Talk:Anarchist archives

What on earth is going on here?

Please tell me there has been a discussion somewhere about these major changes. Why have Centre International de Recherches sur l'Anarchisme (CIRA) and Kate Sharpley Library suddenly been merged to the new Anarchist archives?

I would request we follow the guidelines at Wikipedia:Merging ie have a discussion first. Otherwise it is simply vandalism in my eyes. To make myself very clear, please halt operations and discuss.

Since I recently came across @Czar: when they did a hugely destructive "merge" of Social centres in the United Kingdom with Autonomous social centre which resulted in almost nothing being preserved (this entire discussion sums it up well), I am extremely concerned for the current contents of Centre International de Recherches sur l'Anarchisme (CIRA) and Kate Sharpley Library and whoever knows what other pages are being merged. Czar seems to be using merging as a way to delete without discussion. Mujinga (talk) 20:53, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Ok i've undone the redirects from Centre International de Recherches sur l'Anarchisme and Kate Sharpley Library so i can improve them. The latter is doing good now i would say, the former still needs some work, it's a bit slower because i have to go into foreign language sources since it is based in Switzerland Mujinga (talk) 10:58, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

hmm no response in two weeks, i'll put a tag and contact wikiproject anarchism Mujinga (talk) 09:02, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

What's the issue? My edit summaries on both of those articles adequately explained the actions and redirection is a suitable alternative to deletion. If you disagree, you can revert, as you did, though the sourcing remains abysmal. Otherwise I see nothing that warrants reply in the above harangue, nor any actual connection to this page. czar 10:05, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

I don't know anything about the history of this article, but I've worked with Czar for more years than I can remember and I've never seen them act with anything other than a concern for following policy and making articles—particularly articles related to anarchism—the best they can be. I haven't always liked their edits—particularly when they delete things or merge articles—but I can't think of any instance in which they hadn't made the right choice. There are a lot of people, organizations, and institutions that I think should have articles of their own, but Wikipedia's notability guidelines provide that only people etc. that have been the subjects of significant coverage in independent reliable sources qualify for articles. If Czar has concluded that CIRA and the Sharpley Library don't meet those requirements, I would give them the benefit of the doubt. (Articles about non-notable subjects are liable to be deleted.) If you can find reliable sources that establish the notability of those institutions, by all means expand their articles. But don't complain that another editor is making a good-faith effort to save information about them. — MShabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 02:37, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

hi MShabazz well if you don't check the diffs then we can't really discuss. i guess Czar didn't check the other pages in question recently or else they wouldn't say "the sourcing remains abysmal." cheers! Mujinga (talk) 09:49, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

i do find it weird that nobody replied about the current state of this article, which isn't great. i was holding off to see if there was some sort of plan, but there doesn't seem to be, so i'll wikify it now, maybe that can be the end of it. cheers! Mujinga (talk) 09:50, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

ok it's wikified into sections now but i'll leave the cleanup tag because i don't understand what's going on with the references / bibliography / further reading Mujinga (talk) 10:07, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

The sourcing of those pages does remain abysmal. The added sources were copied from those I had compiled in this article's Further reading section, so I had already seen the sources and concluded (again, per my edit summaries) that those topics would be better off covered in the parent topic, about anarchist archives. Not sure what complaint you could possibly have about this article's "current state" apart from that it can be expanded, which should be obvious as I added a robust Further reading section for that purpose. The cleanup tag doesn't fit—there's nothing about the article that doesn't fit the layout guidelines. If you want to know more about how References/Bibliography/Further reading sections commonly work across Wikipedia, you can read at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout#Further reading, but I'm removing the tag. czar 10:29, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

you really think "abysmal" is the right word? hmm ok. there are two sources sitting right here on this page for CIRA which you could add if you wanted to improve that page.

regarding this page, i'll try to restate my point and make it clearer this time. back in march you left this edit in which "pick up here " seems to suggest you were busy with moving references from further reading into bibliography. i'm not a mind reader and i have asked for clarification a couple of times, but you haven't really explained what's going on. i'll remind you also that at that stage you left the "expansion or major restructuring" tag but then didn't do anything else on the page, hence my enquiries. i hope that is understandable now. by all means remove the tag if you want to but i already did explain why i left it up and removing it doesn't solve the problem.

Mujinga (talk) 11:00, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

I know about the CIRA sources because I added them. Once again, my edit summary explained why, despite those sources, I redirected the title: Without several in-depth sources on the topic, all we can create is the shell of an article that does no justice to the topic. There is room to expand on the basics of CIRA and other anarchist archives/libraries within this overview article. You're welcome to find more non-English reliable, secondary, independent sources, but I did a good faith search.

I've said this elsewhere, but there is no deadline. There is no need for me to finish fully paraphrasing a source or to process every item in Further reading. There is no issue with letting an "under construction" tag go stale to be removed by another editor (as the tag itself indicates). Wikipedia is founded on taking the action that is good enough. So, no, still not seeing what you're calling a "problem", nevertheless one that applies to that cleanup tag. czar 10:34, 18 April 2019 (UTC)