Talk:Mass killings under communist regimes/Archive 48

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Debates between AmateurEditor and Paul Siebert

I came to a conclusion that this talk page is a total mess, and there are two reasons for that. First, too many issues are being discussed in parallel. Second, some users respond to arguments randomly, and they frequently ignore opponent's arguments when they do not know how to respond. As a first step to bring everything in order,

• I propose AmateurEditor to discuss all points of our disagreement here, and I respectfully ask other users (except mediators) to refrain from commenting in this section. Initially, I planned to do that at my talk page, but I think our discussion may be relevant to this talk page. AmateurEditor is the main contributor to this article, he is intellectually honest, and I believe that if we come to some consensus, that may significantly decrease tensions. I declare that I am going to stick with the results of our future consensus independently on its outcome, and I am sure AmateuEditor will do the same.

• I proposed KIENGIR to be our mediator, but I haven't got a response so far. In any event, two mediators would be better than one. Therefore, my question is "does anybody else want to be a mediator if this dispute?" (Of course, either I or AmateurEditor have a right to reject some mediator candidates without explanations. However, if we both accept some person, we will agree to obey their general guidance).

AmateurEditor, I propose to discuss exactly ONE question in each round, and to summarise the results after each round. Each party has several days for a response, and each response should be as brief as possible. We go to the next subtopic only after the previous discussion has came to some definite consensus. Do you accept this my proposal?--Paul Siebert (talk) 00:43, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

I just answered above. You may relocate here then relevant parts about this which is split above between other sections, if you wish.(KIENGIR (talk) 00:49, 12 December 2020 (UTC))

"...how the community would bend to it? Simple we would be forward as the result is given to the them so we are a step forward and everything continues? " Yes. AE is the main contributor to this article, and his arguments are stronger than the arguments of other users. If our dispute will be resolved, it may become a seed for crystallisation of some new consensus.

"I was thinking deeply further what rules we could assert to our arbitration/moderation as you mentioned." That would be good, but that is premature. Let's focus at this dispute. If AE and I will be capable of resolving our dispute, then it is likely that bigger problems are also solvable. I anticipate most reasonable users will join us, and we will come to some general consensus, and the users who are less prone to arguments will quit, so no arbitration will be needed. I am not to interested to think about less optimistic scenarios now. That is a little bit premature

If you are ready to be a moderator, I agree in advance with all what you will propose regarding the procedure. Just say "yes", propose the rules, and we will start.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:22, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, if you were waiting on me to answer you here, I agree to mediated discussion as outlined at Wikipedia:Mediation. AmateurEditor (talk) 06:39, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Good. If KIENGIR is ready, we can start. To the best of my knowledge, we do not need to create a separate subpage or thread, and can start right here, but that is up to you guys.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:26, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Some technical preliminaries:

- when I mentioned thoughts about our arb//med rules, it was about this dispute

- "reasonable users will join us", you mean into the discussion (which is not possible since you asked noone else should edit this section), or you meant they will join to the outcome/result(s) of the mediated discussion between you two?

- Per AE's outline reference, point 1. says any party may withdraw any time, how should we handle this (even if just possibly theoretical), that one who left is considered to gave up his point, so the other will prevail?

- Per the previous reference, reinforce both of you I fullfill point 3. (only after I am willing to say yes and propose the rules)(KIENGIR (talk) 16:42, 13 December 2020 (UTC))

re: "reasonable users will ..." I meant after the discussion.

re: " is considered to gave up his point, so the other will prevail?" I see thin dispute as a way to come to some common opinion. If one of us withdraws, then the whole dispute is a failure. However, at least, we tried :).

re: "I fullfill point 3 " Since it was me who nominated you, the only thing I should attest is that you are not leaning to my side. I think you are not. Do I understand it correct that we need an answer from AmateurEditor, and after that we start?--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:58, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert and KIENGIR: if you need me to answer, I agree with having KIENGIR mediate per section 3 of Wikipedia:Mediation ("Who can mediate") as the user is not a "clearly incompetent or seriously inexperienced user" and I have not had prior involvement with the user as far as I recall. AmateurEditor (talk) 22:48, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Ok. Tomorrow I'll present the proposal of the rules, until just relax you two, both of you I wish a nice evening!(KIENGIR (talk) 23:03, 13 December 2020 (UTC))

Thank you KIENGIR. If you want you can collapse the preliminary part for better readability of this section.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:11, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

My proposal is:

- Each issue has to be decomponated in it's most primitive subset, and each part prompted should not exceed 500 characters, as well the response to them (of course at one issue, the number of responses are not limited, but should be one-by-one (=PS-AE-MOD), limitation by any other cause could be set by the moderator). Similarly, issues should be discussed subsequently, not concurrently (= not starting a new one until the one ongoing is not finished).

- Issues may be finished by the following outcomes:

- A, you reached consensus without the moderator

- B, you did not reach consensus, but after the moderator(s) proposal, finally you end up in a consensus (which may be not identical by any of your original proposal)

- C, you did not reach consensus by any means, which means the issue should be suspended and possibly revisited after discussing another one - which may possibly implicitly may help to resolve a former failure -, however, after 3 unsuccessful trials the issue is finished as total failure and not revisited again

- None of your response time is limited, but given dual subsequent entry pair (= one wrote something, the other reacted) the moderator should react on the issue in 48 hours. In case it did not happen the vice-moderator (which have not been elected yet - has the right to substitute the primary moderator on such occasion, but only on that single instance)

- In case by any means the any of the moderators are fallen - shall the reason be explicit or unknown -, which means none of the moderators give a feedback subsequently in 96 hours, new moderator(s) may be appointed, which ultimately take their role.

In case something would not be clear, or needs deeper explanation, ask (anyway meanwhile I would indicate if something would be missed by anyone, including me)(KIENGIR (talk) 22:11, 15 December 2020 (UTC))

I propose the following preliminary steps for each section. First, each of us describes the opponent's viewpoint as he sees it, another party replies if he agrees with that description, and if not, proposes the amended version. Second, each party proposes the way for refutation of their own arguments. For example "If you find X sources saying Y, I will have to concede my viewpoint is wrong". After that, the dispute starts. AmateurEditor and KIENGIR, do you agree with that? In addition, I propose AmateurEditor to pick the first issue, rename the section (put some title instead of "ISSUE 1"), and describe how he sees my viewpoint on that account (without providing counter-arguments, so far).--Paul Siebert (talk) 00:27, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

I'm fine with following Paul Siebert's preliminary steps, but I don't have a particular issue to start with. As the person who suggested this mediation, I think Paul Siebert should choose the topics. AmateurEditor (talk) 04:44, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Paul, I think those preliminary steps are (implicitly) included in the standard process I proposed. Hence you may do anything you want until 500 chars at each manifestation, which AE will respond likely as he wishes the same barrier. As you went forward, AE's request has been fulfilled (start on/choosing topic). I don't think we should determine how and with which methods the one should answer, you have total freedom, the moderator will anyway intervene (on the other hand, implicitly/explicitly you may direct/tend the discussion in any direction, including your proposed steps, e.g.)

- as well, please both you propose a vice moderator, outlined above first (and please post outside the box, here above anything concerning technical issues, thank you).(KIENGIR (talk) 22:21, 15 December 2020 (UTC))

KIENGIR, I never saw the above proposal (the one you moved up) as a universal format, just a desirable one. With regard to vice-moderators, this discussion is so partisan that is is problematic to find a really neutral candidate, except czar, but I doubt he will be interested to be a vice-moderator. However, I already asked everybody if they agree to be a (vice)moderator, but there were no responces. I am repeating my request: Nug, PackMecEng, Schetm, Aquillion, BeŻet, Buidhe, C.J. Griffin, Davide King, The Four Deuces, Rick Norwood, Vallee01, if you are interested to be a vice-moderator in that dispute and feel that you can be neutral enough, I would be glad if you nominated yourself.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:27, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

This is not relevant to the dispute

As stated I do not know enough about the current dispute to go and state anything on it. This discussion is long, confusing and extremely complex therefor it is difficult to take a stance, it's difficult enough to even to even figure out the discussion. I do not have time (as I am a student,) nor do I have the knowledge to be a arbiter here. Watching this article from the sidelines it appears at completely fails at having a NPOV, it connects communism an extremely broad political spectrum, which includes anarchists, libertarian socialists, council communists, democratic socialists all of such ideologies have no link to mass killings towards mass killings. I would fully agree that certain communist ideologies like Marxist-Leninism and other communist ideologies have links between their ideology and mass killings. The 5 year plans as an example can be argued to directly contribute to forced collectivization contributing to atrocities. My issue is then why is this called "communist," when it only mentions a fraction of actual communist ideologies? For starters this article deals with specific Marxist-Leninist, Maoist and other extremely authoritarian and horrible regimes. It doesn't make any sense then why it is labeled "communist," when in reality it only deals with specific communist ideologies. Communism is a mass political spectrum and includes the most peaceful, to the most violent, the most libertarian vs to the most authoritarian. This article doesn't doesn't mention anarchist, libertarian socialist, council communist atrocities. It deals with a fraction of actual communist ideology. Therefor how can this article state there is a link between the two? If ML states were the only tried form of communism I could understand it however it's not. Of course anarchists, libertarian socialists are all responsible for atrocities as an example the Red Terror in Spain and such atrocities took place however none of this is special to anarchism, in fact anarchism is far less bloody compared to other ideologies. There is no special link between mass killings and libertarian communism, no more then you can any other ideology so the naming is completely confusing and strange, I agree generally with Paul Siebert however certain communist ideologies have and are connected with atrocities, "communism" isn't. I would also like to remind everyone to not dig there feet in the sand, be open, listen and please put your personal POV behind this. Vallee01 (talk) 02:15, 16 December 2020 (UTC) It is simply common usage to refer those technically "Marxist-Leninist" regimes as "Communist", see also Communist state.--Staberinde (talk) 15:57, 16 December 2020 (UTC) The article is about mass killings under communist regimes, not mass killings under communist ideologies. --Nug (talk) 03:56, 16 December 2020 (UTC) Nug, except Valentino says most Communist regimes did not engage in mass killings and the ones who did are these whom he terms "radical communist regimes", i.e. the Big Three (Cambodia, China and the Soviet Union). The only reasons he discusses other mass killings is that he lowered the standard but in his original standard and methodology only Cambodia, China and the Soviet Union committed mass killings. He also still does not blame ideology as we currently do in the lead "resulting from the policies of Communist regimes." Davide King (talk) 07:32, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

KIENGIR, I am fine with anyone as vice moderator, as long as they are not in favor of article deletion. Czar would be fine with me. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:20, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

A request to all other editors. Please, read before posting anything here! Dear fellow Wikipedians! This section is a discussion between me and AmateurEditor, which is mediated by KIENGIR. I respectfully beg you to refrain from posting anything here, because it is really distracting. Please, pots here only if you want to nominate yourself as co-mediator.

Sincerely, --Paul Siebert (talk) 18:04, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

- Paul then I kindly ask you to follow proposed the format for appropriate visibility and convenient overview, as pairwise the entry-pairs will be checked (so 1st entry of yours would match with AE'a 1st entry, and so on, I will also now tabulate your second entry, if you allow, for better stlyling and visual match, the same I ask from AE, thank you)

Checking in Word, Paul Siebert's entry was 580 characters and my response before this sentence was 658, so I think the 500 character limit is a bit too limiting, but I will try to keep my posts close to 500 characters. by AmateurEditor

- AE, no problem if it a bit deteriorates, until I do not say it's too long, just go on.

- Until no vice-moderator will be elected, as long you have to concern in case I would not show up in 96 hours, then the corrsponding part of the proposal should be executed

KIENGIR, I think tabulation is not a good idea, because if there will be many rounds the latest posts will be squeezed to the right side. IMO, tabulation is redundant in that format, because each entry is numbered.--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:39, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Paul, it would greatly help my work (the moment the whole thread would became to far-right :-), the tabulation would start from null tab again from the left..please...(KIENGIR (talk) 21:45, 16 December 2020 (UTC))

Sir, yes, sir!!!:).--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:56, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

KIENGIR, your issue 1, 1st comment says my first comment addresses parts of Paul Siebert's second comment, but I posted my first comment before Paul's second was posted. It might help if we started signing/timestamping our entries to make that clearer going forward. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:41, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

AE, mea culpa, will add time stamps.--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:22, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Paul, Thank you, and I'll let to you decide exactly when tabulation starts from nil.

