Talk:Mass killings under communist regimes/Archive 49

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Main topic and primary sources

I took a break from this and I would have hoped that Aquillion, BeŻet, Buidhe, C.J. Griffin, The Four Deuces, Paul Siebert, Rick Norwood, and others (I also call on other users like GreenC, Mathglot, and MjolnirPants for further input and a source analysis to avoid any original research and synthesis violations) would have kept discussing and finding a consensus on the main topic; this was not the case and the template was removed. The article's main topic is still unclear; is it about the events, which are variously described as mass killings? Problem is scholars actually disagree on this and attempts to propose a common terminology (until recently, it was stated as fact that there was one) have repeatedly failed, and the current article's name is problematic because it presupposes there is consensus. Is it about an alleged link between communism and genocide/mass killing? Then the article should be changed to Communism and genocide or Communism and mass killing (other, more precise titles may include use of Communist states over Communism). This would be better but would still require a restructuring to make it more about scholarly analysis and less repeating the events themselves. Is it about Communist death toll? The title should be changed to Communism death toll, Death toll under Communist states, or Excess deaths under Communist states. It would, and it should, still require a restructuring.

So what are primary sources in this case? They are certainly not the Communist state themselves but rather the authors who may propose the topic. Problem is that in this sense most sources are primary sources, and follows "he said, she said", in light of attributing minority views, especially about the Proposed causes section. But we should not be citing Conquest about what Conquest wrote, or Rummel about what Rummel wrote (in this sense, they are primary sources); we need to find and cite secondary sources, and not just any secondary source, but reliable secondary sources that clearly refer to the main topic. If one is quoting Conquest about Stalinism or the Stalinism era, it is not enough; it needs to be about excess deaths or mass killings in the broad context of Communist states. Problem is, very few, if any at all, do that. They do not discuss all Communist states as we do. If we cannot find such secondary sources to establish weight (e.g. Hicks and Watson, who are neither experts of genocide or historians of Communism), they are undue.

I understand that this can be a pain in the ass because one actually has to do research, read all the relevant books on the topic, distinguish between majority and minority, read reviews and secondary sources about them to establish what they actually say rather than our own POV and due weight. We are all guilty of boldly adding primary sources in that sense, but it is fine so that someone else who has more time and resources can do that for us and replace content with secondary sources. But our policies and guidelines are clear; we should report what secondary sources say about Conquest et al. when we are citing what they say and their views. This article even misrepresents scholars from the "orthodox" or "anti-communist" historiography POV, as Conquest does not support this alleged link and he mainly studied Stalin's Soviet Union. Even The Black Book of Communism, if one actually reads the review rather than make their own analysis, they find it does not support this topic (at best, only the intro does, and it is controversial and "historically revisionist" in equating Communism and Nazism); The Black Book of Communism is not "about communism as an ideology or even about communism as a state-building phenomenon." (Andrzej Paczkowski) For the umpteenth time, Valentino does not support Mass killings under communist regimes but Communist mass killing, which is a different thing, and clearly says that "Communism has a bloody record, but most regimes that have described themselves as communist or have been described as such by others have not engaged in mass killing." (Valentino is an original research and synthesis violation, and contradicts the whole lead) Rummel is about totalitarian governments in general and democide, another topic.

If we follow this, you will see that, once the main topic is established, very few reliable, academic secondary sources are to be found that link all Communist states together as we do ("Mass killings under Communist regimes"). What we do have are actually secondary academic sources that supports the fact this article is original research and synthesis. Per Klas-Göran Karlsson and Michael Schoenhals, discussion of the number of victims of Communism, an more appropriate topic (except it is not a mainstream view among scholars and it is mainly associated with the European Union and Eastern European double genocide theory, and this would be clarified in the lead) has been "extremely extensive and ideologically biased." Per Anton Weiss-Wendt, "[t]here is barely any other field of study that enjoys so little consensus on defining principles such as definition of genocide, typology, application of a comparative method, and timeframe." Yet we are acting like there is consensus on this and selctively, cherry pick those who seem to support it and misrepresent others. So why do we base a whole article on this? Where we use any source that use any of that terminology to mean the same thing, as if they support this article? See "[w]hether all these cases, from Hungary to Afghanistan, have a single essence and thus deserve to be lumped together—just because they are labeled Marxist or communist—is a question the authors scarcely discuss", and criticism of "the idea to connect the deaths with some 'generic Communism' concept, defined down to the common denominator of party movements founded by intellectuals" and the "alleged connection between the events in Pol Pot's Cambodia and Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union are far from evident and that Pol Pot's study of Marxism in Paris is insufficient for connecting radical Soviet industrialism and the Khmer Rouge's murderous anti-urbanism under the same category" (to paraphrase).

Those are not my opinions but of genocide scholars and historians of Communism, which are the only ones we should be using for this article. Problem is there is no consensus not only among them outside but even among them themselves in their respective fields. Those who disagree should actually engage us rather than dismiss and perpetuate their echo-chamber. TLDR, after reaching consensus on the main topic (if there is not a clear consensus on it, what are we even talking about and have this article for?), can you provide secondary sources for "he said, she said" to establish weight and whether they are due? Are there any academic Communist Genocide or Communist Mass Killings books, rather than just chapters about selective events under Communist regimes (which are then originally researched and synthesized to lump them all together as we still do)?

P.S. If Crimes against humanity under communist regimes and Mass killings under communist regimes are two separated main topics supported by reliable academic secondary sources and do not violate any of our policies and guidelines, they should be first mentioned or discussed at either Crimes against humanity, Genocide, and Mass killing. They are not, because they are likely content forks and do not warrant two separate main articles, and books about them do not discuss them all together as we do, implying a sort of link or common denominator, but only singular events and they do not just compare them to other events under Communist regimes (this is also why we do not have, and should not have, articles about genocide and mass killings under capitalist, Christians, fascist, Muslim, etc. regimes. All those can and must be discussed in the relevant articles (Genocide, History of genocide, and the like), not create more than one POV fork article to imply a sort of link which is not supported by reliable sources or scholarly consensus. See also my still current "Analysis of sources and main topic", which has never been really refuted or properly analyzed. Davide King (talk) 03:28, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

Do you think you can condense this down to a few, specific questions? This is not a subject I'm very familiar with, and having specific points to look into would be helpful to me in formulating a response. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 18:20, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

MjolnirPants, first of all, thanks for your comment. Unfortunately, summarization is not my strength and I needed to summarize the last two to three archives for the previous discussions we had. The Four Deuces, could you please summarize my points, since you are very good at that and you can also summarize the many discussion we took part in the last two to three archives? By the way, I think my revised and expanded lead clarified many points and fixed some issues. Now we need to move it to something like Excess deaths under Communist states and Excess mortality under Communist states because, as we way, there is no consensus on the terminology, scholars actually disagree (see Valentino stating that most Communist states did not engage in mass killings), and excess deaths and mass mortality are more accurate and neutral, descriptive terms. Then we need to capitalize instances of communism when they are clearly referring to Communist states, both because many sources do that and treat it as a proper noun, and to clarify that those were not actual communist societies but rather constitutional socialist states, commonly known in the West as Communist states, with a ruling Communist party, usually following the ideology of Marxism–Leninism or a variant. Finally, we need to fix the body by using secondary reliable sources, preferably academic, and remove undue opinions by non-experts. Davide King (talk) 18:46, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

I did try a TLDR, though seriously one needs to read it all once, please.

After reaching consensus on the main topic (if there is not a clear consensus on it, what are we even talking about and have this article for?), can you provide secondary sources for "he said, she said" to establish weight and whether they are due? Are there any academic Communist Genocide or Communist Mass Killings books, rather than just chapters about selective events under Communist regimes (which are then originally researched and synthesized to lump them all together as we still do)? See also my "Analysis of sources and main topic" for why most of sources given in response are problematic or even misrepresented.

Was this not helpful enough? Davide King (talk) 18:51, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

An example of how this article should be restrutured is Comparison of Nazism and Stalinism, which actually has a proper scholarly literature. There is no scholarly literature that lumps all Communist states together and attributes them all as 'mass killing.' Valentino, who has been misrepresented to support this article, clearly stated that most Communist states did not engage in mass killings. There have been authors who have engaged in body counting (Courtois), who have spoken of a victims of communist narrative (Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation), or equated Communism with Nazism (double genocide) but they are revisionists and are not the mainstream or majority view in scholarship (the article's body and the previous lead all treated this as fact or as if there was some scholarly consensus); there is no scholarly literature the way we treat the article (I have shown that scholars actually disagree on lumping all Communist states together as did by Courtois), which is why the body is still synthesis and gives selective, undue weight to non-experts. Davide King (talk) 21:43, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

• In following this discussion for a few years now, I've distilled that there are two working theories about what the main topic should be. The first is that the main topic is the actual mass killings under communist regimes - in other words, names, dates, numbers, and the like - briefly the events. The second is that the main topic is the theory of "mass killings under communist regimes" - the scholarship of the names, dates, numbers, and the like - briefly, the narrative. Judging by the recent reworking of the lead by Davide King, and by our previous discussion, he seems to take the position that the narrative is the primary topic. Indeed, if that is the position, then his new lead is ideal.

However, that is not the position I take, nor has it been the position of the majority of editors who have contributed to this talk page discussion. As such, I propose restoring the lead to the way it was prior to 8/8. My rationale is unchanged from when this kind of lead was proposed in December of 2020. And, for the record, most editors involved in the discussion opposed the sort of lead Davide King has written. Now, I grant that the !votes in December 2020 were on a different lead, but the problems there are the same as the problems here. The thrust of the lead does not match the thrust of the article. The topic of this article is not that "Various authors have written about the events of 20th-century communist states." Further, the use of "some authors" verses "several authors" in paragraph 1 of the new lead is not neutral. Neither is the present undue weight to criticism of the narrative without there being a section on criticism of the narrative in the body of the article itself. Finally, and perhaps most crucially, the new lead fails to sufficiently introduce section 4, which is the backbone of the entire article.

Further, I oppose, on principal, any change to the lead without making prerequisite changes to the body. Changing the lede without reworking the article creates a disconnect. We have a dedicated sandbox, which has been unused since 2018, and it should be utilized to create a new body, then to create a lead that matches it - this new one does not.

I close with a paraphrase of what I wrote in December 2020: "The lead, as it stood, is neutral and a good summary of the article, albeit a short one. It is not factually inaccurate or violate our NPOV guidelines, and is a closer fit with MOS:LEAD than the new one. schetm (talk) 22:39, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

"The lead serves as an introduction to the article and a summary of its most important contents." The previous lead did not check this. It made no mention of criticism and memories studies, and acted like there is a consensus on terminology or on lumping Communist states together. It can be further improved but it is an improvement from the previous one, and of course the body must be worked too. Again, I take the quotes I provided to hold much more weight than the opinion of a Wikipedian user, no matter who or how many. They are not my opinion, unlike yours, but the summary of scholarly consensus, or in this case its lack thereof. Also Wikipedia is not about votes, and I always expressed the belief that one or more expert admins should actually analyze given sources, and clarify whose side's reading is correct. Because it all boil downs to "per sources" and "they do not actually support that." This article should actually be about the history of genocides and mass killings by given regimes, many of which have been described or categorized as 'totalitarian.' As I wrote in the RfC above, there is no scholarly literature the way we structure this article but there is plenty of literature about totalitarian regimes and genocide/mass killings, see Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts, Purify and Destroy: The Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide, Resisting Genocide: The Multiple Forms of Rescue, and Final Solutions. Neither of those works limit themselves to Communist regimes, so why should we, too? Another article, focused on Communist states and about death tolls and the victims of Communism narrative, can be written based on my lead. So this article should actually be expanded to be a history of genocides and mass killings, not limited to Communist states... because... guess what... that is what sources actually do; they do not limit themselves to Communist states and do not just make comparative analysis between Communist states but between wildly different regimes. Davide King (talk) 22:50, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

I think the new lead strays a little to much away from an NPOV. Given the breath and depth of sourcing for this article starting with the definition of MOS:WEASEL is probably not great. Going on to try and cast doubt on if it happened and to what extent is also out of line with what the article talks about. Judging by the RFC just above I think you should revert your changes to the lead and try to get consensus for your changes. PackMecEng (talk) 00:10, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

I think the IP succinctly explained the problem, issue, and difference, except that scholars do not actually agree that "Mass killings took place in some/many communist states." (see Valentino). What they and we can all agree is that tragedies and awful events happened which have resulted in the deaths of many people. I think a solution to salvage this article and avoid any issue of original research and synthesis is to make it about the history of genocides and mass killings. Because most scholars do not find a link between capitalism, communism, or whatever and genocide and mass killings; the only exception may be fascism, and in that case mainly Nazism. There is no serious valid reason to refuse this, other than political bias, because scholars discuss wildly different regimes together; they do not discuss all Communist regimes together, only some of them, and they may compare them not to other Communist regimes, but to other regimes in general, such as Nazi Germany (in the case of the Cambodian genocide). Another article about the Communist death toll can be created to support the proposition B summarized by the IP. That is the only solution. We already have singular articles about each event and tragedies; there is no need to engage in original research and synthesis by positing there is a link with "Communism." Sources do not treat it as a separate subject. Davide King (talk) 02:20, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Yeah but that is all just incorrect. Please see my previous comment that addresses the policy based issues with the lead change you made. Again please self revert pending consensus. PackMecEng (talk) 02:34, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

"Yeah but that is all just incorrect."

