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	9 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 first proposed as an idea on Lemmygrad. As of April 2024, ProleWiki is available in nine languages and has over 3,000 articles and almost 7 million page views.

One goal established for the project at the time of its founding was to make ProleWiki as self-sufficient as early as possible. An influx of new users in late 2022 led to democratic reforms, allowing editors to vote on account requests. 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.

Etymology

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

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 casual help from several contributors on technical aspects, the most important of which was MxAsh. MxAsh helped with organizing the database, maintaining the server, establishing regular backups and generally helped out with the tech stack.

On 1 November 2020, ex-user Jucheguevara joined ProleWiki and became an administrator that same month until September 2022. Later that month, 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 2020 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. The effort eventually proved 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 January 2024, he remains the most prolific editor on ProleWiki.

Purge of patriotic socialists

Messages sent by Jucheguevara to Infrared supporters attempting to infiltrate ProleWiki with MAGA communists

In September 2022, Jucheguevara worked with the Infrared community in an attempt to infiltrate ProleWiki with MAGA communists and patriotic socialists. He was banned on 27 September 2022. Following the purge of two other patriotic socialists, which formed the only presence on ProleWiki, he and followers of Infrared started InfraWiki on 13 October to promote settler colonialism and social conservatism. On 22 October, ProleWiki added opposition to chauvinism and patriotic socialism to its principles, thereby cementing a position of no compromise on such ideologies.

Ultra-left subversion attempt

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 personal 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 the c/Hoxhaism community on Lemmygrad, which he 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-evasion and anti-communist propaganda. Even though Wisconcom was banned from Lemmygrad, he was allowed to continue his work on ProleWiki. What started as honest engagements with ProleWiki editors would gradually devolve to name-calling, bad faith arguments, and generally being disruptive on Wisconcom's part. 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 or deleting his messages after sending them to make it look like he said something different.

Wisconcom retired on 17 October 2022 after a final struggle session. Three 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. Immediately after his ban, he attempted to infiltrate ProleWiki through several means and even managed to deface some ProleWiki articles in the German-language instance (in which he called China a fascist state, suggests that it is committing a genocide in its westernmost 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 [sic]", 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"

This status quo went on for several months: Wisconcom would attempt to make accounts on Lemmygrad or ProleWiki, get found out and banned, and try again after a few days. On 26 January 2022, he changed tactics: he first 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). Secondly, he founded a "committee" on Discord 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.

Since May 2023, Wisconcom has mostly deleted his online presence and stopped bothering ProleWiki and Lemmygrad. It is unknown what prompted this change of mind.

Democratic reforms

Screenshot of the users who participated in the first ProleWiki book club

Regular backups of the website 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 put on hold due to the effort required to enact that plan, which was not deemed urgent.

In the fall of 2022, the administration started 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. Since June 2023, all Trusted editors are opted into the agitprop group. This work group structure 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.

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 that was managed entirely by himself, with members of the book club voting on what to read and when.

Fundraiser

In February 2023, ProleWiki began its first ever fundraiser to expand its storage space from 40 to 80 gigabytes. The goal of the fundraiser was $528 USD, enough to cover the hosting costs of this new 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.

The first goal (one year of hosting) was reached in under 24 hours after comrade Deogeo made a $200 USD donation. Then, with help from Lemmygrad and Hexbear users, ProleWiki raised their stated goal of $528 USD in just 5 days.

Further development

In July 2023, ProleWiki adopted a new library with images of its authors. The old library is still available on an archived page. In January 2024, it allowed users to create library accounts and only be able to edit the library if they lack the knowledge to be approved for a full account.

In February 2024, ProleWiki started a Matrix server.

See also

• Baidu Baike
• EcuRed
• Leftypedia

Further reading

• The Wiscon Files

Social media

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