AE, yes you are right, my mistake, from now on all of us should use timestamps, thank you.(KIENGIR (talk) 20:59, 17 December 2020 (UTC))

KIENGIR, your issue 1, 1st entry (UPDATED) comment that I meant the opposite is not what I meant. I did mean what I said. When I said "I would substitute the word "opinion" for "knowledge" in the issue text", I was referring to the title text ("ISSUE 1. How can we determine if the definition of a topic adequately reflects the current state of knowledge of the subject??"), so that the title/issue would be "ISSUE 1. How can we determine if the definition of a topic adequately reflects the current state of opinion of the subject??". However, since Paul Siebert says his intent with the word "knowledge" was "essential facts and significant opinia" already, I have dropped the request to change it. AmateurEditor (talk) 06:30, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, clarified, in fact Paul did not change the title, but only rewritten the sentence in his entry, so there he made the clarification, but it's ok.(KIENGIR (talk) 21:48, 18 December 2020 (UTC))

KIENGIR, I did ("corerectly -> adequately" in the title), and I even changed the colour to make this change visible. In future, I propose to use the same similar colour scheme to show the changes that were accepted by both sides. --Paul Siebert (talk) 22:57, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

KIENGIR, did I understand it correctly that we are not supposed to move to the next round (post next entry) until you have summarized the previous one? If yes, I apologise for being so quick and will be waiting for your commands.--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:04, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes, you're right, sorry, these early timestamp "shortage" tricked me. Proposal for color shame accepted. You may move on, but I very carefully evaluate the entry pairs, as you see, until synctactically and semantically I have doubts of interpretation, I don't move the next one.(KIENGIR (talk) 08:22, 19 December 2020 (UTC))

Paul, since you're request has been made at Christmas Eve, the one-time extensive extensions have been granted :) (and as I see already fulfilled). The same way AE may as well live this privilege in his 10th entry. I wish a Merry Christmas both of you!(KIENGIR (talk) 04:20, 25 December 2020 (UTC))

Thank you, Santa!

Actually, I have a feeling I have to slow down. The discussion will proceed better if I will be able to timely take into account both AE's responses and your comments. Therefore, I am going to make my next post after obtaining your comments on items 7-10.

Cheers, --Paul Siebert (talk) 17:23, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, I have responded to your 10th entry but I agree with waiting for KIENGIR's comments on entries 7-10 before proceeding further. AmateurEditor (talk) 11:35, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

AmateurEditor&KIENGIR! HAPPY NEW YEAR! I wish our discussion to finish in 2021 with some reasonable and mutually acceptable outcome. :)!--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:07, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, I wish you a Happy New Year too, Best Regards!(KIENGIR (talk) 18:39, 1 January 2021 (UTC))

ISSUE 1. How can we determine if the definition of a topic adequately reflects the current state of knowledge of the subject??

Comments by Paul Siebert

• (1st entry): I have an impression that AmateurEditor believes that can be done as follows:

(i) Find some topic in a literature; (ii) Search for sources that cover that topic as it is formulated, mutatis mutandis; (iii) Check if these sources fit all criteria for reliable secondary sources per WP:V; (iv) Check if there is any serious criticism of those sources in mainstream books or journals; (v) If the sources are reliable and there is no serious criticism, then the topic was defined correctly, this set of sources adequately describes the topic, and they adequately reflect a mainstream viewpoint, so we have a good set of sources the article can be based upon.

Am I right?

• (2nd entry): I added one important point to #1.

Under "knowledge" of some subject, we usually mean all essential facts and all significant opinia, which is in accordance with WP:NPOVFACT. To substitute the word "knowledge" with "opinion", as you propose, would be against NPOV. Immediately after our attention switches from the knowledge of some subject to some concrete opinion on that subject, that opinion becomes the article's subject (which assume all needed reservations and criticism). To avoid that, all important opinia about the facts and events described in the article (i.e. our knowledge of those events) must be proportionally represented. With regard "correctly" in the step "v", the point is that the identified set of sources must correctly summarize the opinia (in other words, the question is not if the sources are correct or not, but if they correctly summarise the opinion(a) they are supposed to summarise). However, I see not much difference between "correctly" and "adequately", so I replaced it.

Can we move further?

• (3rd entry): Good (will be adding time stamps). Then, please, consider the following situation: one group of sources discusses some topic (for example "Mass killing under communist regimes"), and they are focused on mass killings committed by Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot; another group of sources discusses "Mass killings under Eurasian totalitarian regimes in countries with underdeveloped economy", and they discuss Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot. Both of them do not cite each other, and both of them discuss essentially the same events, but the first one totally ignores geography and historical background as factors, whereas the second one totally ignores Communism. Accordingly, a comprehensive search for sources yields two different mutually orthogonal sets of sources. Should we write two different articles (because the two topics are defined differently, so some sources should be thrown away), or we should re-define the original topic to include all sources writing on those events?

In other words, if different keywords yield different sources, do we throw away the sources that do not fit the initial definition of the topic, or we re-define the topic to include all sources writing about the events this topic covers? --Paul Siebert (talk) 04:15, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

• (4th entry): You write, "If reliable sources treat these topics as separate ...", to claim that, one needs to provide some RS that explicitly says the narratives X and Y of events A, B and C are two separate topics. Otherwise, the narratives are X and Y by default are treated as descriptions of facts A, B and C from two different perspectives, and, therefore, they belong to the same topic, and original definition of the topic must be modified. Remember, we are discussing how to determine whether topic's definition adequately reflects knowledge of a subject, and by “knowledge” we mean “all facts and significant points of view on a given subject”, therefore, a "nearly complete overlap" you are talking about is the overlap of facts (events), not the overlap of interpretations. If we want to focus on interpretations (narratives, views), then these narratives become the article's topic, not the facts. --Paul Siebert (talk) 20:55, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

• (5th entry): Well, consider the following situation. During your literature search, you found that some group of scholars (the school of thought X) authored several books and peer-reviewed articles on some set of events (A, B, C ...), where they define this topic as XXX. These books and articles meet all our RS criteria. The reviews on the books (most of them are authored by other members of the same school of thought) are generally positive. That means all above described steps ((i) to (iv)) are successfully accomplished, and we must conclude "(v)" (i.e. the topic was defined correctly), and we can start writing our article about the events A, B, C ... using the sources authored by scholars X as our core (aggregator) sources.

Now answer the following question: how can your procedure (it is your procedure, I only formulated it) discriminate the case when the school of thought X expresses majority views on the events A, B, C ... (so the topic XXX is a mainstream topic) from the case when X is a minority viewpoint (and, accordingly, XXX is not a mainstream topic) ?--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:16, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

• (6th entry): 1. What you call "... your "i" to "v" formulation" is my formulation of the procedure you are using. I did that to make sure I understand your arguments correctly. You agreed with that my formulation (your 2nd entry), which I interpreted as you confirmed that steps (i)-(v) correctly describe what you are doing. If you think steps (i) to (v) may be in some cases inconsistent with our policy, that means one of the following: a) I incorrectly formulated your ideas, and you, for some reason, haven't corrected me, or b) you agree that in some cases your procedure, which described in steps (i) - (v), may not work well. In the latter case, we may stop at that point and move to the next round, where I will propose another procedure, which, in my opinion, is universally applicable to all situations.

However, if you still believe that your search procedure is correct, but I incorrectly summarised it in steps "(i) to (v), please, present a correct desciption of your search procedure, and we will start from the beginning.

Regarding "majority vs mainstream", I don't think that is a really serious issue. "Mainstream" sometimes appears in the policy's text, I even initiated some discussion to clarify what it is, but the policy was not modified, which means that is something intuitively clear. I wouldn't focus on that. Actually, "fringe" is also irrelevant. Let's limit ourselves with the "majority vs significant minority" issue. --Paul Siebert (talk) 04:21, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

• (7th entry): I called it your procedure, because that procedure is yours. And yes, I see some serious problem with it: it violates NPOV. It is in full accordance with all policies, except NPOV. That is the main subject of that round.

In my entry #6, I already proposed a simple test to objectively check if this my assertion is correct or wrong. Since you haven't answered that my question, I reiterate it: please show how your procedure can reveal that the school of thought identified in steps (i) - (v) is a majority or significant minority school. If you can explain that to me, I will agree that you are right. If you cannot demonstrate that, your procedure is inconsistent with NPOV.

There is no "I believe" vs "you believe": if you can demonstrate how your procedure allows making a conclusion: "Yes, this group of sources express majority/minority view", you win. If not, you must concede I am right, and we need to think how to improve your approach.

Your answer "majority views are discriminated from minority views only via statements from reliable sources" has a major logical flaw: imagine some source "A" says, "The viewpoint "X" is a majority view". However, to conclude that "X is a majority view", we need to confirm that the source "A" represents a majority viewpoint of "X". And, according to you, to do that, we need to provide another reliable source "B", which confirms that "A" is a majority view. And so on, and so forth (I see no logical end in that sequence). Clearly, your approach works only in the opposite way: if some RS "A" says: ""X" is a minority viewpoint", then, most likely, that is the case (if there is no criticism of "A" in literature). However, that approach is not universal either (and I can elaborate on that in a separate post). --Paul Siebert (talk) 03:47, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

• (8th entry): Yes, our dispute as whole is not a zero sum game, and that is why there is nothing wrong with my request to demonstrate that I am wrong. As I already said, I see a flaw in your procedure, and you should either demonstrate that I am not right (see previous entries), or concede there is some flaw in your approach. If you demonstrate that I am wrong, the whole dispute is resolved, and I will accept your point of view. If you fail to demonstrate that I am wrong, you must concede something is wrong with your approach, and we together will think how to improve it. I have no idea how all of that fits a definition of a zero sum game.

Regarding the rest, all what you write is correct, except one detail. You implicitly assume that only two type situations are possible: (i) one POV is a majority view, another (or others) is (are) minority view, or (ii) there are several competing viewpoints, and there is an open disagreement (usually in a form of open criticism/mutual criticism). However, you completely ignore a possibility when two or several schools of thought may exist in parallel, and they neither support nor criticise each other, but just ignore, so no sources explicitly say there is some disagreement between those schools. Your procedure cannot reliably identify such a situation, and if we are not playing a zero sum game, then I expect you either to show that I am wrong (by demonstrating how can you deal with such cases), or recognise that problem. In the latter case, we will close that round with a preliminary agreement that your procedure needs some improvement, and will ask KIENGIR to open the next round for us.--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:37, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

• (9th entry): No, you haven't answered my main question. My major points are: (i) the procedure you are using for the topic identification is in agreement with our policy, and in simple cases it gives good results; (ii) in more complex cases, it may lead to a serious NPOV violation. That is my conclusion, and to prove that I am wrong (I cannot rule out that possibility), I asked you to show how your procedure discriminates majority and minority points of view when there is no open disagreement between the two schools of thought, but they use different terminology, and the majority ignores the minority (no open criticism). Your answer consisted mostly in the quotes from our policy, and it doesn't explain anything.

In addition, your "treat them all as "significant minority" views" directly contradicts to WP:FALSEBALANCE.

In addition, if my question could be answered just by making references to the policy, I, obviously, wouldn't ask it. Obviously, the situation we are talking about is not covered by the policy. People who wrote the policy didn't keep that type situations in mind. Remember, the policy is supposed to be universally applicable to both very frivolous articles about some small village or music band and to the articles about such serious subjects as evolutionary biology or quantum mechanics: if it will be too strict, 90% of articles should be deleted.

Therefore, any references to NPOV are not helpful here: I think I am as smart as you, and I can read policy too. Had the policy provided the answer to my question, I would never asked it. Please, answer my question, and if you cannot do that, let's think how to improve your approach.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:59, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

• (10th entry): Compliance with policy is a necessary condition, but that does not mean that all that complies with our policy is correct. Thus, so called "civil POV-pushers" manage to push their POV without making obvious NPOV violations.

The second sentence of FALSEBALANCE says that minority views should not be equated with commonly accepted mainstream scholarship. The rest is mostly about fringe views, but the latter should not be included at all, whereas minority should not be equated with majority/mainstream (sorry for "mainstream", but that is what the policy says).