Per Anton Weiss-Wendt, "[t]here is barely any other field of study that enjoys so little consensus on defining principles such as definition of genocide, typology, application of a comparative method, and timeframe." Per Klas-Göran Karlsson and Michael Schoenhals, discussion of the number of victims of Communism has been "extremely extensive and ideologically biased."

Per Benjamin Valentino, "Communism has a bloody record, but most regimes that have described themselves as communist or have been described as such by others have not engaged in mass killing." Per Jens Mecklenburg and Wolfgang Wippermannm, "[w]hether all these cases, from Hungary to Afghanistan, have a single essence and thus deserve to be lumped together—just because they are labeled Marxist or communist—is a question the authors scarcely discuss."

Per Michael David-Fox, the idea to connect the deaths with some 'generic Communism' concept, defined down to the common denominator of party movements founded by intellectuals and the alleged connection between the events in Pol Pot's Cambodia and Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union are far from evident and that Pol Pot's study of Marxism in Paris is insufficient for connecting radical Soviet industrialism and the Khmer Rouge's murderous anti-urbanism under the same category (to paraphrase).

Per Andrzej Paczkowski, only Courtois made the comparison between Communism and Nazism, while the other sections of the book "are, in effect, narrowly focused monographs, which do not pretend to offer overarching explanations." While a good question [comparison between Communism and Nazism], it is hardly new and inappropriate because The Black Book of Communism is not "about communism as an ideology or even about communism as a state-building phenomenon."

But sure, my analysis must be "all just incorrect." Davide King (talk) 03:05, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

You didn't respond to any of the issues I raised or sources I provided. You have now reverted my lead, even though I would have been curious about what others users had to say. Can you provide a source for "There were many mass killings under communist regimes of the 20th century" rather than "Awful things and tragedies did indeed happen and many people have lost their lives" (which we all agree with)? That statement is contradicted by Valentino and other scholars, per sources I have provided. Davide King (talk) 11:46, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Even The Black Book of Communism doesn't really discuss mass killings other than passing mentions and very specific events, most of which happened in Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China, and Pol Pot's Cambodia. We can make this article about a scholarly comparative analysis between those three regimes, but the title is misleading because most Communist states didn't engage in mass killings. Davide King (talk) 11:49, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

This has been discussed numerous times over the life of this article. With no new arguments or new information there is no reason to go against previous consensus. It is well documented that the majority of major communist states did, in fact, engage in mass killings of their own citizens. That is not really up for debate. If you think that another article should be created documenting your personal point of view you are free to do so. This article however is not for that. PackMecEng (talk) 12:09, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Claiming "consensus" or saying that this "has been discussed numerous times over the life of this article" doesn't mean anything, if sources don't support it. It is well documented that the majority of major communist states did, in fact, engage in mass killings of their own citizens." Again, Benjamin Valentino disagrees. "That is not really up for debate." No, what's really not up for debate is that tragedies and awful events happened, which have resulted in the deaths of many people. What is debatable is whether all these events can be categorized as mass killings and whether Communism was the link. Again, I provided sources that reject this article and the lumping all Communist states. All you have is your personal opinion. I have provided over ten sources, you have provided none. Davide King (talk) 14:14, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

I've been away for a week and at the risk of re-starting a thread that seems to have died: No, Davide King, Benjamin Valentino does not agree. Valentino is talking specifically about his own definition of mass killing (50,000 killed within 5 years or less) when he says "Communism has a bloody record, but most regimes that have described themselves as communist or have been described as such by others have not engaged in mass killing. In addition to shedding light on why some communist states have been among the most violent regimes in history, therefore, I also seek to explain why other communist countries have avoided this level of violence." It is important to understand that mass killing in English is also a generic term for large-scale killing, and Valentino does acknowledge that mass killing in this generic sense did occur in other communist states that he chooses not to focus on ("Communist regimes have been responsible for this century's most deadly episodes of mass killing. Estimates of the total number of people killed by communist regimes range as high as 110 million. In this chapter I focus primarily on mass killings in the Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia - history's most murderous communist states. Communist violence in these three states alone may account for between 21 million and 70 million deaths. Mass killings on a smaller scale also appear to have been carried out by communist regimes in North Korea, Vietnam, Eastern Europe, and Africa."). AmateurEditor (talk) 02:49, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

AmateurEditor, I would like to say I appreciate your work and for taking our concerns seriously, even if we disagree. As you said, we discussed this many times, so I hope Paul Siebert can more specifically answer, if they did not do this already; but Valentino's interpretation needs to be sourced to secondary sources; we need a secondary source that explicitily support what you summarized. I still think the title is one of the issues because it implies a link that is not supported by scholarly sources; it would be the same thing like Mass killings under capitalist, fascism, Muslim, etc. regimes, as if ideology alone was the sole culprit, which is not the case according to genocide scholars, including Valentino. Excess deaths, excess mortality, or mass deaths would be more neutral and accurate terms, especially because mass killing is problematic due to not having clear, or using different, criteria, and scholars themselves disagreeing on terminology. Davide King (talk) 06:52, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

I think this is an issue of primary source because one can cherry pick quotes; however, secondary sources do not support Valentino as a proponent of mass killings under Communist regimes but rather as a proponent of Communist mass killing, which is a different thing, a subcategory of dispossessive mass killing vis-a-vis coercive mass killing. I believe this is also what Paul Siebert said to such objections. Davide King (talk) 11:38, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

• I'm sorry, Davide King, but I'm not going to be able to read this entire thread, previous threads and familiarize myself with the sources in time to provide any meaningful commentary. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 03:26, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

  This really sucks and is a serious problem. The article should have been deleted with the first AfD (K) 22–27 (D) due to being created by an indefinitely banned user. Because it was kept, despite three consecutive no consensus results (if there is no consensus to keep, the solution is not to keep it; the onus is on those to make the positive charge of keep to gain consensus to keep the article in the first place), which gave strength to those who were fine with the article and had no incentive in fixing the problems. Keeping the article in that AfD just give more strength to those in favor of Keep because, by the mere fact the article exists, it is assumed there is no original research and synthesis violations to warrant deletion, or anything other than the article's structure as it has existed for so long. Can you at least check the sources that I cited? Davide King (talk) 03:30, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

  Davide King, you write "if there is no consensus to keep, the solution is not to keep it" — that is a fundamental misunderstanding of how AfD works. In AfD, the proposed question is whether or not an article should be deleted. If there is a no consensus close, then there is simply no consensus to delete, per WP:NOCON. And, as to the trope that this was G5 eligible, by the time the creator was identified as a sock there were substantial edits made by other users, making it explicitly not eligible for speedy deletion. I also find it interesting that you brought up the vote total of the first AfD when you yourself said to me just yesterday that "Wikipedia is not about votes." I would challenge you (as I have others) to put the thing up for deletion if you think it should be deleted. Heck, if it gets deleted, you'd be saving everyone a lot of time! I'd do it myself, while paradoxically !voting keep, but that would likely be a WP:POINT violation.

I do want to address an earlier point you made. You wrote, in response to me, "Another article, focused on Communist states and about death tolls and the victims of Communism narrative, can be written based on my lead." Dude, we already have that article, and it's this one! Write your own article if you want an expanded look at totalitarianism and mass killings. And, if you don't like this article, put it up for deletion. But what you propose is deletion by stealth, and there is, thus far, no consensus for you to do that. I echo the call for you to self revert. schetm (talk) 07:00, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

That is a problem of consensus itself, which is misinterpreted, as was also reflected by Paul Siebert here and here but that is beside the point; the damage has already been done. "I also find it interesting that you brought up the vote total of the first AfD when you yourself said to me just yesterday that 'Wikipedia is not about votes.'" I brought it up because even by that standard, there are problems; you also ignored that I specified that the arguments were largely the same. It is unclear why there was a double standard in the AfDs. By the way, considering the controversy, it would not have been a bad idea to delete the article while improvements to the articles could have been done in a draft and/or sandbox, and then reach consensus on whether the improvements are now enough to warrant the article.

You call that "deletion by stealth", I call that writing a proper article that does not violate any policy and that actually follows the scholarly literature. I propose this article to be about the history and analysis of genocide and mass killings (an actual topic and literature), rather than writing a new one myself, simply because it already includes Communist states; we just need to add other types of regimes discusses, dude! Either way, you are deflecting and have not properly responded to any of the issues I raised. Why should we not follow actual sources, such as Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts, Purify and Destroy: The Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide, Resisting Genocide: The Multiple Forms of Rescue, and Final Solutions? They do not limit themselves to Communist states, so why should we do the same and imply mass killings are only something Communist states do or did? Why does only Communist regimes, of all regimes under which many people have lost their lives, warrant an article of its own rather than a large section about my proposed-expanded article?

Even though actual, scholarly sources do not limit to them. Valentino and other scholars clearly disprove the theory that mass killings took place in some/many communist states; they agree on the tragic events and that many people died but they do not describe them as mass killings, and Valentino say that most Communist states did not engage in mass killings. Who holds more weight? You, or what those scholars actually say? So the topics supported by sources are:

Proposition A: Many tragic events happened under Communist states and many, many people lost their lives. Many tragic events also happened under wildly different regimes and many, many people lost their lives. Why is that? And what can we learn from them to avoid happening it in the future?

Proposition B: These events are connected to each other, and/or to the ideology of communism, through the victims of communism narrative, and several authors have engaged in estimates of death tolls. It is a controversial theory, it has been compared to the double genocide theory, many estimates have been criticized, and is not supported by most scholars but it is relevant and notable.

Finally, can you, any of you, answer to this?

After reaching consensus on the main topic [we disagree, as summarized by the IP below, you are for A, I am for B, and I am also for A if it is about analysis of genocide and mass killings in general, not limited to Communist states], can you provide secondary sources for "he said, she said" to establish weight and whether they are due? [I am referring mainly at the Proposed causes section, where we are like "he said, she said" but rather than use secondary sources that analyze what they actually say, we cite the authors themselves]

Are there any academic Communist Genocide or Communist Mass Killings books [which actually support that mass killings took place in some/many communist states as scholarly consensus rather than a few authors' view], rather than just chapters about selective events under Communist regimes [I have shown that there is no consensus among scholars, who disagree in lumping all Communist states together as if they are a monolithic block, that they disagree about describing the events as mass killings, that only a few events, such as the Cambodian genocide, are commonly described in scholarly literature as genocide, and there is no consensus on the terminology; many of this, we already say it in the body. If the main topic is not about mass killings but excess deaths and mortality, that is a different thing and would still require a rewrite]. Be my guest. Davide King (talk) 08:03, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

"They do not limit themselves to Communist states, so why should we do the same" — we shouldn't, but this article is about mass killings under communist regimes. This article is not about mass killings under totalitarian regimes. To push that point is to deny the clear consensus in the RFC above. I think that sums up my criticism of the IP's Prop A well. As to Prop B, I'd need sourcing that specifically says it "is not supported by most scholars". The existence of sources that criticize the theory is not evidence of that particular point, and a SYNTH violation is committed by adding up sources on either side and coming to that conclusion. schetm (talk) 15:04, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

As I expected, you keep deflecting and didn't answer most of points I raised, including sources. As noted by The Four Deuces below, and as stated by Valentino, most Communist states didn't engage in mass killings, so the only fact is that many peoples have died under Communist states and those were tragic events; this is the fact. What is not a fact is that all those events were either a genocide or mass killings because scholars are still debating them, and most Communist states did not engage in either genocide or mass killing. Communists in Nepal democratically shared the power with Social Democrats and others. The whole mass killing category has definitional problems because it may mean any deaths over 5 and anything over 50,000. This is why scholars don't describe those events as mass killing, and this is where original research come in. Valentino says that ideology doesn't explain genocide or mass killing.

"... but this article is about mass killings under communist regimes." It shouldn't be because this is synthesis per above ("Communism has a bloody record, but most regimes that have described themselves as communist or have been described as such by others have not engaged in mass killing"), and because it implies Communism, rather than any other factor, was the main cause. Again, scholars and sources do not treat it it as a separate subject (Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts, Purify and Destroy: The Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide, Resisting Genocide: The Multiple Forms of Rescue, and Final Solutions). It shouldn't be about totalitarian regimes either because it would be committing the same synthesis by claiming that totalitarianism is the cause of genocide and mass killing, when that is not supported by scholars, is not even what sources say, and totalitarianism is also a debated concept among scholars.

The only solution is to make this article about an history and analysis of genocide and mass killing, including Communist regimes and many others wildly different regimes. You are the one supporting the article as it is, so the onus is on you; I have yet to see any source that says the article as it currently is reflects sources and "is ... supported by most scholars." You are the one who is making positive claims, and any positive claim I have actually made was backed up by sources, which you ignored.

