Category talk:Former Trotskyists

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I do see a point to this page, however there are several details which, in my view, need to be taken into consideration: for one, it seems that the general practice on wikipedia is not to create "former" categories, but to include people who have moved from x ideology to a y ideology into both an x ideology category and a y ideology category (not into a "former x" ideology category and a y ideology category); aside from the point that all deceased Trotskyists could be included in this category for "having been Trotskyists", I don't know what this category means for, say, Christian Rakovsky (does his submission to Stalin make him a former Trotskyist, or was that submission, as Trotsky argued, "purely formal"?). Food for thought. Dahn 20:09, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I tend to agree with Dahn that "former" categories are not generally useful. While this is not as bad as many, my choice would be to merge it back in to Category:Trotskyists. Warofdreams talk 02:21, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Why are some people included in this page?

I wonder what basis there is for claiming that some of the people on this list are former Trotskyists. For example, I know of no reason for including either Stephen Byers or Charlotte Raven here and there is no mention of any such connection in either biography. Indeed there would appear to be more reason for claiming that Julie Birchall is an ex-Trotskyist as she once wrote an article for Socialist Worker.

Einde O'Callaghan, Editor, Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL) 01:28, 3 January 2008