Talk:Mass killings under communist regimes/Archive 53

This is an archive of past discussions about Mass killings under communist regimes. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

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Archive 52

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AFD it

If the last AFD was 11 years ago, it's time to review recent scholarship. I don't think it passes WP:N for largely the same reasons raised in the last AFD from 2010. I think it's a SYNTH POVFORK (same argument made in the AFDs), and I wonder if the community of today would look at it differently than the community did in 2010. Levivich 16:49, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

There is currently a discussion at the Dispute Resolution Noticeboard that some of the editors are participating in. An Articles for Deletion nomination takes precedence over other content dispute mechanisms. If this article is nominated for deletion, I will put the DRN on hold until the AFD is resolved. Obviously, if the conclusion is to delete the article, the DRN will be closed as resolved by deleting the article. Otherwise the DRN may or may not resume, depending on what is found by the closer. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:21, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

The material in here certainly needs to be covered but to me the compound qualifiers in the title looks a bit POV. But IMO this article certainly meets WP:Notability criteria. North8000 (talk) 18:41, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Certainly the material in here needs to be covered somewhere, but I'm not sure about it being covered on the same page like this. What are the WP:THREE that support the topic "Mass killing under communist regimes"? Valentino, Mann, and Chirot--mentioned in the most-recent AFD from July 2010--aren't about "communist regimes", but specifically about USSR, China, and Cambodia, which is a small subset of "communist regimes". "Mass killings by USSR, China, and Cambodia" seems like it should be three separate articles. Are there three good sources that talk about mass killings in "communist regimes" overall and together, beyond just USSR, China, and Cambodia? There are books about mass killings that mention some done by communist states, and books about communist states that mention some mass killings, and like maybe three or four works that talk about mass killings in three communist states together (USSR, China, Cambodia), but I'm not seeing SIGCOV of "mass killings by communist regimes" (as opposed to a topic like, war crimes by the soviet union, or by pol pot, etc.), and even the keep !voters seemed to acknowledge that in the last AFD (that "mass killings by communist regime" is not a phrase in use in the scholarship). It seems like for us to group mass killings by political ideology is WP:SYNTH. I'm not sure if this needs to be AFD'd so much as split/merged (so RFC, not AFD).~~, but then if this article becomes a redirect, what's the target?~~ Levivich 19:33, 8 November 2021 (UTC) Update: just realized it could become a WP:DAB. Levivich 20:04, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Obviously this article fails notability because there is not a body of literature about the topic. All we have are studies of individual countries or time periods and a few sources that attempt to connect mass killings under Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, who together account for the vast majority of numbers.Were it not for the topic, the article would have been deleted long ago.

Perhaps we could split the article in two: one about comparative studies of mass killings under Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, and one about the New Right project to prove that the Communists killed more people than the Nazis, both of which unlike this topic are documented in reliable sources.

TFD (talk) 19:41, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Do you think the intersection of "mass killings under Stalin/Mao/Pol Pot" is notable? I'm having a hard time with this, because yeah, there's WP:GNG sourcing for it, but here are two books about home runs by Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron: [1] [2], but I'm not sure that means the topic, "Home runs by Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron" is notable, or at least should exist as an article. It's rare that something meets GNG and I think it's still not notable, but I guess this is what WP:PAGEDECIDE is all about. In any event, I would support splitting this article into two along the lines you suggest, my philosophizing about notability notwithstanding. Levivich 19:58, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

I think the question is somewhat different. There are actually at least three separate questions:

Is the view that mass killing under Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot form a separate topic more notable that the view that those three topics are separate? That can be checked by a simple comparative analysis of country specific vs group literature: how many notable authors published books/articles about, e.g. only Cambodia or Great Purge, how many sources emphasize commonality, and how many sources say focus on difference between them. In addition, comparative studies, such as Harff's comparative study of "communist" (Cambodian) and "anticommunist" (Indonesian} genocides should also be taken into account. My impression from what I've read is that an overwhelming majority of sources do not emphasize commonality at all.
The views that all excess deaths under Communists were mass killings. That can be checked by a simple comparison of the most commonly accepted description of major Communist famines like Great Chinese famine. If majority of country experts or famine experts describe them as "mass killing/democide etc", then ok, all excess deaths should be described as such. But, to the best of my knowledge, an overwhelming majority of sources does not describe Great Chinese of Volga famine as mass killing.
And, finally, the question is if this grouping (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot) is more frequent than others, e.g. genocides in Asia, comparison of Nazism and Stalinism (not "Communism"), etc. We cannot have separate articles about the same events if different sources group those events in a different way, that contradicts to WP:NPOV Paul Siebert (talk) 22:40, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict) WP:Notability can be argued either way. Coverage doesn't need to be about the exact title of the article or grouping used to organized the material. But to me the two criteria title / grouping by the political system seems to be either the article trying to make a point (=POV) or about the real world process of people trying to make that point. My own opinion is that each mass killing of this scale should have it's own article rather than grouping them by political system. Conceivably there might be a field of study or movement regarding the proneness of communist regimes to do mass killings might get an article. But having the main coverage of these mass killings grouped by political system does not seem right. North8000 (talk) 20:14, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

North8000, each of those events already has their own articles, and, importantly, some of those articles says totally different things. Paul Siebert (talk) 22:45, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Noting there is also Crimes against humanity under communist regimes, which I think is duplicative of this article (and probably also should be split, like this article). Levivich 20:24, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Actually, those who, during the last AfD, argued that the topic is notable referred to the notability of each separate subtopics (e.g. Cambodian genocide or Great purge). That each subtopic is notable is an indisputable fact. The question is if the discussion and analysis of MKuCR as a single, well defined subject is a notable topic.

To answer this question, let's create a list of works that select MKuCR into a single topic.

Courtois&Malia (but not other contributors to the Black Book) can be considered as the first source. The BB as whole cannot. The views of Malia/Courtois are described in details in The Black Book of Communism article, so the is no need to have this article for the same purpose..
Benjamen Valentino is definitely not a source. Yes, one chapter of his book was devoted to "Communist mass killings", but his main idea was that mass killings, as he (and this article) define them, were not linked to some specific regime type. That is a core of his theory, so under "Communist mass killings" he meant "mass killings that happened in some communist regimes", and that are linked more to leader's personality than to regimes themselves. That is important, because the main practical conclusion of his theory is: mass killings can be prevented or stopped by eliminating concrete persons from power, without changing the regime type. That idea is carefully attenuated in this article.
Steven Rosefielde is also not a source, because he wrote about the three concrete regimes (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot), and, being an expert in Soviet history, focused mostly on Stalinism. Therefore, his views are more relevant to the Red Holocaust article.
Rudolph Rummel was mostly focused on linkage between totalitarianism and democide, not on Communism specifically (and it seems to be outdated in light of the works of "second generation genocide scholars"). In addition, his views are duly represented in the Democide article, so, similar to Courtois, there is no need to duplicate them here.

(this list can be continued, feel free to add new items above this line)

If we will be able to create a list of sources that seriously discuss all MKuCR as a single topic, and not just apply the word "mass killing"/"democide"/etc to some unspecified set of crimes committed by Communists, we can speak about keeping this article. However, so far, the article seems to directly misinterpret the view of even the author whose book chapter gave the name to this article.

I also propose to estimate how much of information will be lost from Wikipedia if the article will be deleted. It seems most of this information is already available in other articles, but we need to make sure that is really the case. Paul Siebert (talk) 22:11, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

In my opinion, the really notable topic is the discussion of the view that Communism was the greatest mass murderer in XX century. Who said that? Why? What was the main purpose for putting forward this idea? How this idea was accepted? Who supports that? Who criticise it and what the criticism consists in? How this idea is linked to recent trends in Holocaust obfuscation? And so on, and so forth.

This would be a really notable topic, and that can save the article from deletion. However, that will require almost complete rewrite of the article. Paul Siebert (talk) 22:15, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

AfD is a good place to discuss merge or redirect, but the page title itself is questionable. ~ cygnis insignis 13:06, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Next Steps on Mass killings under communist regimes

I think that at this point there is a rough consensus that this article needs something drastic done to it, but there is disagreement as to what. I don't think that a decision can be made by discussion here as to what that action should be, so I don't think that protracted discussion here at this time will be helpful. I think that we need to resort to some community process with formal closure, and that we should decide relatively quickly what process to use. That may be:

Articles for Deletion.
Requested Move to change the title of the article.
Request for Comments.

I was working in the dispute resolution noticeboard case with some of the editors to develop one or more RFCs. As discussion progressed, the question of what type of sources to use affected how the article should be organized. The next step in DRN would have been, and still may be, an RFC on the organization of the article. A deletion discussion takes priority over other dispute resolution vehicles. I intend to remain as neutral as possible so as to be able to resume mediation if appropriate. I don't think that a lengthy pre-AFD discussion is necessary. I think that a formal process, either AFD or RFC, is in order as soon as possible. Either nominate the article for deletion, and any alternatives to deletion can be considered in the AFD, or don't nominate the article for deletion. If the article is nominated for deletion, I will put the DRN on hold. I don't see the need to put the DRN on hold while there is a lengthy pre-discussion of whether to have a deletion discussion. If the article is nominated for deletion, and is Kept, DRN will be resumed, and should then proceed to an RFC on the structure of the article.

