Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Conspiracy allegations about Harry Magdoff

This page is an archive of the proposed deletion of the article below. Further comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or on a Votes for Undeletion nomination). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was keep. The disposition of content should be worked out by discussion, but there seems to be strong support for merge with Harry Magdoff. --Tony Sidaway^Talk 16:17, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Conspiracy allegations about Harry Magdoff

Users are attempting to remove information from the article so that they do not have to discuss it on the bio page.

This entry should be deleted and the content remain in the Harry Magdoff article with talk remaining there as well. --TJive 01:44, July 27, 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. If there is going to be an edit war over these ridiculous allegations, it's better that it be on this page then mucking up Harry Magdoff's web page. I should note that a Google search for "Magdoff", "Venona" and "Kant" (Magdoff's supposed Venona secret spy name) yields four results currently. One is Wikipedia. One is a white supremacist site. One is John Earl Haynes web site - Haynes is a far right author who makes accusations of Soviet espionage by name of hundreds of US Democrats and liberals, never mind people to the left of them. As I said - a Google search turns this up as the fringiest of fringe things, yet they want to fill up three quarters of Magdoff's article with these fringe accusations that he is a Soviet spy. I should note User:Nobs01 is editing the Wikipedia articles for half of the liberals and Democrats in the early/mid twentieth century and accusing them of being spies. Keep this article, Nobs01's fringe conspiracy theories do not deserve to take up 1/2 to 3/4 of Harry Magdoff's article. Ruy Lopez 02:12, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
  • Please note that Ruy's faux objections here have been duly refuted at the aforementioned talk page long ago. --TJive 02:17, July 27, 2005 (UTC)
  • Just to give a sample of where Ruy Lopez is coming from, his far right author works for the Library of Congress - which is hardly a log shack full of people in white sheets. Noel (talk) 19:58, 27 July 2005 (UTC) PS: Haynes' books are published by Yale University - hardly a right-wing think tank. Noel (talk) 04:26, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
• Delete Merge nobs 02:13, 27 July 2005 (UTC) Theory that accuses the United States government of conspiring against Harry Magdoff should be on the Magdoff bio page.
• Delete. Just in case that wasn't clear. The article title is also POV. Merge. For clarity. --TJive 02:18, July 27, 2005 (UTC)
• Merge. Gamaliel 02:19, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
• Merge what is verifiable with Harry Magdoff.Capitalistroadster 02:24, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
  • The problem is that there's no agreement on what's "verifiable", other than the original source documents. Ruy refuses, for example, to even concede that the "Magdoff" mentioned in the VENONA decrypts is this Magdoff, so you can't say "he was mentioned in VENONA", you basically have to give the decrypt as released by the NSA. Noel (talk) 19:58, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
• Merge verifiable material to Harry Magdoff; sort out the wheat from chaff on the talk page. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 02:29, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
  • Ditto my previous comment. Noel (talk) 19:58, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
• Merge into Magdoff article. Rangerdude 02:42, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
• Merge all content to Harry Magdoff, don't create POV forks. ¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸ 03:23, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
• Merge into Magdoff article. ObsidianOrder 04:09, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
• Keep until discussion is settled Note that instead of waiting for the outcome of this vote that TJive initiated, the material being debated was unilaterally merged back into the main article, where it now forms the largest block of text on a biography page. --Cberlet 12:28, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
  • Note that I have now found misrepresentation of the underlying documents cited to justify the conspiracy claims made against Magdoff. See the talk page.--Cberlet 13:49, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
    • Cberlet, you are the one who unilaterally moved all of the text from the main article to a POV fork without consensus and without even asking anyone's thoughts; I was simply correcting this move. It was already the largest section (by text) on the page when you got there. The reason being the section was challenged factually so we backed it up in the most concise manner possible. Also, this page is not for the purpose of debating the merits of the claims but whether this page as it is should exist. --TJive 18:57, July 27, 2005 (UTC)
• Keep per Cberlet. 172 | Talk 18:46, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
• Keep until discussion is settled Viajero | Talk 19:17, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, but renameDithering. This material is way too lengthy to put in the Magdoff article; if he was a source, it was a relatively minor episode in his overall career, and putting all this stuff in his article is poor stylistically - it needs to be in a separate article. (I would suggest something like Harry Magdoff spying controversy.) It has to be covered at length, alas, because this whole issue of whether or not Magdoff was a source for the Golos network is apparently a bete noire for those on the left, which has resulted in this becoming a big go-round. It seems that to simply say "he was a source" is deemed unacceptable (although all reputable historians of the period of whom I am aware now agree he was one), but the inclusion of material from offical archives, excerpts from sworn legal depositions, etc is harder to question, so that has become the default path. As such, it's necessary to extensively cite all the relevant documents (VENONA decrypts, Comintern archives, etc), and as I explained, that sort of lengthy material is not appropriate for his main article. Noel (talk) 19:58, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
  • Now that I think about it, whether this page is encyclopaedic, well, I'm somewhat dubious - it's really a bit too detailed; this is really devolving into a level of detail where it's more like a journal article on the issue at this point, giving all the original sources - not really encyclopaedic. On the other hand, given lack of a consensus to say in the main article what contemporary secondary sources say flatly (that he was a "source"), I don't know what to do. Noel (talk) 16:28, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

For the record, I totally agree that the main article should indicate that several published sources stat flatly that Magdoff was used as a source of information by the KGB, as long as there is also text that explores the dispute over what that actually means. For too long the large amount of text and illusrations were designed to imply that Magdoff was a Soviet spy. That was just unfair.--Cberlet 16:47, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

• Merge--MONGO 20:00, July 27, 2005 (UTC)
• Delete and Merge POV fork. Ultramarine 20:06, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
• Keep until dispute settled Well researched article and should not even be called 'conspiracy allegations', but 'espionage allegations'. A good title would be 'Harry Magdoff - Espionage Allegations'. I wouldn't call it a controversy until we have another side to the issue. It simply documents the allegations based on solid secondary research. In any case, the article is convoluted and off-topic as I see it with the main article and so it probably should not be merged with the main article unless consensus says otherwise. Cyferx 21:27, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
• Delete Dwain 22:36, July 28, 2005 (UTC)
• Keep until discussion is settled. Per Cberlet. El_C 22:39, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
  • Somehow I doubt this is going to be settled anytime before the next coming. Some people consider any mention of this McCarthyism of the worst sort, others think it's basically proven that he was a source (note, not a "spy" - "source" is a quite different thing). Hard to see any way for those two point of views to co-exist. Noel (talk) 15:56, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
    • Magdoff has no claim whatsover to being a "victim of McCarthyism"; there should be no reference whatsover to Joseph McCarthy or McCarthysim on either page. That clearly has been been demonstrated to be POV now. nobs 17:26, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
      • Stop making demands that privilege your point of view and try to find a reasonable compromise on the Talk page. Jeez!. Be constructive. --Cberlet 17:32, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
• MergeTDC 17:29, August 1, 2005 (UTC)
• Merge UNless there's good reason to separate them, seems to be a duplication. Coqsportif 02:30, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

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 an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.