"To push that point is to deny the clear consensus in the RFC above." That is to be established by the closer, and you may have the numbers, but they shouldn't matter; I believe the other side gave the strongest argument, while you keep reducing yourself to "per source" arguments, when they don't actually support what they claim to do. Davide King (talk) 09:24, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

A compromise solution is to make this article about what TFD described. "Some writers have connected mass killings in Stalin's USSR, Mao's China and Pol Pot's Cambodia. The thinking is that Stalin influenced Mao, who influenced Pol Pot. In all cases, mass killings were carried out as part of a policy of rapid industrialization." After all, those are the three states where most things happened, and as noted by Valentino most Communist regimes didn't engage in mass killing, and democratic Communists in the post-war period, or democratic Nepal, didn't engage in genocide or mass killing. Davide King (talk) 11:51, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Davide King, if you look at the definitions of the other terms in the terminology section, and the excerpts supporting them, all of them use the generic mass killing explicitly in their definitions (or some equivalent phrase like "large-scale killing" or "mass murder"). Valentino's non-generic definition of mass killing should not be confused with the generic term. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:07, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

But do they specifically discuss Communist states or are they talking in general? Why not turn this article into a scholarly analysis of genocide and mass killing, which would include Communist states and many other and wildly different regimes? An article more focused on Communism (the narrative, excess deaths and mortality, and only scholarly estimates) can be created but this one, since it already discuss Communist regimes, it can be expanded to support my Proposition A (Many tragic events happened under Communist states and many, many people lost their lives. Many tragic events also happened under wildly different regimes and many, many people lost their lives. Why is that? And what can we learn from them to avoid happening it in the future?), which is what genocide scholars actually do. Davide King (talk) 06:46, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

The sources cited for those terms have specifically applied them to communist states. Please read the excerpts cited in that section if you don't want to take my word for it. That's why the excerpts are there. There is plenty of room in Wikipedia for this article as well as other more general articles. Those things aren't mutually exclusive. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:27, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

That may be true for each term but I am specifically referring to the introductory phrasing at the start of the section. Krain 1997 is about genocide and mass killing in general, and even if you are right, Wheatcroft 1996 and others still do not support the article as you have written. The fact there is no clear criteria for what constitute a mass killing is the problem (when that number can range from as few as four to more than 50,000 people, what are we talking about?), and for why we should not have such a controversial article.

I agree with Siebert and TFD's points below; we should be using all sources but by doing that we would actually have to rewrite the article because sources do not support the events as mass killings, while it only includes, through synthesis and original research, events where many people have died and act like they were mass killing and communism is the link. "Some editors say lets use that definition and enumerate every case in Communist countries." Unfortunately, that is exactly what the article does. If a source says an event was a mass killing, or use any other term (which add further confusions, as stated by TFD, because any term is treated as a synonym or as treating the same thing or topic, hence that section is still synthesis), but defines mass killing as any events with at least four deaths, and other describe the same event as mass killing but defines it as any event with more than 50,000, we have got a problem, there is no consensus, and we are engaging in original research and synthesis. Essentially, this article lists the Great Chinese Famine as a mass killing under a Communist regime because a few sources are synthetized to support that, ignoring all the others who do not; if scholarly consensus, or lack thereof, says it was not a mass killing, we are not going to list it here just because you have found a few minority sources who do. In many cases, they are not even significant enough to be in the individual event's main article.

If any of this is not enough, we actually have a genocide scholar source that disproves this article. It is not just a genocide scholar source but an actual global database of mass killings which, coincidentally, is also the most frequently used by genocide scholars. Most of the events we discuss in this article are not there, and even the few that are there, no link is made between communism or that they are mass killings under Communist regimes, rather than a genocide (Cambodian genocide) or politicide (others) which just happened to take place under regimes governed by self-professed Communist parties. Davide King (talk) 10:45, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

You say "The fact there is no clear criteria for what constitute a mass killing is the problem...". It is the sources' problem, not ours. The sources are aware of the problem and discuss it. We need only reflect what they have published, warts and all. I responded to Paul Siebert's points below. AmateurEditor (talk) 06:17, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

And if it's the sources' problem, it's also ours; I can't understand how you don't see this. "The sources are aware of the problem and discuss it." They certainly don't discuss in the same way this article is structured; they don't draw a link with communism or lump together all states governed by self-professed Communist parties as the article does. I look forward to The Four Deuces and Paul Siebert addressing your points below. I am surprised you didn't point out that the global database combines all mass killing events since 1955 because I would say that's irrelevant, as there is no link drawn to communism, are not categorized or divided into mass killings under Communist regimes; they are all listed together, which is why you're always welcome to help me turn this article into a scholarly analysis of genocides and mass killings irrespective of ideology or regime-type, and the other article about TFD's victims of Communism narrative and Paul Siebert's neutral analysis proposal. That would be following what actual genocide scholars do, and not original researching through cherry picking and synthesis, by violating NPOV, this content POV fork article of Genocide and Mass killing. Davide King (talk) 15:22, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Our only problem as wikipedia editors is to write an article that reflects the content of the identified reliable sources on the topic in accordance with wikipedia policies/guidelines. It is not our problem to resolve any issues that the sources themselves are grappling with. There certainly are sources (included in the article already) that do lump together states governed by self-professed communist parties. For examples, see the following excerpts, among others: excerpt "i" by Rummel (from an essay titled "How Many did Communist Regimes Murder?"), excerpt "ag" by Valentino ("...Estimates of the total number of people killed by communist regimes range as high as 110 million..."), and excerpt "aj" by Alex Bellamy ("Between 1945 and 1989, communist regimes massacred literally millions of civilians."). The global database of genocide/politicide events you mentioned that is reproduced in the more general Mass killing article is of course not restricted to communist governments, but the author, Barbara Harff (with Ted Gurr), has written about Marxist-Leninist politicide specifically: see excerpt "bw": Harff & Gurr 1988, p. 369: "Revolutionary mass murder: the most common type of politicide (following repressive politicide), with ten examples in our data set. In all these instances new regimes have come to power committed to bringing about fundamental social, economic, and political change. Their enemies usually are defined by variants of Marxist-Leninist ideology: initially their victims include the officials and most prominent supporters of the old regime and landowners and wealthy peasants. Later they may include-as they did in Kampuchea and in China during the Cultural Revolution-cadres who lack revolutionary zeal. In Laos and Ethiopia they have included ordinary peasants in regions which actively or passively resisted revolutionary policies. Most Marxist-Leninist regimes which came to power through protracted armed struggle in the postwar period perpetrated one or more politicides, though of vastly different magnitudes. The worst offender was the Pol Pot regime in Kampuchea; the second worst, the Chinese Communist regime.". Most sources use "communist regimes", but "Marxist-Leninist regimes" is clearly referring to the same thing. AmateurEditor (talk) 00:50, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

"... but the author, Barbara Harff (with Ted Gurr), has written about Marxist-Leninist politicide specifically." So why do we not rename this Marxist-Leninist rather than communist then? And she has not written about many of the events we currently synthesised them with. "Most Marxist-Leninist regimes which came to power through protracted armed struggle in the postwar period perpetrated one or more politicides, though of vastly different magnitudes." Most is not all, and there remains the terminology synthesis issue ("So you are saying that as long as a source uses the expression mass killing we can put it in even if the sources define mass killings differently.") The whole categorisation of lumping them all together is disputed (when there is a dispute, the solution is not to take the side of those who propose the lumping, such as using a title biased towards their views or implying it as a fact, rather than a more descriptive title; if scholars dispute the categorisation of Communist states, that warrants a more neutral rewrite, it does not warrant having an article that gives more weight to those who support the lumping), and sources can include some and exclude others; consistency does not rank high on your priorities. "Most sources use 'communist regimes', but "Marxist-Leninist regimes" is clearly referring to the same thing." Again, it would be helpful to at least capitalise it then, because Communist is capitalised exactly to make it clear it is referring to Marxism-Leninism (Communist state) and not necessarily to communism. Finally, this remains a primary source issue because they are sources as interpreted by AmateurEditor; the quotes may be very explicit but we still need a secondary source establishing that they are discussing this topic (and we still disagree on the topic, so what are even discussing about? You say they support yours, I say they support ours, wall against wall), or else they just remain your word against mine because we interpret them differently. Rather than cherry pick quotes from their own work, you need to give me a secondary source about what Harff and Valentino thought, and whether they support the topic as you understand it, or as I and others understand it. Again, why cannot those sources used to actually expand the Mass killing article to discuss Communist states there? Why we must have a separate, content POV fork article limited to Communist states, when genocide scholars do not discuss them in a vacuum, as we currently do? We need a secondary source about what Harff et al. thought, and the few out there still do not support the article as currently structured and do not rule out a rewriting or TFD/Siebert proposal. This just is not going nowhere, so I hope that TFD/Siebert can reply you on this, or correct/clarify something. Davide King (talk) 13:26, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

Just one last thing. As stated by Paul Siebert, as long as main articles about the events disagree with what we write here, all of this is irrelevant; for most of the content here, if truly due, should belong first to the main articles. If there is a contradiction, it is a NPOV, OR, SYNTH, WEIGHT, and so on and so forth violation(s), all the tags remain appropriate, and a rewrite would be necessary. We cannot even agree on the main topic, or how to interpret it, so we can continue to discuss this for months, it will be irrelevant; the fair solution would be to rewrite it together and find some common ground. As I said, I think your interpretation can easily fit TFD/Siebert proposal; it is much harder to fit ours in the current article because it is full of violations and would require a big re-structuring, which is why your calls to simply add things, criticism, analysis, etc. to the article miss our points and concerns. Davide King (talk) 13:37, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

Davide King, I apologize for the delay in responding, but here it is:

1) you asked "why do we not rename this 'Marxist-Leninist'"? I answered that question before you even asked it: as I said at the end of my previous post, "Most sources use "communist regimes", but "Marxist-Leninist regimes" is clearly referring to the same thing." For the policy, see WP:COMMONNAME.

2) you say "she has not written about many of the events..." but she does not have to. She only has to write about the topic of mass killings under communist regimes, and she did.

3) you say "Most is not all..." but that is only a problem if we are citing her for saying all. We are not. Her saying most committed politicides is her take on the topic.

4) you say "So you are saying that as long as a source uses the expression mass killing we can put it in even if the sources define mass killings differently." I am saying that mass killing is used as an undefined generic term for the terms politicide, genocide, classicide, etc. in the sources themselves, so it is not a case of sources using "mass killing" differently. Valentino uses "mass killing" differently with a specific definition, but even he also uses "mass killing as an undefined generic term (when he mentions "mass killings on a smaller scale" than his specific definition on page 91; see excerpt "ag"). We also have a source that explicitly states that "mass killing" in the field of genocide studies has a "sort of consensus" (see excerpt "g"). It is not synthesis to use the common term that reliable sources themselves use.

5) you say "lumping them all together is disputed". I assume you mean it is disputed by reliable sources, rather than wikipedia editors, but you have not provided sourcing for that. According to Michael Mann "All accounts of 20th-century mass murder include the Communist regimes. Some call their deeds genocide, though I shall not." (see excerpt "av"). If there is legitimate reliable sourcing disputing lumping them all together, then that should of course be included in the article, but you can't jut assert it. You have to base it on reliable sources.

6) you say "sources can include some and exclude others". Yes they can. The views of sources should be accurately reflected in the article where they are being cited. If you see a sentence where that is not the case, it should be fixed. But a source stating that regimes A, B, and C committed mass killing and another source stating that regimes A, C, and D committed mass killing are both discussing the same topic of mass killing under communist regimes.

7) you say "consistency does not rank high on your priorities". Considering you falsely accused me of disrespecting you in this edit, I'm surprised that you appear to be doing that to me here. I have tried to be consistent with wikipedia policies and guidelines. I think I have been and I think the article is currently.

8) you say "Communist is capitalised exactly to make it clear it is referring to Marxism-Leninism (Communist state) and not necessarily to communism". See MOS:IDEOLOGY. It says not to capitalize when referring to an ideology such as marxism-leninism and to capitalize only when referring to the proper name of a political party. The article is currently in compliance with the Manual of Style on this by using lower-case "communist regimes".

9) you say "this remains a primary source issue because they are sources as interpreted by AmateurEditor". No, see WP:PRIMARY and WP:SECONDARY. All secondary sources used in wikipedia are paraphrased by wikipedia editors unless directly quoted (which is rarely done); that doesn't make them primary sources. I have not interpreted anything from these sources that is not there is plain english. The analysis/interpretation of Harff and others about mass killings under communist regimes is not a primary source about mass killings under communist regimes. You could argue that they are primary sources about a different meta-topic (maybe "Analysis of mass killings under communist regimes"), but treating them that way would be inconsistent with both wikipedia policy and practice.

10) you say "why cannot those sources used to actually expand the Mass killing article to discuss Communist states there". They can be if you want, but that does not mean getting rid of the more focused article here. Wikipedia frequently has articles at different levels of detail and/or overlapping scope. For example, there are the articles Slavery, Slavery in the United States, Slavery among Native Americans in the United States, and History of slavery in Indiana, among other related articles. Communist mass killing, specifically, is a distinct topic found in reliable secondary sources and it is appropriate to have an article about it. It is not a POV fork any more than the various slavery articles are.

11) you say "As stated by Paul Siebert, ...". If you don't mind, I will reply to Paul Siebert's points when and where he makes them. There is no point in me also responding to your paraphrasing of him.

