Talk:Protest Warrior

Left wing descriptions

Listen anons, you cannot define "leftism" as "statism, theocracy, etc." You cannot delete whole paragraphs about Protest Warrior's activities crashing protests. You can't delete links to their critics. Reverted. Rhobite 03:19, Oct 10, 2004 (UTC)

They will always do abusing any public website for propaganda reasons. Thats what they always do. And defining "Nazism" as "leftism" in an encyclopedia is extremely ridiculous.

protected from editing

The current edit is sheer propaganda for the Protest Warrior group. Troll edits of the article by Protest Warrior members are abusing Wikipedia for extremist propaganda. Restore to neutral and lock the version or delete article.

I protected the page on whatever version it was currently in. You'll have to talk it out with the other person you were disagreeing with, and come to a neutral version (to start one, you can create subpages, like Talk:Protest Warrior/temp). Demands won't get you anywhere. Hope this helps, [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 17:05, Oct 10, 2004 (UTC)

Nazi references

If any of the anons wish to productively work towards a better version of this article, I'd like to propose this guideline. Could both sides please refrain from making Hitler/Nazi comparisons unless they have references? Particularly the "liberal" version in the revert war had a paragraph about PW's official connections with Stormfront, which I believe to be unsubstantiated and completely fabricated. My understanding is that many PW members have a pro-Israel stance, while Stormfront is an anti-semite group.

Similarly, the current list of acceptable users shouldn't contain the word Nazi. It's only used as an example, but it could be inflammatory. Rhobite 00:05, Oct 11, 2004 (UTC)

This whole edit war was actually started for this reason. First, let me take care of this issue: Protest Warrior is in no way associated with Nazis, Stormfront, The American Nazi Party, nor is it a white nationalist organization. The founders are two Jews. If you check the operation section, many operations are against pro-Palestinian groups. Now, Protest Warrior supports the War in Iraq. If you go to their main page, right there, you can see one of their sarcastic signs, that reads:

Except for ending slavery, fascism, Nazism & communism, war has never solved anything

So their position is pretty clear. I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "both sides refrain", as only one user (or multiple users) is continuously defacing the page by reverting to an old version with added POV text. The edit battle is clearly between two sides: One side who is clearing unsubstantiated comments and adding good information to the body of the article about Protest Warrior. The other side is the people who are reverting the article to the old version with unsubstantiated text and trolling comments. That's pretty much it.

This POV text first appeared in the version marked (01:03, 3 Oct 2004), where the text was changed in a POV way, and there were links added to the American Nazi Party and Stormfront.

Another defacement occured on (10:41, 8 Oct 2004) when Bijoux added "The main target of the Protest Warriors is the entire Muslim world with which they seek to "nuke", to "flatten" and to turn "into a parking lot" for white Christians."

If you look through other edits, you can see more POV language peppered throughout, such as describing Protest Warrior as "...based on white power"

There have been lots of additions added to the article since the initial trolling, but the troll (or trolls) keeps reverting to an old version with the POV text. The troll writes deceptive edit summaries to make it look like he addded good information. This even tricked a few users, who instead of reverting the article, just removed the POV text. This just left behind the old article. I reverted back the longest version.

The IP of the latest defacer was reported, and he just reported the other IP of the editor back. I have a feeling that as soon as it gets unlocked, the edit war will just continue. Due to the nature of Protest Warrior (being a highly charged political organization), there are obviously hard feelings between supporters and people who don't like the group.

One of the defacers made a comment on Ahoerstemeier's talk page asking why that user reverted the page back to the good version:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Ahoerstemeier#stormfront_on_protest_warrior_external_links

Making his position pretty clear that he believed that Protest Warrior was a Nazi group. So, I don't know what to do now. It doesn't seem like a compromise can be reached with trolls. Please read the comment in the above link that starts with "Stormfront is a neo-Nazi organization, while Protest Warrior is a pro-freedom and pro-individualism organization;"

That describes how Nazi groups and Protest Warrior are completely different, and also describes the content of the first paragraph.

--65.161.65.104 00:41, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment. For the most part I agree with you entirely. However this article currently defines "leftism" as "statist collectivism," which is inaccurate, unnecessary, and POV. It then defines "statist collectivism" as "Communism, Nazism, theocracy." In effect, this paragraph gives the impression that Wikipedia equates liberalism with Nazism. I'm sure you can see how this is inaccurate and opinionated.

