles did largely or entirely originate from the American anarchist movement. The concept of propaganda of the deed was coined by Johann Most and inspired the attempted assassination of Henry Clay Frick by Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman, the Lexington Avenue explosion, and the Galleanisti attacks like the Preparedness Day Bombing, 1919 bombings and Wall Street bombing, once again interconnected with American anarchist history. Mutualism and mutual aid was first implemented in practice by Josiah Warren, such as the Cincinnati Time Store, one of the earliest attempts at anarchist economics based on Warren's system of labor notes, and would go on to inspire other individualist anarchists in the U.S. like Lysander Spooner and Stephen Pearl Andrews. Murray Bookchin is responsible for communalism and libertarian municipalism. To conclude, I would argue that the principles section of the sidebar reflects the ways in which the movement's history has been influenced by these ideas, and what have certainly turned out very different if such ideas like propaganda of the deed weren't theorised or gained popularity within the U.S., or simply contributed to wider anarchist theory worldwide.

As for The Ego and Its Own, I am aware that Max Stirner is German, and as such that is why I did not include Stirner in the people section, as unlike other anarchists like Goldman who, though not being born or died there, spent much of her life in the U.S., and you are correct in that Stirner never visited the U.S., so it wouldn't make sense for himself to be included. However, The Ego and Its Own had a significant impact on individualist anarchism in the United States, one of the main branches of the movement. Stirner's theory of egoism inspired Benjamin Tucker, one of the most influential anarchists in American history, who spread the ideas in The Ego and Its Own in his periodical Liberty, and it also influenced the theories of Enrico Arrigoni. I also include Stirner's work as significant to the American movement due to Tucker's conflict and split over its ideas with other egoists like James L. Walker and John Beverly Robinson, as well as the support for natural rights from Spooner, a notable example of internal division. Furthermore, it inspired other works of U.S. anarchism like The Abolition of Work by Bob Black, who aimed to synthesise the egoism Stirner proposed in the work with an egalitarian anarchist communism. I do recognise that The Ego and Its Own is not itself American, but the impact it had on American anarchism is strong and undeniable, and that at the end of the day is the subject at question.

Hopefully, this explanation answered your concerns, and if you have any other criticisms or questions about the sidebar, you're perfectly welcome to send them to this talk page or my own, and I will try and get back to you as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely, @Grettoonist (talk) 13:41, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Small correction: the term "propaganda of the deed" was not coined by Johann Most, it was coined by Carlo Pisacane and it was advocated by Italian anarchists like Cafiero and Malatesta long before Most ever set foot in the US. As for the argument for including Stirner's book, I think this could just as well be made for almost every other major anarchist work that has been translated into English, so I'm not sure why Ego is singled out.

Anyway, I probably shouldn't have involved myself in this discussion, as I'm really not that interested in USian anarchism for the most part. Do what thou will. --Grnrchst (talk) 13:56, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Grnrchst, thanks for the correction, I meant that to say that Most expanded on the concept instead of coining it. I still maintain that The Ego and Its Own can be considered a work significant to American anarchism over other non-American anarchist works and how they influenced the U.S. movement. Other works like The Conquest of Bread and Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution certainly would've had some sort of impact, the former of which influencing the Occupy movement. But I would argue that unlike that work, The Ego and Its Own stands out in its impact on the U.S. individualist anarchist movement, creating divisions and influencing theorists and publications. That is a subjective decision however and if someone else were to come and argue that it shouldn't be counted, I wouldn't have much of an issue with that being changed.

That being said, I appreciate the concerns and questions you raised about the template, I myself have been interested in American anarchism and am willing to have the template scrutinised, for I maintain that it is a worthy addition as a sidebar for other articles to encourage engagement on the wider topic.

Thanks, @Grettoonist (talk) 11:48, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Still seems tangential to me. Personally, if I'm looking at a sidebar about Anarchism in the United States, in the United States is an important part of the descriptor. If you have to explain for paragraphs and paragraphs why a German text should be included, but Russian texts shouldn't, its inclusion is just going to look arbitrary. Do you think Stirner hasn't also been highly influential in other countries too? I really think you should keep inclusion to stuff that is specific to anarchism in the United States. No broadly-applicable principles that could be used anywhere, no stuff from people that never set foot in North America, keep it specific. --Grnrchst (talk) 10:37, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

Take the socialism US sidebar as an example. Do you see any broadly-applicable principles in there? Do you see any works of Karl Marx or Friedrich Engels? In my mind, this is what a sidebar about a regional anarchist movement should look like; it should be specific to the region, stuff I wouldn't find in any other sidebar. The more scope that different sidebars duplicate, the less reason we have to use them. --Grnrchst (talk) 10:42, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

I still think the principles section should be removed, by the way. It strikes me as, at best, a duplication of scope from the main Anarchism sidebar; and at worst, a US-centric claiming of these ideas as uniquely American or a product of American thinking. Out of the list, I think there's only a few that are wholly products of American thinking, and two of those are just redirects to the article on Murray Bookchin. --Grnrchst (talk) 10:19, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

On navboxes/sidebars

Following on from the above discussion on the US anarchism sidebar, I've been thinking a lot about what asilvering said about navigation boxes. I'll confess that I have also become more agnostic towards them, the longer I've spent editing Wikipedia. In particular, I've found that they are magnets for scope creep, as some users indiscriminately throw everything but the kitchen sink into them. But I also agree completely that they are incredibly useful for making intra-subject navigation more accessible for readers. I've also (anecdotally) noticed that newer users tend to gravitate towards them.

I think there must be a middle ground somewhere between accessibility and scope creep, so I was hoping we could have a wider discussion about the templates covered by our project. How do you think these could be improved? --Grnrchst (talk) 14:15, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Ah, this reminds me that I messed around a bit with the main anarchism sidebar a ways back and never got around to pushing the change back out. I don't even know if I finished what I'd been planning to try. That version is here.

That's a good point about newer users. I wonder if that actually contributes to longstanding editors' ambivalence towards the nav templates in general. -- asilvering (talk) 23:14, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

@Asilvering: I'd give that another look before pushing the change, as I've noticed this version redlinks to deleted articles, links to redirects like "left-wing uprisings against the Bolsheviks" and uses deprecated terms like "Free Territory".

In any case, the above discussion has gotten me thinking about maybe creating some more templates in the future. I recently created for a sidebar for the Makhnovshchina, which probably needs a companion navbox. I was thinking it may be a good idea to create one about the CNT-FAI as well. Or maybe if the "Anarchism in the US" sidebar finds a stable niche, we could create similar ones for other regional movements as well? Just some thoughts. --Grnrchst (talk) 10:26, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it's something like two years old at this point. I think I'll just G7 it since I can't recall what my motivations were or if I'd finished making the changes.

Re "anarchism in..." sidebars, imo a navbox is better, since I expect a lot of relevant articles would be in many different groupings. It's easy to stack a bunch of navboxes at the bottom of an article without making things unwieldy, but a sidebar takes up a lot of space. I think they're best used for cases like your Makhnovshchina, where they're a closely related set of articles that would otherwise be pretty obscure, aside from a few more prominent articles (eg Nestor Makhno). -- asilvering (talk) 18:13, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

I unfortunately see very little value from side navs. They take up prime real estate and, as stated above, have endless scope creep because they define a group or canon that has no basis in sourcing. We already have navboxes (at the bottom of the page) for specific/defined article groupings and that, alongside regular blue links in each article, covers basic navigational needs. Politics articles on Wikipedia are really the only topics that tolerate these side navs and I would be in favor of deprecating all of them. czar 15:58, 28 April 2024 (UTC)