Your "we cannot determine ourselves what is a majority view without ... "reference to commonly accepted reference texts"" looks illogical, because it is not clear how can we determine if that text is "commonly accepted ": following your approach, we need some additional source that confirms that that "reference text" is "commonly accepted" per se. However, I already used that argument previously, and I am surprised I have to repeat it. Clearly, this part of the policy tells only about simple and obviousl cases. In more complex cases, additional efforts are needed to make sure you are neutral.

I have a feeling that you agree that your procedure is incapable of determining if some school of thought is majority or minority if no reliable source says that explicitly. However, to expect some source may resolve that problem is naive, because scholarly or scientific books or articles, as a rule, do not characterise the works of others as "mainstream/majority/minority". Instead, they either criticise some author/school or ignore them. The latter case is the most difficult one, but it is more usual, and your approach totally fails in that situation. Below, I demonstrate that with a concrete example.

KIENGIR, I respectfully request for an extension of 500 char limit for this post only.

During this and our previous disputes, I was trying to convince you the authors you found do not express majority viewpoint on the events they are describing. You argued that they adequately describe the topic that you identified, so those sources may serve as a good core for the article. I responded that your arguments are circular reasoning: you selected some topic - you found sources that describe that topic well - you concluded the topic is adequately formulated, because it is supported by reliable sources. During that dispute, I was trying to convince you that for the topics that are supported by an isolated community of authors your procedure always identifies it as majority view, and, therefore, it may lead to creation of a non-neutral content. In addition, using my own search procedure, I came to a conclusion that the topic found by you is a viewpoint of some minority school of thought. For some reason, which are unclear for me, you refuse to accept this, and I concluded we were in an impasse.

However, recently, I found a reliable source that says exactly the same what I was saying. This source is Ernesto Verdeja, The Political Science of Genocide: Outlines of an Emerging Research Agenda, Perspectives on Politics , June 2012, Vol. 10, No. 2 (June 2012), pp. 307-321. This article was published by American Political Science Association, and it was cited 52 times. The author speaks about several authors including Valentino and Midlarsky, and he says:

"This new generation of scholarship has crystallized into the interdisciplinary field of "genocide studies," a community of scholars and practitioners dedicated to researching and preventing genocide. However, genocide studies has emerged as its own research field, developing in parallel rather than in conversation with work on other areas of political violence. Aside from a few important exceptions, mainstream political scientists rarely engage with the most recent work on comparative genocide. Some of the newest genocide research appears in topic-specific conferences and journals like "Genocide Studies and Prevention" and the "Journal of Genocide Research", but not in political science venues. The reasons for this separation are complex, but partly stem from the field's roots in the humanities (especially history) and reliance on methodological approaches that have had little resonance in mainstream political science, as well as the field's explicit commitment to humanitarian activism and praxis. Earlier generations of political scientists and sociologists who studied genocide often found little interest for their work among dominant political science journals and book publishers; they instead opted to establish their own journals and professional organizations. Although the field has grown enormously over the past decade and a half, genocide scholarship still rarely appears in mainstream disciplinary journals."

Therefore, this very reliable source fully confirms that the topic you identified is a minority view topic, and the authors you use are working mostly in isolation from "mainstream political scientists" (again, sorry for "mainstream", but that is a quote). Therefore, your approach may not work well in some situations, and it needs an improvement.

Interestingly, the above source explicitly says that "[genocide] scholars choose different cases based on their definitions, and thus their theories are difficult to compare." He analyses how different authors, including Valentino, Levene, Mann, Weitz, Valentino and others, group different cases, but the words "Communist mass killings" never appears in that article; according to the author, "Valentino combines "mass killings" and genocide in his analysis of not only the Holocaust and Rwanda, but also Guatemala, Afghanistan, the Chinese communist revolution and other cases", but he never says "Communist mass killings" were defined by Valentino as a separate category.

In contrast, my approach is devoid of those defects. As I already noted, I was able to come to the same conclusions as Verdeja, and I did that independently. Moreover, validity of my approach was confirmed by a reliable source. In 2013, Brendan Luyt, the scholar who systematically studies Wikipedia, published the article Debating reliable sources: writing the history of the Vietnam War on Wikipedia, where he concluded that the search procedure used by a Wikipedia user Paul Siebert is adequate, and it provides good quality sources. That is not a surprise, because my real-life professional skills include comprehensive literature search, which allows me to reliably determine the current state of knowledge of any field (except some totally crazy disciplines as string theory or Math).

Therefore, I think it would be correct to conclude that your approach, which is generally good, is not working in that case, so the whole article needs to be redesigned to bring it in accordance with majority views.--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:10, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

AmateurEditor and KIENGIR, I apologize for a delay, I asked a neutral question at the NPOV talk page, and I was waiting for responces. My 11th entry is below.

• (11th entry): It seems other users agree that we don't need a source to confirm some view is a majority view, and we should not treat all viewpoints as minority view if no source says that one of those viewpoint is a majority viewpoint. Moreover, NPOV requires editors to treat each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject, which requires us to establish weights. As I concluded from the AE's responses, his procedure does not allow us to do that, and by proposing to treat each viewpoint as a minority view (unless some authoritative source explicitly says some viewpoint is a majority view) he recognized this deficiency of his search procedure. If AE and KIENGIR agree with that conclusion (even with reservations), I propose to end this round and to start the next round, where I am going to present my own approach (the one that was supported in the article I cited, although it became more advanced during recent years), and to hear your criticism.--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:23, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

• (12th entry): Whereas your previous responses looked serious, this one is not. The main focus of that discussion is violations of NPOV policy, and I presented a quote from that policy, which clearly says that each view must be presented proportionally to its weight, which implies that we are expected to determine that weight by doing a comprehensive research of sources. I asked you how can your approach establish that relative weight, and you responded that there is no need to determine weight. As a support, you provide a quote from guidelines (not a policy), which relate more to WP:V than to WP:NPOV. So, instead of answering how your approach complies with the requirement to determine relative weight, you claim that we are not required to determine weight. I cannot accept that response seriously.

Regarding your "As more sources about communist mass killing are added ... etc", that demonstrates your deep misunderstanding of NPOV. Even if all relevant materials are included into the article, it still can be non-neutral, and that is why proper article's structure is so important. Again, the decision about article's structure can be made only if relative weights are determined, but you claim we are not required to do so. This your approach directly contradicts to NPOV, and I propose you, again, to concede your approach has some problem, and to switch to a discussion of my approach, which, in my opinion, allows us to be more neutral.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:58, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

• (nth entry):

Comments by AmateurEditor

• (1st entry): I can agree with that characterization, but I am concerned with the use of "knowledge" and "correctly" in the issue text and in step "v", because matters of opinion (such as whether grouping mass killing events by communist regimes is a useful frame to begin with) fall outside of being correct/incorrect because they are not really knowledge so much as assertions. How to define a topic can itself be a matter of opinion that can vary between reliable sources, and criticism of one source by another can be based on those differences of opinion, rather than any serious flaw in the facts presented by the source. I would substitute the word "opinion" for "knowledge" in the issue text and "adequately" for "correctly" in the issue text and step "v", then I think that is close enough to move on.

• (2nd entry): If "knowledge" is going to mean "all facts and significant points of view on a given subject", as mentioned at WP:NPOVFACT, then yes, I agree with moving on.

• (3rd entry): If reliable sources treat those topics as separate, then Wikipedia should as well, per OR policy, unless there is some compelling reason not to. We should follow the Wikipedia:Notability guideline for determining what is a notable topic and what topics deserve a stand-alone article, in particular the WP:GNG section and the WP:PAGEDECIDE section (which says "When creating new content about a notable topic, editors should consider how best to help readers understand it"). In your example, I would think the two should be combined only if the topic being described were actually the same. That is, if "totalitarian" was being used synonymously for "communist" in those sources (and was for some reason excluding the other totalitarians such as the Nazis, for example), so that there was really complete overlap of the two topics and nothing to justify them having separate-though-related articles. AmateurEditor (talk) 06:18, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

• (4th entry): I don't think we need a source telling us that two different words/ideas are different in order for us to recognize that they are different. The default would be to treat those topics as different unless we have good reason to believe the author intended "totalitarian" to mean "communist" in their work. "Totalitarian" is not the same as "communist" and wikipedia has separate articles on those two things for that reason. Likewise, there is no problem with treating mass killing under each of those areas as separate topics, if that is what reliable sources do. That is, one topic/article would be something like "Mass killing under totalitarian regimes" and the other "Mass killing under communist regimes". Having said that, relevant information from reliable sources for each of those topics could be used in a supplemental capacity in the other article, so no views would be excluded. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:49, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

• (5th entry): I try to follow what wikipedia policy requires and I don't believe I have my own "procedure" different from that. I agreed with your "i" to "v" formulation because I believe it agrees with wikipedia policy. If it doesn't we should not be using it for the article or for this discussion. The policy for weight of sources is WP:WEIGHT. The three categories used there are "majority", "significant minority", and "extremely small minority", and I don't agree with conflating "majority" with "mainstream" because multiple minority views can be mainstream, particularly if there is no well-established majority view. "Mainstream" is converse to "outside-the-mainstream" (or fringe), which is not applicable to any of the sources used in this article, as far as I know. In my opinion, without a reliable source to say what the majority view is, we should not be reaching that conclusion. The cautious course is to treat views found in reliable sources as "significant minority" views until definitive sourcing on that question is found. AmateurEditor (talk) 04:06, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

• (6th entry): I am concerned that you think (i) to (v) are inconsistent with policy because you called them "your procedure" (my procedure), as if it is different from what wikipedia policy requires. I don't think the formulated steps (i) to (v) are inconsistent with policy. If you do, then that is a problem we should resolve before proceeding. If this line of questioning has been your attempt to explain why it is inconsistent with policy, then that's fine. And I agree with limiting ourselves to the "majority vs significant minority" descriptors. To reiterate my answer to your 5th entry question: majority views are discriminated from minority views only via statements from reliable sources, per WP:WEIGHT. We should treat views found in reliable sources as "significant minority" views until definitive sourcing on that question is found. AmateurEditor (talk) 23:37, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

• (7th entry): I would prefer we not frame this discussion in zero-sum terms as you did in your third paragraph (suggesting one of us wins and the other loses). We are here to arrive at a common understanding of what wikipedia policy requires and if we can do that we are both better off and both win. WP:NPOV says the following about proving a majority view: "If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts;". Absent any identified "commonly accepted reference texts" on a particular topic, we must assume a view is not the majority view (but that does not necessarily mean there is a different majority view because it may be that there is no majority view). About your point that having a reliable source "A" that states a view is the majority view not being itself sufficient because we would need another source "B" to confirm that source "A" is "commonly accepted" (you said "majority view" here again, but I would prefer we stick to the words of the policy text) and a source "C" that source "B" was acceptable, etc., I think we can avoid that because if source "A" meets the reliable source criteria we can accept it at face value until we find another reliable source "commonly accepted reference text" that contradicts it. If that happens, we have a dispute between reliable sources and would follow NPOV policy for us to "describe disputes, but not engage in them", meaning we present both and assume neither are the majority view. If I have misread the policy text, please let me know where and how. AmateurEditor (talk) 19:38, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

• (8th entry): I don't think there is anything I have not responded to from your previous posts (I am a little confused if you were saying there was in your 8th entry, first paragraph, when you said "see previous entries"). About your three situations from your 8th entry, second paragraph, I think wikipedia policy is as follows:

(i) "one POV is a majority view, another (or others) is (are) minority view" - per WP:NPOV/WP:WEIGHT we include all views from reliable sources on the topic but give more space and prominence to the majority view, make clear that the majority view is the majority view, and treat the various minority views as such with in-text attribution;

(ii) "there are several competing viewpoints, and there is an open disagreement (usually in a form of open criticism/mutual criticism)" - per WP:NPOV/WP:WEIGHT we include all views from reliable sources on the topic, treat them all as "significant minority" views (rather than "majority" views) with in-text attribution, and describe disputes between reliable sources fairly without taking sides;

(iii) "two or several schools of thought may exist in parallel, and they neither support nor criticise each other, but just ignore, so no sources explicitly say there is some disagreement between those schools" - assuming the several schools of thought are actually about the same topic, rather than our own WP:OR synthesis of similar but distinct topics (such as the similar but distinct topics of totalitarian mass killing and communist mass killing), then per WP:NPOV/WP:WEIGHT we include all the reliable sources from the several schools and describe the differences between them fairly without taking sides, with relative weight determined by the "relative prominence" of the reliable sources involved. AmateurEditor (talk) 06:22, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

• (9th entry): With respect, consistency with wikipedia policy must be the basis of any agreement. Even if a certain scenario is not directly addressed in the policy language, our approach to it cannot violate policy. You stated that there was a NPOV policy violation in your 7th entry ("It is in full accordance with all policies, except NPOV"), which you elaborated on in your 8th entry ("all what you write is correct, except one detail"), and so how can we resolve that disagreement without reference to NPOV policies? In your 9th entry, you again referenced NPOV policy when you said "your "treat them all as "significant minority" views" directly contradicts to WP:FALSEBALANCE". I disagree with your reading of WP:FALSEBALANCE, which is only about not giving fringe views equal weight (the "extremely small minority" views of WP:WEIGHT, not the "significant minority" views). I had said that none of the article's sources are fringe in my 5th entry and you appeared to agree with that in your 6th entry ("Actually, "fringe" is also irrelevant. Let's limit ourselves with the "majority vs significant minority" issue"), so I don't think WP:FALSEBALANCE is relevant. I am not questioning your intelligence or your ability to read English when I disagree with you. I spend a lot of time on my responses to you and make sure to always double-check previous posts and policy language before posting new responses, not only because I can make mistakes, but because the policy language may have changed from the last time I read it.

