ProleWiki

This article is about the history and notable events that happened on ProleWiki. For a description of the wiki, see the About page.

ProleWiki
The logo of ProleWiki, a globe featuring a star and wheat emblem, historically communist symbols
Main page of English ProleWiki
Type	Online encyclopedia
Available in	7 languages
Founded	30 September, 2020
Founder	Comrade Forte
Key people	CriticalResist, MxAsh
Users	23 active users 440 registered users
URL	prolewiki.org

ProleWiki is a free, collaborative Marxist-Leninist encyclopedia founded in September 2020 aiming to build an anti-imperialist proletarian online collection of pages and essays with information on history, current events, communist parties worldwide, and countries, as well as hosting a library of texts important to the international proletarian movement.

ProleWiki was conceived and created in the community of Lemmygrad, which is a communist community using the open-source software Lemmy. As of October 2022, ProleWiki is available in seven languages and has over 1,700 articles and 530,000 page views.

History

Founding

Old logo of ProleWiki used until February 2022

ProleWiki was created on 30 September 2020 by current ProleWiki administrator Forte. The project began under his sole administration for some time, receiving a casual help from several contributors on technical aspects, the most important of which was MxAsh. She helped with organizing the database, maintaining the server and establishing regular backups if needed.

On 1 November 2020, user Jucheguevara joined ProleWiki and became an administrator that same month.

In the month of November, ProleWiki received a mass influx of account creations and spam accounts, prompting the administration to implement an account request system.

On 16 November 2020, current ProleWiki administrator CriticalResist joined the project.

Jucheguevara and CriticalResist became administrators on 30 November and 5 February 2021 respectively, along with several other members of ProleWiki (as an invitation was extended to all editors at the time), in an effort to diminish the centralization of tasks into a single person. Eventually, the effort was ineffective as the administration group suffered with absenteeism, and most of the early administrators would have their functions revoked a few months later. The administrators who remained committed and active on ProleWiki at that time were Jucheguevara, Forte and CriticalResist.

On 29 December 2021, ProleWiki editor Ledlecreeper27 joined the project. He brought the project to new heights through his extremely quality contributions spanning several subjects. As of 2023, he remains the most prolific editor on ProleWiki.

Purge of patriotic socialists

In September 2022, Jucheguevara worked with Infrared in an attempt to infiltrate ProleWiki with MAGA communists and patriotic socialists. He was banned on 27 September 2022. Following the purge of patsocs, followers of Infrared started InfraWiki on 13 October to promote settler colonialism and social conservatism. Considering the timing and the skills JucheGuevara gained on the MediaWiki software while working for ProleWiki, it is believed that he is involved with InfraWiki in some capacity, but no confirmation exists to this day. On 22 October, ProleWiki added opposition to chauvinism and patriotic socialism to its principles.

Internal conflicts

In June 2022, Wisconcom, a self-described Hoxhaist, joined ProleWiki. He was a competent editor and overall improved many articles on ProleWiki, reaching 4th in all time edits in late 2022. In ProleWiki's Discord server, Wisconcom had behavioural and ideological conflicts with other editors, but was allowed to stay due to his prolific editing. For the most part he respected the line of ProleWiki, even though he did not agree with it.

In August 2022, Wisconcom began to oppose ProleWiki's principles in the talk page of the Socialist market economy article. When the discussion was shared in Lemmygrad, Wisconcom argued with others and sometimes insulted them. Because of his behaviour, he was eventually banned from Lemmygrad but later created another account to evade his ban.

After creating a community for Hoxhaism in Lemmygrad dedicated to anti-China propaganda, Lemmygrad administrators called for a collective debate on the issue in the People's Court of Lemmygrad (a space that the administrators use to poll and audit the community and gather opinions), and it was decided that Wisconcom and his community would be banned for ban-evading and anti-communist propaganda. Even though he was banned from Lemmygrad, he was allowed to continue in ProleWiki. What started as honest engagements with ProleWiki editors would gradually devolve to name-calling, falsely-equivocating, and generally being disruptive. Wisconcom later edited articles to oppose the consensus of the editors without the consultation of said editors and also engaged in a dishonest manner with others, even resorting to lying and editing/deleting his messages after sending them to make it look like he said something different.

Wisconcom retired on 17 October after this struggle session. 3 days later, he came back demanding that he be given higher authority over ProleWiki "to ensure that no unfair rejections of anti-revisionists takes place" (referring to ProleWiki's account request system). After arguing with Forte and condemning ProleWiki and Lemmygrad, he was banned on 21 October. Following his ban, he has attempted infiltrating ProleWiki through several means and even managed to deface some ProleWiki articles in the German-language instance (in which he calls China a fascist state, suggests that it is committing a genocide in its easternmost regions, and likens the Chinese economy to that of Nazi Germany). He has denounced ProleWiki as promoting "Dengist revisionist ideology."