12) you say "We cannot even agree on the main topic, or how to interpret it". We agreed on the topic a long time ago: mass killings under communist regimes. That is a descriptive title, meaning a description of the topic, per WP:NDESC. "Mass killing" was chosen as a more neutral term than genocide, and we have since identified additional reliable sources and statements that make "mass killing" an even better choice. One source states that there is "a sort of consensus that the term 'mass killing' is much more straightforward than either genocide or politicide" (see excerpt "g"). Wheatcroft source mentions "mass killing" along with "repression" as one of the more neutral terms for the events of the USSR (see reference 30). The term "communist regimes" is also frequently found in the reliable sources and appears to be the best and most neutral choice. "Mass killings under communist regimes" likewise mirrors the neutral phrasing of one of the scholarly sources by Karlsson ("Crimes against humanity under communist regimes". If you or others no longer agree with that topic or that description, then you need to show why it is inappropriate according to wikipedia policy/guidelines/manual of style, which you have not yet done. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:59, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

(1) WP:CRITERIA, which are seen as goal rather than rules, includes precision; precision would be making it clear that the Communist regimes we are talking about are Marxist-Leninist, so we could be more precise about it, and also using the Marxist-Leninist sidebar, not communism. If communism actually refers to Communist states and Marxism-Leninism, well, we have a problem because the Communism article is about the whole movement, not 20th-century Communism. We are just confusing readers by falsely implying those regimes represented all communism, when the source themselves, as you yourself admitted, are referring to Marxism-Leninism, so I see no harm in clarifying that. What matters is what sources actually mean by Communism; they mean Communist states and Marxism-Leninism, not broader communism. Unless someone has an inner motive in wanting to associate all communism with Communist states and Marxism-Leninism, I see no reason why we should not do our readers the favour of clarify what sources actually mean by that and they are not referring to all communism.

(2) "She only has to write about the topic of mass killings under communist regimes, and she did." She did not wrote about the topic of mass killings under Communist regimes, she wrote about genocide and mass killing, the latter of which is a proposed concept and theory for killings that make no distinction in membership; it is a theory and she writes in general, not Communist regimes.

(3) "Her saying most committed politicides is her take on the topic." Her database only lists the Cambodian genocide, the Cultural Revolution, and the Tibet Uprising, and she makes no connection with communism or between them.

(4) I do not necessarily disagree with any of that but this topic should be about the analysis and theory, not the events. Because scholars do not state it as fact, and secondary sources describe them as analysis and theory. "We also have a source that explicitly states that 'mass killing' in the field of genocide studies has a 'sort of consensus'." But is it about Communist regimes or in general? I think the issue is that I first want mass killings to be discussed in general terms, not limited to Communist states, to which you seem to attribute , or interpret source as doing it, some sort of speciality that is not there.

(5) See Dallin's review of The Black Book of Communism. "Whether all these cases, from Hungary to Afghanistan, have a single essence and thus deserve to be lumped together—just because they are labeled Marxist or communist—is a question the authors scarcely discuss." A 'Red Holocaust'? A Critique of the Black Book of Communism by Jens Mecklenburg and Wolfgang Wippermann, and "On the Primacy of Ideology: Soviet Revisionists and Holocaust Deniers (In Response to Martin Malia)" by Michael David-Fox. It was even mentioned in Malia's foreword ("... commentators in the liberal Le Monde argue that it is illegitimate to speak of a single Communist movement from Phnom Penh to Paris. Rather, the rampage of the Khmer Rouge is like the ethnic massacres of third-world Rwanda, or the 'rural' Communism of Asia is radically different from the 'urban' Communism of Europe; or Asian Communism is really only anticolonial nationalism. ... conflating sociologically diverse movements is merely a stratagem to obtain a higher body count against Communism, and thus against all the left.")

(6) But they are clearly disagreeing among themselves, so there is not actually consensus for mass killings under Communist regimes as you understand it. "Some writers have connected mass killings in Stalin's USSR, Mao's China and Pol Pot's Cambodia. The thinking is that Stalin influenced Mao, who influenced Pol Pot. In all cases, mass killings were carried out as part of a policy of rapid industrialization." This an actual topic that would not violate our policies.

(7) That is your opinion; I thought you respected our views, as I respect yours, even if we disagree but I guess this is not reciprocal on your part, or perhaps that was just a misunderstanding on both parts, and we respect each other. You also clearly misunderstood here of what I stated here. It is unclear what exactly you meant by that but I agreed with Siebert's statement, which is why we no longer advocate outright deletion because there are sources that would not violate original research but they support our proposed topic of analysis and theories, not yours of mass killings as fact, rather than mass, excess deaths, which is the fact; mass killing is just one theory to categorize the killings. "I have tried to be consistent with wikipedia policies and guidelines. I think I have been and I think the article is currently." I agree with everything, which also applies to me, except the bolded part, which is our disagreement.

(8) They are capitalized as proper noun, thus no policy violations. See "... communism (noun) ... 2. The economic and political system instituted in the Soviet Union after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Also, the economic and political system of several Soviet allies, such as China and Cuba. (Writers often capitalize Communism when they use the word in this sense.) These Communist economic systems often did not achieve the ideals of communist theory. For example, although many forms of property were owned by the government in the USSR and China, neither the work nor the products were shared in a manner that would be considered equitable by many communist or Marxist theorists."

(9) They are paraphrased only through other secondary sources. i.e. we should not paraphrase what Rummel said and citing it to Rummel himself; we need to paraphrase the secondary source (Jacobs and Totten) about what Rummel said. We do this for Rummel, why should we not do the same for others? You may paraphrase them well but you need to paraphrase the secondary source (i.e. a review of Rummel), not Rummel's primary source (i.e. Rummel's work itself). You did this for Rummel, you just need to do this for all the others too. Is this more clear? "The analysis/interpretation of Harff and others about mass killings under communist regimes is not a primary source about mass killings under communist regimes." Again, the topic is not and should not be "mass killings under communist regimes" but their analysis and theories, hence why they are primary sources in that sense. "You could argue that they are primary sources about a different meta-topic (maybe 'Analysis of mass killings under communist regimes'), but treating them that way would be inconsistent with both wikipedia policy and practice." Why? That is the topic we propose because your topic is original research because it treats theories as facts, and makes no distinction between deaths (fact) and their categorisation (theory).

(10) How is that topic different? That is what Valentino actually propose according to secondary sources (Straus 2007), not what you interpreted.

(11) I agree. I also suggest you to discuss what we are talking about with both The Four Deuces and Paul Siebert because English is their primary language and I believe they can express better my main points; in short, I am afraid I may express myself in ways that do not actually support what I was trying to say, so apart from clarifying some points I asked you here, I think it is better if you discuss this with them. They can better address and explain our points.

(12) Consensus can and does change; many users are discouraged because of our long discussions, and I assure there are several more users that would make it more clear there is no consensus on the main topic. There has not been a proper AfD or RfC in a decade by now. We just need to neutrally write one that correctly summarize both sides. Again, sources are discussing mass killing in general terms, not in special Communist regimes terms, mass killing is a more straightforward term to describe non-genocide killings in general, which is why most sources are about genocide and mass killing in general or in the 20th century. ". If you or others no longer agree with that topic or that description, then you need to show why it is inappropriate according to wikipedia policy/guidelines/manual of style, which you have not yet done." I believe I have done this by providing many sources that treat this as a theory, that genocide studies are a minority school of thought and are not mainstream political science to treat this as fact, that this article should be an offset of Mass killing but first we need to put the analysis there in a section focused on Communism. As things stand, it is a content fork article because none of this is discussed in main articles about event, or at Genocide and Mass killing. Davide King (talk) 15:43, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

The terminology section provides a range of definitions from one death per year to 50,000 over five years, caused by any government action, deliberate or accidental. Some editors say lets use that definition and enumerate every case in Communist countries. But WP:SYN says, "Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources." Per policy, we need a defined topic that includes events that reliable sources place within the topic. This article would be an embarrassment to the World Anti-Communist League. But note that the sanctions for this article aren't even about ideology, they're about an ethic-nationalist dispute between Russia and Eastern European states in the Baltics, Poland and Ukraine. Somehow Pol Pot's massacres in Kampuchea have relevance to the Russian annexation of Crimea. TFD (talk) 02:34, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

You said: "Some editors say lets use that definition and enumerate every case in Communist countries". No, editors do not say that and the article does not do that. The article title/topic does not refer to that specific definition, it refers to generic "mass killing" as it is used in just about every source cited in the article. "Generic "mass killing" is most appropriate because it is generic. Please see the excerpts. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:27, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

So you are saying that as long as a source uses the expression mass killing we can put it in even if the sources define mass killings differently. To add to the confusion, we are assuming that other expressions be considered to be synonyms. TFD (talk) 04:20, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Yes, AmateurEditor literally says that the sources that use some certain terminology should be used in the article, whereas the sources that use different terminology should not be used. By doing that, a huge number of sources are either left beyond the scope or put in a subordinated position, which is a violation of our policy. We have a list of events (Great Purge, Great Chinese Famine, etc), and we must use all sources, fairly and without editorial bias, what those sources say about those events. If we do a comprehensive analysis of sources, we will see that the sources this article is based upon are minority sources. See the example provided by me in the section below. Thus, the article discusses in details if the Great Chinese famine was mass killing, democide, politicide etc, but the relative contribution of FAD1/FAD2 or entitlement famine components is totally overlooked, despite the fact that true famine experts discuss that event in those terms. The article definitely expresses minority POV and put the experts opinia in a subordinated position.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:21, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

I literally say that sources about the article's topic are the reason the article exists and are what the article must be based upon, and that sources that do not discuss the topic in general but do discuss part of the topic (such as one event, but not in the context of mass killings under communist regimes generally) can and should be included in a supplementary capacity. You have been arguing that we should draw our own OR conclusions about what sources that do not discuss mass killings under communist regimes generally intend by not doing that. AmateurEditor (talk) 06:17, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

You mix two totally unrelated questions: article's existence and article's structure. Yes, several sources exist that make the topic non-OR. That is true, and we never had any disagreement about that. However, it does not mean the structure of the article must reflect what those sources say. As I already said, must prove that the sources you are talking about reflect majority views, and I you failed to provide any evidences for that. As I already explained (and I am a little bit annoyed that I have to repeat these explanations again and again, although it is quite possible that I cannot find correct words to explain my thought), the topic covers some concrete list of events, and if different sources can be obtained when you use different terminology and/or keywords for our goggle scholar search, that means our set of sources may be incomplete, and we need to be very careful in defining the topic, otherwise some sources may be even ignored or placed in a subordinated positions relative to the sources that we voluntaristically selected as a base for the article. In connection to that, I suggest you to focus on teh Great Chinese Famine: the authors writing about "Communist mass killings"/"-cides" usually include it into the global "Communist death toll", whereas the authors who write about that event specifically usually describe it otherwise. Meanwhile, that event is responsible for up to 50% of all deaths inflicted by Communist regimes, therefore it event alone significantly change the overall picture. So far, the evidences already provided by me, and additional evidences that I have and can provide, say that GCF is not considered as mass killing/democide by most authors. Therefore, the view of Valentino, Rummel, Courtois, and few other authors should be presented as an opinion, and should not be used as a base for the article's structure.

In addition the Great Chinese Famine article tells a totally different story about that event (thus, it even does not contain the word "democide" or "mass killing"). By telling two totally different stories in two different articles we clearly and obviously violate NPOV.

I perfectly understand how and why all of that happened. This article started as the article about Cambodian genocide, which was a clear and obvious case of a mass killing (and which was recognized as genocide first by Communist regimes of Vietnam and USSR, whereas the US we tacitly supporting KR). However, to this very obvious case, other cases were being added piece by piece, and the article quickly became a non-neutral collection of anticommunist journalism.

I see two ways to fix this article. The first way, in my opinion it is preferable, is to convert the article into the description of theories (Rummel, Valentino, and few others), and supplement it with a critical analysis of them. This approach is preferable, because we don't need to tell about the events themselves, for each of them is perfectly described in specialized articles.

The second approach is to describe mass mortality events in Communist states (and probably rename it to the "Mass mortality events in Communist states", and, in a separate section, describe what Valentino et al say about them.

I already explained all of that, and I and a little bit worried that your response will be "No, this article is perfectly in agreement with our policy", but that is definitely wrong, because I persuasively demonstrated it is not. Please, provide fresh arguments if you disagree with me. --Paul Siebert (talk) 19:02, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

P.S. In a situation when we are having this and that, your attempts to pretend that the article does not violate NPOV does not look convincing. The topic may exist, but the article's structure is totally inadequate.--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:25, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, you say "Yes, several sources exist that make the topic non-OR. That is true, and we never had any disagreement about that." Well, then tell that to Davide King, who seems to think you do. If you're annoyed about having to repeat yourself, then you know how I feel. Per WP:RS/AC, if we do not currently have sourcing to justify that a particular view is a majority view, then we must present all the views as significant minority views (meaning as opinion), which is what we have done. That is, we have to present all the views on the article topic. The topic is not just some random list of events. We do not consider any and all sources that mention any of the events as sources that discuss the article topic: the topic is not just mass killings, it is mass killings under communist regimes (plural). Meaning only those sources that discuss the killing of multiple communist regimes together are the sources on which the article is based (but that must include sources that criticize such sources or just criticize the idea of lumping the regimes/killing together). Sources that focus on a single event or a single regime without lumping communist regimes' killings together are sources on which other articles for those single event or single regimes should be based. They can be cited here for facts and analysis of the individual events/regimes, but in a supplementary capacity, and cannot be what the article structure is based upon. Otherwise we have clear synthesis/OR.