You have asked how we can discriminate "majority and minority points of view when there is no open disagreement between the two schools of thought, but they use different terminology, and the majority ignores the minority (no open criticism)". My response remains that we cannot determine ourselves what is a majority view without a source to that effect (per WP:WEIGHT, "reference to commonly accepted reference texts"). If we cannot determine this without going beyond wikipedia policy, then we should not determine it at all and we should treat all the non-fringe sources as "significant minority" sources. I suspect, however, that looking at the actual sources for this presumably-not-hypothetical situation will either show that they are not actually talking about the same topic (even if talking about the same events) or they do not actually entirely ignore each other, so I would suggest we do that next. I would also suggest we take a break for a couple days for the holiday. AmateurEditor (talk) 20:20, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

• (10th entry): I do think that "all that complies with our policy is correct" (reading the word "correct" to mean "proper", rather than "true"). Civil POV pushing may not result in "obvious NPOV violations", but it does indeed create NPOV violations of WP:BALANCE if it is unjustified by the body of reliable sources. If the POV being pushed by an editor is actually justified by the body of reliable sources for a topic, then the civil pushing by the editor for the reliable sources to be fairly represented is actually proper editor behavior.

I apologize if my quoting from policy language appears patronizing, but it is critical that we are on the same page regarding policy requirements and I don't think we are right now. You say "The second sentence of FALSEBALANCE says that minority views should not be equated with commonly accepted mainstream scholarship. The rest is mostly about fringe views, but the latter should not be included at all, whereas minority should not be equated with majority/mainstream (sorry for "mainstream", but that is what the policy says).". I think you meant to say the first sentence, rather than the second. Here are the first two sentences from WP:FALSEBALANCE with the wikilinks included: "While it is important to account for all significant viewpoints on any topic, Wikipedia policy does not state or imply that every minority view or extraordinary claim needs to be presented along with commonly accepted mainstream scholarship as if they were of equal validity. There are many such beliefs in the world, some popular and some little-known: claims that the Earth is flat, that the Knights Templar possessed the Holy Grail, that the Apollo moon landings were a hoax, and similar ones." Note that the link on the term "minority view" in the first sentence is to Wikipedia:Fringe theories, which you agreed in your 6th entry was irrelevant to our discussion. The entire WP:FALSEBALANCE section is about over-representing fringe theories, or insignificant minority views, and so is irrelevant to our discussion; how to treat significant minority views is addressed in the WP:BALANCE section. Per WP:BALANCE: "Neutrality assigns weight to viewpoints in proportion to their prominence. However, when reputable sources contradict one another and are relatively equal in prominence, describe both points of view and work for balance. This involves describing the opposing views clearly, drawing on secondary or tertiary sources that describe the disagreement from a disinterested viewpoint."

You say "it is not clear how can we determine if that text is "commonly accepted": following your approach, we need some additional source that confirms that that "reference text" is "commonly accepted" per se." I agree that "commonly accepted" is not defined, so I think the reasonable approach is to evaluate reference texts by the reliable sources criteria and take what reliable source reference texts say at face value until we have a situation where multiple reliable source reference texts contradict each other, then we would follow WP:BALANCE. Otherwise, we have the absurd situation you describe of needing an infinite number of sources. Fortunately, we do have guidance on how to establish what is the consensus/majority opinion at WP:RS/AC: "A statement that all or most scientists or scholars hold a certain view requires reliable sourcing that directly says that all or most scientists or scholars hold that view. Otherwise, individual opinions should be identified as those of particular, named sources." That has been my approach.

KIENGIR, I have mirrored Paul's extension in order to respond to it.

You say: "your arguments are circular reasoning: you selected some topic - you found sources that describe that topic well - you concluded the topic is adequately formulated, because it is supported by reliable sources. During that dispute, I was trying to convince you that for the topics that are supported by an isolated community of authors your procedure always identifies it as majority view, and, therefore, it may lead to creation of a non-neutral content." I have never said the reliable sources identified were a majority view of the topic. I have consistently said that until we have a reliable source that states what the majority view is, we should treat the sources so far identified as "significant minority" views. According to wikipedia policy, topics "supported by an isolated community of authors", as you say, should reflect those authors' views, assuming they meet the reliable sources criteria (and I am a bit confused about you saying it is "circular reasoning": what you describe is not circular reasoning). Even an "isolated community of scholars" can contain majority/minority views within that group of scholars, so I don't agree that using those sources "always identifies it as majority view". By "majority view", you seem to be conflating the topic of the large-scale communist killing of non-combatants with the field of study of comparative genocide studies (although the topic is found in reliable sources both inside and outside that field) and then concluding that the field of study of comparative genocide studies is only a legitimate field of study when viewed from within the field (or that, outside the field, comparative genocide studies is not viewed as legitimate or is ignored as fringe). I don't agree that the comparative genocide sources identified are "an isolated group of scholars" any more than any very specialized field of study is isolated simply by consisting of a relatively small number of scholars. I also think this is tangential to the question of whether the topic of the large-scale communist killing of non-combatants is being adequately covered.

You say the Verdeja source you presented "confirms that the topic you identified is a minority view topic, and the authors you use are working mostly in isolation from "mainstream political scientists"" but I read it differently (and this source is not about the topic of communist mass killing at all, it is about the field of comparative genocide studies). Verdeja is instead saying that comparative genocide studies is a different field of study than political science because it is a field from the humanities, such as history, and rarely appears in political science journals for that reason, among others ("The reasons for this separation are complex, but partly stem from the field’s roots in the humanities (especially history) and reliance on methodological approaches that have had little resonance in mainstream political science, as well as the field’s explicit commitment to humanitarian activism and praxis."). The interdisciplinary field of genocide studies has its own journals separate from political science journals but Verdeja thinks that the study of genocide should appear more often in political science journals because the political science field has a lot to contribute, particularly in the context of the political science study of political violence. He is specifically talking about political science scholars/journals when he says (bold added for emphasis): "Earlier generations of political scientists and sociologists who studied genocide often found little interest for their work among dominant political science journals and book publishers; they instead opted to establish their own journals and professional organizations. Although the field has grown enormously over the past decade and a half, genocide scholarship still rarely appears in mainstream disciplinary journals.4" The endnote 4 referenced at the end of that last sentence says "An abstract search for “genocide” in mainstream political science journals shows the term appears in five abstracts in American Political Science Review, six in American Journal of Political Science, and zero in the Journal of Politics.", so when Verdeja says "[...] genocide scholarship still rarely appears in mainstream disciplinary journals" he is only talking about mainstream political science journals. He isn't saying that the field of comparative genocide studies is itself outside of the mainstream.

About your small-font aside that "Communist mass killings" does not appear in the journal article, the article is about the field of comparative genocide studies, not the topic of communist mass killing, so that is not necessarily significant one way or the other.

Your mention in the Luyt article does not support your approach being valid/consistent with wikipedia policies, which is the key issue. Luyt isn't discussing wikipedia policies for determining weight or majority views in the first place. What he says is (bold added for emphasis): "Paul Siebert constructs himself as a model information searcher (according to his user page he has a PhD so this is perhaps not so surprising). He claims no biases, uses the information technology of choice for Wikipedia editors (Google Scholar) and applies the criteria of peer-review as a means to filter potential information sources. And the sources he finds I think would be viewed by the majority of librarians or scholars as decent enough: Pacific Affairs is a scholarly journal with a long history of publishing the work of illustrious scholars. Cold War History is a more recent journal, but is also seen as publishing quality work while Porter’s work appeared in the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars which is seen as a leftist journal, but one which adheres to standards of rigour in scholarship." Paul, I respect you as a wikipedian and my interactions with you have always been worthwhile. You do generally identify decent sources and I believe I have consistently said any reliable sources on the topic or even just part of the topic that you identify can contribute to the article, even if only in a supplemental capacity. But your approach to determining majority/minority view distinctions by using keyword searches in google scholar or google books is flawed from a wikipedia policy perspective and likely a violation of WP:OR, which says "The prohibition against OR means that all material added to articles must be attributable to a reliable, published source, even if not actually attributed." and "Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources. " If you want to state or imply that something is a majority view or a minority view in the article, then you need a reliable source that states that explicitly. The Verdeja source does not do that and the Luyt source does not override policy requirements. AmateurEditor (talk) 11:32, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

• (11th entry): You say "It seems other users agree that we don't need a source to confirm some view is a majority view..." but I don't see why should we follow that path when we have clearly written policy language that states the opposite. As I quoted in my 10th entry at the end of the 3rd paragraph, per WP:RS/AC: "A statement that all or most scientists or scholars hold a certain view requires reliable sourcing that directly says that all or most scientists or scholars hold that view. Otherwise, individual opinions should be identified as those of particular, named sources." About a procedure to establish weight (presumably beyond just the three large categories of majority, significant minority, and extremely small minority), there is only one way to do that "in proportion to the body of reliable, published material on the subject", and that is to have a variety of editors be exhaustively comprehensive in finding sources to build out the article, using every means at their disposal and in an open-ended timeframe. As more sources about communist mass killing are added to the article over time, the proportions of viewpoints in the article will ever more closely approach the proportions in the body of published reliable sources on that subject. We may be close to proportional already but, given that this is a moving target because more sources can be published or become available at any time, we can never really ever be done. That is Wikipedia's process, so if it is deficient then it is not just an issue for this article in particular. I think it has worked out so far and I don't think we need to (or are allowed to) conduct our own original research in the form of a survey of Google Scholar, no matter how advanced. If you want to discuss your process anyway, I will listen but I don't see any way around the prohibition on original research without a change in policy. AmateurEditor (talk) 04:52, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

• (12th entry): You said I "...responded that there is no need to determine weight. As a support, you provide a quote from guidelines (not a policy)...". It is true that Wikipedia:Reliable sources is a content guideline, not a policy, and I misspoke when I said it was policy. However, it being a guideline doesn't mean we can ignore it. As it says in the box at the topic of that page, a guideline "...is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply." Looking at Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines, it says "Policies are standards all users should normally follow, and guidelines are generally meant to be best practices for following those standards in specific contexts. Policies and guidelines should always be applied using reason and common sense." As I read those quotes, we would need to have a good reason to not adhere to the guideline at WP:RS/AC for stating what is a majority view: "A statement that all or most scientists or scholars hold a certain view requires reliable sourcing that directly says that all or most scientists or scholars hold that view. Otherwise, individual opinions should be identified as those of particular, named sources." I was responding to your comment that "It seems other users agree that we don't need a source to confirm some view is a majority view...". Those users seem to me to directly contradict the WP:RS/AC guideline and it does relate to weight because majority views get more weight than significant minority views.