That is my opinion, anyway. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:53, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

I have long argued for an AFD to break the logjam on this page. I would have nominated it myself, but, as I would have been *voting keep, that would be inappropriately WP:POINTy. That was also before the wholesale changes to this article in the past few months, which have shifted the tone from being primarily about events (i.e. the facts about mass mortality in the USSR, PRC, Cambodia, etc) to that of an analysis of a "theory of mass killings under communist regimes", the tone of which is rather dismissive and non-neutral. There have been numerous RFC's before, very few of which have resulted in anything substantive. I'm not sure if it was a formal RFC, but the last proposal on this talk page regarding the lead showed consensus to leave the lead largely as it was before this edit, which began the wholesale changes to this page.

As such, if this goes to AFD, I think we need to figure out what goes to AFD. Is it the article as it stands now, or the article as it stood before the undiscussed changes on August 8 of this year? I think each article would get different results were it to go to AFD. As for an RFC, I think one phrased as "Is there consensus to support the recent changes to this article?" would be the most definitive, with some discussion needed to determine which revision should be considered as the last "stable" one before the wholesale changes. The above linked revision, I think, serves as a broad starting point. And changes in title have been frequently polled and frequently shot down - I don't see an RFC on the title being at all helpful until we know what the article is about. schetm (talk) 03:21, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

In my opinion, the difference between the current and Aug 8 versions is minor, and, although the current version is an improvement, it is still awful. It managed to twist the main idea of even the author whose work gave the article its name (I mean B. Valentino).

Nevertheless, I am almost 100% sure AFD will be unsuccessful. The reason is simple: the statement "Communism killed 100 million people" (and variations thereof) can be frequently found in popular literature, various web sites and magazines. Although professional historians use different approaches and interpretations, that argument is sufficient to say the topic is notable.

Therefore, the realistic scenario is not AFD, but a complete rewrite. The current structure makes this article a single huge POV fork full of synthesis and direct misinterpretation of sources. However, it is possible to fix it by changing its structure and scope. THAT should be the subject of the discussion. Paul Siebert (talk) 15:46, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

I would suggest that we first agree on which sources are appropriate, so as to avoid "per source" arguments, when they may still fail SYNTH/OR and WEIGHT. As for my recent edits, it is in line with WP:LEAD (It should identify the topic, establish context, explain why the topic is notable, and summarize the most important points, including any prominent controversies.), as the previous failed this, especially the last point, and stated it as fact that all those events were mass killings, when that is a matter of disagreements. The new tone is in fact reflective of the cautious and controversial nature of the topic; there is no consensus on terminology, estimates, or even causes, and genocide scholars, apart from Rummel, actually say the cause was the leaders, not the ideology (Valentino). Despite it not being perfect, as noted by Siebert, it is factual.

In light of such misunderstanding about the topic (e.g. Schetm want it to be events-focused, even though we already have articles about each event, and the summaries do not reflect scholarly consensus, hence SYNTH and Siebert's proposal to rely on country experts and specialists to address NPOV), this should be clarified. Of the users who took it to this discussion, it appears to be that only Schetm want the article to be events-focused, while everyone else (excluding deletion) would prefer it to be theory-based (e.g. this, or comparative analysis and New Right project, which in my view would still fit the theory proposal), which is the direction I took. Davide King (talk) 04:36, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

IMO this article is likely to survive an AFD. I think that any forward path forward needs to start by acknowledging / deciding what the topic of this article is. After taking only a slight deeper look and also learning from what was said on this talk page, it's become clear that this article isn't (the) coverage of those killings, and that those are covered elsewhere. It's really about things related to the juxtaposition of those two things. With perhaps that main question being whether or not communist regimes are more causal or prone to mass killings, and if / when so, why? (Not having taken a deep look here)if this article takes the normal track of a political where two sides from real-world contest (of ideas or..) are present as editors, even if they are polite and Wikipedian, you are doomed to an endless contest of each side working towards working to put in / maximize whatever best favors their side, and reduce keep out / minimize whatever does the opposite. And policies and guidelines are not (alone) going to provide a roadmap to a resolution. For your own sanity and enjoyment my advice would be for the editors to acknowledge what the actual topic is, pick sources that provide the most expert and informative analysis/ coverage of it and build a short article which covers what they say. And make making an informative article your only mission., I only plan to watch this for a few days.....after that please ping me if desired. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 18:07, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

North8000 I took the challenge of summarizing the purpose of this article in the ongoing Dispute Resolution comment here[3]: "The title of Mass killings under communist regimes is very straightforward: it describes events when large groups of people have been killed ("mass killing") in countries that described themselves as communist ("communist regimes"). The article is not called "genocide under..." or "politicide under...". It uses the most basic and widely understood term of "mass killing", and I don't think any of the parties disputes these killings actually happening." Alternative subtitles could be possibly "Marxism and violence" or "Mass killing as result of an actual Marxian class war" or "Literally interpreted eradication of bourgeois class" but the existing title is just as well as the others. Cloud200 (talk)

User:Cloud200 - As I said in the DRN, I disagree that the title of "mass killings" is straightforward. The examples given of mass killing include famines in the Soviet Union between 1931 and 1934, and in China between 1959 and 1962. There is controversy among scholars as to the extent to which starvation was an instrument of policy or the result of policy failure. We agree that most scholars agree that the deaths from starvation in Ukraine were mostly the result of a genocidal policy by Stalin, but that there is less support for the idea that the famine elsewhere in the Soviet Union was planned, or that the Chinese famine was planned. The number of deaths by country and year is a matter of more agreement than whether the deaths were mass killing, or policy failure. So there isn't a simple answer. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:57, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

So what are the three best sources for this topic? Levivich 19:48, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

There would be no problem to find a half dozen of sources, because, obviously mass killings did occur under Communist regimes, and some authors do such a generalisation. However, each of those sources defines "mass killings" differently, and includes a different set of events in that category, and the linkage (or the lack thereof) between those mass killings and Communism is described totally differently (sometimes, in a mutually contradicting way).

In that situation, how can these mutually contradicting narratives be combined together? Should we use logical AND, or logical OR? In other words, should we define a topic as "all excess/premature deaths under Communist regimes that were called "mass killing" by at least one source", or "all mass deaths that are described as "mass killing" (and similar terms) by all sources"?

The latter approach would be in agreement with our policy, but that limits the article's scope with Cambodian genocide, Stalin's purges/deportations/camps deaths, and Chinese "counterrevolutionary suppression campaign/Cultural revolution". Such an article would hardly be really valuable, because Wikipedia already has this information. Paul Siebert (talk) 20:20, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

@Cloud200: Not saying it is / I am right or wrong but that infers something very different from what my post observed / suggested. Your definition infers that this article does and should be coverage of the killings themselves. My post posits and suggests an actual current main and future topic of any relationship between having a communist regime and having mass killings. North8000 (talk) 21:51, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Responding to all the above - it's not Boolean logic, it's a spectrum of events and spectrum of views, and yes, often contradictory, as we saw in coverage of Holodomor by Walter Duranty versus by Gareth Jones and Malcolm Muggeridge. The most fair way of describing them is to describe events ("per source X, 2 million people died in Y in 19NN, per source Z it was 5 million people" etc) and describe attribution ("execution order X signed by Y in order to achieve Z", "grain requisition order X signed by Y", "reports by residents who described practice X applied during enforcement of law Y", "Duranty said it's all OK"), possibly ordered by the level of consensus, from events where there's least doubt about their course and attribution, to poorly sourced events with contradictory reports even as to the number of victims (e.g. Khaibakh massacre). In this model there is a place for both respectful presentation of the views of witnesses of these events, and also all kind of dissenting opinions who disagree with numbers and/or causes. As to the "relationship between having a communist regime and having mass killings" topic, it is already part of the article Mass_killings_under_communist_regimes#Proposed_causes, and I think it's an important part of the article as it demonstrates how majority of the political movements that explicitly called for "violent revolution" and "class war" ended up doing exactly that. Cloud200 (talk) 09:35, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Updates and paths forward

AfD may still be worthwhile—if limited to us and those who know about it, and the mediator is willing to scrutinize and verify each argument and source
Problems have been acknowledged by mediator, so they cannot be ignored forever ... we disagree on how to fix them
Topic is the real issue — but this article should be theory-based, not events-based, the latter of which is problematic per arguments above
There may be already some majority agreement—or at least the best arguments were—to have it theory-based, if such an article is to exist

I was sceptical about an AfD for exactly the same reasons (e.g. all those events indeed took place, which completely miss our arguments and point of the matter) but I believe it should still be attempted if all other attempts fail; it should be limited, however, to those who took part in this discussion and others who have some knowledge about the history of this dispute, etc. Then every argument must be carefully verified by the mediator (e.g. it is not sufficient to put a bunch of sources, you need to show those sources support your analysis, which is something that only Siebert has been able to do, such as when they proved Valentino's views have been completely misunderstood).

North8000 is correct — it is OR/SYNTH to do such articles by ideology (it would actually need some clear agreement among scholars and all other issues, perfectly identified above, that remains—to not exist), and the fact we do this only for Communism is telling. The problem, again correctly highlighted by North8000 above, is that defenders of such article want it to focus on the events (hence POV fork and OR/SYNTH, as we already have such articles, which are discussed here with a particular bent and do not reflect consensus, or even majority view; one defender said those are all at best minority views, which they nonetheless deemed to be significant), while it appears there is now some rough consensus to have it theory-focused — and there is now an acknowledgement by the mediator that this article has indeed problems, which have been until now dismissed and saw us falsely accused of being "pro-Communists", but we disagree about how to fix it, though I think there is some agreement that, if there is to be an article, it should be rewritten and be theory-based. Davide King (talk) 06:34, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

The "topic of any relationship between having a communist regime and having mass killings" would still be theory-based because it would discuss the interpretations and theories of such killings, not the events themselves, for which we already have all relevant articles, and not treating them all as mass killings and such link as fact. I think we should try to have an AfD and a RfC about the topic, which in my view should be the one proposed by Siebert, which is also what The Four Deuces and I meant by victims of communism narrative.

