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General Concerns and Questions
Q1: Why does this article exist?
A1: This article exists because so far there has been no consensus to delete it. The latest AfD (2021) said that the Wikipedia editing community has been unable to come to a consensus as to whether "mass killings under communist regimes" is a suitable encyclopaedic topic. Six discussions to delete this article have been held, none of them resulting in a deletion:
Q2: Why isn't there also an article for "Mass killings under _________ regimes"? Isn't this title biased?
A2: Each article must stand on its own merits, as justified by its sources. The existence (or not) of some other similar article does not determine the existence of this one, and vice versa. Having said that, there are other articles such as Anti-communist mass killings and Genocide of indigenous peoples which also exist. This article has a descriptive title arrived at by consensus in November 2009.
Due to the editing restrictions on this article, a subpage has been created to serve as a collaborative workspace or dumping ground for additional article material.
Mass killings under communist regimes is part of WikiProject Cambodia, a project to improve all Cambodia-related articles. The WikiProject is also a part of the Counteracting systematic bias group on Wikipedia, aiming to provide a wider and more detailed coverage on countries and areas of the encyclopedia which are notably less developed than the rest. If you would like to help improve this and other Cambodia-related articles, please join the project. All interested editors are welcome.CambodiaWikipedia:WikiProject CambodiaTemplate:WikiProject CambodiaCambodia articles
I'm looking for the best picture or any informations about the KAF's U-6 (Beaver). It seem that the KAF had 3 aircrafts.
But in 1971, during the viet cong's sapper attack at the Pochentong Air Base,at least 1 Beaver was destroyed.In 1972
at leat 1 Beaver was refurbished with a new engine.
http://www.khmerairforce.com/AAK-KAF/AVNK-AAK-KAF/Cambodia-Beaver-KAF.JPG
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This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (color, defense, traveled) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.
This article was nominated for deletion. Please review the prior discussions if you are considering re-nomination:
no consensus, 14:22, 22 November 2021 (UTC), see discussion.
Nolan, Lucas (November 29, 2021). "Wikipedia Community Considers Deleting Entry on Mass Killings Under Communism over Claims of 'Bias'". Breitbart News.
I think a section dedicated to historiography of this subject is needed. After all, the latest AFD nomination was closed as "no consensus". Attempts to change the title has failed numerous times. Furthermore, the topic has been under arbitration remedies and barely studied by academics. George Ho (talk) 04:53, 16 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think it would be possible. Can you cite any review articles that outline the literature? That btw is the reason many editors have found the article unencyclopedic. TFD (talk) 02:42, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
See my comments in the section about. This article is about mass killings under communist regimes, not mass killings in Mao's China specifically. TFD (talk) 00:35, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There are quite a few sources on the historiography of communism in the 20th century, and they usually do cover mass killings and other crimes. Maybe we could use some of them? - Small colossal (talk) 00:04, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've seen a claim that the book, Red Holocaust, by Steven Rosefielde cites Wikipedia articles in its text. Naturally, I wanted to double check this myself and it appears to be true. I'm impaired by the fact I don't have access to the full book, but here's a preview of it too where you can see the Wikipedia pages together with other references. Inclusion of it on this page likely violates WP:CIRCULAR and Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a reliable source. These Wikipedia citations also don't include the date they were accessed or what version of the article they were from, further making them problematic. Keep in mind the book was published in 2009. Given that I see this source used in a couple different areas on this page and this page's controversial history, I didn't want to remove it myself without discussing it with the other editors. I looked through the Talk Page Archives to see if the issue had been discussed before, and it doesn't appear to have been. Forgive me if I missed it, given the endless discussions that have occurred here. I have to admit, I would be a bit surprised if this issue hasn't been broached before. Solitaire Wanderer (talk) 02:42, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We don't require that WP:Reliable sources use only WP:Reliable sources. And WP:Circular prohibits using mirrors of Wikipedia and so is really not applicable to this. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 18:44, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This article should at least be very cautious with how this book is employed through this page given that, again, it cites Wikipedia Articles from 15 years ago and it's unknown which exact version of the articles they are. Are you sure this wouldn't fall under WP:Circular? It's only one more step removed. Solitaire Wanderer (talk) 23:27, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with North8000. The only other case where it might be important is if a source is used for a fact that the source cites to a Wikipedia article. TFD (talk) 19:02, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Scholars routinely use unreliable sources. In fact, scholarship would be impossible without them. How else for example could anyone write the history of the Roman Empire, since there were no reliable sources to record any of its events?