I don't know where you are seeing that I said "there is no need to determine weight" because I never said that. I did directly address the issue of how to give "weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject." To repeat myself from my 11th entry: "About a procedure to establish weight (presumably beyond just the three large categories of majority, significant minority, and extremely small minority), there is only one way to do that 'in proportion to the body of reliable, published material on the subject', and that is to have a variety of editors be exhaustively comprehensive in finding sources to build out the article, using every means at their disposal and in an open-ended timeframe. As more sources about communist mass killing are added to the article over time, the proportions of viewpoints in the article will ever more closely approach the proportions in the body of published reliable sources on that subject." Where did I say that we were not required to determine relative weight and where is the contradiction with NPOV? Relative weight is really just determined by whether a view is majority, significant minority, or fringe and by following WP:BALANCE when they are all significant minority sources. Proportional representation of views versus the body of reliable sources on the subject of the article can only really be achieved by being comprehensive in finding sources (including those that are not online).

About your comment "Even if all relevant materials are included into the article, it still can be non-neutral, and that is why proper article's structure is so important." I agree that even an article that includes all available sources can be non-neutral due to structure, but that is a separate issue that we should discuss when we are done with this one. AmateurEditor (talk) 01:13, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

• (nth entry):

Comments by Moderator

• (1st entry): (UPDATED 2) Paul wanted to propose a deduction how mainstream viewpoint may be extracted, while AE raised legitimate points of interpretation of some expressions.(KIENGIR (talk) 22:15, 18 December 2020 (UTC))

• (2nd entry): (UPDATED) In fact, in the title in the proposed replacement by AE have been made, step "(v)" remained as it was, however in this entry some terms have been clarified. Both users in the end agreed to move on.(KIENGIR (talk) 22:15, 18 December 2020 (UTC))

• (3rd entry): AE's approach is correct, until Eurasian totalitarian regimes are identical with communist regimes. Other factors like underdeveloped economy etc. may be weighted according to the sources, e.g. if as it would be more or at least as much significant as the other points referred, if it's not the main core of them then we cannot say they are unrelated, even given by two different mutually orthogonal sets of sources.(KIENGIR (talk) 01:33, 21 December 2020 (UTC))

• (4th entry): Paul presented a compelling deduction ("otherwise", "must be"), which is implied, however these were not set as a priori by AE as the only possible scenario. The cutting edge is, how the example demonstrated by AE would be handled, given under the title "..totalitarianism" only communist-related things are discussed. Very possibly merging would follow, and/or choosing another title that may resolve the situation.(KIENGIR (talk) 21:53, 22 December 2020 (UTC))

• (5th entry): Per WP:MAINSTREAM majority and mainstream cannot be conflated: "While what is considered "mainstream" may sometimes be a minority view in society, the mainstream understanding will conform to explanations provided by the highest-quality sources.". Apart from this, poetrical question , do we also need an RS to determine what is the majority viewpoint, can't we just assess it by an empirical way? (careful, do not conflate with mainstream, academic consensus or scientific consensus, etc., mostly by editing practise we don't hunt for a source explicitly stating e. g. "the majority viewpoint is...", but present a larger number of sources in case).(KIENGIR (talk) 04:09, 25 December 2020 (UTC))

• (6th entry): AE, Paul did not say those steps were inconsistent with policy, he just showed some conditional scenarios in case you may pick and clarify. Both editord agreed to limit themselves to the "majority vs significant minority" issues/descriptors, however I have to reiterate what I referred in the previous entry may not be ignored.(KIENGIR (talk) 13:06, 27 December 2020 (UTC))

• (7th entry): Literally Paul did not ask any question, but asked for clarification, which may not conclude a boolean answer. Yes, we don't need an infinite recursive algorithm as presented, we should summarize the sources per the criteria discussed, and then it will be outlined what is majority/mainstream/minority/academic/scientific and/or/not, so WP:NPOV may be applied correctly (and I uphold the importance of things said in my previous two entries in connection with these).(KIENGIR (talk) 21:56, 31 December 2020 (UTC))

• (8th entry): Paul concerned the assessment would ignore a point, while AE reinforced how to handle it. At this point, these listed options are the subset of my assessments detailed in the previous entries.(KIENGIR (talk) 09:57, 4 January 2021 (UTC))

• (9th entry): Paul concerns how to the treat paralell scholarship with no open disagreements (in case we may not safely determine any mainstream view). I agree AE's interpretation regarding WP:FALSEBALANCE, and his recommendation about reevaulating the sources in order to conclude our initial approach is really/strictly correct is considerable (this reevalution in case should contain my */*/*/*/* (=5*star) set clustering on them).(KIENGIR (talk) 06:48, 8 January 2021 (UTC))

• (10th entry): Well, it has been fascinating to get through in the extended comments, both of you are heavyweight competitors. AE gave valid answers to Paul, and I think I preceded the outcome much earlier, even being backwards reading & interpreting the entries - not knowing how their content would be elevated in the next entry in advance. Consequently, my 5-10 entries contain the cutting edge, which is culminated in the 5*star approach (the majority/minority approach may became marginal as mainsream may be as well a minority view in society, and yes, the highest quality sources should lead us. If there is no source which would explicitly address something like "commonly accepted/majority/minority/etc.", we may also draw conclusions by empirical way, however these principles are already included in the BALANCE policies not just implicitly, but explicitly. Infinite algorythms may be in theory, but we may anytime improve the article, so by default we work with the available material, which will form the first frame/barrier that may be updated/amended if additional material may emerge, our policies are sufficient to deal with these cases). So reevaluation should be made in spite of this which may conclude how the current form of the article is approximating that. When it's completed, then to adjust if needed (= because the approximation offset/intervall is between 0%-100%).(KIENGIR (talk) 22:39, 12 January 2021 (UTC))

• (11th entry): Paul, I think we outlined already besides the possibility of any clear-cut majority/minority approach/assumption, our assessment and evalution will make a proportional representation and balance of he significant viewpoints (yes, in other words weights). Paul what you call AE's procedure, regardless he nominally said that unless proven otherwise, all should be treated as minority viewpoints does not exclude what I or you outlined, that weighting will still be part of the process (= regardless of the semantical interpretation of AE's statements the result will be identical). I have to add, what AE cited (...directly says that all or most scientists or scholars hold that view...) is only holds for academic consensus, but not necesarily in general (the 5*star scheme lists all possibilities, in which academic is just one of them, all the other have it's policies, implicitly and/or explicity, and yes, possibly unregulated/unclear parts may arise as now, but I reiterate, in this particular coined case the outcome will be identical and will be even in-line of what AE said, that over time they will became and converge even more as that.(KIENGIR (talk) 02:55, 30 January 2021 (UTC))

• (12th entry): Well, I cannot tell much more outlined the my previous entry. Please note the explicit statement is a requirement for academic consensus, not necessarily in general, etc. As I said, either how we call the child on the name, the result of the approach will be the same, in an invariant way the weight will be proportionally correct. So I recommend to switch to WP:STRUCTURE, on which both you agree.(KIENGIR (talk) 05:40, 4 February 2021 (UTC))

ISSUE N

Comments by Paul Siebert

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• (2nd entry):

• (nth entry):

Comments by AmateurEditor

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• (2nd entry):

• (nth entry):

Comments by Moderator

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• (nth entry):

The main problem with this article

is the word communist in the title.

Countries that called themselves "communist" (and because they called themselves that, we've called them that, too) were actually the polar opposite of communism. They were totalitarian fascist regimes, state capitalism, while the objective of communism is a stateless society. They called themselves "communists" as a propaganda tactic to gain and retain power by persuading the masses they were being led to a self-governing workers' paradise, when in reality they were being led into plutocracy of highly-centralized authority. It was likely the biggest hoax of the 20th century, and it continues to persist. It is hilariously ironic that some on the modern right who advocate diminishing or eliminating federal government power are unwittingly advocating Marxism. And some of these same people have attempted to make the association between the Soviet Union and communism, and from there communism to liberalism, to make a preposterous argument that liberals are responsible for all historical genocide. After all, they argue, Nazism meant "National Socialism." And of course I fully expect that some will now wrongly conclude I'm advocating communism. ha!

I agree with Nug that Mass killings under totalitarian regimes is a better title. soibangla (talk) 00:33, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Meh, RS call them communist so they are communist. This is not like calling Nazi Germany socialists here. PackMecEng (talk) 00:36, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

The above comment is WP:OR and probably more suitable for a blog post than Wikipedia. BTW, calling the Soviet Union "fascist" is about as smart as calling Nazi Germany "socialist."TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 04:02, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

How come? The are known as National Socialists, and for a good reason, as explained on our page. Of course they were not true socialists, sure, but the same can be said about Soviet communists, Stalinists, Maoists, etc. My very best wishes (talk) 16:50, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

TheTimesAreAChanging: Granted, I did not provide sources for my argument on this Talk page, though I could, beginning with Many scholars argue that the economy of the Soviet Union and of the Eastern Bloc countries modeled after it, including Maoist China, were state capitalist systems. They also argue that the current economy of China constitutes a form of state capitalism, but the whole topic is more involved than I have time for...now. See also: Red fascism soibangla (talk) 19:44, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

The main problem with that article is as follows. There is a set of mass killing, mass murder, mass mortality, and excess death events that happened in several states, such as Cambodia/Kamouchea, China, USSR, etc, and there are tons of sources that tell about that. Some of those sources discuss, for example, genocides in Asia, and that includes events in Cambodia, China, and Indonesia. Some sources discuss mass famine in China in a context of the Bengal famine and Irish potato famine. Some sources discuss genocide in Rwanda, Cambodia and Bosnia. Some sources discuss mass killings in USSR and Nazi Germany. And so on, and so forth. In addition, there are many sources that discuss some specific events in one country (for example, Holodomor or Great Purge). However, out of this huge variety of sources, we selected few sources that discuss mass killings in Communist states taken together, and we built the overall article's structure based on the narrative taken from some of those sources. The problem is that no proof has been provided so far that this small group of sources expresses the majority viewpoint. Therefore, even if we add more and more sources about some specific facts, the overall narrative is based on sources that are not necessarily a majority view sources. Meanwhile, neutrality policy pays special attention to the need to select a correct article's structure. So far, I saw no evidences that the article's structure reflects majority viewpoint on the events the article describes.--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:58, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, I don't want to create a second debate while our first is still going on, but what you are describing is a huge variety of different and overlapping topics (genocides in Asia, mass famines, genocides in general, mass killings in individual countries, etc.) that justify a huge variety of different wikipedia articles. There is plenty of room to argue about this article's structure, but the structure for this article should be based on a neutral presentation of the content on this specific topic (communist mass killing) found in those reliable sources with content on this specific topic so far identified and used, not on other sources about different (even if overlapping) topics. Likewise, the majority viewpoint to be expressed in this article (if there is one) is the majority viewpoint found within the group of reliable sources on the specific topic of communist mass killing, not the majority viewpoint found among sources on the larger variety of different/overlapping topics. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:53, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

AE! The progress of our debates is slow, and other users don't have to wait for their end. With regard to "overlapping topics", they, per our policy, must be presented in the same article, or, at least, their description in different articles should be presented in a mutually consistent way (and this article obviously violates that rule). So far, you failed to demonstrate that "communist mass killing" is a topic that includes all essential facts and opinia about the described events. I already proposed a solution: to define a topic as a group of theories that link Communism and mass killing, and to discuss them in that article. You refused to do so, and you still provided no adequate rationale for your refusal. In contrast, I have serious reasons to believe the sources that are used as a base for creation of the article's structure do not adequately summarise what majority of authors write about those events. That is a direct proof that the topic was defined incorrectly.

I am ready to continue our debates, but that does not prevent me from responding to other users when I see that that is necessary.--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:48, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

You can respond to whatever you like, I just don't want to disrupt the pattern we have established. But I don't know what policy you are referring to when you say "...they, per our policy, must be presented...". We don't have any sources on the topic of "a group of theories that link Communism and mass killing"; we have sources on the topic of "Communism and mass killing". That's why the article is about communist mass killing, not theories of communist mass killing. AmateurEditor (talk) 05:48, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

I thought I already explained that, but I can do that again. The policy I am referring to is WP:NPOV, which says: all facts and significant points of view on a given subject should be treated in one article except in the case of a spinoff sub-article. If some important opinion on some topic is not represented, or underrepresented in the article, the article violates NPOV. In this concrete article, the very structure prevents an adequate representation of significant views, and I already explained that. I will elaborate on that more, after we will come to an agreement that your approach to defining a topic is flawed (you already failed to convince me it is not).