I hate trying to reason by analogy or hypothetical, but for an article like Slavery in Africa you might have critics saying that there is nothing that justifies such an article because slavery has and does exist on other continents, Africa itself is hugely diverse with a long and varied history, the types of bondage described are also diverse, and it is misleading to restrict the topic to just Africa because people could be misled by omission in all sorts of ways. Wikipedia's solution to all that is not to get rid of the "Slavery in Africa" article (which is presumably reliably sourced), it is to also have other articles that are more general, more specific, and/or overlapping in all sorts of ways (again, assuming there are reliable secondary sources that justify each of them), such as Slavery, Slavery in the Ottoman Empire, Atlantic slave trade, Slavery on the Barbary Coast, Slavery in ancient Egypt, Slavery in contemporary Africa, Trans-Saharan slave trade, etc., etc., etc.

Your example of the Great Chinese Famine article not mentioning mass killing (or democide, etc.) means that that article is incomplete/missing information because we definitely do have reliable sources that characterize the Great Chinese Famine that way. Each article is supposed to be comprehensive of its topic (within reasonable level-of-detail size constraints) and this perspective is a part of it. WP:NPOV says NPOV "means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic." Also, topics define articles, so NPOV policy applies within an article/topic, not between articles/topics.

You say "This article started as the article about Cambodian genocide...". That's incorrect; the article was general to communism as a whole from the beginning. Here is the entire article as it was created with the first edit on August 3, 2009: Communist genocide refers to the genocide carried out by communist regimes accross the world. Courtois in The Black Book of Communism compared Communism and Nazism as slightly different totalitarian systems. He claims that Communist regimes have killed "approximately 100 million people in contrast to the approximately 25 million victims of Nazis" [1]. According to Dr. Kors, founder of Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), "No other system has caused as much death as communism has".[2] As you can see, the article has improved since then.

About article structure, we have to follow wikipedia policy/guidelines/MOS (such as WP:STRUCTURE) but there are few explicit rules other than being neutral. In my view, article structure should be whatever allows us to most effectively present the currently identified secondary sources on the topic in a neutral manner, so it may change as additional sources are identified. The currently identified sources discuss subtopics of terminology, totals, causes, and also details of individual regimes/events, so that is what the article does. Your suggestion to change the entire article into a "description of theories and supplement it with a critical analysis of them" is close to what we have right now in sections 1, 2, 3, and 5 (although criticism is thin, it is there, but mostly of individual sources, rather than criticism of the topic itself). Your suggestion to change the article to be "mass mortality events in Communist states", is a significant change away from the sources and appears to be OR. What source describes these events as "mass mortality events"? That kind of language is used for natural disasters (maybe some famines are characterized that way, but famines are disputed in general for this topic, which is why we have the "Debate over famines" section). It seems to me to be very non-neutral when applied to the non-controversial/non-famine events in which people were deliberately and directly killed by the regimes.

About your search results, please see Wikipedia:Search engine test (search results are not part of any policy/guideline I am aware of). We make very clear in the article currently that famines are disputed as being mass killing. Some sources do say they are and also meet wikipedia's reliable source standard, so their view should be included in wikipedia. AmateurEditor (talk) 05:11, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

• "..."we do not currently have sourcing to justify that a particular view is a majority view, then we must present all the views as significant minority views". Wrong. Per policy, we should explain the sides, fairly and without editorial bias, and the article's atricture you are advocating introduces a strong editorial bias. Furthermore the policy requires us to assigns weight to viewpoints in proportion to their prominence, which means we must make a good faith effort to evaluate prominence of each point. I made such efforts, whereas you persistently refuse to do so, and you reject my conclusions under a false pretext. You say that "search results are not part of any policy/guideline I am aware of", which looks odd, because WP:SOURCES (a policy) contains a direct reference to Wikipedia:Search engine test. Your position is fundamentally wrong, because you literally say that if two or more different points of view exists, they must be presented as opinia, and presented equally. In reality, the policy says they must be presented proportionally to their prominence (not equally), and it is our job to determine this proportion. You refuse to do so, and you are blocking my efforts to do that.
• Of course, I may be wrong. However, doesn't it look natural to represent conflicting points of view from description of facts that are universally recogrized by all parties? I am sure, no good faith person can disagree with that. What fact is universally recognized in this topic? The fact that mass mortality events did occur in some Communist states. That means that fact should be a core of the article. That fact is recognised by Courtois, Valentino, Rummel, Ellman, O'Grada, and by all country experts, genocide scholars, famine experts, etc. That means that is a point we must start with. Later, we may present views of Valentino (who claimed those deaths were strategic mass killing), Rummel, who claimed that was democide, O'Grada, who explained Chinese famine totally differently, etc. That is a normal and totally natural approach, which is totally consistent with our policy, and that will be neither original research not non-neutral description. --Paul Siebert (talk) 18:00, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, the first sentence from WP:NPOV is "All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic." The topic here is mass killings under communist regimes, which we have reliable sources to justify, (as you have acknowledged - and as the large community has acknowledged, per the results of the AfDs years ago). The structure of the article should be whatever allows us to fairly represent the content of reliable sources on this specific topic. As I tried to explain with the Slavery in Africa example, different sources choose their own topics (or frames within larger topics), which are then legitimate topics for wikipedia articles, despite potentially excluding other frames from other sources (which can have their own wikipedia articles). You want to expand the scope of this article beyond its current topic so that you can include sources that do not address this specific topic, which is original research/synthesis if there are no sources on the specific topic you propose. I have been saying that other sources that do not contain this specific topic can still contribute significant supplemental material to the article but are not sources that justify the article and determine its structure. You say that the topic itself is too restricting and excludes sources that do not agree with the topic. However, sources that explicitly disagree are definitely not excluded (and are even required to be included in the article, when identified, per NPOV). The problem is that you are assuming that sources that do not address the topic at all one way or the other are implicitly rejecting the topic, which is original research.

Yes, Wikipedia:Search engine test is referenced in the policy WP:SOURCES, but only as a way to find individual reliable sources, not as a way to determine weight between sources. Wikipedia:Search engine test warns against relying on the numbers produced by search results and it explicitly states that searches are not a legitimate method of determining notability ("A raw hit count should never be relied upon to prove notability."). Wikipedia:Search engine test explains what search engine results can and can't do and explicitly states that "search engines often will not [...] Be neutral." It also says: "Google (and other search systems) do not aim for a neutral point of view. Wikipedia does. Google indexes self-created pages and media pages which do not have a neutrality policy. Wikipedia has a neutrality policy that is mandatory and applies to all articles, and all article-related editorial activity. As such, Google is specifically not a source of neutral titles – only of popular ones. Neutrality is mandatory on Wikipedia (including deciding what things are called) even if not elsewhere, and specifically, neutrality trumps popularity."

About proportional representation of views, per WP:WEIGHT (and WP:RS/AC) all we can determine are where sources fall in the three different levels of acceptance: majority views, significant minority views, and fringe views. The proportionality we need to in representing views as their correct category (i.e. not treating a fringe view as a majority or significant minority view). I think the article currently correctly treats all the identified views as significant minority views, pending identification of a majority view at some point in the future. About "mass mortality events in some communist states", that is a significantly different article that would require sources speaking to that specific topic. Such an article would seem to include combatant war deaths, which this article excludes, and would include natural disaster deaths, which this article also excludes (famines are only included to fairly represent those sources that include them in this topic, which is acknowledged in the article to be controversial). Assuming there are reliable sources for the topic of mass mortality in communist states, or however you choose to title that, it is a different enough topic that it would be a separate article, rather than a replacement for this one. AmateurEditor (talk) 19:39, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

As schetm correctly noted below, the article's subject is events, not a narrative. That means ALL sources writing about, for example, the Great Chinese famine, must be represented equally, proportionally, and without bias. As I persuasively demonstrated, >95% sources write about that event in a totally different way than this article is doing. That happened because the selection of sources based on terminology used by them is an intrinsically flawed approach. If the article's structure does not allow us neutrally describe the topic, that means the structure is inadequate, and it must be changed. The current structure does NOT allow us to do so, moreover, it contains some general sources and country-specific that directly contradict to each other, and they are put is separate sections, which is clearly and strongly discouraged by our policy WP:STRUCTURE. That must be fixed, and I am intended to do that.

Regarding Search engine test, you must concede you were not right, because the policy contains a direct reference to it. We may argue about a context, but the fact is that the policy refers to it. And, I at least provided an example of a neutral and unbiased procedure of mainstream source identification (and you know that reliable sources say that my approach is quite correct). In contrast, you provided no alternative approach, you just say, without any evidences, that your sources are good, and those sources must be used as a core sources the article's structure is based upon.

In addition, since schetm noted that the "Causes" section is well written and well sourced, I decided to check that. Frankly speaking, I didn't review that section for several years. I am currently in the middle of that work, but my preliminary conclusion is that the section if terribly one-sided, dramatically incomplete, it contains a lot of synthesis, and it directly misenterprets the views of some authors, including Valentino himself. I was sick during the last week, so I had a time for writing that review. Now I recovered, and I return to my RL work, so I cannot tell you when the review will be posted here. However, after it will be posted, I am going to completely re-write that section, and I propose you to present your counter-arguments if you believe the current text is good.--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:11, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

Possible summary

I hope it's ok for a non-wikipedian to comment here. I read the article and came here to post about it, then I saw the thread above. I'm thinking that my post could perhaps serve as a summary of the same issues detailed above, since it seems that a summary is needed.

Anyway, here is what I wanted to say. Consider the following two propositions:

Proposition A: Mass killings took place in some/many communist states.

Proposition B: These mass killings are connected to each other, and/or to the ideology of communism.

Proposition A is a fact. Proposition B is an opinion shared by some historians. The problem with this article is that it conflates A and B as if they were the same thing, and implies that everyone who agrees with A also agrees with B. That is not true.

As far as I can tell, the discussion above is basically about this, and about whether the article should be about A or B or both. Right now it seems to be about both, but without distinguishing them (in other words, it does not explain that "mass killings took place" and "all these mass killings are connected and happened for the same reasons" are two different ideas with very different levels of academic support; one is simply a fact, the other is a highly controversial opinion). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1009:b029:2a63:d2c6:63f4:9b4:635c (talk • contribs) 01:50, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

That is a very good and fairly accurate summary. The only problem is that scholars do not actually agree that "Mass killings took place in some/many communist states." (see Valentino), which makes this article remaining as it is even worse, because it clearly does not reflect what scholarly sources say and even misrepresent them. Like us, they only agree that awful things and tragedies did indeed happen and many people have lost their lives. Instead, Proposition B is a perfect summary. What I propose is to have a single article about history of genocide and mass killings, where we discuss the views of scholars of why they happened, what can we do to avoid them happening again, etc. but without using any single label or category, whether capitalism, Communism, totalitarian, etc.

Because by using a label or category, we are indirectly implying that is the link why they happened, which is not what scholarly sources say. Even totalitarianism is not a full-agreed concept among scholars and there is no consensus that totalitarianism is the sole reason why such events and tragedies happened. Indeed, Valentino actually says that ideology alone, or even ideology in general, does not fully explain why genocide and mass killings happened.

To sign your comment, use ~~~~ Davide King (talk) 02:28, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

MjolnirPants, as I stated above, this a good summary by the IP. I hope it can help you, so that you can make your contribute. Davide King (talk) 03:54, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

A would be synthesis. It would be like mass killings in English speaking countries. Some connection between speaking English and mass killing would have to be made. There are I think two versions of B: (i) Some writers have connected mass killings in Stalin's USSR, Mao's China and Pol Pot's Cambodia. The thinking is that Stalin influenced Mao, who influenced Pol Pot. In all cases, mass killings were carried out as part of a policy of rapid industrialization. (ii) The other version is that mass killings were dictated in otherwise forgotten works of Karl Marx. Under this view, COVID-19 can be seen as the latest attempt by the Communists to wipe out the world population. Anyone who argues for A probably believes B (ii). TFD (talk) 14:20, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

The Four Deuces, this is correct. "Some writers have connected mass killings in Stalin's USSR, Mao's China and Pol Pot's Cambodia. The thinking is that Stalin influenced Mao, who influenced Pol Pot. In all cases, mass killings were carried out as part of a policy of rapid industrialization." Is this not exactly what Crimes against humanity under communist regimes. Research review? Can you summarize what this source is arguing? My understanding is that it is B (i). Davide King (talk) 10:22, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

I don't think it is arguing anything, since it is a review study summarizing what others have argued. It does however confirm what I said. The "geographical scope" is the USSR, China and Cambodia. The reason for the mass killings was rapid industrialization: "what marked the beginning of the unbalanced Russian modernisation process that was to have such terrible consequences?" It mentions that some writers see the origins of mass killings in Marx's writings. Unfortunately, there is very little literature that compares mass killings under Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot and the literature that does exist mostly enumerates mass killings rather than explain their ideological reasons. TFD (talk) 14:02, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

