Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of left-wing terrorist attacks

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete‎. ✗plicit 12:21, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

List of left-wing terrorist attacks

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This is a POV fork of List of terrorist incidents. Any content that isn't irredeemably biased belongs there along with all other terrorist incidents. This page should be deleted and set to redirect to List of terrorist incidents. AlanS^talk 09:42, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Events, Politics, and Terrorism. AlanS^talk 09:42, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I am the original creator of the page List of left-wing terrorist attacks. In my opinion, I believe that the page List of left-wing terrorist attacks should remain up if the page List of right-wing terrorist attacks is not deleted. A lot of the problems existing on the page List of left-wing terrorist attacks also exist on the page List of right-wing terrorist attacks (such as not explicitly left\right attacks being listed on their respective pages). I should mention that I am a newcomer regarding Wikipedia. I had not fully finished the List of left-wing terrorist attacks page by the time it was submitted for creation (as the page was full of bare URLs). There are many problems with the page List of left-wing terrorist attacks, I do think that it should be improved, or even deleted. However, I believe that if List of left-wing terrorist attacks is deleted, so should List of right-wing terrorist attacks. Micheal Sieger (talk)10:01, 30 July 2023

@Micheal Sieger, I have nominated both List of left-wing terrorist attacks and List of right-wing terrorist attacks. So far it appears that people who vote on one are voting on the other so I imagine whatever the result is it will most likely be the same for both. AlanS^talk 13:40, 30 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. Michael Sieger (talk) 21:16, 30 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as it seems to be an OR mess, and possibly a mass BLP violation. Slatersteven (talk) 10:16, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 10:33, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per Blow it up. While reliable sources routinely publish lists of left-wing terrorist attacks, this article does not reference these lists and is basically original research. Left wing terrorism does not mean terrorism carried out by people who happen to be left-wing, but terrorist attacks carried out in order to achieve left-wing objectives, specifically, the replacement of capitalist rule with socialist government. It specifically excludes anarchist, eco and nationalist terrorism, each of which have different characteristics.

I would not preclude someone from recreating the article, but in my experience list articles of this type quickly become exercises in original research. TFD (talk) 10:47, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Left-wing objectives are much more broad than just replacing capitalism with socialism. It includes any attack done to further a left-wing political message. As such, attacks with Anarchists, Eco-Terrorist, or nationalist motives would be considered if there are reliable sources that refer to the attacker’s motive as socially or politically left wing. Jaboipizza22 (talk) 12:41, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Your argument to me seems to come from a position of original research or WP:SYNTH. I don't think it's justified. AlanS^talk 13:37, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Reliable sources use the definition I provided, not the one that you have. They are concerned about the motivation for terrorist attacks. Having a list of terrorists who happen to be left-wing is prohibited by policy as Wikipedia:Synthesis. TFD (talk) 22:02, 30 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note that List of right-wing terrorist attacks also has a discussion in Articles for Deletion.

