Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Origins of Democracy Project
It was not a hoax but I don't know if it merits the "notable academic project" appelation. It's a trend within the modern anarchist movement which is mostly underground and quite a bit of the culture of which is luddite and doesn't publish online. Some people are interested in anarchist theory and ongoing trends, not all of which are encompassed by the more well known public anarchist periodicals. In fact it could be argued that there is an artificial skewing of coverage of this topic due to the fact that certain groups within that movement tend to be more active online, wheras others for whatever reasons prefer not to be.
The page which was deleted didn't give a very good overview of the project, as I hadn't had time to really work on it, but it's a real thing, I wish it hadn't been deleted.
I'm trying to get permission to post some of their research material online which was published in underground zines, and even scan some of the zines, but I don't want to do that if the authors don't like the idea, though I don't see why they wouldn't. From what I understand it is an ongoing effort on the part of several anarchists and some academics who may prefer to remain anonymous- to revive Kropotkins idea of examining History to find examples of democratic societies. They seem to have done a lot of good research, I think more people should know about the project, as it has implications for the future of the movement. It is sort of a return to methods which hadn't been looked at since the 19th century.
Does wikipedia not want to include articles about people who themselves don't publish online?