Attempted infiltration

Wisconcom used his account on RationalWiki to spread anti-China propaganda and denounce ProleWiki for being "tankie", "pro-CCP", and "whitewashing Chinese imperialism." This event was shared on Lemmygrad, leading him to create another fake account claiming he didn't make the edits.

A screen capture of Wisconcom's message to the mods of the ProleWiki subreddit, under the alias ComradeWenger, saying "You have forced me to go THERMONUCLEAR!" as he announces the "Committee to Reconstitute ProleWiki"

On 26 January 2022, Wisconcom contacted the moderators of the r/ProleWiki subreddit (at the time, the same administrators of ProleWiki) and left them a message under a known alias of his, ComradeWenger, saying ProleWiki had "left him no choice" and that he would "go THERMONUCLEAR!" (see picture on the right). Around the same time as this message, he founded a committee seeking to infiltrate ProleWiki and overthrow its administration.

This prompted the administration of ProleWiki to create an internal security group composed of trusted editors, whose tasks are to audit prospective and established members, monitor ProleWiki's reputation online, help solve conflicts between editors, and generally offer opinions and information on matters of security to the project. This group was formalised on 15 February 2023.

Democratic reforms

One goal established for the project at the time of its founding was to make ProleWiki as self-sufficient as early as possible.

Regular backups were quickly established, and a plan to distribute them freely on the Internet (so that ProleWiki could be rehosted in case it went down) was studied but left out due to the effort required to enact that plan, which was not deemed urgent.

In the fall of 2022, the administration would start a work group program, which was aimed at delegating some tasks (outside of editing articles) to the editorship. An Agitprop group was created, which editors could join to help create content for social media.

Around the same time, editors became more involved in approving account requests. When someone requests an account on Prolewiki, their vetting answers are systematically passed on to the editorship in the Discord server who can vote with a simple yes or no. The administration provides context if necessary, and abides by the results of the vote. This was made possible by the growing interest in ProleWiki that happened in 2022, as the Discord server was mostly inactive until some users joined in September and breathed new life into it.

In January 2023, ProleWiki made great strides in its goal of establishing proper democratic centralism in the project so that it would not depend on a single person for survival. Co-administrator CriticalResist was given access to the entirety of the ProleWiki accounts and started learning how to debug MediaWiki software on a VPS. This meant that in case either of the two administrators was unable to participate on the project in the future, the other could always keep ProleWiki alive.

Around the same time, editor RedCustodian created a book club and manages it entirely by himself, with members of the book club voting on what to read and when.

This "work group" structure that ProleWiki adopted and encourages lets editors branch out to areas of interest to them and not limit themselves strictly to editing the wiki. Editors are able to propose almost any plan they wish to be involved with that would be beneficial for ProleWiki, and the administrators help them with everything they need to set up these self-governing groups.

Thus the administration is gradually moving closer to a "mentor" or "guidance" role, here to guide the editorship towards the goals set out by ProleWiki and measure adherence to the principles, as well as providing help and resources for setting up these editor projects.

Most of this discussion is found on the Discord server as its format makes it easier to manage such tasks.

Fundraiser

In February 2023, ProleWiki began a fundraiser to expand its storage from 40 to 80 gigabytes. The goal of the fundraiser is $528 USD, enough to cover the hosting costs of the server for two years. The administration has been completely transparent about where the money is going; it has also decided that, should any excess be raised, the contributors would be allowed to vote on what the surplus is spent on.

Working principles (to be moved)

International solidarity

The name chosen for ProleWiki was based on the term "proletariat", whose root "prole" you may find in common with very different Western languages: proletariat, proletariado, prolétariat, proletariato, proletariaat, etc. This linguistic phenomenon reflects the internationalist aim of the encyclopedia.

Free encyclopedia

ProleWiki is a free encyclopedia, in more ways than one.

Firstly, the encyclopedia has no price attached. It is free to access without payment as well as copy for private use.

Secondly, the encyclopedia is free because any comrade is eligible to apply for an account (a measure installed to combat spam) and start editing.

Finally, ProleWiki is free in the sense of free software. The content found on ProleWiki is generally free to use by anyone for their own needs.

Collaborative work

ProleWiki is also a collaborative project, meaning that most everyone is welcome to make an account and start editing. The encyclopedia does not belong to one person specifically, and relies instead on the labour of many editors who also give their inputs on decisions regarding the direction ProleWiki takes.

Social media

• Discord
• Facebook
• Lemmygrad
• Matrix
• Reddit
• TikTok
• Twitter
• YouTube