Yes "a group of theories that link Communism and mass killing" is not a topic, but "a linkage of Communism and mass killing" is, and there are many sources that claim there is a significant linkage, and the sources providing different explanation for each mass mortality event. The first type sources are core sources this article is built upon, whereas the second type sources do not fit into the article's structure, so even if some of them are cited, the opinia expressed there will never be represented adequately until the whole structure of the article is changed. Just few examples.

1. Couirtois provides figures for "Communist death toll". These figures directly contradict to what Werth and Margolin say in the same book. That means Courtois is NOT a good aggregator source for figures: his data contradict to what country experts say. Meanwhile, his opinion has a priority in the article.

2. Rummel provides the figures that include ridiculously inflated death toll for the USSR. They contradict to all modern data. Rummel's opinion has a priority over the data of modern demographers. The reason is that someone decided that we need figures for "global Communist death toll", and if we have no good data, then we should add bad ones. In contrast, a good approach should be as follows: "If the article's structure does not allow us to present the best modern figures in a duly way, we should change this structure."

3. There is a long discussion about famine deaths, concretely, if all those deaths were a result of a deliberate policy of Communist authorities aimed to starve people to death, or they were a result of a combination of various factors. However, the whole article structure follows Valentino's book (which is essentially ignored by famine experts), who claims all those deaths (which constitute more than a half of all "Communist death toll") were "strategic mass killings". If the article's structure is organized in that way, an apparent hierarchy of fact is created where Valentino's of Courtois' views appear "true" and "undisputed", whereas other, segregated material authored by famine experts is deemed "controversial", and therefore more likely to be false. Note I almost literally quoted the policy, which says that segregation of text or other content into different regions or subsections, based solely on the apparent POV of the content itself, may result in an unencyclopedic structure, such as a back-and-forth dialogue between proponents and opponents, so if you even add a section about the opinion of famine experts, the article will still have an unencyclopedic structure.

In summary, the structure of the article is unencyclopedic, and that is because the topic was defined incorrectly and non-neutrally.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:18, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

The policy at WP:NPOV does not say anything about overlapping topics needing to be included in the article about one topic, which is what confused me. The key words in WP:NPOVFACT are those about the narrow focus for inclusion on views about just the single topic/subject of the article: "all facts and significant points of view on a given subject should be treated in one article except in the case of a spinoff sub-article". The subject of the article is the general topic of communist mass killing, so the only significant views to be included are views on that general subject (including criticisms of the general subject). The Courtois and Rummel info is being treated as the views of those individuals, not as facts in wikipedia's voice, so there is no problem there. We certainly are not supposed to be excluding reliable sources containing bias. Criticism of those individuals views is not being excluded, so if something like that is missing, fix it. About the famine section having a "back-and-forth dialogue between proponents and opponents", that is not forbidden (it "may result in an unencyclopedic structure, meaning it also may not). It makes sense to me to have it that way, but if you have a better way of neutrally presenting that info, then propose it. AmateurEditor (talk) 06:06, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

I've just noticed KIENGIR's comment on the 12th entry, so I'll better respond there.--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:01, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Communism vs Marxism-Leninism

I've read through the article, and I've noticed that all the communist states that engaged in killings had Marxism-Leninism as their political ideology, which is only a small wing of communism. Other wings, such as Anarcho-Communism, Left Communism and Libertarian Marxism, have no documented death toll. By listing Marxism-Leninism's death toll as communism's, the readers are getting a very inaccurate picture of communism's history. In my opinion, we should change the title of this page to "Mass killings under Marxist-Leninist regimes". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.85.200.227 (talk) 19:15, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

We follow what reliable sources use, and they use "communist". I think you should argue your case at Communist state instead. AmateurEditor (talk) 19:32, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

There's a difference between sources and the obvious truth. If you can find a genocidal communist regime that wasn't Marxist-Leninist I'll make a formal apology.

And the difference is that citing reliable sources will help your proposals on Wikipedia go forward, while solely citing your personal opinion will get you no where. Changes on Wikipedia are made based on the website's policy (like WP:RS), not the opinions of editors. Also, talk pages are places for discussion on policy-based changes to the article, not a forum or social media comment section to debate the representativeness of ML regimes as "communist". CentreLeftRight ✉ 22:55, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

It's not my opinion, it's a fact. Just face it. The only communist regimes that have ever killed people were Marxist-Leninist. If you disagree with that, you disagree with the truth. If that's what you actually believe, go ahead. I have no power to change your repeatedly falsified view on this subject. I won't change the article back, but acknowledge that you are against the truth. If you make another reply to this comment, make sure to dispute the fact that all communist regimes that killed were Marxist-Leninist, or don't reply at all. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.85.200.227 (talk) 01:29, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Most of the literature is even more specific and refers to mass killings in Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China and Pol Pot's Cambodia. It's really a subset of Marxism-Leninism. TFD (talk) 01:33, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

When those sources speak generally about the killing they commonly use "communism", rather then "marxism-leninism". AmateurEditor (talk) 03:44, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Actually, most of the studies are about Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China OR Pol Pot's Cambodia. "Mass killings under communist regimes" is a term invented by Wikipedia editors and the only other source that uses it is Metapedia. I recommended at least capitalizing Communist so that it would not be confused with such things as Anarcho-Communism, Left Communism and Libertarian Marxism you were opposed. TFD (talk) 04:01, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Even those sources use "communist" when speaking generally. AmateurEditor (talk) 05:13, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Yet I would argue what matter is what they mean by it. By communist, they clearly do not mean Communism but either/or both Communist state and Marxism–Leninism. Even The Black Book of Communism is really about the latter, although the introduction, which is the main source of controversy and was not peer-reviewed, may make the argument that the latter was the natural result of the former. That is why I advocate to use Marxism–Leninism rather than communism, or at least to capitalise the former, which is also used to distinguish it from small c-communism; it is clear they are not referring to communism as a communist society or forms of communism opposed to authoritarianism.

What matters is what the sources mean by the term. We just confuse our readers even more and it is not like "Marxism-Leninism" is not used at all to refer to the same thing, see "marxism-leninism", "communist regime", "marxist-leninist regime", "socialist regimes", etc. on Google Scholar. "Marxism-Leninism" is simply a clearer and better way to word, so as not to conflate all communism with them or socialism, as is done in the United States; it may not be the common name, but clarity and neutrality hold more weight and, again, it is not like "Marxism-Leninism" is unknown, which could have been a point. After all, the Communist bloc's ideology was "Marxism-Leninism", either directly put in state or party constitutions or in practice followed the Soviet developmental model anyway, albeit with slight differences and claimed to be "Marxism-Leninism adapted to [national]'s material conditions." Davide King (talk) 02:02, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

What the reliable sources mean by "communist" is up to them, but us using the word "communist" in the article is not just a good idea because it follows the normal convention found in those reliable sources, it also avoids us injecting our own POV into the article on exactly what that word means. AmateurEditor (talk) 04:03, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Besides the word "Communist", they use many other terms. For example, most sources about the Great Purge use "Stalinism" as a primary term. Does that mean that we have to write two different articles about the Great Purge: one article discusses "Stalinist repressions", another article discusses "Communist mass killings"?--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:53, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

"Communist" is by far the general term commonly used by sources on this article's topic, not "Marxist-Leninist" or "Stalinist" or something else. Sources on your example of the Great Purge may use any number of more general terms for that topic and so the Great Purge could be included in all of the articles for those more general topics: they may say the Great Purge was an example of Stalinism, or they may say the Great Purge was an example of Purges of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, or they may say it was an example of State terrorism, or they may say it was an example of Mass killings under communist regimes. The Great Purge is properly mentioned included in all of those articles for that reason. AmateurEditor (talk) 05:41, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

One of general terms. And, sometimes, it is used just as a synonym for "revolutionary".--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:23, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

I think it is time that we reach an agreement. I propose that we keep using the word "communist" in the title, but clarifying that all communist regimes known to have engaged in killings were Marxist-Leninist. This way, we can keep the article matching up with its citations while not condemning the non-Marxist-Leninist wings of communism.

@IP 24.85.200.227. Which States do you mean? Oh no, you are mistaken. Different versions of Marxism-Lenininsm were an official ideology of all Communist states, including North Korea [1]. My very best wishes (talk) 05:07, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Amateur Editor, there are no sources on the article's topic and in the sources we use, Communist is usually capitalized. MVBY, it's unhelpful to make a claim and link to a 200 page book. Can you provide a page reference. And don't say we have to read the whole book, unless you have read it yourself. TFD (talk) 17:10, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

That is not a book, that is a PhD thesis, which is considered marginally reliable, afaik. Meanwhile, many reliable sources, e.g. this, describe NK as more Confucian than Marxis-Leninist society.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:21, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

TFD, here yet again are four sources on the article's topic that you're familiar with because you have discussed them multiple times in the past, including recently. And three of the four use lowercase "communist". Just one uses uppercase "Communist". AmateurEditor (talk) 06:11, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

The word "communist" returns 2,040,000 hits on Google Scholar. Thank you for providing 4 hits. Could you please tell me what the other 2,039,096 hits are. I assume you have a degree in natural sciences or economics, but if you don't understand statistics, please post to my talk page. TFD (talk) 03:53, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

You said "there are no sources on the article's topic and in the sources we use, Communist is usually capitalized". You're wrong on both points. AmateurEditor (talk) 05:25, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Anyone can make claims without sources which is what you are doing. You of course are free to make evidence-free claims, but it wastes my time to argue with you. TFD (talk)

I linked you to four sources in response to you saying there were none for the article's topic. Here they are again. AmateurEditor (talk) 20:39, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Ignoring the sources doesn't make them go away. AmateurEditor (talk) 04:54, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

In any case, when the term Communist is capitalized, it refers to the parties that governed the Soviet Union, China, etc. When it is not capitalized, it has a wider meaning. In Marxist writing for example a communist regime is an oxymoron, since communism is a stage of society where government no longer exists. It can also refer to movements that had no connection with Communist states. When there is a choice between an ambiguous term and an unambiguous one, encyclopedic editors should choose the unambiguous one. Can you explain why they should not do that? TFD (talk)

Capitalization on wikipedia is covered by the Manual of Style guideline here: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters. The relevant subsection for communism, "Religions, deities, philosophies, doctrines, and their adherents", says "Doctrines, ideologies, philosophies, theologies, theories, movements, methods, processes, systems or "schools" of thought and practice, and fields of academic or professional study are not capitalized, unless the name derives from a proper name. E.g., lowercase republican refers to a general system of political thought (republican sentiment in Ireland); uppercase Republican is used in reference to specific political parties with this word in their names (each being a proper-noun phrase) in various countries (a Democratic versus Republican Party stalemate in the US Senate). Nevertheless, watch for idiom, especially a usage that has become disconnected from the original doctrinal/systemic referent and is often lower-cased in sources (in which case, do not capitalize): Platonic idealism but a platonic relationship; the Draconian laws of Athens but complained of draconian policies at her workplace. Doctrinal topics, canonical religious ideas, and procedural systems that may be traditionally capitalized within a faith or field are given in lower case in Wikipedia, such as a virgin birth, original sin, transubstantiation, and method acting." AmateurEditor (talk) 20:39, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

My very best wishes, you are technically right. However, please recognize that communist branches other than Marxism-Leninism DO exist, such as Anarcho-Communism, Left Communism, and Libertarian Marxism. By using the word communist, you condemn ALL branches of communism, including those that did nothing wrong, such as the branches mentioned above. Although no long-lasting state/community indeed has ever existed under these ideologies, we cannot be certain that creating a state/community under these ideologies will result in the same failures as Marxism-Leninism. On the contrary, some short-lived states, such as Makhnovia and Revolutionary Catalonia, have been very successful under these ideologies. Please reconsider your thoughts. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.85.200.227 (talk) 02:10, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

It says not to capitalize "unless the name derives from a proper name." Notice that most of these parties were called Communist and belonged to the Communist International. Some editors believe that mass killings are attributable to general communism and socialism. All collectivism leads to mass killings. That is a position popular among extreme right sources. My view is that unless reliable sources make this claim that we should not either. TFD (talk) 03:12, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Yes, the "communist" in "Communist Party of the Soviet Union" should be capitalized, "communist regimes" should not, because it is referring to the ideology/philosophy/theory/movement/school of thought and practice and not to a proper name of a specific political party (like the example of "republican" versus "Republican"). AmateurEditor (talk) 04:53, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Please kindly take a look at the list of communist ideologies, and acknowledge that only the Marxist-Leninist ideology has engaged in mass killings. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.85.200.227 (talk) 04:22, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

161 million plus figure

@AmateurEditor

The article mentions a figure of 161 million plus dead. The source for this figure is a blog by an unnamed author using a synthesis of figures given by other authors, it is therefore the research of the blogger. The figures may be different methodologically, they may be mistaken, we have no idea as blogs are not subject to any quality control. I intend to delete the figures as there is very strong grounds to believe it is not RS. Boynamedsue (talk) 07:58, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

The "161 million plus" is just the maximum possible death toll estimate. The range of estimates spans from 42,870,000 to 161,990,000, with a median estimate of 100,000,000. Please verify your sources before proceeding further. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.85.200.227 (talk) 23:44, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

@Boynamedsue, thank you for discussing this on the talk page, rather than just reverting my revert. I was the one who added the source and text to the article (here, in 2018) and the following is my thought process. The Wikipedia:Verifiability policy page has two sections about blogs, WP:NEWSBLOG and WP:BLOGS, about newspaper blogs and personal blogs, respectively. Neither applies very well to this source. I have copied both sections below, with bold added for emphasis.