Delete per above. OR mess. --TheLonelyPather (talk) 11:51, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
AfC reviewer comment: if this is to be deleted as OR/TNT, please salt it. This is what it looked like when accepted. All of the attacks on the list at this point were carried out by socialist, Marxist-Leninist, etc organizations (though personally I think there's an argument to be had about some of the Palestinian lib/nationalism ones). There may be some in the list that I missed and which actually fail verification, in which case mea culpa, but you can see from the article history how quickly the rest of it was added, and how a few editors have been continually trying to hack it back to something that isn't a solid wall of WP:OR. Personally, I think lists like this are a huge editorial timesink and non-npov magnet and I would not be sad to see it go. But since the topic "left-wing terrorism" is notable in itself, this list will be continually recreated and then immediately drown in the same problems the article has now. TNT will not fix this one. -- asilvering (talk) 12:11, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Asilvering, I personally disagree with any assessment that sees Palestinian lib/nationalism as necessarily left-wing. While the Palestine Liberation Organization can be characterised as left-wing (with the wiki page showing its member organisations being so), I think a lot of left-wing people would not think that Hamas is left-wing by any stretch of the imagination and I've never seen anything where they characterise themselves as such. Those on the left generally support national self-determination as a principle, however that doesn't necessarily mean that they always identify with the actors that are leading the push. This highlights perfectly to me the amount of OR that is going on in that article. AlanS^talk 09:15, 30 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@AlanS I definitely don't think Palestine lib/nationalism is necessarily left-wing, and already removed a few of those myself in a sweep of the article. I personally agree with you about Hamas, etc, but I'm not an expert in this area. I left the ones that were attributed to orgs that claim some degree of socialism/communism/etc according to their Wikipedia articles, since deciding those aren't "left-wing enough" seemed to me to be too much of a departure from existing editorial consensus. (ie, I am taking the contents of the current articles as a standing consensus, and my own sense as the sense of just one editor.) If the article were to survive I would encourage discussion on the topic to clarify the point. -- asilvering (talk) 16:09, 30 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: mainstream sources do not normally use the joint term "left-wing terrorist", probably because the term "left-wing" is ambiguous and means different things to different people and in different countries, and instead use a more precise term to modify "terrorist", such as "Palestinian terrorist" or "eco-terrorist" or "white-supremacist terrorist". NightHeron (talk) 14:47, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete If this information was actually valid, it could be included in a column at List of terrorist incidents. Dream Focus 16:25, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete even after the effort to clean up the list there re still entries where left-wing politics is not mentioned in the relevant article. This is just going to be a massive time sink to maintain against POV editing. As Dream Focus says anything useful can be included in List of terrorist incidents. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 18:54, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Besides this and List of right-wing terrorist attacks, it may be worth noting that we also have List of Islamist terrorist attacks and List of foiled right-wing terrorist attacks (and maybe more). TompaDompa (talk) 21:10, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete and salt: per asilvering. Content of this article should be covered at List of terrorist incidents or Left-wing terrorism#History. ––FormalDude (talk) 21:14, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
My reading of LISTN is that even if there are multiple examples of X (e.g., people who played baseball for two teams and got injured on each one), we should only have a "list of incidents of X" if sources consider "incidents of X" to be a category which could be listed, yes? and that instances of "more complex [...] cross-categorization" like this are even less surely includable. Well, I do not find that many sources that talk about "incidents of left-wing terrorism" as a general category of incidents, although there are several; it is even less clear to me that sources exist which would regard Operation Nemesis and the Pheasant farm raid as groupable into a single category of thing that could be listed, i.e. sources which would support the scope our list currently has; and there is a general List of terrorist incidents that any non-OR incidents could go in. So, it seems reasonable to me to move anything that would be left here after pruning the OR to List of terrorist incidents as proposed above, and salt this page. If anyone wants to bring to bear RS that do have "lists of left-wing terrorist attacks" that would include the kinds of things this page includes, I will reconsider. However, it seems clear that if kept, this page is likely to need at least Fascism-level protection to stop OR, and is likely to be a POV magnet and timesink. -sche (talk) 21:18, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I like your reading of LISTN but the list AfDs I've seen have been all over the map, with "the general topic is notable, and it can be written in list form, so keep" coming up extremely often. However, I do think "list of left-wing terrorist incidents by country" is notable per your definition. I don't think that would be any better, though. It would just give editors even more work to prune, and bring up additional categorization questions. At least in my view, I don't think the issue with this article is a notability one. It's "do we, as editors, want to put the work into maintaining this list" and "is this list useful and informative to readers in a way that justifies keeping it". I think I'm a no on both, myself. -- asilvering (talk) 22:06, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete and salt A POVfork filled with original research. Cambial — foliar❧ 21:45, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note that List of Islamist terrorist attacks also has a discussion in Articles for Deletion.

Delete Highly subjective metric for a list. Some clear, well-agreed upon (by RSes) examples can be included on Left-wing terrorism, but we shouldn't be trying to compile a list ourselves. --Masem (t) 13:49, 30 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The origin of this list is obviously this list by the user Alejandro_Basombrio/Empanada Mixta - who got blocked indefinitely after a series of problems [1] [2] + sockpuppepery [3] for "Clearly not here to build an encyclopedia". The author of the article "Michael Sieger" mostly copied the list. The other edits of the account fit the old accounts too (for example [4]). This clearly seems to be another sockpuppet, which might be another reason for deleting the list. What's useful might be integrated into the main article Left-wing terrorism) instead. 2A02:810B:10A0:634:7D8F:E8FA:1C3B:A4BC (talk) 15:35, 30 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note that List of thwarted Islamic terrorist attacks also has a discussion in Articles for Deletion.

Keep. The topic is notable and encyclopedic. However, strongly enforce WP:DUE on the page; as I have raised previously we have an issue with items being included in lists without meeting core policies of WP:OR or WP:NPOV. Correcting that broadly is a difficult task, but hopefully we can correct it here. BilledMammal (talk) 01:01, 1 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete and salt since those building the article appear clearly intent on POV-pushing the inclusion of incidents far outside the obvious scope of left-wing terror and simply by any nationalist group that may incidentally have a left-wing leaning. BilledMammal's suggestion of simply vigorously enforcing WP:DUE might be the ideal scenario, but who's going to enforce it, especially if the page's main contributors clearly have no interest in doing that? Pages that are simply disruptive, POV-pushing magnets are just a community time sink. And here the main contributors are clearly only interested in WP:OR. Hence delete. And salt, to stop this going round in a circle all over again as it clearly has already before. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:57, 1 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete and salt. "Left-wing" is clearly being defined here as POV OR. I'm ambivalent about the existence of "right-wing terrorist attacks", as it likely better-defined and less OR-ish in that definition though I would suggest "ethnonationalist terrorist attacks in the Global North" is probably a more-appropriate description of what I assume that means. "Islamist terrorist attacks" is also better defined. — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 16:32, 1 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete and salt; BM's suggestion is appealing in theory, but in practice it will never work. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 16:46, 1 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete In the context that the term is bandied about in this case, "left-wing" does not exist. It is a conservative pejorative, bordering on a neologism, for things they do not like, a one-size-fits-all lump of everything from Marxism to Antifa to Barack Obama. Zaathras (talk) 00:14, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Not only is this a mess of original research (as others showed above), but even if the contents were perfect, I still see no value in such a contextless list. We're mashing together a bunch of different attacks of different kinds, done for wildly different goals, and the list has no educational value. DFlhb (talk) 14:36, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.