"In my opinion, the really notable topic is the discussion of the view that Communism was the greatest mass murderer in XX century. Who said that? Why? What was the main purpose for putting forward this idea? How this idea was accepted? Who supports that? Who criticise it and what the criticism consists in? How this idea is linked to recent trends in Holocaust obfuscation? And so on, and so forth. This would be a really notable topic, and that can save the article from deletion. However, that will require almost complete rewrite of the article."

I support the solutions proposed by McClenon, e.g. AfD, RfC, and name change/move. We should agree on which order, how to word it, and which topics and sources are to be accepted as possibile solutions. Because if we cannot find a solution, if we cannot write an encyclopedic article — the status quo is not keeping such a problematic article, which has been in fact more harmful than helpful and a source of citogenesis, but it not existing until such an encyclopedic article, in full respect of our policies and guidelines (NPOV is not negotiable), can be properly written. The only notable topic and solution to avoid this appears to be that individuated by Siebert. Davide King (talk) 06:34, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, I agree that having various articles (mass killings in Asia, MKuCR, etc.), that contain the same material would be wrong. That's why, as I have always said, this article should not be a cut and paste of other article but should outline theories about how Stalin's firing squads, Mao's famine and Pol Pot's Killing Fields are connected. And if they are, what relevance do they have to Communism/communism. So far no editors have shown that this topic is notable. TFD (talk) 14:29, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

User:Davide King wrote, in the visible header of a collapsed statement: "AfD may still be worthwhile—if limited to us and those who know about it, and the mediator is willing to scrutinize and verify each argument and source". No. Neither AFD nor RFC can be limited to a particular group of editors, and both AFD and RFC provide notice to all in the English Wikipedia. I am not sure what Davide King intends, but neither AFD nor RFC can be limited to any particular subgroup of editors. In fact, inviting other editors is one of the two advantages of a formal community process. (Formal closure is the other.) I submit that we should use a formal community process sooner rather than later, but I may be in a minority, because maybe other editors would prefer to try to "win" the dispute by talking at greater length. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:30, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Considering the canvassing that was done at DRN and the controversial nature of the article, forgive me if I am sceptical or 'elitist' about it and thinking it should be required to have a minimum of competence about the topic (e.g. events or theories question, and a set of sources agreed among us, as suggested here, which is something that events-based supporters have yet to address), and avoid personal insults and false accuses. If it can be guaranteed there will not be any such canvassing, that it will not be a vote, and instead be based on rational arguments in line with our policies and guidelines (NPOV is not negotiable) — that is what I meant.

But before of any of this, we actually have to agree on a set of topics and sources. Can you summarize that for us? — which was the purpose of this new section. Siebert already proposed one topic and analyzed several sources, to which no response has been given that addressed them, and Levivich's question about sources for the events-focused topic has not been answered. Davide King (talk) 17:21, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

IMO you are headed into endless hopelessness with this article not because of editor issues, but because you have an article with a title that could cover so many different things and an article with no defined topic which is about many different topics, some of them being ethereal or subjective areas of opinion or study. It would probably survive AFD. So IMO your only hope is to clearly decide what the topic of the article is to be, then change the title (if necessary) to align with that. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 16:59, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Why not a dab page ("Mass killings under communist regimes may refer to:") with a list of the various topics (New Right, killing fields, great famine, etc.)? Levivich 17:01, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Which is why I was concerned — it should not survive an AfD because of the many issues raised but it likely will anyway. As for the topic, it should be this, which also fits what you proposed, e.g. the relationship between the regimes and mass killings. I would just delete the MKuCR naming because it is only used here, and Communist mass killing(s) would be preferable as a DAB linking to Stalin's, Mao's, and Pol Pot's mass killing events; it is the term used by Valentino (it is a subcategory of dispossessive mass killing, not MKuCR, in relation to Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, as explained here by Siebert). Davide King (talk) 17:21, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Well, to sort it out, there are two really core topic possibilities here:

Is having a communist regime a causal or key enabling factor for mass killings? I think that this part is inevitably a topic of this artice.
Some type of summary / condensed coverage of mass killings under communist regimes. (knowing that this is covered in a split up / more detailed fashion elsewhere). IMO whether or not to include this is a big decision you should make.

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 18:54, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Brief answers to your questions are:

1. The claim that some communist regime was a causal or key enabling factor for mass killings is somewhat ambiguous. Thus, when some article claims that Stalin's regime was a cause of death of millions of people, that article may link the deaths to Stalin's personality, and that also may be interpreted as an accusation of that communist regime. However, if such an article makes a stress on the word "regime", not on the word "Communist", that source draws not more linkage between mass killings and Communism than, e.g. the articles about Bengal famine or Congo genocide draw a linkage between mass killings and capitalism/democracy. In both cases it would be original research to claim that type sources draw/discuss such linkages. IMO, all relevant sources about mass killings/mass mirtality in Communist countries may be subdivided on the following subcategories:

The sources that directly link Communism and mass killings. Examples: Courtois, Malia.
The sources that directly criticize that approach. Examples: a significant part of reviews on the BB (I discussed them previously on this talk page)
The sources that discuss mass killings in Communist states (or in a subset thereof), but that discussion is general, and not directly linked to Communism. Examples: B. Valentino, whose main conclusion is that not the regime type, but leaders personality is a primary cause of mass killings, so by removal those leaders from power it is possible to prevent mass killings even without significant transformations of the regime type.
The sources that discuss a single Communist state. Examples, the works by Wheatcroft, Ellman, Getty etc. They perform the analysis of historical realities that lead to mass killings, and usually Communism is beyond the scope of that analysis.
The sources that perform a comparative analysis of mass killings in several states, some of them may be Communist. No specific attention to Communism is usually paid in those sources. Example: Barbara Harff: "Revolutionary and antiterrevolutionary genocides.

I think this (by no means a comprehensive) list demonstrates that if we will focus on the question about the linkage between Communism and mass killings, that will create a totally false impression that that topic is a focus of scholarly debates. However, similar to the question if intelligence is linked with one's skin colour, this issue is not the main topic of interest of majority historians.

2. Condensed figures are produced by a small group of authors who are, like Courtois, interested to demonstrate that Communism was a greater murdered than Nazism. Usually, they use obsolete data (like Rummel, who included a fantastic 60+ million number for the USSR, which blatantly contradicts to ALL modern data), and/or they include famine and disease deaths into that figure. Overwhelming majority of country experts (e.g. Ellman, Wheatcroft, Davis, Getty, Maksudov etc for USSR) or famine experts (O'Grada) produce more accurate and realistic figures, but, they do that for each country (or even for each event) separately, and they are absolutely disinterested in producing a "global Communist death toll" figures. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that, as Ellman correctly noted, the estimates of the number of victims depends on which category is considered as victims, and that decision is strongly politically motivated. Usually, famine is not considered as mass killing/genocide/politicide etc. by overwhelming majority of historians. However, since the former group is essentially ignored by mainstream historians, there is no direct discussion between the former and the latter, so I have no idea how the correct information can be presented without OR. I know no country expert or famine expert who openly criticized the claim that Communism killed 100+ million by means of deliberate starvation, shooting and death camps, and more than a half of those death were famine deaths. This view is not criticized by experts simply because it seems to be completely ignored. It is very hard to adequately describe all of that within the frames of WP:NOR. Paul Siebert (talk) 19:49, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

My point was that you need to start by deciding on the topic/scope of the article, and to make an attempt simplify the choice/ decision.North8000 (talk) 20:37, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

If you look through the talk page history, you will see that I and other users repeatedly raised that question, and the answer was: "The topic is mass killings in Communist states, and the article describes it quite adequately, so no significant changes are needed." Paul Siebert (talk) 20:44, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

@North8000: Take a look at this title: "Excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin". The title is perfectly neutral, and it covers everything. Paul Siebert (talk) 20:38, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Looks good to me. But how that relate to here? North8000 (talk) 20:41, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

The relation is quite direct: the Coirtois' "Communism death toll" is what country-specific sources call "excess mortality" (of scourse, such eventgs as Cambodian genocide or Great Purge are called differently, but their scale was small as compared with other cases). The number of excess deaths in Communist states is pretty well known from country-specific sources. The problem is that only in Cambodia they were a result of direct genocide. In other countries, an overwhelming majority of them were famine death. If we describe all of that, and explain that, some deaths were a result of shooting, camp mortality and deportation deaths, that would be absolutely neutral. At the end, we may add a chapter where we give an attributed opinion that all premature deaths under Communists are considered mass killings, and, based on that, some authors claim that, since Communism killed up to 85 million people, it should be considered more murderous than Nazism. We will also supplement that with due analysis and criticism, and all of that will be perfectly neutral. Paul Siebert (talk) 20:52, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

"Excess mortality" is really a different topic, as it can include the total population deficit as a result of anticipated births forestalled by the harsh conditions of the times. "Mass killings", on the other hand, implies a narrower more deliberative process. Otherwise, given what some people believe about the origins of Covid-19, do we really want to pin excess mortality during the Coronavirus pandemic on the Chinese communist regime? --Nug (talk) 06:17, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

No. Total population deficit (including the deficit due to unborn infants and emigration) is called "population losses". Excess mortality is more narrow category, which includes only real deaths that would not normally happen.

