Leftypedia

Leftypedia
Type	Online encyclopedia, wiki
Founded	2019
Founder	CyberSynGang (original version)
Key people	Harrystein, RedParabola (2024)
Users	98 registered users 1 active (Harrystein)
Espoused ideology	Marxism (before 2024) Revisionism (2024)
URL	leftypedia.org (2019–2022) wiki.leftypol.org (2022–2024)

Leftypedia was a failed "left-unity" and "non-sectarian" encyclopedia founded in 2019. Initially, the site existed at the leftypedia.org domain name until it was removed after its founder stopped participating in the project in July 2022, but was revived under the wiki.leftypol.org domain later that year, hosted and maintained by leftypol.org. In 2024, a revisionist section of the site administration purged all Marxist–Leninist editors and installed a tiny rump editorship of mostly left-communists and anarchists. The project has never recovered, and the website would go down in late 2024.

Although Leftypedia had many flaws during even its height, its external platforms allowed many anti-revisionist Marxist–Leninist editors to organize and eventually form the basis for Revolupedia later in 2024.

History

Founding and early development

Leftypedia was founded in 2019 by users of Marxistpedia, a Trotskyist website, after it ceased to exist earlier that year. The initial goals of Leftypedia related to preserving content from Marxistpedia, resulting in Leftypedia inheriting much of the biased content from its predecessor. By early 2022, the initial version of Leftypedia would stagnate and become become plagued with constant spam attacks. In July 2022, the project's sole administrator, CyperSynGang, became inactive and discontinued Leftypedia, making it permanently inaccessible for the public.

Revival on Leftypol.org

Main article: Leftypol.org

By August 2022, Leftypedia was revived under wiki.leftypol.org, with its servers being maintained by administrators of the leftist message board leftypol.org. After importing a portion of the previous Leftypedia's content to the new site, administrator Nonmakina and the revived project generally became inactive, with only sporadic and meager contributions from other users.

2023 edit warring

Activity on Leftypedia would suddenly increase notably in late January 2023 when editors of a Dengist website attempted to create a promotional article about their project. In response, anti-revisionist user Wisconcom would create an account and remove promotional content. Following this, the Dengist editors would begin a protracted edit war with Wisconcom on Leftypedia as part of their greater harassment effort against him and other anti-revisionists. The Leftypedia administrators sided with Dengist editors and permitted them to maintain their vanity pages which contained attacks on other users, even after they had engaged in uncivil conduct and even made legal threats on the site.

Later in 2023, user Harrystein was made an administrator after the others in that position were becoming inactive. Immediately afterwards, he banned multiple Marxist–Leninist users, claiming that they were alternative accounts of Wisconcom.

Growth and outreach in early 2024

Leftypedia would largely regress into its initial stagnation after August 2023, with Harrystein being the main contributor. Harrystein, at this time, would begin to allow anti-communist, incel, and other right-wing users onto the site, resulting in poor-quality edits, pages, and content explicitly promoting reactionary ideology.

On January 19, 2024, the account RedParabola was created. RedParabola would make many large contributions to Leftypedia, including designing a new main page, logo, refining the site-wide stylizing, etc. RedParabola would also create an official Leftypedia Discord server, subreddit, and Lemmy community to gather support for the project. However, by May, RedParabola would begin to see the limitations of "left-wing unity," with him being unable to read more advance Marxist texts to members of the Discord study group he founded, having to permit anti-communists along with Trotskyists and Maoists to be present on the server, and so forth. This was in tandem with general administrative inefficiency, with most of the other administrators inactive and the Leftypol.org staff focusing little on Leftypedia, resulting in needed changes that required access to the hosting server being made little if ever.

Community split and mass bans

Profile picture of RedParabola, the individual responsible for much of Leftypedia's later history.

RedParabola had begun to align with anti-revisionist Marxist–Leninist ideology by the start of June 2024, and was able to convince many of Leftypedia's editors to adopt Marxism–Leninism as well. After convincing Leftypedia administrator Harrystein to hold elections for positions, RedParabola was unanimously elected as an administrator by the editors, and Aussig was elected as moderator on June 17.

After these elections, on June 18, RedParabola called for a poll to be held within the editorship to ban rightists and anti-communists from the project and make it officially communist. When the poll was about to succeed and be passed, Harrystein denied its legitimacy and stated he would ban RedParabola for this action. This prompted RedParabola to ban Harrystein and the other administrators and install a new administration of Marxist–Leninists. However, the Leftypol.org administrators, who controlled the server Leftypedia was hosted on, allied with Harrystein and used their high-level access to revert Harrystein's ban.

Harrystein would proceed to ban or restrict the editing access of most of Leftypedia's editors, including all Marxist–Leninists, leaving only a small group of anarchist, Maoist, and left-communist users unaffected. In a statement after the purge, Harrystein accused RedParabola of being an "alternative account" of Wisconcom.

Aftermath

Since the June 18 purges, Leftypedia has virtually become defunct. All new accounts are unable to edit without administrative approval and the only somewhat active user is Harrystein himself. All of Leftypedia's external presence has either been deleted or dissociated itself from the project.

RedParabola, following the purge of Marxist–Leninists, was able to maintain control of the Leftypedia Discord server, which he dissociated from the site. Soon after, he retired from moderating the server and deleted Leftypedia's Lemmy community. He handed power over to Aussig, who in turn handed power to Saul Wenger. Wenger was a member of The Red Spectre, and he decided to collaborate with the remaining members of the server to form a new encyclopedia called Revolupedia which would be managed by that organization. The vote was successful, and a new encyclopedia was created on June 22, 2024.

In September 2024, wiki.leftypol.org would go down without clear explanation, bringing an end to Leftypedia after months of inactivity following the events of June.

See also

• Anarchopedia