Scholars are expected to be able determine what information in unreliable sources is true and what isn't unlike Wikipedia editors who lack that expertise.
I myself would never use a Wikipedia article as a source for a paper, but might use it to find sources.
Presumably, Rosenfeld did not come to his conclusions from erroneous information in Wikipedia. While I don't know that for a fact, other experts reviewed his work and one of the leading academic publishers accepted it.
The other issue is that most conclusions are treated as opinions, not facts, hence rs does not apply. We report opinions based on their acceptance in reliable sources, not whether or not they are true.
Incidentally, much of the information in reliable sources is unsourced, for example Encyclopedia Britannia articles. How is that better than using Wikipedia? TFD (talk) 02:17, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
When historians quote and rely on ancient & Medieval writers, they also employ skepticism towards them. I don't see how that issue matters because writing pre-modern history is much different from writing modern history due to the relative lack of primary sources for the former.
Encyclopedia Britannica isn't immune to scrutiny, but it's more reliable than Wikipedia, because it avoids many of Wikipedia's issues. I'll scrutinize Encyclopedia Britannica in the same way I'd scrutinize any other source. Likewise, I would expect Encyclopedia Britannica to avoid recycling facts from itself found in another book.
The difference is that Wikipedia does not consider itself a reliable secondary source. I'll come back to this topic at some point when I have full access to the book and can confirm what the book is using it for. To me, it appears to be using it as a secondary source. Solitaire Wanderer (talk) 18:36, 1 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The specific question here is (implicitly) whether Wikipedia's rules (excluding citing Wikipedia as a source) apply. The answer to that narrow question is NO. Any other questions should be clearly stated for discussion. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 19:27, 1 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Are you saying that if Rosefielde had not provided sources where he cited Wikipedia, that information would have been reliable, since the book otherwise meets rs as an academic work?
BTW I doubt that Rosefielde used Wikipedia without scepticism.
I want to come back to this topic at some point when I have access to the full book, but you mentioned there were academic reviews of it. Do you know what their titles were? I would like to read them if possible. Solitaire Wanderer (talk) 16:37, 3 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I wrote "other experts reviewed his work." I meant in the course of publication. You can find Routledge's publishing process here. Academic sources are considered the most reliable because the of the process they follow in publication.
While academic publishers will publish controversial books, the publication process should weed out glaring errors of fact. TFD (talk) 12:36, 7 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I do think that if nothing else this might be a reason to consider whether we're giving the work WP:UNDUE weight. We list him under "notable estimate attempts" (what makes an estimate attempt "notable"?), and devote more than half the lead of the "Comparisons to other mass killings" section to his views. At a glance it's not clear why we rely on him so much. And Kragh's review of the book is not particularly kind; his ultimate conclusion is that All in all, the book has some relevant merits that deserve praise. It brings forward new perspectives on Communist repression and makes valuable comparisons between different totalitarian systems. It further provides interesting data from various sources, adding to its relevance for scholars working on contemporary political history. However, Rosefielde's promise to describe events ‘without normative gloss’ (p. xv), is lost among editorial mistakes and polemics that distract the reader. That doesn't sound like a source we should be using so aggressively. (And IMHO this shows what the correct thing to do when a source seems to use weird / unreliable sourcing itself - it is not itself automatically disqualifying, no, as people said above. But it is a reason to investigate further and to see what other RS coverage has said about the source, which in this case doesn't seem to be good.) --Aquillion (talk) 08:04, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There was a decision last week to merge the article on Crimes against humanity under communist regimes into this article. I noticed that this has not yet been done, so I would like to give it a try. After reading both articles, it seems to me that the best way to do it is to just copy the content from the Crimes against humanity article into a new section here. I will go ahead and do that, with an introduction that links the new section to this article without repeating what this article already says, and the rest of the content just copied and pasted. But I intend to leave out the Bulgaria section, since it does not cite any sources. I have not done a merger before, so I apologize in advance if copying and pasting is not what is supposed to be done. Feel free to change things after me in that case! - Small colossal (talk) 23:58, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Done! I also re-ordered the sections a little, to put the USSR section first, for chronological reasons. But the content was simply copied and pasted from Crimes against humanity under communist regimes (minus the Bulgaria section, as I said above, since it lacked sources). Important: I did not check any of the sources used in this content. If there are concerns about any of them, they still need to be checked. - Small colossal (talk) 01:12, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
level-5 vital article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
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