"Excess mortality" is by no means a different topic: more than a half of "Communism death toll" is actually famine and disease deaths (Great Chinese famine, Volga famine, 1932-33 famine, WWII famine, post-WWII famine). Virtually ALL famine experts and historians who study those events do not apply the terms "genocide", "mass killings" etc (Holodomor is arguably the only exception), and they usually apply the terms "excess deaths" or "premature deaths" to those events. These works are underrepresented or misused in this article, despite the fact that they represent a majority viewpoint. Paul Siebert (talk) 06:52, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

I've checked myself, and you can do that too. I typed this, and took first three article relevant to the topic (Justin Yifu Lin and Dennis Tao Yang, "FOOD AVAILABILITY, ENTITLEMENTS AND THE CHINESE FAMINE OF 1959-61", The Economic Journal, 110(January), 136-158; Gene Hsin Chang and Guanzhong James Wen, "Communal Dining and the Chinese Famine of 1958–1961", Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. 46, No. 1 (October 1997), pp. 1-34, and James Kai‐sing Kung and Justin Yifu Lin, "The Causes of China’s Great Leap Famine, 1959–1961", Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. 52, No. 1 (October 2003), pp. 51-73; all works published by The University of Chicago Press). None of them contains the words "genocide", "democide" or "mass killing", but all of them use the term "excess deaths".

If you want, you may examine other works in that list, but I am sure the result will not be significantly different. Paul Siebert (talk) 07:07, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

You may argue those sources are Chinese. I have no idea why Google Scholar put those sources on the top, I just tried to be totally neutral. When I scrolled a little bit down, the next relevant work is this (not Chinese at all). However, the overall language and terminology is the same, and it is totally different from the language of the sources that serve as a core sources in that article. The primary reason why the marginal POV is overrepresented in the article is a blatantly non-neutral title. Paul Siebert (talk) 07:17, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

As noted by Siebert, "excess mortality" and this summary is simply the same topic as this but neutral. To not violate our policies, there must be a clear link (it is not sufficient that the regime was nominally Communist, because that can be done for every other regime type; as noted by Siebert, scholarly sources about Stalinist period refer to the regime, thus attributing events at the leader's personality, which is also the conclusion of Valentino, the main source for this article and the most misunderstood, not communism) — because you have such low standards that we could do this for every regime, and if it is enough to have a source, we may as well write an article about the 4 million excess deaths in 1990s Russia and capitalist regimes (10 million lives could be saved each year) because Rosefielde, the same scholar who wrote about excess death under Communism, also did the same for Russia.

Of course, I would not want to have such articles — I want higher standards which are in line with our policies but it just shows how much OR and SYNTH you are willing to go to defend such an article. As for COVID-19, none of them actually mention communism, and China is capitalist (economic growth) and Communist (human rights abuses) depending on what is more useful, and it would still be OR/SYNTH unless a majority of respected scholars in the field actually reach those same conclusions — unlike Siebert, who is backing their statement by neutral research and the best sources, all you are doing is your own OR. So far, that is done by the Victims of Communist Memorial Foundation and The Epoch Times — try again. Note that they would be attributed to the CCP, which again would be in line with Valentino's views of leadership, not ideology (ideology can be used to justify them, not to cause them), explaining the onset of mass killings.

Can anyone actually respond to Siebert's well-raised points? Do you understand that all those deaths simply cannot be categorized as mass killings (only Stalin's, Mao's, and Pol Pot's can)? If you cannot do that or understand this, you are just wasting our time to find a solution in line with our policies and guidelines. Davide King (talk) 09:21, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Paul is incorrect, unborn children are absolutely included in "excess mortality". Steven Rosefielde explicitly includes unborn children in "excess mortality" figures:

"Western scholars have long known that the Soviet Union experienced an extraordinarily large number of excess deaths during the early phase of forced industrialisation. Excess mortality between the census dates 17 December 1926 and 17 January 1939 has been variously estimated to have been as few as 5.5 million and as many as 20.6 million people. The lower figure was thought to represent excess adult deaths, principally peasants who died as a result of the famine brought on by Stalin's collectivisation policies; the higher figure the total population deficit including anticipated births forestalled by the harsh conditions of the times."[4]

Rosefielde concludes:

"The forced industrialisation program adopted by Stalin culminated a demographic disaster of major proportions for the Soviet population. Collectivisation, Gulag forced labour and the terror apparatus that sustained the Stalinist system appear to have claimed the lives of 21.4 to 24.4 million adults and 7.2 to 8.0 million children. An additional 14.4 million unrealised births unrelated to the war may also be included in this inventory bringing the total poplulation deficit attributable to Stalin's forced industrialisation policies to 43.8 to 46 million people; figures more than double the 20 million civilian and military casualties incurred during the war."

If you think Excess mortality under communist regimes is a more neutral title, then we must include unborn children as well. --Nug (talk) 22:15, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

No. The author says that 14.4 million birth deficit must be included not into the "excess death" category, but into "poplulation deficit attributable to Stalin's forced industrialisation policies".

"Population deficit" is synonym for "population losses": demographers use them interchangeably. In general, if you demonstrate that population losses/deficit is generally considered as a synonym for "excess mortality" (for example, during a discussion of Bengal famine or Great depression), then I will agree with you. However, even the quote provided by you does not support this your assertion and rather demonstrates that I was right, and Rosefielde considers unborn infants as a part of "population losses/deficit", not "excess death" (which is, both from scientific and common sense point of view, a different category: you cannot kill a man who was never born and even concepted). Which is not a surprise, because he is a reasonable person and good scholar, despite his deep disagreements with Wheatcroft. Paul Siebert (talk) 23:05, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Nevertheless, I don't mind to discuss birth deficit that was a result of Communist policy, but that would require us to discuss ALL demographic consequences of their policy. Including an unprecedented overall decline of mortality (and the growth of life expectancy) in the USSR. By the way, during the discussion with you I accidentally found one source (I already presented it, here is the link again). As you can see, I posted this source (which I found using a totally transparent search procedure, so you can see by yourself that I didn't cherry-picked it), and only after that I've read it. It says that significant decline of mortality was observed in China under Communists, and the Great Chinese famine was just a short interruption in that trend.

Maybe, if we discuss infants who had never been born due to Communists, maybe, intellectual honesty requires us to discuss already born infants and adults who didn't die due to the same evil Communists? I wouldn't mind to discuss that in this article. Paul Siebert (talk) 00:05, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Support Rename (Excess mortality[...] (or split): Regardless of your standard of who to count the article body includes citations which count death by direct action( killing ), and death by negligence/incompetence (starvation). I have commented on splitting the article so I won't repeat that here, but if you want to first split the article on killing vs preventable deaths and cross-link them then that makes both topics searchable while not having a clinical title that nobody can agree on. The problem there is now I think editors are trying to seperate deaths into two camps where the source material probably would not. Because of this I support renaming to excess death, and just doing a disambiguation page if someone tries searching for death in general, and they actually wanted to know about like funeral rites or natural causes.Ethanpet113 (talk) 08:11, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

And then people say Wikipedia isn't a left wing echo chamber. 93.141.205.124 (talk) 13:20, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

This AfD has to be a joke when articles like Anti Communist Mass Killings exist. What is next? An article called "Anti-fascist mass killings?" Skyrant (talk) 17:39, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

I noticed that article, but one thing at a time. The 'anti-fascist mass killings' are also referred to as the premise for the 'second world war', arguably a euphemism, as "stoppin' communism" was for the extraordinary amount of ordnance dropped on North Korea a little later. ~ cygnis insignis 18:26, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

Object Deletion (listify?): I fundamentally disagree with just deleting the body of this article, because for any other article on wikipedia we would apply the standard of seeing if anything is salvageable, even if editing has been protracted. It doesn't make any sense to delete this article in light of many other weaker politically charged articles which are kept. Afd mediation is usually required only if the community process failed, it has not, in fact this article has been not deleted 3 times now. There are also many social science articles just as old as this one of more dubious quality which are routinely kept. By the standard of any other article on wikipedia this article has a very strong keep article. The problem with this article is that it is bloated, not that it is unsalvageable. The article has been evaluated as a B-Class article which is much better than the vast majority of articles on WP. I agree that the article is unfocused, but it should just be edited down and its contents relocated to children as required. Worst case I would rename to List of mass killings under communist regimes and include a short heading to summarize and then offlinks. Alternatively several if there wouldn't be enough list items to make it a good list, or if more context is required, then several short summary sections sorted by year-regime with and a link with the {{main|main article}}. I think perhaps some conjectural scholarship should also be split out into sub articles, however any way you slice it you should be using the mark split-mark under construction-split-cleanup workflow to shrink the article, not doing wholesale deletion on established content, because you think it is an impossible task to make it succinct. As with any continuing social problem that humanity is tackling this article is always going to go interesting directions and some people will disagree. This is a common problem for political and sociological articles in general on WP, but we just keep iterating even if the amount of novel information on the matter seems galling.Ethanpet113 (talk) 08:11, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
- I fundamentally agree that the core problem here is the article's title. It's not at all weird for Wikipedia to have a list page - it famously has list pages - but it's very weird for the word "list" not to appear in its name. And that's self-evidently what this page is - a list of mass killings under communist regimes, no stranger than List of serial killers in the United States. Quindraco (talk) 12:24, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Oppose deleting this article. It is relevant and full of important information widely debated. There are plenty of sources that make direct links between communism and mass death Viktory02 (talk) 00:31, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

commentary

Davide King Since September you have effectively taken over this article and turned it into your private playground, which is now quite evident with edits such as this one[5] which is:

biased and written from your personal point of view perspective, which ignores all the opposing views that were raised here before
written entirely in WP:WEASEL language
completely unsourced by any WP:RS

I found it impossible to have any reasonable fact-based debate with you and Paul Siebert since you're both not responding to any arguments, just flooding the discussion with largely unrelated opinions, as seen above. As result I have abandoned it and saw your outrageous edits only because someone had reverted it (and rightly so). I have therefore filed a dispute resolution process under Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard#Mass_killings_under_communist_regimes of which you will be surely notified individually. Cloud200 (talk) 16:16, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Cloud200, can you please explain again your arguments (for the beginning, present just one), and I will try to address it as briefly as possible, and will do my best to stay focused.