My other problems with the current version are listed below. Rhobite 01:31, Oct 11, 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps the article could say something like leftism and statist collectivis? From what I understand, the most popular sign on Protest Warrior and the one that headlines the main webpage takes a stand against many different ideologies. I don't know, maybe it should state all of those political systems seperately, and not try to define it under one word like leftism or statist collectivism? Maybe that would help?

--65.161.65.104 03:01, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Problems with current version

The protected version is much better than the version used by 24.103 and other editors. However it has these serious POV problems:

• Defining liberalism as collectivism, nazism, theocracy, etc.
• Implying that liberals are morally bankrupt (this needs to be attributed to PW better, the current statement is ambiguous)
• Rephrase "The website introduction pretty much says it all"
• In "whether they be Communist, Nazi, theocrat, neo-Conservative, or Libertarian," this list is unnecessary and the Nazi mention especially serves no good.
• The external links to criticism must stay in the article. External links do not have to present the subject in a positive light.

Rhobite 01:31, Oct 11, 2004 (UTC)

The external links should be allowed, so long as they are at the bottom of the page, and separated into "pro" and "con". The liberalism thing is refering to the american usage of the word liberal, which is innaccurate. In reality the word "liberal" means "libertarian" essentially. The mention of Nazi is a good one I think, because it makes clear just how bad these guys think lefties are. It is very common concept that left-wingers are ignorantly pushing towards dictatorship and totalitarianism, fascism, communism, etc... Anyways, I'd like the article unprotected, so I'd be happy to discuss whatever needs discussing so that we can begin editing w a concensus. Sam [Spade] 16:12, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Also:

• Subjective and suspicious comparisons between PW's forums and "many other left-wing political forums" -- PW is not the authority on how other forums operate and it certainly isn't verified encyclopedic information that PW even runs its forums in the way it claims.

-- Antaeus Feldspar 16:25, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I can agree with that, the article does seem to have a slight "PW's have a really super website" slant, which could do w some toning down. That said the fact that they encourage people of various politics, and apparently don't ban people based on ideology seems noteworthy. Sam [Spade] 16:42, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Not really. I'm sure there are forums that actually do ban posters based on ideology, but it is certainly not the rule for left-wing forums, and that is exactly what the write-up as it stands would have us believe is the case. They may also preach that they "encourage people of various politics", but we do not have any evidence whatever that they practice what they preach; there are very few groups where we could take their word for a claim like that, and this group is certainly not one of them. I mean, just look at the sentence that ends that paragraph: "Protest Warriors believe they are right and therefore hold to the view that engaging in open and honest debate is far more effective than simply silencing the opposition." If you took this as an authentic statement of their beliefs, and took it on faith that they practice what they preach, you would never guess that in fact the group's primary tactic -- practically the reason for their existence -- is to falsely attribute discrediting straw man statements to their opposition; that's certainly not part of "open and honest debate". -- Antaeus Feldspar 18:09, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Straw man

It should be noted that Protest Warrior's main form of activism is the wide-scale practice of the straw man technique, claiming that by displaying easily-refuted slogans such as "Communism has only killed 100 million people... let's give it another chance" they have thereby "exposed" the bankruptcy of leftism.

With that being their modus operandi and the easily-refuted lies of a persistent, anonymous vandal being what forced the page to be protected in a form that reads like a Protest Warrior press release, it's no wonder the suspicion is that the vandal is only another PWer, serving the PW's ends. -- Antaeus Feldspar 16:10, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

That strikes me as an extremely POV, unhelpful viewpoint. Is there something specific you'd like to discuss about the article, rather than other editors and their theoretical politics, or insults towards the organization in question? There is absolutely no way that calling the protest warriors claims "straw man" arguments is going to be allowed in the article. Unless you have a quote from an expert source stating such, it would be an outlandish violation of the NPOV policy to state that. Sam [Spade] 16:23, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well, please re-read my statement. And then re-read the article. Do you feel that these two slogans:

"Saddam only killed his own people.. it was none of our business"

and

"Communism has only killed 100 million people... let's give it another chance"

are actually accurate statements of what the left-wing believes? If not, then what Protest Warrior is doing by holding those signs up in the middle of protests, pretending that those beliefs are indeed what the left espouses, is holding them up as straw men. It's inherent in the definition of straw man; the only way it can be denied is if you truly assert that the modern American left in general does indeed still support Communism. I marvel at this idea of yours that it would be a violation of NPOV to point out that what the Protest Warriors do on a regular basis, their primary tactic, is in fact the straw man rhetorical technique. -- Antaeus Feldspar 18:20, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)