Talk:Alt National Park Service

Older unsectioned discussion

Is this not how you expand redirects to articles?

[Copy of WP:EDRED's text removed ~ToBeFree] Ellieeugenia (talk) 22:58, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

Ellieeugenia, please have a look at WP:42 for an (over)simplified summary of what others seem to see as a problem here. If you disagree with them, please reply here with a list of independent secondary sources that describe the subject "Alt National Park Service" in detail, and use {{ping|Muboshgu}} ~~~~ to notify Muboshgu about your message. You can then discuss whether the sources provided by you are sufficient to establish notability. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 00:21, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

Oh, you have already provided a list in Special:Diff/1275082639. Thank you very much. I'll copy it here:

1. https://boingboing.net/2024/11/22/alt-national-park-service-has-a-message-for-doge-leaders-elon-musk-and-vivek-ramaswamy-our-coalition-will-rise-against-you.html
2. https://thehumanist.com/news/national/alt-national-park-service-protecting-nature-corporate-interest/

~ ToBeFree (talk) 00:26, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

Yes and please see my earlier revisions https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alt_National_Park_Service&diff=prev&oldid=1275074388 Thankyou Ellieeugenia (talk) 00:37, 11 February 2025 (UTC) and more

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alt National Park Service closed with a consensus to merge. Your attempts to recreate the page do not establish WP:GNG and the few links below don't either. – Muboshgu (talk) 00:52, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

https://www.vice.com/en/article/alternate-national-parks-service-explains-why-its-twitter-will-remain-anonymous/

https://www.williamsnews.com/news/grand-canyon-news/alt-nps-to-trump-you-cant-shut-down-the-internet/article_b9e647d1-1ff4-5037-8145-88c7a0c34b6b.html

https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/tech/2017/01/27/guide-alternative-parody-government-twitter-accounts-alt-national-park-service/97156444/

https://www.dailykos.com/story/2025/2/9/2299371/-Evening-Shade-Resistance-Rising-Sunday

https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.24407933

https://rss.com/podcasts/meteorology-matters/1886408/

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/1/25/1624958/-The-Alt-National-Park-Service-shows-how-to-resist

@Muboshgu: Ellieeugenia (talk) 00:50, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

Just learning how to edit articles, not attempting to recreate articles, or edit war, but expound on sources, was trying to add the additional sources once up I have added almost a dozen second sources to this talk, and I have about a dozen more articles to add, but can get more eyeballs, if that is better. thank you. Ellieeugenia (talk) 02:23, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

Here is my suggestion: since this would need work to demonstrate notability, do it in WP:DRAFTSPACE at Draft:Alt National Park Service, and use the WP:AFC process to get it reviewed. – Muboshgu (talk) 15:08, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

New article

Since this page was the subject of a previous deletion discussion, I want to be clear that what I just posted is a completely new article about the subject, not a recreation of the previous content. Most importantly, it contains multiple independent reliable sources to establish notability. This includes multiple pieces from news organizations and academics that post-date the 2021 discussion. --RL0919 (talk) 01:11, 21 June 2025 (UTC)

Strange behavior

We need better sourcing on this, but there has been some strange behavior with the AltNPS accounts lately.

• https://bsky.app/profile/hypoautonomic.bsky.social/post/3lrtibqdths2l
• https://skepchick.org/2025/06/the-alt-national-park-resistance-account-is-so-obviously-fake/

Terrible Tim (talk) 15:50, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

Overhaul of the Alt National Park Service page in light of plagiarism and misinformation

• What I think should be changed (include citations):

A complete overhaul of the Alt National Park Service page to represent the proper history of the real resistance movement (AltGov) that it was based off on, including mentions of AltNPS's history of plagiarism, and other recently documented controversies.

This will have to include information that was previously not widely known, that has now helped verify members of the real AltGov movement, the recorded history of plagiarism from AltNPS, and a more detailed timeline of events. Sources are either newly available or recently found, including:
• Reporting on the AltGov movement by Snopes' Journalist, Brooke Binkowski
• A collective biography of the AltGov movement by Professor Amanda Sturgill, We Are #AltGov: Social Media Resistance from the Inside
• A record of over 8 months of plagiarism and even false news by social media watchdog, AltWatcher
• And two recent deep dive investigative video essays by Aden Ng (Me, hence the conflict of interest), that includes a detailed timeline of the founding of AltNPS and related AltGov accounts. Sources are heavily cited within the video, and links to them are available upon request, as well as verification of identity

I would thus like to propose that the Alt National Park Service page be either updated to be a page about a troll farm instead of its current categorization of a political movement, or removed entirely, else fully replaced with a page about the AltGov movement, with the Alt National Park being relegated to a controversial or disputed section/footnote.

• Why it should be changed:

The history of the movement that actually spawned behind the idea that created AltNPS is currently drastically inaccurate. The story of AltNPS does not align to known facts, and serves as continued misinformation to the actual real world history, activities, and achievements of an real online resistance group that has helped shaped the history of America during the Trump presidencies behind the scenes.

Prior similar levels of plagiarism and misinformation by notable individuals have also caused for the removal of their respective Wikipedia pages to better represent their history, as well as to credit the actual figures behind them - in this case, AltGov.