Meanwhile, can you please respond to one my argument, namely that the "Causes" section is awful, it is desperately biased, and it contains direct and obvious misinterpretation of sources, or say something the sources do not say. Paul Siebert (talk) 17:33, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

In addition, it looks like you accused me of article ownership. Such accusations require serious evidences, otherwise it may be considered a personal attack. I am not sure that approach is productive. However, I agree that David's language needs a significant improvement. It would be good if m=somebody joined this work. I am busy now, and I cannot do that alone, especially when I have a feeling my work may be contested/reverted. Therefore, I would prefer to achieve an agreement on the talk page first. In that situation, it would be highly desirable if you stopped throwing your (in my opinion, baseless) accusation and switched to a more productive regime. Paul Siebert (talk) 17:38, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

With regard to this, the statement " posit that most communist regimes did not engage in mass killings, and some in particular" was taken (to the best of my knowledge) from Valentino, so the only problem is that a citation is missing. Similarly, the second statement discusses a double genocide theory, which is considered to be linked with novel trends in Holocaust denial or trivialization. Thus, M Shafir (Revista de Istorie a Evreilor din Romania, 2020 - ceeol.com) discusses it in details, and, in particular, discusses Courtois introduction to the Black Book in that context (with references to Omer Bartov's opinion). Therefore, although the wording may be (and should be) improved, I see no significant factual problems with this text. Of course, I may be wrong, and if you find some concrete mistakes in this my post, I would be grateful. However, I respectfully request you to refrain from general accusations and personal attacks. Paul Siebert (talk) 17:57, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

This is absurd. You have just stopped discussing, and my new edits have been pretty stable since then; previous lead did not have any source either and it is not necessary if everything is already in the body, of which I simply tried to summarize and actually introduce the topic. I wished Paul Siebert and others could have helped me to improve the wording and all the other work there is to do but perhaps it is about time to take you, not us, to a dispute resolution for having supported such outrageous policy and guideline violations (NPOV, OR/SYNTH, WEIGHT), as Siebert once suggested. See also this comment by Ivanvector that accurately summarizes the topic, of which you and many others users have a complete lack of knowledge because you actually believe in it, when it is OR/SYNTH. Davide King (talk) 02:38, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

I would like to note the lead reflects the issues of this article; if there is no consensus among scholars on so many things like definitions, terminology, causes ... of course the lead is going to be like that; there would be no need for all that if the article was actually neutrally written and not synthetized. But the solution is not a return to the status quo ... As written by Siebert in their summary there, we either fix the article, or it should be deleted as a POV content fork, among many other issues, with NPOV being non-negotiable according to our policies and guidelines. Any attempts by Siebert and I have been disrupted, though my latest work has been mostly accepted, especially in the body, but it is not acknowledged by you. Davide King (talk) 04:42, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

Cloud200 I can't help but agree, Without naming individuals I find it extremely troubling that it is the same users attempting to AstroTurf left wing atrocities that are also the ones so concerned with maintaining similar pages for the right. It speaks to a coordinated if unconscious effort to apply bias with a broad-stroke brush. Until I came to Wikipedia for instance there was no redirect for extreme left-wing politics like there was for extreme far-right politics. Additionally far-left politics pales in comparison to the analogous page for the right and I specifically recall a user mentioned here attempting to unravel a lot of what I attempted to add to make the pages more symmetrical. Davidgarcia84 (talk) 17:21, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

These are not policy informed opinions. Please consider joining the community of editors and editorial standards. "Other shit exists" is not sufficient justification for a non-policy adhering page. Fifelfoo (talk) 08:53, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

AfD Header

While this AfD has not yet been formally closed, it is locked for editing. The AfD header invites people to "share (their) thoughts on the matter at this article's deletion discussion page." As this is not possible, should the header be removed? schetm (talk) 05:18, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps the link could be piped to the AfD talk page? This is really an edge case, not a problem in 99% of AfDs. I don't think removing the header is the right move, considering it hasn't been decided yet. BSMRD (talk) 05:50, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

It's possible. The AfD has a talkpage. GoodDay (talk) 06:11, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Seumas Milne?

Why is Seumas Milne supposedly a reliable source for this article? He's a mediocre politician who did not exactly cover himself with glory in his most recent role as Jeremy Corbyn's enforcer for trying to deny the existence of antisemitism in the Labour Party. AnonMoos (talk) 16:13, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

The idea that Seumas Milne was an "enforcer for trying to deny the existence of antisemitism in the Labour Party" is a deranged fantasy of the UK's far-right media (and also a pretty clear libel). I'd be embarrassed to put it forward as a topic for discussion at the Spectator cocktail party, let alone on Wikipedia, but I guess nothing embarrasses some people. DublinDilettante (talk) 17:53, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm not too interested in continuing this discussion (having made my point clearly), but for the record, I get the great majority of my UK news from the Guardian website, which has by no means followed a strict Corbynite party line, by the way: see 'Back in the bunker': Labour unease with Corbyn's cadre grows, as well as these: [6], [7]. (I'm not even sure what the "far-right media" are in the UK.) AnonMoos (talk) 23:03, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

As you know, unless you're far too poorly informed to even be participating in this discussion, the Guardian has been the main organ of Blairite antipathy and resistance to Jeremy Corbyn and the strain of politics they believe he represents. If you don't know what the far-right media are in the UK, I look forward to you defending the Spectator's views on immigration, Muslims and the Wehrmacht. And that's before you get to the tabloids. And no, you haven't made your point clearly. You haven't made a point at all, just repeated a smear. DublinDilettante (talk) 23:14, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Umm, The Guardian is centre-left, the fact that you think it is far-right media somewhat invalidates your arguments I think. --Nug (talk) 02:56, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

That is clearly not what they said — they said The Spectator's views on immigration, Muslims, and the Wehrmacht are far right, while The Guardian represents the right wing of the Labour Party, which is clearly not the same thing. Davide King (talk) 03:49, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

As far as I'm aware, contributors personal opinions on the merits of politicians and other commentators aren't relevant to decisions as to their reliability as a source. If Wikipedia policy on this has actually changed, please indicate where exactly, as I'd like to be able to cite it while I rewrite half the content of the encyclopaedia... AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:20, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Anything that Seumas Milne wrote on the subject of antisemitism in the Labour Party (the scope of his most recent employment) would be overwhelmingly likely to be filled with lies and personal vendettas, so I'm not sure why he's a trusted source on Communism and Colonialism... Is Hugh Trevor-Roper a reliable source? AnonMoos (talk) 16:27, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether Milne is or isn't 'a trusted source on Communism and Colonialism'. I'm not even sure what a 'trusted source' means in the context of this article, given the self-evidently contentious nature of its topic. And WP:RS doesn't in any case require that sources be 'trusted' for their opinions. Whether such opinions are included in an article is of course subject to policies and guidelines, but again, not liking what they say about something isn't an appropriate reason to exclude them. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:38, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Speaks volumes on the paucity of sources disputing mass killings that Seumas Milne is seen as reliable on this topic. --Nug (talk) 20:37, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Are you even pretending that your investment in retaining this page is not a political crusade at this point? Do you want to tell us what your issue with Seumas Milne is? This "contribution" alone invalidates all your arguments on this topic DublinDilettante (talk) 20:45, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Have you not noticed that Milne is supported by historian Jon Weiner? Historian and journalists, such as Seumas Milne and Jon Wiener, have criticized the emphasis on communism when assigning blame for famines. In a 2002 article for The Guardian, Milne mentions "the moral blindness displayed towards the record of colonialism", and he writes: "If Lenin and Stalin are regarded as having killed those who died of hunger in the famines of the 1920s and 1930s, then Churchill is certainly responsible for the 4 million deaths in the avoidable Bengal famine of 1943." Milne laments that while "there is a much-lauded Black Book of Communism, [there exists] no such comprehensive indictment of the colonial record."[267] Weiner makes a similar assertion while comparing the Holodomor and the Bengal famine of 1943, stating that Winston Churchill's role in the Bengal famine "seems similar to Stalin's role in the Ukrainian famine." I fail to see what is so controversial about this, other than not simply liking any form of controversy and criticism, and the lack of same standard applied to colonialism. Davide King (talk) 23:31, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

More likely is that Milne read Weiner and is just repeating those same talking points, I doubt he did any independent research, so his inclusion doesn't add anything, it just looks ridiculous. --Nug (talk) 02:49, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

If we are removing sources for looking ridiculous, may I suggest that we remove Victims of Communism first? I hardly think that counting deaths due to the pandemic, Nazis killed in World War 2, and potentially unborn, unconceived children as "victims of communism" is any less ridiculous. Dark-World25 (talk) 03:11, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Considering that Milne (Milne 2002) was published in The Guardian (a reliable source) ten years before Weiner's reference (Weiner 2012), your allegation makes no sense. Davide King (talk) 03:49, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

@Nug: On this talk page, I repeatedly mentioned the name of Cormac O'Grada, a renown famine expert. In one of his papers, he analyses Chinese and Bengal famines in much more neutral terms. Due to copyright reasons, I am not reproducing his conclusion in full, but one fragment is shown below.