The Four Deuces, I agree, especially that the reason was not necessarily ideology but rapid industrialization. Do you agree, then, that this source may be used for B (ii)? We could use it to summarize what they have argued within the narrative of Victims of Communism article. The problem of this article is that it uses too many primary sources (perhaps because secondary sources that support don't actually exists...), especially for the Proposed causes section about "he said, she said." Rather than using a secondary or tertiary source like this one, they use a primary source of the authors themselves. When you cite the author to say what the author say, it's a use of a primary source, right? Davide King (talk) 14:20, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

If you use a source for the opinion of its author, it is a primary source. While allowed, I would avoid this because it requires us to interpret the passage and determine its degree of acceptance. The only exception would be direct quotes that had been reported in secondary sources. So for example in the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, it is useful to cite the text of the amendment. TFD (talk) 16:59, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

The Four Deuces, so are those tags accurate? I just tagged the obvious one, but essentially the whole body is like this, with just a few exceptions. Davide King (talk) 23:49, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Davide King, those are not primary sources. See WP:PRIMARY, which says "Primary sources are original materials that are close to an event, and are often accounts written by people who are directly involved. They offer an insider's view of an event, a period of history, a work of art, a political decision, and so on." ... "A secondary source provides an author's own thinking based on primary sources, generally at least one step removed from an event. It contains an author's analysis, evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis of the facts, evidence, concepts, and ideas taken from primary sources." ... "Tertiary sources are publications such as encyclopedias and other compendia that summarize primary and secondary sources. Wikipedia is considered to be a tertiary source.[h] Many introductory undergraduate-level textbooks are regarded as tertiary sources because they sum up multiple secondary sources." A primary source for this article would be something like original documents from the USSR with lists of people to be executed without trial. The sources used in this article use in-sentence attribution because we are trying to follow WP:RS/AC, which says "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." AmateurEditor (talk) 03:20, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

They are primary sources in the sense that any interpretation requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation, as we do for Rummel with Jacobs and Totten. Either way, we should not be citing the authors themselves to say what they think; we need secondary sources; if we cannot find secondary sources, and they need to be specifically about the topic and not passing mentions, it means they are undue. For example, we should not be citing Conquest for In the 2007 revision of his book The Great Terror, Robert Conquest estimates that while exact numbers will never be certain, the communist leaders of the Soviet Union were responsible for no fewer than 15 million deaths. We could be citing Wheatcroft, Stephen G. (1999), who says The arguments about excess mortality are far more complex than normally believed. R. Conquest, The Great Terror: A Re-assessment (London, 1992) does not really get to grips with the new data and continues to present an exaggerated picture of the repression. The view of the 'revisionists' has been largely substantiated (J. Arch Getty & R. T. Manning (eds), Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives (Cambridge, 1993)). The popular press, even TLS and The Independent, have contained erroneous journalistic articles that should not be cited in respectable academic articles. Too bad he is writing about "victims of Stalinism", which are "a matter of political judgement" (Ellman 2002), and like Conquest, they did not write about mass killing or lumped all Communist states together as we do, but that at least would be a secondary source for what Conquest said. See? Davide King (talk) 06:36, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

Davide King, these are not primary sources for the topic of mass killings under communist regimes. I linked you to the policy/guideline pages and quoted directly from them: we are supposed to identify the various opinions as the opinions of the particular authors, per WP:RS/AC. Finding a source that criticizes another source means you include both, it doesn't mean that one cancels out the other. Redefining the secondary sources as primary sources and then arguing that we need "secondary sources" for the analyses is nonsense. If you read what I posted before (and bolded for you), analysis and opinion is one of the characteristics of a secondary source. Primary sources are documents of the base facts and secondary sources are authors' "analysis, evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis of the facts", which is what we have here. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:57, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Original interpretations or opinions are primary sources. Secondary sources report those opinions. As a tertiary source, Wikipedia articles must rely primarily on secondary sources. What confuses some editors is that the same source may contain all three types of source at one time. It would be helpful if we had secondary sources that compared and contrasted various studies on mass killings under communist regimes. Unfortunately none exist since there is no reliable literature about the topic of this article. Instead this article combines material to create a novel synthesis. TFD (talk) 03:25, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

You say "Original interpretations or opinions are primary sources." No, they aren't. Original interpretations or opinions about the facts are what secondary sources do. See WP:PRIMARY, which says "Primary sources are original materials that are close to an event, and are often accounts written by people who are directly involved. They offer an insider's view of an event, a period of history, a work of art, a political decision, and so on." ... "A secondary source provides an author's own thinking based on primary sources, generally at least one step removed from an event. It contains an author's analysis, evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis of the facts, evidence, concepts, and ideas taken from primary sources." AmateurEditor (talk) 03:36, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

I believe The Four Deuces gave you a better explanation than I ever could, and that's exactly what I was talking about. Another thing is that many sources, especially at "Proposed causes", are mainly about Communist state than Mass killing or the topic of this article, and are also non-scholarly, undue, or by non-experts, even if properly attributed and everything; they need a secondary source for their interpretation, as explained by TFD. The reason why you or someone else could not provide such secondary sources is because "none exist since there is no reliable literature about the topic of this article. Instead this article combines material to create a novel synthesis." Davide King (talk) 10:15, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

As I said, some source may contain all three types of sources at one time. If it expresses a novel theory about the information it analyzes, it becomes a primary source for that theory. A biographer of Caesar for example will use all available sources to write about his life, which is a secondary source. But when he starts talking about his own theories, it becomes a primary source for those theories. Note that we attach the description reliable to secondary sources. Reliability relates to facts, i.e., the facts established by the author. But opinions are not facts and we don't require reliable secondary sources for them, since opinions expressed are primary sources. Alex Jones' website for example is just as reliable a source for what he says as is a peer-reviewed article for what its author says. The difference is that one is a reliable secondary source for the facts while the other is not. I guess the confusion is that secondary sources analyze primary sources to determine facts, but they also use those facts to determine opinions. Facts and oipnions are different things. While our main concern about facts is their accuracy, our main concern about opinions is their degree of acceptance. TFD (talk) 04:14, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

I will give you an example. There are no reliable primary sources for the life of Caesar and no primary sources that say he was assassinated in 44 B.C., since that dating system had not been developed. It requires "evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis of the facts, evidence, concepts, and ideas taken from primary sources" to determine that date. TFD (talk) 04:53, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

The current sources that analyze and interpret mass killings under communist regimes are rightly considered reliable secondary sources on the topic of mass killings under communist regimes. If you want to call them primary sources on the different topic of "analysis of mass killings under communist regimes", that's irrelevant to this article. If you want to have an article about the topic of "analysis of mass killings under communist regimes", you need reliable secondary sources for that topic. All secondary sources contain opinions, whether you call it evaluation, interpretation, or whatever else. There are three categories of degrees of acceptance for secondary sources in Wikipedia: fringe, significant minority, and majority. Until evidence is presented that the identified sources are fringe or majority views, we rightly treat them as significant minority views. AmateurEditor (talk) 04:39, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I cannot actively participate in this discussion right now, but, Since David pinged me, let me explain my position again.

Surely, mass deaths took place in the countries ruled by Communist regimes, and that is an objective fact. This fact is undeniable, but the interpretation provided in this article is one-sided and distorted. As an example, let's take a look at and the main mass mortality event the Great Chinese famine. This event alone is responsible for about 50% of what is called by some authors "Communist death toll". Therefore, if this event, along with other mass mortality events is a topic of this article, the Great Chinese famine is expected to be described as "Communist mass killing", "democide", "politicide" or other "-cide" in majority of sources writing about it. However, if that is not the case, then by using this terminology we are leaving a significant amount of sources beyond the scope. In other words, if the search phrase great chinese famine and "mass killing" great chinese famine yields the same sources, the topic was defined correctly. However, if these two search produce totally different sets of sources, then the topic was defined incorrectly. As you can see, the first scenario takes place: by using "mass killing" or "democide" or other "-cides" during a search, we artificially narrow the range of sources telling about "Great Chinese famine". Thus O'Grada, a renown famine expert, never uses the term "mass killing" in his article about the Great Chinese famine. Therefore, is we use, for example, Valentino, to define a topic and then add the O'Grada article to provide additional information, we thereby imply that O'Grada shares Valentino's views, although there is no evidences that that is the case. In other words, by doing that, we are engaged in original research, which is not allowed per our policy.

If we take a look at the whole body of sources telling about mass mortality events in Communist states, we will see that few of them (e.g. Cambodian genocide) are universally seen as genocide, whereas others are described otherwise. Only few sources describe all mass mortality events in Communist states as genocide or politicide or mass killing etc. Moreover, even genocide scholars themselves, such as Harff, do not consider the most deadly events such as Great Chinese famine as mass killing a.k.a demo/politicide (it is not listed in the mass killing database). That means the article is dramatically non-neutral, and it is a piece of original research. The article must be totally rewritten, and it must tell about theories by Valentino or few other scholars, and about claims made by some authors, such as Courtois, and explain who support them (they do have a significant support), and who cricitise them (there is a lot of criticism). And, the description of the events themselves must be removed from this article, because it is written from the the point of view of the scholars who share the "mass killing" concept and ignores the views of majority of authors.--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:45, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, this, this, this. Why can't such defenders of the article understand this? The fact Crimes against humanity, Genocide, and Mass killing do not really discuss Communist states as a monolithic, if they do at all, apart a few cases, is proof that Crimes against humanity under communist regimes and Mass killings under communist regimes, apart from being original research and synthesis per reasons outlined by Siebert, are content POV forks. Of course, Wikipedia is not a reliable source in itself and there is WP:OTHER, but assuming good faith, if Communist states are such notable cases of crimes against humanity, genocide, and mass killing, surely they would be at least discussed in such articles in the first place? I noticed only now but the fact there is an actual database of mass killing, operated by a respected genocide scholar, who we misrepresent, among others, in this article, and it doesn't include mass killings by Communist states (apart the few exceptions also mentioned by Siebert, e.g. Cambodian genocide), it is an indictment against this own article and 'proof' that it is original research. It essentially contradicts the whole By state section, for any relevant scholar (not any author), who describes the event as something (in contrast to scholars who do not describe it as mass killing), it belongs to that article if a significant minority view, not here. The fact this article is admittedly based on minority views is the problem. When there is no consensus among genocide scholars and scholars of Communism, and among themselves in their own respective fields, original research, synthesis, and other serious policy and guidelines violations are only natural; they shouldn't be though, they are serious violations. Davide King (talk) 08:51, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

I have boldly tagged the section for such reasoning. In short, this whole article, as currently structured, can only be supported if there is consensus among scholars (especially genocides scholars and scholars of Communism); if all we have are minority views, of which we give undue weight to authors and non-experts over scholars and specialists, this article as currently structured cannot exist, and needs to be rewritten per above. If that is the standard, similar articles about capitalist, Christian, colonial, fascist, Muslim, and the like can be easily created because there are similar minority views; of course, I hope this is not the standard because it would be original research and synthesis but then this article exists and seems to be the only one where our policies and guidelines do not apply. Davide King (talk) 12:05, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

Davide King, please read WP:RS/AC. It does not support what you say about there needing to be a consensus among scholars. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:02, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Sorry but the article is titled Mass killings under communist regimes, and despite the body being full of admittedly minority views (significant ones for you), the lead states it as fact, including the terminology, which the body now at least say is only an attempt, and I still think it is synthesis; I mean, the whole article acts like there is consensus among scholars, so Paul Siebert's diagnosis is still correct, and the article needs a name change and a rewrite. WP:RS/AC also says Editors should avoid original research especially with regard to making blanket statements based on novel syntheses of disparate material. Stated simply, any statement in Wikipedia that academic consensus exists on a topic must be sourced rather than being based on the opinion or assessment of editors. Review articles, especially those printed in academic review journals that survey the literature, can help clarify academic consensus. While the article may not directly implies such a consensus exists, it makes it obvious indirectly, and is also why many users who support the article, and who have less knowledge than you do (even if we disagree), take it for granted. I mean, the real reason this article still exists is because many users are convinced there is consensus among scholars, for God forbid one say "mass deaths took place in the countries ruled by Communist regimes, and that is an objective fact. This fact is undeniable, but the interpretation provided in this article is one-sided and distorted", and it is full of original research and synthesis, exactly because there is no such consensus and sources used to support the article are either misrepresented or non-experts. Davide King (talk) 10:11, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

"Mass killings under communist regimes" is very much a fact and the lead correctly states it as such. I am not thrilled with the wording of the last sentence in the lead about terms, but it's ok, I guess. I have used the term "significant minority" in discussions here because it has a very specific meaning on Wikipedia and you should not understand that as me saying I think they are actual minority views. Views included in the article are assumed to be "significant minority" for weight purposes views if there is no documentation of them being either of the other two weight categories (fringe or majority views). AmateurEditor (talk) 04:26, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, since you say you will be inactively participating in the discussion, I will respond to you comments in detail and you can replay whenever you have time.

1) You say "Surely, mass deaths took place in the countries ruled by Communist regimes, and that is an objective fact. This fact is undeniable, but the interpretation provided in this article is one-sided and distorted." I don't think anything in the article is distorted, but I can certainly believe that there are missing interpretations since most of the effort on the apologist side has been here on the talk page, rather than doing the work of contributing to the article itself. My contributions have been focused over the years on demonstrating with sources that there is no synthesis or original research related to the existence of the topic as expressed in the descriptive article title. The solution to missing interpretations is to add them.