Aden ng (talk) 19:41, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

References

@Aden ng: Since I am the major contributor to the current version of the article and you are asking for a "complete overhaul", I will let someone else review your edit request and mark it as "Done" or "Not Done". But I do want to reply with some context and suggestions. First, I absolutely sympathize with the concern that AltNPS may be a "fake" account that has nothing to do with current or former NPS employees. The article mentions its questionable status in the "Identity of participants" section. But Wikipedia is very dependent on what reliable sources say about a subject. From what I have found so far, most reliable sources either take the account at face value or express some questioning. Most do not denounce it as a fake; the It Could Happen Here podcast is an exception. If more sources start taking up that point, then we could expand on the criticism and even change the description of AltNPS in the lead.

Unfortunately, most of what you cite is from sources that Wikipedia does not treat as reliable, such as BlueSky, Medium, Substack and YouTube. Two exceptions are Snopes and the book by Amanda Sturgill. But the Snopes page doesn't mention AltNPS at all, so it isn't a relevant source for this article. I don't have Sturgill's book and found only limited excerpts online. Does she say anything specific about AltNPS being a misrepresentation, scam, etc.? If you can provide something we don't already have from an academic like Sturgill, or from an established media outlet (newspaper, TV, news website, etc.), then that is what we really need to make changes to the article.

As to "the real AltGov movement", the coverage from Snopes and Sturgill is a good start toward possibly having an AltGov article. But that would be better handled by starting a new draft of that, rather than asking to turn this article into it. --RL0919 (talk) 22:26, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

I completely understand the issue. The problem with proving AltNPS as fake is kind of proving a negative. Because they sell themselves as an anonymous, none regulated body, it's basically the same as trying to prove god exists. We can't prove AltNPS is real, because they've never admitted to being real. I can get as close to certainty as I can, but at this moment, it's basically impossible to have any definitive confirmation. But with that same train of thought, it can also be said that because AltNPS is not real enough, they should not be treated with the same real "online movement" motive, as there's no evidence of that either.

Take for example the Snopes article and Amanda Sturgill's book. They do not note AltNPS as being representative of AltGov, nor do they specify them as a scam, because their goals were to verify accounts. Unverified accounts would not make it on the list. So the lack of AltNPS mentioned in both simply means that the only 2 reliable sources of mass attempts at verification have both failed to verify AltNPS. It's another case of proving a negative.

Even if AltNPS is not removed as an article, I think it would only serve the integrity of the subject, to have it be noted not as a real movement, or at least written with a voice that doesn't lend it credibility in the same way, as a work of fiction instead of non-fiction.

If it helps, the Bluesky and Substack sources are from the same person that the It Could Happen Here podcast interviewed, Jack Joyce, which the YouTube videos also build upon. In terms of sourcing goes, it'd be primary to the podcast. Even if the videos aren't treated as reliable sources, I think a case can be made that Jack Joyce's work should be considered.

The AltGov movement themselves also have an internal verification system that can be viewed by the public, and they have also noted to not have been able to verify AltNPS's identity. A verified National Parks AltGov account, RogueRangers, have also been unable to verify the mysterious 160,000 members that AltNPS have claimed.

Barring the ability for complete rewrite, removal, or unreliable sourcing, at the very least, I think the language used in the article should be changed. A few examples would be:

The Alt National Park Service (AltNPS) is a [supposed] coalition of progressive activists created in 2017

AltNPS said[claimed] it had 160,000 "coalition members" [but no independent verification of membership exists].

As an aside, the Origin and growth segment is also quite error filled, as there is no evidence that the current AltNPS and AltUSNatParkService, or @NotAltWorld are actually the same individuals. And thus, any historical origins that relies on the account of any other accounts except the current AltNPS account, should not be taken as the same, which includes the history of its logo.

I have an eBook version of Amanda Sturgill's book which I am happy to share if needed. Barring that, I am happy to search through the book for keywords and phrases on request. Aden ng (talk) 10:19, 15 December 2025 (UTC)

Not done: @Aden ng, I concur with @RL0919.

The USA Today (February 2025) citation in the lead section says

Self-described as the "resistance" team of the National Park Service, the Alt National Park Service is an activist coalition dedicated to protecting and promoting U.S. parks.

That sounds a lot like the current coalition of progressive activists description.

Regarding the bit about having 160 000 members, see MOS:CLAIM and MOS:EDITORIAL. It might also help to read MOS:ACCUSE. ―Tosca-the-engineer (talk) 05:37, 18 April 2026 (UTC)

Content not based on reliable sources

On January 30, I removed a "Controversy" section that had been added using sources that do not meet our reliability standards. Specifically, the sources used are:

• Kyle Frost, "The Grift and Activism of AltNPS". This is a post on his personal blog, as indicated on its About page.
• Rebecca Watson, "The "Alt National Park" Resistance Account is So Obviously Fake". This is a video on her personal YouTube channel.
• A social media post on the "AltWatcher" Bluesky account, which belongs to a writer called Jack Joyce.

Unfortunately, these are all self-published sources, which are not generally considered reliable. None of the authors seem to qualify for our "established subject-matter expert" exception for using self-published sources. That is why I removed the content. However, User:Halosix has twice reverted me to restore it, without any attempt to fix the sourcing problem. So I am bringing the issue to the Talk page to explain in more detail what the problem is. RL0919 (talk) 14:37, 5 February 2026 (UTC)