"Not so the Bengal and Great Leap Famines, which tend to be blamed, not one conomic backwardness or harvest deficits, but on human agency. Malthus believed that the problems of corruption and poor governance were largely endogenous, and was sceptical of the power of public policy to mitigate famine. Most accounts, however, blame the Bengal famine of 1943–4 on a combination of market failure and public inaction rather than harvest failure, while the conventional wisdom on China sees the harvest failures that produced the famine as endogenous to the follies of the Great Leap. This paper attempts to add to our understanding in two respects. Firstly, in the case of China, it has been argued that more room should be made for the supply side factors stressed by Malthus. More historical context has been added by drawing attention to China’s relative poverty and the overlap between high excess mortality regions and those previously vulnerable to famine. The famine remains an outlier, but to an extent fits a pattern established by the mid-nineteenth century."

Since I pinged you, I assume you will see this text by the moment when you make your next edit. That article is one out of many articles that address and debunks your argument about a lack of independent comparative research of "communist" and "non-communist" famines. If this article will survive deletion, this, as many other discussions will be preserved. If you continue to put forward the same argument again (as if it has not been addressed), I may make some conclusion that I may share with admins. Paul Siebert (talk) 16:30, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Russian philosopher Karl Marx

This made my day. Paul Siebert (talk) 16:37, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Doh! AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:39, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

LMAO. X-Editor (talk) 21:00, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

FAQ Q1

How should Q1 of the FAQ be rephrased, now that most recent consensus is no longer to keep? I was going to just rewrite it myself, but figured seeking community input first would be for the best. BSMRD (talk) 18:44, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

What revised text were you proposing? AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:52, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Something simple to the effect of:

A1: According to a weak consensus of Wikipedia editors, the topic is found in reliable secondary sources and meets Wikipedia policy requirements. This consensus was established by two deletion discussions in 2010

A part of me feels uncomfortable saying there is any consensus on keeping the article though, considering there are double the No Consensus closes to Keep closes. BSMRD (talk) 18:57, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

We can't say that there is currently 'a week consensus' for the article. That isn't what the AfD close says. it says no consensus. All we can really say is that we have repeatedly debated the subject, and have been unable to resolve the matter. And that per policy, 'no consensus' articles are kept, until a firm decision is made one way or another. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:19, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Actually, in light of the last AfD, there only legitimate answer is "Because so far there was no consensus to delete it". I suggest to remove A1 altogether, because there is no consensus answer to this question. Paul Siebert (talk) 19:35, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

I think keeping the question is helpful, as it is obviously a topic which is regularly brought up - as evidenced by the AfD. It is also good context for editors wishing to edit the article. They can read previous discussions, or at the very least see that this is a controversial article. Until the DR is closed it could read something like 'This article was considered for deletion in November 2021 with no consensus achieved. The article is currently the subject of a DR that will determine its future'.

Having said that, I am not completely against the idea of removing the question if we can't find a decent solution. Vanteloop (talk) 20:01, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, but the DR isn't going to 'determine' anything. Per Wikipedia policy, it can't. DR is a mediation process between individuals, and nothing decided there is in any way binding on anyone else. If positive proposals result from the DR, they can of course be considered, but participants in that particular discussion have no more authority than anyone else. AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:07, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Fair point, the RfCs that spin out of that will be semi-binding if they can achieve consensus. But as I said I have no problem deleting it if needs be. Vanteloop (talk) 20:20, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

The question should obviously be deleted. Even the panel’s “ruling” more or less accepted that the article exists, at least partially, because some of the best-funded hard-right media organisations in the world have decreed that it should never be deleted. That’s a farcical situation, but at least we should be honest about it. DublinDilettante (talk) 22:50, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

'Dispute resolution' is not a legitimate reason to remove content.

Per this edit summary, "If the article is kept, let’s leave this to the reactivated DR process where there will be a number of RFCs", [8] I'd like to remind people that there is nothing whatsoever in policy that says that people uninvolved in the DR discussion are in any shape or form obliged to wait for an undetermined length of time until particular contributors start as-yet-undefined RFCs. If, as seems likely, this article is kept, about the only positive thing likely to result from the trainwreck RfC discussion is that it has attracted a broader range of contributors to the article. Contributors who are fully entitled to edit the article, according to relevant policies, in any manner they see fit. 'Leave this' until a particular subset of contributors agree to something or other isn't remotely a legitimate reason to revert anything.

It seems readily apparent from the behaviour of a few individuals, on both sides of this debate, that there are severe 'ownership' issues involved, adding more heat to the obviously-contentious nature of the topic itself. I see no reason why this sort of delaying tactic should be tolerated if it is going to prevent progress, and I suggest that anyone thinking about using such arguments in the future should avoid them, if they don't want to be seen as disrupting the process. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:10, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

?? Delaying tactic? That is just bizarre. Let’s have an RFC over this clearly contentious section then. -Nug (talk) 15:22, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Doesn't explain how you consider it ok to remove a well sourced and supported section, especially the previous justification was "oh well it wasn't there before". Dark-World25 (talk) 15:30, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

If the objective of writing "let’s leave this" wasn't to delay it, why did you write it? As for RfC's, I have no objection to properly-formed and policy-compliant ones, provided they actually serve a purpose. Having 'an RFC' in the abstract may or may not be a good thing though. Hard to tell, without knowing what it is supposed to be about. Personally, I think that the fundamental issue to be resolved is what exactly the scope of this article is supposed to be, rather than one about a few specific phrases, or about the exact meaning of the word "Völkerabfälle" (see section above), and that needs to be discussed first. By everyone, not just a few contributors who have been arguing back and forth inconclusively for years on end. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:32, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

I guess you believe a chaotic approach will help fix things. Rather than sit on the fence criticising everyone, why don’t you start by articulating here what you think the scope of the article should be. —Nug (talk) 15:52, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

The scope of the article? For a start it absolutely, per WP::NPOV, must include scholarly debate over whether attempting to attribute 'mass killings' to something inherent in something as ill-defined as 'communist regimes' is fruitful, or even meaningful. It must also include scholarly debate over whether trying to compile a 'total' of 'mass killings' is an appropriate histographical process, given the obviously-problematic and inherently subjective inclusion criteria involved. And it must likewise, if such subjective 'totals' are to be included at all, note their historical context, and the (appropriately-sourced) later criticism of the validity of such 'totals'. What the article will not do, per WP:NPOV policy, is to define its scope is such a manner to precisely limit said scope to ensure that only one very limited perspective on the complex issues involved is covered. That, quite simply, is a violation of Wikipedia policy. And an insult to readers, who should be permitted to make up their own minds on such issues, rather than being spoon-fed simplistic one-dimensional rhetoric from the pop-up-book of Evil Empires. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:13, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

The title is a descriptive, "Communist regimes" is a widely used term. The article makes no claim that "mass killings" is inherent in "communist regimes", no more than Valentino implies it, but he groups them together never the less. That these killings happened under communist regimes, that they were some of the worst episodes of the prior century, and that communist regimes have killed a massive number of people are mainstream and incontrovertible. That all communist regimes engaged in mass killing, that communism somehow inherently leads to such killings, that Communism is worse than Fascism aren't presented as fact in the article. In regards to your proposal for s section on the scholarly debate, does such a debate actually exist in the sources, all I see is a lot of criticism and polemic over Courtois's number (which is already covered in the article) which is then conflated to include the other dozen estimates in a WP:SYNTHy manner. Even if we halve Courtois' number by excluding famines, is 50 million killed somehow better than 100 million? --Nug (talk) 20:26, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

I am not going to get engaged in a debate with you here. You asked me for my opinion on the appropriate scope of the article, and I gave it, based on my understanding of Wikipedia policies. And if the article is kept, I shall endeavour to ensure that the article complies with such policies. AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:38, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Pray tell why the first results I get under both communist mass killings and "communist mass killings" are related to Indonesia (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)? Davide King (talk) 23:27, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

If you think I should search for "communist regimes" "mass killings", "communist regimes" mass killings, and communist regimes "mass killings", I get Rummel and Valentino but I also still get Indonesia ("Constructive Bloodbath" in Indonesia: The United States, Britain and the Mass Killings of 1965–66, mass killings in general, and mass killings in single Communist regime and/or "Asian Communist regimes" from Margolin (I stopped after a few pages because they were all like this) — so the issues remains, are Rummel and Valentino majority sources? We simply cannot write a NPOV article based on the views of a minority, no matter how significant. The structure must be reversed. Davide King (talk) 23:57, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

The fact that Valentino's chapter about Communist mass killing has been cited once, it must be considered a not so significant minority view, while the book itself is certainly more significant for Mass killing in general, since that is his whole point and scope. Is this wrong and/or I missed something, Paul Siebert? Davide King (talk) 00:06, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

No. You are wrong. Usually, a whole book is cited. And, by the way, that is a reason why Courtois is cited so broadly: when experts in Russia need to cite Werth, they inevitably cite the whole book. That is a standard practice.