2) You give the example of the Great Chinese Famine and say that if it is part of the topic, then it "is expected to be described as "Communist mass killing", "democide", "politicide" or other "-cide" in majority of sources writing about it." I disagree: even among the sources on the topic of mass killings under communist regimes generally (which is the more appropriate pool of sources), an event does not have to be included by the majority of sources to be a part of the topic and a part of this article. It is demonstrably a part of the topic if at least one of the reliable secondary sources we have identified includes it as part of the topic. The famines are the most controversial part of this topic among the communist mass killing sources themselves, which is why we have a separate section devoted to explaining that, so I would not expect a majority of sources about the Great Chinese Famine which are not general communist mass killing sources to use mass killing terminology.

3) You say that adding information on the Great Chinese Famine by O'Grada we would be implying that he agrees with characterizing it as Valentino or others do. I think that is not necessarily true because it depends on the particulars of what is written.

4) You say "even genocide scholars themselves, such as Harff, do not consider the most deadly events such as Great Chinese famine as mass killing a.k.a demo/politicide (it is not listed in the mass killing database)". Valentino is also a genocide scholar and does consider it mass killing (Rummel also changed his mind in 2005), and the article directly acknowledge the controversy over famines in the "Debate over famines" section. It is not original research to include famines in the list of events when we have sources that include it. The list should be a superset of all the events listed in all the reliable sources, with the controversies explained. That is basically what we have now.

5) You say "The article must be totally rewritten, and it must tell about theories by Valentino or few other scholars, and about claims made by some authors, such as Courtois, and explain who support them (they do have a significant support), and who cricitise them (there is a lot of criticism)." The article currently does tell about the "theories" (I would prefer "analysis") of Valentino and (more than) a few other scholars. It names the scholars in the sentences with their ideas. It also does currently include criticism (and any missing criticism should be added, as I said in point 1 above). Totally rewriting the article is unnecessary, in my opinion.

6) You say "And, the description of the events themselves must be removed from this article, because it is written from the the point of view of the scholars who share the "mass killing" concept and ignores the views of majority of authors." This is a niche mainstream topic with a relatively small number of scholars but uncontroversial enough to be written about in mainstream newspapers in the US. A "majority of authors" do not address the topic at all, but that is not grounds for removing details about specific events from the sources that do address the topic. The mass killing concept itself is not controversial, it is the details that are controversial (such as which term/definition is best, which events were deliberate killing, and which death toll estimates are most accurate). The article should reflect all the information about the topic (including all the criticism) found in reliable sources. AmateurEditor (talk) 06:01, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

"'Mass killings under communist regimes' is very much a fact and the lead correctly states it as such." Too bad it's not. The fact is that "mass deaths took place in the countries ruled by Communist regimes." We need scholars to actually draw a link; the global database of mass killings, which lists the 1959 Tibetan uprising (genocide and politicide), the Cambodian genocide (genocide and politicide), and the Cultural Revolution (politicide), make no link between them or communism; they just happened to take place under self-professed Communist parties in Eastern Asia, so why should such structured article exists? Most mass killings happened in Afro-Eurasia on vastly different regime-types, do we write Mass killings in Afro-Eurasia or something? Both are original research, synthesis, and violate NPOV.

Ironically, what you believe of the topic can be easily discussed in Siebert's proposal; it would just be neutral and not be original research. The problem remains that such sources are secondary sources when discussing the events, but since they are minority views, they must be attributed; if they are attributed and we provide their interpretation, they become primary sources, and we need secondary sources that explain their interpretation and draw a link. As things stand, apart a few exceptions where the interpretation is sourced to someone other than the author, it's authors paraphrased by AmateurEditor, and not by secondary sources. Either way, I agree we should do something about it rather than just discuss it because you, as the principal author of this article, are of course convinced of your work and believe the article is mostly fine as it is, and nothing is going to change this; I just don't feel doing a draft alone, and wish that Buidhe, Czar, The Four Deuces, and Paul Siebert could help in writing it, so that we can compare both articles, or something, and find a way to move forward.

P.S. "This is a niche mainstream topic with a relatively small number of scholars but uncontroversial enough to be written about in mainstream newspapers in the US." I am not surprised because, as I have stated, this may well be caused by our own biases, including geographical ones and political (such as the double genocide theory and the Prague Declaration), as reflected by memory studies and experts (Ghodsee 2014, Neumayer 2017, Neumayer 2020, and Dujisin 2021, among others), and this should be taken seriously and not dismissed. I would note that WP:SOURCES put them at last place, after university-level textbooks, books published by respected publishing houses, and magazines. Wheatcroft 1999 noted that the popular press "have contained erroneous journalistic articles that should not be cited in respectable academic articles." This is such a controversial article, we need academic and scholarly sources. If you cannot provide such secondary sources for their interpretations, they are either undue or original research; with no secondary sources, parts are going to be removed, and you will see we will have to rewrite it anyway in light of this. Davide King (talk) 15:13, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

We do have academic and scholarly sources that actually draw a link. See again excerpts i, ag, aj, bw, and others. You say "...if they are attributed and we provide their interpretation, they become primary sources". The primary/secondary source distinction is relative to the topic. Since the topic here is mass killing under communist regimes, these sources are secondary relative to that. Valentino's work would be considered a primary source on the topic of "Valentino's publications" or something like that. WP:PRIMARY gives this example: "An account of a traffic incident written by a witness is a primary source of information about the event". WP:SECONDARY gives this example: "A book by a military historian about the Second World War might be a secondary source about the war, but where it includes details of the author's own war experiences, it would be a primary source about those experiences." And as I mentioned before, per WP:RS/AC, analysis from secondary sources on any topic that do not represent a general academic consensus on that topic are always supposed to be attributed to the authors in a wikipedia article ("...individual opinions should be identified as those of particular, named sources"). But naming the authors in-sentence that does not change them from secondary to primary sources because the topic and the sources' relation to it is unchanged. AmateurEditor (talk) 01:19, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

"Since the topic here is mass killing under communist regimes ... " This is the problem; this should not be the topic because it is original research and synthesis stated as fact, directly or indirectly, that there exists an actually literature that lumps all Communist states together. The topic should be as outlined by The Four Deuces and Paul Siebert, or an analysis of genocide and mass killing in general. The quotes said it themselves; they are secondary sources only about the events, about their interpretation they become a primary source. "A book by a military historian about the Second World War might be a secondary source about the war, but where it includes details of the author's own war experiences, it would be a primary source about those experiences." Changes this to "A book by Rummmel about events in the Communist states might be a secondary source about the events themselves, but where it includes details of the author's own interpretation of the events, it would be a primary source about those interpretations." Hence, we need a secondary source to see whether they actually support the topic as you understand it, or as I and others understand it. Davide King (talk) 13:02, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

You say "this should not be the topic because it is original research and synthesis stated as fact, directly or indirectly, that there exists an actually literature that lumps all Communist states together". The topic is clearly not original research or synthesis given the secondary sources we have (and that dispute was ended a long time ago by the two "keep" determinations at the last two AfD discussions in 2010). See excerpts i (from a Rummel essay titled "How Many did Communist Regimes Murder?"), ag (Valentino states "Communist regimes have been responsible for this century's most deadly episodes of mass killing. Estimates of the total number of people killed by communist regimes range as high as 110 million..."; the 110 million figure he mentioned comes from Rummel's democide work, by the way), aj (Bellamy states "Between 1945 and 1989, communist regimes massacred literally millions of civilians. A conservative estimate puts the total number of civilians deliberately killed by communists after the Second World War between 6.7 million and 15.5 million people, with the true figure probably much higher..."), and many others. Clearly they do lump communist states together. The article is about the mass killings and it properly contains analysis of the mass killings from secondary sources, but the topic of the article is not the analysis itself, nor should it be. If you want the topic to change to be the analysis, rather than the mass killing itself, then you would indeed need secondary sources for that topic, which we do not have. Since we do not have such sources, we cannot change this article to that topic or even create a separate article on that topic. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:26, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

I will try to keep this short. No one is disputing that deaths occurred but you need to provide secondary sources for what Valentino et al. said because neither I nor Siebert dispute that such scholars (Courtois, Valentino) proposed the theory; the problem is that you see this as fact rather than a disputed theory among scholars. So quoting such authors, the ones who propose the concept and theory, is problematic because (1) they are the minority, (2) they only say that many deaths occurred under Communist states, (3) we need a secondary source that support your analysis of Valentino et al. I clearly asked you a secondary source that review Valentino et al. in support of your analysis.

"Clearly they do lump communist states together." That does not mean we should do the same. They also do not discuss them in a vacuum; Valentino's Final Solutions is about genocide and mass killing in the 20th century, so why should this be a separate article rather than be a section of Mass killing? TFD is right that "[s]ince there is a body of literature that connects mass killings by Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, it would be a section in a proposed mass killings article and would probably be large enough to spin into its own article, leading back to what we have now", without original research.

"The article is about the mass killings ..." which is synthesis because scholars disagree about the events being mass killings; they are mass death events, some scholars have proposed a theory of mass killing about it, but it is a theory, not a fact, and is what Siebert and I want to discuss. "... and it properly contains analysis of the mass killings from secondary sources, but the topic of the article is not the analysis itself, nor should it be." It should be because otherwise it is synthesis and POV fork, as main articles contradict this.

"If you want the topic to change to be the analysis, rather than the mass killing itself, then you would indeed need secondary sources for that topic, which we do not have. Since we do not have such sources, we cannot change this article to that topic or even create a separate article on that topic." Ironic, because that actually applies to your proposed topic. TFD/Siebert and mine's proposed topic is actually supported by secondary sources because they treat this is a theory, not a fact; the fact is that mass deaths occurred, mass killing is the theory. This article can be easily rewritten if we actually follow sources and remove such synthesis.

P.S. Genocide studies is a minority school of thought and genocide scholarship rarely appears in mainstream disciplinary journals (Verdeja 2012), meaning this topic should be a about the theories of the events, not as fact or the events themselves, but sure, you are right (sarcasm). Davide King (talk) 14:49, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

"I clearly asked you a secondary source that review Valentino et al. in support of your analysis" If you want to redefine the topic to be about the theories, rather than the killing, then you need to find reliable sources for that. Insisting that the secondary sources about the current topic are primary sources for a different topic is irrelevant.

"why should this be a separate article rather than be a section of Mass killing?" It should be both. The separate article just allows for a greater level of detail.

""The article is about the mass killings ..." which is synthesis because scholars disagree". That's not what WP:SYNTHESIS means. Disagreement between sources on a topic is normal. AmateurEditor (talk) 20:23, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

I am glad you were able to summarize your response so concisely. Let me respond to such points. (1) That is precisely what I want to do, so we can agree on this. What I disagree is the rest; I do not need to find reliable sources because they are already here, they are just misrepresented to imply mass killing is a fact rather than a proposed theory or categorization, which is proposed by a minority within a minority but is clearly relevant and worth discussing. Such sources as Straus 2007 and secondary sources that analyze Valentino, and do not support your views but Paul Siebert's and mine. They remain primary sources for their interpretations; why the hell should we be citing Valentino and all others to their own work rather than secondary sources like Straus 2007 and others? This is a recipe for original research and synthesis, which can be easily avoided if you use secondary sources, which you will see support our claims.

(2) The problem is that first Mass killing should have been expanded and only later this could have been created; instead, as things stand, this article acts as a coatrack for that and misrepresent sources. Indeed, this whole article was created as a troll attempt, and then became the synthesis mess it remains to this day.