WP:NEWSBLOGS says: "Some newspapers, magazines, and other news organizations host online columns they call blogs. These may be acceptable sources if the writers are professionals, but use them with caution because blogs may not be subject to the news organization's normal fact-checking process.[8] If a news organization publishes an opinion piece in a blog, attribute the statement to the writer, e.g. "Jane Smith wrote ..." Never use as sources the blog comments that are left by readers. For personal or group blogs that are not reliable sources, see § Self-published sources below.".

WP:BLOGS (in the "Self-published sources" section of the page) says: "Anyone can create a personal web page, self-publish a book, or claim to be an expert. That is why self-published material such as books, patents, newsletters, personal websites, open wikis, personal or group blogs (as distinguished from newsblogs, above), content farms, Internet forum postings, and social media postings are largely not acceptable as sources. Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications.[8] Exercise caution when using such sources: if the information in question is suitable for inclusion, someone else will probably have published it in independent reliable sources.[9] Never use self-published sources as third-party sources about living people, even if the author is an expert, well-known professional researcher, or writer."

In this case, the source is a posting by an organization on that organization's website, on a page that uses a blog-like format. This is obviously not a personal blog. The individual's name is not given, so the responsibility of the content falls entirely on the organization, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. We should be treating the source here as being the organization/publisher, rather than the source being the individual who wrote the words.

Although the WP:BLOGS section is written specifically about personal postings by the general public, and it is not a great fit, it also says "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications.[8] Exercise caution when using such sources: if the information in question is suitable for inclusion, someone else will probably have published it in independent reliable sources.[9]" According to reference [9], "self-published sources" can also apply to organizations, such as a company: "Self-published material is characterized by the lack of independent reviewers (those without a conflict of interest) validating the reliability of content. Further examples of self-published sources include press releases, material contained within company websites, advertising campaigns, material published in media by the owner(s)/publisher(s) of the media group, self-released music albums and electoral manifestos:". Given the focus of the organization, I think it could be considered "an established subject matter expert", although, as you say, the material in question here is little more than a compilation of numbers published elsewhere (each of which seem reliable enough to pass WP:RS).

In any event, caution has been exercised in the attribution of the statement (for convenience, the sentence in the wikipedia article is "In 2016, the Dissident blog of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation made an effort to compile updated ranges of estimates and concluded that the overall range "spans from 42,870,000 to 161,990,000" killed, with 100 million the most commonly cited figure.[ab]"). The [ab] citation includes an excerpt with more details. The sources for the individual figures can be found at the link in the citation (but not in the excerpt, which is unfortunate). I can't speak to whether or not the individual figures are accurate to the individual sources. However, since we are attributing the material to the VOC Memorial Foundation, rather than stating it as fact in wikipedia's voice, I think we are on solid ground there. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:39, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

I disagree with your reasoning here, I don't see enough evidence in the editorial control of this blog to satisfy me that it is RS. The title of the blog "The Dissident", does not seem to me reflective of scholarly academic processes of editing, and it appears to contain a great deal of opinion. I may well take it to the RS noticeboard. Boynamedsue (talk) 05:07, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

The organization is certainly a reliable source for its own assertions and opinions, and it is being properly cited in the article as the organization's assertion/opinion. There is a big difference between referencing a source for a fact in wikipedia's voice and referencing a source for an opinion by that source, I think you would agree. How a source is used is critically important to its appropriateness as a reliable source, which is why "content" is one of the four things the RS Noticeboard asks you to include in any posts there ("Content. The exact statement(s) in the article that the source supports. Please supply a diff, or put the content inside block quotes. For example: <blockquote>text</blockquote>. Many sources are reliable for statement "X," but unreliable for statement "Y"."). AmateurEditor (talk) 05:34, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

I'm not entirely convinced that even the organisation itself satisfies WP:WEIGHT for this. It's certainly not a neutral academic source, looking at the rest of the contents of the blog, and the website is highly politicised and no longer active. Boynamedsue (talk) 15:49, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

To that, I can add that the very idea to provide the estimates of "Communist death toll" is highly questionable (see, for example, this, this, and that). The sources cited in that section are either unreliable (like Rummel, see the recent [RSN discussion], or they are criticized for politicizing the discourse (Courtois), and most of them are ignored by country experts. The only expert is Rosefielde, but he is one out of many experts in Soviet history, who had serious disagreement with other experts in Soviet history, and his Red Holocaust is a summary of his own articles about Soviet history plus additional information about Asian Communism. He does not summarize the views of the whole scholarly community.

AmateurEditor, I am still thinking about my response. It must be short, which is not easy.--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:58, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Boynamedsue, WP:WEIGHT tells us to include "all significant viewpoints" on a topic. Of the three broad categories for weight (majority view, significant minority view, and fringe view), I think the source is appropriately considered a significant minority view (as opposed to the majority view or a fringe view like flat earth theory), as are all the others currently in the article. Non-neutral sources are common and allowed with in-line attribution, per WP:YESPOV and WP:NPOVHOW. AmateurEditor (talk) 06:59, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Hi AmateurEditor, the necessity of including All significant viewpoints is stated, but I really don't consider this to be a significant viewpoint. I mean, should the article also contain the views of Hoxhaists on Communist death tolls? Anyway, hard exclude is my opinion.Boynamedsue (talk) 09:14, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Boynamedsue, I understand your opinion, but the policy seems pretty clear to me that all non-fringe viewpoints published by sources that meet or exceed the minimum criteria for reliable sources can be included. Otherwise, we as editors are imposing our own biases. AmateurEditor (talk) 09:28, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, Please don't link to articles without specifying what exactly you are referring to in those articles about The Black Book of Communism. I read all three and the first two say nothing like "the very idea to provide the estimates of 'Communist death toll' is highly questionable". They talk instead about the specific controversy about Courtois and the Black Book of Communism (i.e. about the particular number arrived at by Courtois, not the idea of arriving at an estimate to begin with). The third notes on page 4 of 7 two related things: that victims of communism were not just those killed and the focus on a number of just those killed victims downplays the living victims; and that estimates of the number killed vary widely. "Some of the authors openly resisted the pressure to define victimization in terms of death estimates. Margolin and Werth accused Courtois of being obsessed with arriving at a total of 100 million. This whole approach is misguided, not least because the data regarding victims are not systematically and carefully presented. Courtois provides a "rough approximation" table which adds up to 95 million, but his list of specific campaigns leaves out any numbers for deaths in the Soviet Gulag or in Maoist China. The country authors note that death estimates vary widely and definitive figures are not available." This is saying that the estimate by Courtois is questionable, not that the idea of providing an estimate is questionable. There is a very big difference. That "death estimates vary widely and definitive figures are not available" is obvious from the various ranges already provided in the wikipedia article estimates section, so this article is very much in line with the wikipedia article. That a focus on the number killed does not at all focus on victims not killed is so obvious that it goes without saying, but also does not mean that "the very idea to provide the estimates of 'Communist death toll' is highly questionable", unless you mean questionable-as-a-method-of-focusing-on-all-victims-of-communism.

Rummel isn't "unreliable", his work is a product of a certain time (as is reflected in the article) but continues to be relevant and cited by other reliable sources. I think I will have to start participating in the RS Noticeboard going forward, because there is a lot of nonsense going on over there. AmateurEditor (talk) 06:59, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

The article presents these numbers is such a way that the fact that Rummel's figures are a "product of certain time" is absolutely not clear. Moreover, even if we assume that Rummel's data are "product of certain time", I am not sure we can find some period of time in the past when these figures represented a majority view. In addition, I see no reason to present outdated figures in that way. They may be presented, for example, like that was done in the GULAG article (in a separate section devoted to historical estimates). However, there GULAG deaths is a well recognized and very concrete category, whereas various "-cide" deaths are strongly linked with the author's political views and the terminology each author uses, and most historians just do not support the idea to combine all those deaths in "Communist killing" category. If you disagree with that, please, join the RSN discussion (I provided the link).--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:13, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Obviously this is an unreliable number from an unreliable source. If you had taken my advice on the article, it would have been reliable, since the article would be about the anti-Communist interpretation of Communism. I don't see why this poses a problem with highly experienced editors such as AmateurEditor. However, if this continues, I can post a query at RSN. I don't however want to waste more editors' time on an article that has already wasted a lot of effort. TFD (talk) 03:22, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

TFD, We frame the topic as it has been framed in our reliable sources, not your personal POV. The only one making you waste time on this article is you. AmateurEditor (talk) 19:15, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

Paul, what is unclear about "In 1994, ..."? Rummel's figure, like all the figures, is given with the date prominent in a chronological list with other figures that are also given with dates prominent. You keep trying to settle an unsettled question. Per NPOV, we are supposed to present the issue as we find it in our sources without taking sides, not pick and choose the figures we personally prefer. There is no consensus figure or majority view, according to the sources (unless you take the popular "100 million" figure to be a "majority" view based on it being widespread in newspapers and other non-academic sources). AmateurEditor (talk) 19:15, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

I posted an enquiry at RSN. I notice that we have discussed this before at RSN.[2] Amateur Editor, Nug and Volunteer Marek as well as smallbones who used to contribute here all supported the site, while eveyone else found it unreliable. TFD (talk) 03:36, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Why say "everyone else" when it was two people, other than you? AmateurEditor (talk) 06:38, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

It was three other people. Only two uninvolved editors participated and they both thought the source was unreliable. TFD (talk)

Counting yourself, it was three. And if un-involvement in the issue was important, then you should not have been the first to respond there. One of the other two was an IP address, so who knows who that was. But my point was that you saying "everyone else" implies it was numerically more than the supporters, which is untrue and misleading here (doubly-misleading, since it is not a vote to begin with, as Fifelfoo noted at the time). The only value of the RS noticeboard is the quality of the points made by commenters there, which was and continues to be of very little value, unfortunately. AmateurEditor (talk) 18:24, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Fifelfoo, Stephan Shulz, IP and I make four. In any case, the discussion was about using the Global Museum as an external link which you had added.[3] The museum is gone and we are now discussing whether to use its parent site as a source for this article. The discussion at RSN has attracted wider participation than the discussion over a decade ago and as before most uninvolved editors agree the site is not reliable. If it's not reliable and the opinion you want to include is not reported in any reliable sources, then it doesn't belong in the article. TFD (talk) 20:00, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

I agree with you counting Fifelfoo as an "unreliable", although he did a good job of posting a neutral summary and did not take a position there. But then again, neither did I. But again, it's the quality of the comments that matters. Comments giving illegitimate reliability rationale's from a policy perspective, like source bias, are irrelevant. AmateurEditor (talk) 20:19, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

I agree that the point of view of a writer is unimportant. When I am searching for sources, I look at the publisher rather than the political orientation of the author. Most academics in fact express an opinion because the reason for their book or article is to argue a point of view. Reliability of course relates to the presentation of facts, rather than opinion. However, some sources allow their bias to compromise their reliability. Anti-Communists for example want people to believe that Communism was a greater evil than Nazism and are willing to overestimate Communist mass killings in order to do this. TFD (talk) 21:09, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

AmateurEditor I've just realised our discussion was archived. I am still thinking about a better way to present my arguments, hopefully, I will be ready in 1-2 months. I think the discussion of figures is just a part of a bigger problem, and we should think not only about reliability of figures, but about their placement in a proper context. Let's take a look at the sources again:

• Rummel. This source was recognised as reliable only for Rummel's own opinion during this RSN discussion. He "uses historical estimates to support his agenda, without adequate regard for their accuracy." Even his close colleague Barbara Harff conceded that genocide scholars selectively rely of the data of country experts, and Rummel "chooses numbers of death that almost always are skewed in the direction of the highest guesses" (Harff, Barbara (1996) Review of RJ Rummel: Death by Government. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 27(1): 117–119.) All of that should be reflected by placing Rummel into a proper context.
• Courtois. I don't think we need to start the RSN discussion (I can do that if we need it), because it is clear that Courtois estimates (i) were made in an attempt to support some specific agenda, which is not accepted by majority of authors, and (ii) were criticized even by the two main BB's contributors. Clearly, these figures are reliable only for Courtois opinion, not as a statement of fact, which means they cannot be presented separately from the main Courtlois thesis (and without its criticism, which is very severe)

• Valentino. He did no independent research. He just compiled existing data, including Rummel's data. In addition, what he defines as "strategic mass killings" is not considered as mass killings by majority of authors. Thus, majority of authors do not consider Great Chinese Famine as mass killing. Therefore, is we present Valentino's estimates, it is quite necessary to explain WHICH categories of deaths are considered as mass killing by him.