It would be much productive to approach this problem totally differently, to answer the following questions:

What is the main Valentino's contribution to science? Why he is notable?
What in the Valentino's theory in general? How it describes and explains mass killings?
What is the place of "communist mass killings" in the Valentino's theory? What causal linkage he sees and what he rejects?

By having answered these questions, we will better understand how exactly this source should be used in this article (if it will be kept) or in other articles. However, it is a little bit premature to speak about that. Paul Siebert (talk) 00:16, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

I do not think we are going to get answers to that, since we are just going to be accused of misreading Tago & Wayman 2010.

I think that answers your questions — "Communist mass killings" is not what he is notable for, and most citations cite the whole book, but the whole book is about genocides and mass killings in the 20th century. I also have to agree with one comment that AndyTheGrump made in the AfD (As for Valentino and Rummel, these are the same authors that have been repeatedly cited for many years in discussions over the disputed article, and the fact that they are being cited yet again surely illustrates just how isolated from mainstream historiography they have become.), and even though it should not be up to us to prove whether they are majority and minority, I think we already did that. Valentino is not cited at all in Karlsson 2008, and Rummel is, well, dismissed to say the least; Courtois does not seem to represent a majority view either according to Karlsson 2008. What more 'proof' do we need?

Davide King (talk) 00:38, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

?? You clearly don't know what Tago & Wayman 2010 is about if you think it related to Valentino or Courtois. Paul's questions about Valentino's conclusions are irrelevant in terms of how this article is structured, the fact that he still grouped communist regimes together for the purpose of his analysis is the key point here. There is no synthesis in this grouping because that's what he and other authors like Bellamy have done. Nobody has claimed Valentino has inferred anything by that grouping because there is no issue with that grouping, and yet the delete !voters continue to claim this same structure infers something beyond what is clearly attributed to the various authors. --Nug (talk) 02:42, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

@Nug: I am going to exhaustively address these your arguments in this my post. If there will be no response from you, I will assume you understood and accepted them. If you will not respond, but raise these arguments again, I am going to interpret it as stonewalling (and may use it in other platforms if I find that appropriate).

Three facts are important:

Valentino's theory of mass killings states that regime type and ideology are not important predictor of mass killings onset (that is important, because his main goal was not to explain, but to predict and prevent mass killings);
Valentino groups what he defines as "mass killings" under Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot into one chapter of his book, which implies some degree of commonality;
Valentino puts Afghanistan counter-guerilla warfare into a different chapter, which implies that the previous grouping was made according to some other criterion than Communism.

And now I am waiting for proposals from all of you guys how to correctly present Valentino's view in this article (of course, if it will not be deleted). I am not going to participate in this discussion until the admins's verdict. Paul Siebert (talk) 03:01, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

You are confusing cause (as a predictor) (the substance of Valentino's conclusion), and topology (the six types defined by Valentino: communist, ethnic, territorial, counterguerilla, terrorist and imperialist), where the communist type comprises of agricultural collectivisation and political terror (which is unique to this regime type). --Nug (talk) 04:44, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

It is — did you not say that we are misreading Tago & Wayman 2010 and that you think regime type is more important? Tago & Wayman 2010 say Valentino is just a bit closer to Rummel but also say that Valentino disagrees with Rummel's authoritarian and totalitarian conclusion, and that this is a complication of original theory his book is based on because regime type does not really matter. Valentino's Communist mass killing grouping is limited to Stalin's USSR, Mao's PRC, and Pol Pot's Kampuchea, while Afghanistan is grouped in counter-insurgency mass killing. It is Courtois and Malia who apply the Communist grouping to any nominal Communist regime ("generic Communism"), which is controversial and not supported by majority of scholars. We cannot write a NPOV article based on minority views — the article should be restructured from majority sources to present Courtois, Rummel, and other scholars' views, not vice versa.

The synthesis is not necessarily the grouping in itself, which is more a NPOV issue because it is not supported by majority of scholars who by and large discuss them individually, but taking chapters mentioning Communist regimes in works about mass killings in general to mean it is a separate category and treat it as such. A more accurate summary would be Mass killings under Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, and/or a comparative analysis between those three regimes, because that is what most sources say. Even Bellamy says that "Communist regimes massacred millions of civilians during the Cold War" but limit himself to the Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia, and says uncontroversial things like that Communist regimes committed atrocities but there were no mass killings (50,000 within five years) other than Stalin's, Mao's, and Pol Pot's regimes. Again, what is the main topic of this article supposed to be? Any Communist atrocity? Communist mass killings (Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot)? A Communist death toll (where the focus is not mass killing in its academic usage but (excess) mass deaths)?

You may think they are but those are not all the same things. Davide King (talk) 03:22, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

"The Cold War Struggle (1): Capitalist Atrocities". There are no excuses for a similar article about capitalist regimes then. By the way, I am not wasting my time to discuss what sources says (I will let Siebert doing that) — can we write a NPOV article if majority of sources used are, in fact, minority? Alex J. Bellamy is an academic who directs the Asia-Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect and is a professor in the department of peace and conflict studies at University of Queensland. We should expect that if someone is going to write about Communism, they should have published works about Communism and/or being some specialists (e.g. Rosefielde or Wheatcroft) — we cannot write an article about Communism from the perspective of minority genocide scholars who have no relevant expertise about Communism. We would have no issues if scholars of Communism and genocide scholars actually relied on and cited each other but they do not, meaning that this article is always going to be from a minority POV of genocide scholars, who are criticized not only by mainstream political science (Verdeja 2012) and does not appear to have changed, which should be enough, but even among themselves (Weiss-Wendt 2008).

Davide King (talk) 03:40, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

An interesting source. That confirms an obvious notion that when some author group some fact into one book chapter, that does not implies a new topic is created. I expect to see @Nug:'s comments here. Paul Siebert (talk) 23:16, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

@New and old participants&DRN

I would love to resume my participation on the DRN, but I am a little bit concerned that the DRN may be seen by someone as insufficiently representative. Is anybody here who is skeptical about it (in terms of representation etc)? If yes,what solution can you propose? Paul Siebert (talk) 23:22, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Leave in Black Book

@Elishop: just removed all references to the Black Book of Communism in the text. I have reveerted him. If anybody wants to say that the Black Book is an unreliable source please just take it to WP:RSN (I believe it's been tried before and the issue has been talked to death here). The "let's delete all the sources we don't like" folks lost the AfD, so are now just going back tp deleting sources. Shame on you. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:00, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Please remember to WP:AGF and to avoid framing things as a WP:BATTLEGROUND; if you remember those previous discussions, you know how firmly split they were - I would not at all characterize them as producing a consensus supporting that source's reliability, so it's not that unremarkable that there continue to be people questioning the heavy way we're leaning on it. In any case, looking over this, we're citing the book an awful lot of times for a source that is unquestionably controversial. I don't think it would hurt to pare it down a bit, if nothing else - the extensive way we're sourcing it gives the impression that it is a mainstream survey of the topic, which it really, really is not. --Aquillion (talk) 02:45, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

As a notice for everyone here who is interested, it has been taken to WP:RSN. BSMRD (talk) 03:23, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Smallbones. We should use this source, and make a stress on his best part (the Werth's chapter), whereas the Courtois's opinion should be put into a proper context, supplemented with a due criticism this list of sources may be helpful.--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:48, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

And, when Courtois's opinion is presented, it is always necessary to present Werth's opinion on what Courtois says.

By the way: how many people here have read the BB in full (not just the introduction)? Who can tell me what Werth says about the roots of Stalinism? Paul Siebert (talk) 04:51, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Alternative wording for FAQ Q1

This is, I think, more than fair, given the acknowledged inadequacy of the "keep by default" convention in the case of the AfD debate we've just had.

The article exists because the most recent proposal to delete it resulted in no consensus to either keep or delete the article. In accordance with Wikipedia’s operative procedures as of December 2021, this lack of consensus to either keep or delete the article results in the article being retained.

Furthermore, it has been acknowledged that right-wing media organisations conducted significant canvassing in favour of the article’s retention, and that such canvassing is likely to be repeated upon any subsequent proposal to delete the aritcle. The extent to which this consideration should be permitted to influence the article’s content (or existence) is still being debated.

While many of the claims put forward in the article are adequately sourced as per Wikipedia guidelines, the accuracy and reliability of these sources remain heavily disputed.

DublinDilettante (talk) 23:24, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

I think that is a fair summary, though I am not sure the accuracy and reliability of these sources remain heavily disputed is correct — what we dispute is that they do not represent a majority, mainstream view (Courtois, Rummel, and genocide scholars are either controversial or minority), and that sources that are claimed to support the grouping as a separate category is likewise controversial and/or in several cases not true, e.g. Fein has a chapter about Soviet and Communist genocide but she does not treat this as a separate category, and most academic books about the subject are about mass killings in general, which is how the topic is discussed, not as we do.