(3) The problem is they are misrepresented to support your topic (as you understand it) rather than ours (as backed by secondary sources), which better reflects what sources actually say. Mass mortality events are the fact and how sources treat the topic; the controversial, minority theory is that all those events were mass killing, which may be true only for three specific periods of three different Communist states out of dozens and dozens. This article mixes the two and treats the latter as a fact or majority, consensus view among scholars, when genocide studies is a minority within a minority, not mainstream political science. Davide King (talk) 22:15, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, you should not be adding tags to the article that you do not have time to discuss on the talk page (the template usage notes state: "Drive-by tagging is strongly discouraged. The editor who adds the tag should discuss concerns on the talk page, pointing to specific issues that are actionable within the content policies. In the absence of such a discussion, or where it remains unclear what the NPOV violation is, the tag may be removed by any editor."). Such tags were removed in the past because the discussion had ended, which is one of the triggers also in the "Learn how and when to remove these template messages" link in the template itself. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:12, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Paul Siebert has been editing this article long enough not to be considered a drive-by editor. This approaches a personal attack which is not conducive to our long term goal of producing a good article. TFD (talk) 03:27, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

I didn't call Paul a drive-by editor. He stated "Unfortunately, I cannot actively participate in this discussion right now..." Adding tags that require active discussion on the talk page with no intention of discussing them afterward is called "drive-by tagging" in the template usage notes and it is inappropriate. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:33, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

The key word here is "actively", which means I will not be able to reply promptly. That does not mean I am not going to participate at all. And, I added the tag because the discussion has resumed, and, by the way, the previous discussion never lead to any consensus.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:14, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Fine, but you've promised to resume discussion "in close future" before and then gone quiet for months. You can't expect tags to stay up in the absence of active discussion (and when I removed tags last time I gave the reason in my edit summary, so you saying in your edit summary adding them "I do not understand why the tags are constantly being removed" is very strange). Per WP:WTRMT, item 7, the tag can be removed when "the discussion is dormant, and there is no other support for the template". Consensus does not have to be achieved in a discussion for the discussion to be dormant. AmateurEditor (talk) 04:13, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

I hate to be that guy but if there is anyone to have a conflict of interest, that is you, as you have authored almost 70% of this article, and I understand you put a lot of work to it and it sucks we want to rewrite but we ardently believe that it fails our policies and guidelines, and a rewrite is necessary. I think the tags are appropriate (I was the one to first add them to the two sections, Siebert simply moved them to the lead through the multiple issues tag), as there is a significant and well-argued dissident view, otherwise you wouldn't have lost all this time to engage with us, if we were just spouting nonsense or without legitimate reasons. Davide King (talk) 10:20, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

The amount of time I spend responding to arguments here is not a reflection of their quality or legitimacy. It is a reflection of my available free time. I am very, very familiar with the article and most of its sources, so I imagine it takes me less time to respond than it would others. AmateurEditor (talk) 04:13, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

That is a bit disrespectful then. About the tags, I think they should stay. You may have well been right in removing them months ago because both Paul Siebert and I didn't respond to the talk page but now we're here, and I think our reasoning is still legitimate; more users would also agree with us, if this wasn't such a long story to summarize and understand. Certainly, TFD is right about why the primary source tags are appropriate; they are secondary sources for the events but primary sources for the interpretations. We need secondary sources for the latter, and if as you say, they are significant, this article is supported by reliable sources, and doesn't violate original research and yadda, yadda, yadda, it should be very easy to provide them; otherwise, they're going to be removed as either undue or original research, and you will see the article will have to be rewritten anyway in light of this. There just isn't any scholarly literature about the topic as you and the current article interpret/propose/structure it. Davide King (talk) 15:32, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Rereading my comment again, I don't think there is anything disrespectful in it. It simply can take longer to respond to a low-quality or illegitimate argument with lots of component elements than to a clear and high-quality comment, so the amount of time it takes to respond to any given comment is not a good indicator of that comments quality/legitimacy. The tags should stay as long as there is a reason for them to stay, as described in the how-to guide here. The primary source tags are not appropriate, as I explained above. AmateurEditor (talk) 01:29, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

"The tags should stay as long as there is a reason for them to stay, as described in the how-to guide here." I agree, and I think they are warranted again now. 15, this was a good edit; now we just need to also reflect this in the body, requiring some restructuring, rewriting, renaming, whatever will be necessary. "The primary source tags are not appropriate, as I explained above." They are absolutely appropriate because they are only secondary sources for the events, they are primary sources for their interpretation, which is what they are about in that case, hence the tag. The Four Deuces gave the correct reading of the policy. Davide King (talk) 12:55, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

Again, the sources tagged as primary are actually secondary sources for the topic of mass killings under communist regimes. Analysis is what you find in secondary sources, but the analysis itself is not the topic itself. Those tags should be removed. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:30, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

This is the problem, the main topic is still the problem, and we do not agree on it or have different interpretations, which can only be solved through secondary sources (they support Siebert's analysis). You focus on the events, while the topic is about the interpretations and theories. This is why the article is original research and synthesis because (1) it lumps all Communist states together as a monolithic, (2) they are not connected by most scholars (the only possible literature is TFD's "Some writers have connected mass killings in Stalin's USSR, Mao's China and Pol Pot's Cambodia. The thinking is that Stalin influenced Mao, who influenced Pol Pot. In all cases, mass killings were carried out as part of a policy of rapid industrialization."), just like killings in capitalist, Christian, fascist, Muslim regimes, etc. are not connected, and (3) it treats the few authors who do that as the majority, rather than minority, by giving them unwarranted weight by treating it as fact or consensus, i.e. what Siebert laments. I think the policy is clear and we need secondary sources for the interpretations (where is the noticeboard to discuss this?) I mean, we do that for Rummel by citing Jacobs and Tottens, why should we not do the same for all the others, so what is the fuss? Perhaps because you could not find secondary sources for them too, meaning they are undue? Hence why, unless secondary sources like Jacobs and Tottens are provided for the others, they should be removed. Davide King (talk) 14:35, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

When you say "...which can only be solved through secondary sources" you appear to mean tertiary sources. Please re-review the differences between primary, secondary, and tertiary sources. We have secondary sources for this article on the topic of mass killings under communist regimes, which is all we need. Per WP:GNG, "A topic is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list when it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject," [...] ""Sources" should be secondary sources, as those provide the most objective evidence of notability." Per WP:PSTS, "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources and, to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources and primary sources. Secondary or tertiary sources are needed to establish the topic's notability and to avoid novel interpretations of primary sources." WP:SECONDARY states "Wikipedia articles usually rely on material from reliable secondary sources. Articles may make an analytic, evaluative, interpretive, or synthetic claim only if that has been published by a reliable secondary source." That is what we have here. WP:PRIMARY sources would be documentation of the events themselves, rather than the analysis of it. WP:TERTIARY sources are what would be what "helpful in providing broad summaries of topics that involve many primary and secondary sources, and may be helpful in evaluating due weight, especially when primary or secondary sources contradict each other." AmateurEditor (talk) 20:46, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

I do not see how this affects anything I wrote. Yes, they are tertiary sources but become secondary sources for the interpretation of Valentino et al. Which is why we should use them rather than cite the work in which the author said such, as we currently do in most of the article. The sources are there, which is why we are not even advocating deletion, the problem is the topic and the fact sources are misrepresented, exactly because we do not use such tertiary sources to verify whether the authors support the topic as you understand it. The topic should either be the events but only limited to Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot (so no under communist regimes), or the narrative and interpretations, the controversial theory (rejected or criticized by most country specialist and other scholars), proposed by some genocide scholars (minority and not yet mainstream) that all those mass mortality events under Communist regimes (fact) are mass killings, the whole body counting, that those were "victims of Communism" (anti-communist, right-wing authors, etc.), its criticism, etc. The current topic is original research and synthesis because it conflates mass mortality events with mass killings and it describes it as fact. If I recall correctly, in the past you argued to not bold Mass killings under communist regimes (I do not remember the exact reason but I agree with it), yet it is now bolded, the lead fails our policies in outlining the topic, including criticism, controversy, and the rest. Davide King (talk) 22:25, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

Primary sources and their tagging

In regard to this, it is coming from the same user who wrote there can be no more reliable source for Valentino's analysis than Valentino himself. As I explained here, that is a mockery of our policies and guidelines. What is absurd is not us pointing out that Valentino did not connect Communist states, or communism and mass killing, as reported by actual, independent secondary sources (which say Valentino supports Communist mass killing as a subtype category of mass killing, not mass killings under Communist regimes, and were not ideologically driven but resulted from the same motivations as non-Communist states) but the mockery of our own policies and guidelines, which say sources must be secondary and independent of the authors when we are discussing what they think or have said. Let us summarize primary, secondary, and tertiary sources on this article:

1. Primary sources are Communist states (about the events) and authors (about their own interpretations).
2. Secondary and tertiary sources are authors writing about the events (i.e. mainly saying what happened for key and uncontroversial facts rather than saying why or giving their own interpretation) and sources summarizing what such authors think and have said (what we actually need to verify the authors' interpretation).

Our policies and guidelines are clear, and the primary source tags, or similar tags, are warranted. I did discuss this with AmateurEditor (you can see here our discussion), so there is no need for them to reply (we agree to disagree). In my view, Wikipedia:Reliable sources is clear about it, and WP:PRIMARY says:

A book by a military historian about the Second World War might be a secondary source about the war, but where it includes details of the author's own war experiences, it would be a primary source about those experiences.

[My example would be:]

A book by Valentino about the events in Communist states might be a secondary source about the events themselves, but where it includes details of the author's own interpretation of the events, it would be a primary source about their own interpretation.

[The differences were bolded.]

I do not see any difference, and any of you? This is the reason why the whole article is original research and synthesis; for the most part, we are actually relying on primary sources by the authors for their interpretations, rather than relying on secondary and tertiary sources that do that for us. Once this is fixed, the topic, and our understanding and interpretation of it (which is probably the main issue of contention) will be much clearer, and you will see it would be much different but in a good way, i.e. neutrally written.

References

• Straus, Scott (April 2007). "Review: Second-Generation Comparative Research on Genocide". World Politics. 59 (3). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press: 476–501. doi:10.1017/S004388710002089X. JSTOR 40060166. S2CID 144879341.

Davide King (talk) 23:52, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

I see a difference. The sources that provide interpretation of facts are secondary sources. The real problem is that Valentino's views are significantly misinterpreted by cherry-picking quotes from him and ignoring or distorting his main concept, as I explained above.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:57, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Could you please clarify the difference? Because I actually agree with what you wrote, so perhaps I did not explain myself good? "The sources that provide interpretation of facts are secondary sources." My understanding is that they are only secondary when we are using a tertiary source, i.e. we are using a secondary source for what Valentino says or thinks, which becomes the secondary source about what Valentino says or thinks. In other words, we cannot use Valentino to says what he thinks and his own interpretation of facts and the proposed concept, we need a secondary/tertiary source doing that for us. Here at Mass killing, we are using Straus to describe the views of Mann, Midlarsky, and Valentino, not the works of Mann, Midlarsky, and Valentino (which are primary sources in this case). See The Four Deuces' comments here and here.

Either way, I agree that the bigger issue is Valentino's views (but there are many others) are indeed "significantly misinterpreted by cherry-picking quotes from him and ignoring or distorting his main concept." So even if I am technically wrong about this, which is why I asked for outside comments, it does not preclude a rewriting or restructuring because the bigger problem is that the sources, no matter which type, are misinterpreted and cherry picked, as you clearly demonstrated here for Valentino. Davide King (talk) 12:58, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

The true reason for primary-secondary-tertiary separation is that primary sources may contain errors or a direct lie that may be overlooked by non-professionals. That is why a separate discipline called Source criticism exists. For example, if some Medieval chronicle says a king X had 100,000 troops, and he won the battle Y, a amateur always takes these words literally. Meanwhile, a professional historian will conclude that, in that concrete historical context (which, among other factors, includes a comparative analysis of other chronicles), 100,000 meant "many" (which in Medieval realities normally meant 1,500 - 5,000), and "won" meant "didn't obviously lose" (for his opponent, a king Y claimed victory too, and subsequent events demonstrated that the real outcome of the battle was "a draw").

In this particular case, Valentino is definitely a secondary source, but that source was dramatically misused and misinterpreted. The very idea of Valentino was totally distorted, because, to understand it, one has to read not only the chapter of interest ("Communist mass killings"), but the book in full. The main Valentino's idea is that ideology, political system and similar factors play much less role than many people believe. The core explanation of "mass killings" is personality of the leaders: if, for some reason, they conclude mass killing is the most optimal way to achieve their goals, mass killings can be perpetrated. To demonstrate this goal, Valentino analyzed eight cases (and compared them with similar societies where mass killings never occurred), and his analysis seems to confirm his conclusion. All of that is carefully ignored in the article, and totally different words are put in Valentino's mouth. The article implies that Valentino invented a category "Communist mass killings", and all mass killings that occurred under Communists fit that category. That is a direct lie. The article implies that Valentino emphasizes the role of Communist ideology in mass killings, although in reality the situation is directly opposite: he rejects the Rummel's claim about the role of ideology, although he concedes that it can shape the choice of some leaders (i.e. it may be important, although it is never a key factor). That means the article description of Valentino's views on ideology is a lie too. --Paul Siebert (talk) 16:53, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

This was very interesting and helpful. The reason why I still think the tags are warranted is that we actually do this for Rummel, we cite it not to Rummel's work, as we do with pretty much everyone else, but to Totten & Jacobs 2002. All I ask is why cannot the same be done for all the others? Perhaps because there are no such secondary/tertiary sources, and thus the section is going to be emptied because they are undue, and are original research/synthesis by misrepresenting sources. The NPOV tag I added was removed by AmateurEditor, who has written much of the section, as was acknowledged here, and thus there may be a conflict of interest in not wanting that section to be NPOV tagged. Perhaps better source needed or undue weight inline (Hicks, Watson, and the like) are more appropriate tags than non-primary source needed, but the NPOV tag should stay per your analysis here and here. Davide King (talk) 18:33, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Conflict of interest is possible when we speak about some external relationships. In this case, it would be incorrect to speak about any COI, as well as any lack of a good faith of any party. In general, your attempts to use tangentially related issues to criticize the text do not add points to your position. The text by itself is deeply one-sided, misleading, and contains fundamental errors and misinterpretations. I am in a process of reviewing it, I need some time to finish it, so I am not ready to speak about that so far.--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:27, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

I get that and I agree with it. It was mainly an euphemism, and I meant it more as a compliment for your work, because I just could not understand after all the work you have done here, all backed by reliable secondary sources in your arguments, and now an accurate analysis here (it was really interesting the fact that "Valentino's 'mass killings' ... happened many years after Russian or Chinese revolution", I do not know how I did not think that before) how can someone still not see all the problems with this article. This is something I do not really get. Davide King (talk) 00:08, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

• Support removal - I am not seeing any reason those sources would be tagged as primary. They are not primary sources for the content they are supporting. If you think there is a case I would suggest taking it to RSN. PackMecEng (talk) 01:45, 1 September 2021 (UTC)