• Rosefielde. He is an expert in Soviet history, and he has a strong disagreement with some other experts, especially with Wheatcroft, about the scale of mass mortality in the USSR. The data for other countries presented in his book are compilation of the figures obtained by experts in China. It is not clear why the opinion of Rosefielde is presented in this section, but WHeatcroft's opinion is not. The fact that the latter focuses on the USSR only makes him probably more reliable.
• White. This "self-proclaimed antropologist" is not an expert at all, so the fact that we use him as a source is an indication of a desperate lack of good sources about a "global Communist death toll", and it implicitly demonstrates this concept is a marginal topic.
• Bellamy mentions the number of deaths in passing, his article is not devoted to that subject, and the lack of references does not allow us to tell where that figure was taken from. I can discuss this source at RSN, but we are reasonable people: it is not serious. The Bellamy's article has 103 references and footnotes, but the page where the Communist death toll is presented has just one footnote (about US bombing of Cambodia). Clearly, Bellamy uses someone else's figures, and we have no clue whose data he is talking about. If THIS is a reliable source for the subject, that is a perfect demonstration of the fact that this topic is not mainstream.

• Strauss. She speaks about "victims of revolutionary policies", which includes not only killings, but famine etc. There is no universal agreement among the authors about describing all those deaths as "mass killings". In addition, since the source is a handbook (a tertiary source), I would like to see evidences that it uses some data that are different from the above listed sources (BB, Rummel): I am not sure oversourcing (which creates a false impression that different authors performed independent research to obtain these figures) is our goal. We don't want to mislead our readers.

• Victims of Communism Foundation. I think the RSN verdict is clear: unreliable.

• Kotkin. Per WP:NEWSORG, that is an op-ed, which is reliable for Kotkin's own opinion. I found no Kotkin's own works on that subject, so it is quite likely that his opinion is based on some of the sources listed above. If Kotkin published similar estimates is some peer-reviewed journal or university book, we can add it to the article, otherwise I doubt Kotkin should be used here.

In summary, all sources presented here are either not reliable for the figures, or the data presented in these sources must be put in a proper context. One possible way would be to combine Terminology and Estimates (and remove various garbage). Thus we can say:

"Benjamin Valentino proposed a concept of "strategic mass killings", which are defined as (...). According to him, many mass mortality events, such as famine, disease, etc are considered as mass killings. The number of victims of mass killings defined in that way was estimated to be XXX million, according to some available literature data."

And, obviously, some sources should be removed as insufficiently reliable or implicitly duplications. Obviously, it must be clearly explained that the very idea to combine all deaths under some "global Communist death toll" is aimed to push a very specific agenda, and it faces a serious opposition from other authors (the discussion around the Black Book's introduction is a clear example of it, and it should be explained here in details).--Paul Siebert (talk)

Paul Siebert, before getting into the details of each of these points/sources, do we or do we not agree that we should be following wikipedia policies (and guidelines) to the best of our ability? I think we have different approaches to editing wikipedia and that is causing at least some of this friction. My approach has been to include everything allowed by a strict reading of the policy language. Correct me if I am wrong, but you do not seem to be interested in that. AmateurEditor (talk) 04:37, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

The policy qiestion is irrelevant here. My point is that the section is a collection of sources that are either questionable (Rummel is inaccurate and dramatically outdated, VoC memorial is inreliable, Couroius is highly questionable and scandalous, Rosefielde has serious disagreements with other experts in Soviet history, White is an amateur), or cite the figures from unknown sources (Kotkin or Strauss definitely cite the figure produced by someone else, and we have no idea what exactly do they mean). Meanwhile, we have a lot of reliable figures (Erlikhman for the USSR mortality and population losses, Kiernan for Cambodia, Harff for a global database of genocides and politicides, and many many more). All of that cannot be included because you decided that they do not fit the topic. However, if the topic definition does not allow us to include good sources, maybe, there is a problem with the topic's definition? Indeed, if a topic is an attractor of questionable or outdated sources, the topic is poorly defined. That is not a dispute about a policy, that is a dispute about the topic definition. --Paul Siebert (talk) 05:00, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

No, I think the policy question is of primary importance here. Wikipedia editor opinions are cheap, plentiful, and irrelevant to the extent that they deviate from the written policy. Your characterizations of these sources and approach to their use in the article is only legitimate insofar as it aligns with Wikipedia policy, such as avoiding original research and maintaining a neutral point of view. Figures for individual state/event killings from more narrow sources can absolutely be included in the appropriate section for that state/event, as sources that do not on their own justify this article's existence but are appropriate to contribute to it in a supplemental capacity, as I have said repeatedly. Creating our own global estimate by picking and choosing what we deem to be the most reliable state/event estimates is blatant original research, as is creating weights for various sources through our own OR analysis of google keyword searches. AmateurEditor (talk) 19:53, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

• While examining sources for reliability is fine, this should not become a removal of numerous RS simply because someone does not like them. Doing so is against WP:NPOV and WP:RS. "A is scandalous". "B has disagreements with others". "C is amateur" "D used numbers by others". None of that is a valid reason to discount the sources. Yes, works by many researches were criticized by others, and the criticisms have been rebutted or ignored. But this is simply a normal scientific discourse, especially in this highly politicized field. My very best wishes (talk) 15:42, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

To be honest, I do think that some of the sources here are highly problematic (especially Courtois, i.e. The Black Book of Communism; That the two of the main contributors distanced themselves from this book should be a red flag in of itself.) TucanHolmes (talk) 17:21, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

What does it mean "distanced"? They wrote chapters in the book, and they never retracted anything or said their chapters were wrong in any aspect. They only said that some specific ideas by the editor of the book in the Introduction to the book were views by that editor, not their views (yes, it was he who wrote it). But I am sure that the contributors did read the Introduction prior to the publication of the book (as they should according to the publishing rules) and did not object because the publisher must have consent of all authors. Did you actually read this whole book rather than only Introduction? My very best wishes (talk) 18:22, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Yes, the variance in estimates between the various authors of the BBoC is already included in the article in the form of the wider estimate range from Martin Malia's 1999 foreward, in which he says "a grand total of victims variously estimated by contributors to the volume at between 85 million and 100 million." AmateurEditor (talk) 19:53, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

Excess deaths and improved life expectancy in China and India

I was sent here when I noticed the subject "Excess deaths under Communist regimes" in the index (I was actually originally looking for excess deaths from Covid19). I was hoping there might be some scholarly clarification of a problem I noticed decades ago. A brief look at some data decades ago suggested, perhaps incorrectly, that life expectancy under Chinese Communism seemed to have improved faster than in neighbouring democratic India (and this seemed to start well before the economic boom in what should probably no longer be called Communist China, since it seems basically now an undemocratic but capitalist system (but let's not digress into that)). It occurred to me that this might mean (rather embarrassingly for a democrat and anti-Communist like me, as well as somebody who is vaguely interested in the question of whether the worst human ever was Mao or Hitler) that Chinese Communism on balance possibly actually saved lives if the improved life expectancy (presumably due to things like better access to education and healthcare and other forms of social welfare) more than offset the horrors of mass killings like those under The Great Leap Forward, at least in a purely statistical sense, something for which reliable scholarship would obviously be needed. Unfortunately there seems to be nothing about this here, not even as a caveat in the "estimates" section. It seems to me that the article would be improved if reliable sources could be found at least to supply such a caveat in that Estimates section. But I am not sufficiently interested to look for such sources myself, per WP:NOTCOMPULSORY (after all, in this case I was hoping Wikipedia would supply info to me rather than the other way round). But if some other more interested editor could find and include such a reliably sourced caveat (if it exists), I think that might well improve the article, if only by making it seem (at least to me) less like one-sided propaganda (which is not what Wikipedia is supposed to look like, even if unfortunately in practice it can't always easily avoid this). Tlhslobus (talk) 15:27, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Adding any sentences to the article that directly relate to its topic and are verifiably sourced to something that meets or exceeds the minimum criteria for a reliable source are fine by me. I am not aware of a source for this particular point, but I have not been looking for it either. AmateurEditor (talk) 01:44, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Source of Mao Quote on Destroying Peasants

In the section "Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries" it states that Mao discussed potentially destroying 1/10th of all peasants in official study materials. I was unable to find an english language copy of these documents and the Goldhagen source refers to Rummel's "China's Bloody Century" (which I'm having dificulty getting access to).

In what study material does Mao discuss this? Bouncyknight (talk) 04:23, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

For help finding a copy of the right reference page in China's Bloody Century, I would refer you to WP:REREQ. AmateurEditor (talk) 06:38, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for the tip. I was able to get a relatively clear line of sources through. It seems like its is based on this quote from the 1958 Wuchang conference:

"In this kind of situation, I think if we do [all these things simultaneously] half of China's population unquestionably will die; and if it's not a half, it'll be a third or ten percent, a death toll of 50 million people... If with a death toll of 50 million, you didn't lose your jobs, I at least should lose mine; [whether I would lose my] head would be open to question. Anhui wants to do so many things, it's quite all right to do a lot, but make it a principle to have no deaths."- from The Secret Speeches of Mao.

This seems to imply something completely different from the article, which seems to say that Mao was intending (or at least willing) to kill 1/10th of peasants Bouncyknight (talk) 10:09, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

What do you mean by "relatively clear line of sources through"? Are you saying "relatively" because you do not know the actual source cited by Rummel but you think you identified the source independently? Isn't the Rummel source from "official 1948 study materials", rather than a 1958 conference? AmateurEditor (talk) 04:25, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Manual of Style italics for terms

I think most of the italics recently added to terms in the article are incorrect, per MOS:WORDSASWORDS. We should only italicize mass killing, for example, if it is being referenced as a word/term, rather than being used normally. In other words, if you can insert "the term" in front of mass killing, genocide, etc. without it changing the meaning of the sentence, then mass killing, genocide, etc. should be italicized. If inserting "the term" changes the meaning of the sentence, then mass killing, genocide, etc. should not be italicized. For example, the sentence "Wheatcroft excludes all famine deaths as "purposive deaths" and claims those that do qualify fit more closely the category of execution rather than murder." has inappropriate use of italics, because inserting "the term" in front of "execution" and in front of "murder" changes the meaning of the sentence. The sentence is clearly using those terms in the normal way and not referring to the words as words. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:34, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

I think I have fixed that specific case you mentioned; if you have other examples, let me know. Thank you. Davide King (talk) 12:20, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

Davide King, the other examples are almost all of the italics you added since August 8th. Will you please go through the article and revise the use of italics to be in accordance with MOS:WORDSASWORDS? AmateurEditor (talk) 02:42, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

AmateurEditor, my bad for that. I thought they were still referring to words as words, and I did not mean to change the meaning of the sentence. Thanks for pointing this out, I will try to work that out as soon as I can. Davide King (talk) 09:59, 18 August 2021 (UTC)