This is also because we still do not agree on the main topic and its structure — is it a mere list of Communist mass killings, in which case it clearly violates our policies because only Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot's regimes engaged in the most commonly accepted academic definition of mass killing (50,000 within five years)? Is it about a link between communism and mass killings, in which case it still has problems because the discussion of the events only includes the minority views of those who may support the link? Is it about both, in which case there may be serious NPOV/SYNTH issues that have not been solved? Is it about a Communist death toll or literally any death, excess death, excess mortality, and mass deaths, under Communist regimes, and mass killings is used in this generic sense, in which case it contradicts Mass killing and still has the same problems?

By the way, "communist death toll" on Google Scholars results show either Rummel, mentions of The Black Book of Communism, or unrelated results (hell, at least one source mentions a post-Communist death toll!), which is yet another proof that body-counting is not a majority mainstream scholarly discourse and reflects a minority with a specific POV, and despite this article acting as a citogenesis for over a decade by now, it has not entered mainstream scholarly discourse as a majority view or separate subject.

Davide King (talk) 23:59, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

I'd personally leave out the second and third paragraph. They don't seem to be a direct answer to the FAQ. And, such canvassing is likely to be repeated upon any subsequent proposal to delete... seems honestly to be WP:CRYSTAL. — Mhawk10 (talk) 07:41, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

The first paragraph - or something like it, I think the wording could be improved - is all that is needed. AndyTheGrump (talk) 12:22, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

I think the first paragraph alone is a good suggestion. It presents the findings of the panel in a straightforward and neutral way. That is all that is needed Vanteloop (talk) 12:56, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Terminology from the sandbox

The terms section written on the sandbox seems ready to replace the terms section of this article. However, considering that it is a high trafic page, I would like to reach a consensus before applying the change. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 22:39, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

This is a really old version of the article that hasn't been substantially edited for a long time. Feel free to blow it away and write something else. --Nug (talk) 22:42, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Some of the grammar needs be imoproved. Other than that, looks good to me. XavierItzm (talk) 04:59, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Prior to the changes just made by XavierItzm, substantial editing to the sandbox ceased in 2013, and the sandbox seems to have been almost entirely forgotten. It would be grossly inappropriate to add material in such a manner without clear prior consensus, even if we weren't already discussing whether we need a section on 'terms' at all. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:58, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

WP:NODEADLINE. Arguments regarding date of contribution hold limited weight. Cheerio, XavierItzm (talk) 16:25, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

If the sandbox section is being proposed, and it is not obvious, launch an RfC and see what the community thinks about the new text. That seems to be the best way forward on heavily-contentious pages. — Mhawk10 (talk) 16:40, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

'Many commentators on the political right ...' better citation requested

Many commentators on the political right state that the mass killings under communist regimes are an indictment of communism ^[1]^[2]^[3]

The citations given for this are examples, rather than references that posit this view. Does anyone have a better source for this (which shows that the statement is correct)? As is, it seems like WP:OR with the citations used as evidence for an argument. Vanteloop (talk) 20:28, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

References

^ Engel-Di Mauro 2021.
^ Piereson, James. "Socialism as a hate crime". newcriterion.com. Retrieved 2021-10-22.
^ Satter, David (2017-11-06). "100 Years of Communism—and 100 Million Dead". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2021-10-22.

Forgot to mention the first source. This states These right- and left-wing attacks on communism nourish a return to anti-communism in the legal frameworks of liberal democracies and threaten the political prospects and personal safety of socialists of any stripe. Anti-communism should be as unacceptable and as vigorously challenged as the ignorant equation of anarchism with chaos and terrorism.. The article seems like more of an attack on anti-communism than a reliable source desribing a phenomenon among many right-wing political commentators. I understand this might be bordering on WP:BLUE but I believe it should have at least one reference considering the contentious nature of the article Vanteloop (talk) 20:33, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree. A representative sample of sources assembled by me, as well as the sources presented by other users, suggest that we should not use that type language.

Instead, I propose the following.

1. Completely rewrite and rename the "Estimates" section.

2. From this section, the sources that are recognized as unreliable for figures should be removed. That include, first of all, Rummel and White.

3. Other sources should be presented as follows:

Some authors (Courtois and few others; name them explicitly) argued that a total amount of premature deaths, including the deaths caused by mass shooting and executions, and the deaths as a result of harsh living conditions (famine) that occurred under Communist regimes should be combined in a single category and directly linked to Communism and Marxism in particular.
The main aspects of that approach have been criticized by other authors, who (i) point that that approach is intrinsically politicized and serves some concrete ideological goals; (ii) find the very idea to combine poorly related events into a single category; (iii) see no direct linkage between these events and Marxism; (iv) find the figures unreliable and inflated.

I also noted that some sources in this section are directly misinterpreted. Thus, Kotkin is used as a source for this statement:

"communist regimes killed at least 65 million people between 1917 and 2017, commenting: "Though communism has killed huge numbers of people intentionally, even more of its victims have died from starvation as a result of its cruel projects of social engineering."" In reality he says:

"In the Soviet Union, China, Mongolia, Eastern Europe, Indochina, Africa, Afghanistan and parts of Latin America—communism has claimed at least 65 million lives, according to the painstaking research of demographers."

which means he speaks about demographic losses, which is not the same as "mass killings". "Demographic losses" is a much broader category, and it refers to those 65 million, not to "even more", as a reader may conclude from the article.

In summary, the section must be rewritten. I propose to start collecting sources, quotes, arguments, and if there will be any disagreement, I propose to try DRN. Paul Siebert (talk) 20:49, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

The entire section is a mess, and I'm not sure it's really useful to have a section labeled "controversies" in the first place when the entire article is a giant controversy. What it seems to cover, instead, is discussion of whether mass killings under communist regimes are an indictment of communism and whether they are a phenomenon unique to communist governments, or ideologically inherent within them. It should be rewritten and retitled to cover that aspect of the debate; it should probably be expanded, but right now most of the sources are terrible; "talking heads at the WSJ and random websites say this" isn't a particularly useful thing to build a section around. But it's also possible it's redundant with the "proposed causes" section and should just be merged into that - what it's really discussing is "is communism the cause?", which we cover better elsewhere. Perhaps it could be turned into a subsection there; but, again, most of the sources are so weak that I'm not sure what we'd be preserving. --Aquillion (talk) 21:04, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
"To expand" by adding new sources and to get rid of garbage sources (as you propose) means "to re-write. It is ok to have a "controvercy" section on teh top in the article that discusses the intrinsically controversial subject.

"Proposed causes" is just a fake. Even the sources it cites do not support what it says.

However, I propose to stay focused. Do you agree "Estimates" must be rewritten? Can you propose another plan (instead of mine)? Paul Siebert (talk) 21:11, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

I moved all the info in the controversy section to the ideology section, which is more fitting. X-Editor (talk) 22:01, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

This, which I support and I thanked you for it, is in fact a call to a rewrite and restructuring, which is what Siebert and I advocate to fix the issues — if the concept is disputed, it must be rewritten to reflect majority views (i.e. those who dispute the concept), and rely on Ghodsee 2014, Neumayer 2018, and others to summarize for us this anti-communist1 phenomenon that criminalizes communism by positing an inherency or link, rather than be like "A said B, and cite it to A rather than C."

I think Siebert, or it may be someone else, were onto something when they said this article essentially attempts to prove the Black Book thesis, and presents it as a majority view or significant part of mainstream scholarly discourse, hence the cherry picking of works about genocide and mass killings in general, the misreading of sources that do not make or discuss a Communist grouping (Courtois and Rummel are prominent exceptions) as a separate topic, and many other errors which Siebert may describe in detail. I may add that it uses the discussion of the events, which indeed happened and Stalin's, Mao's, and Pol Pot's (plus the Red Terror) regimes indeed engaged in mass killings, not as a summary of majority sources, which do not rely on genocide scholars or the terminology that we synthesize as common, but to further legitimize and hide this fact.

[EtA] By this, I mean that the discussion of the events as grouping is not notable and/or is clearly a minority views even among genocide scholars, who compare and group Communist and non-Communist regime types, showing that communism is not the common link. The real notable topic is this link, and the attempt to criminalize communism as a whole, which is presented by a minority of one side of historiography but is more mainstream in the (right-wing) popular press and political institutions (e.g. Prague Declaration, equations between Communism and Nazism, etc.), based on the assumation that it was the greatest murderer of the 20th century (c. 100 million) and that deaths and killings under Communist states were linked to communism as main cause, is rejected by most scholars, and how it fits in the Holocaust memories and politicization.

Rather than prove the Black Book thesis, this is a NPOV version of the same topic. If you want to group the events, we can listify them and/or have a disambiguation page. As it stands, we cannot mix the two without violating NPOV, e.g. 'Proposed causes' only discussing those who see a link, and events being described as death toll events rather than summarize according to majority scholarly views and country experts. Without adding such majority sources, we are violating NPOV but if we add them we may engage in OR/SYNTH because by and large those sources do not rely on genocide scholars, their terminology, and do not link communism as main cause for the mass killings.

Notes

1. Even scholars that may be considered "anti-communist", and/or "orthodox", do not usually go that far in criminalizing communism as a whole. "Revisionist" scholars who are now mainstream, such as Michael Ellman, Sheila Fitzpatrick, J. Arch Getty, Ian Kershaw, Moshe Lewin, Stephen G. Wheatcroft, and many other well-respected scholars in the field, can only be described as anti-communists by Communist apologists, and as pro-Communists by anti-communists and now revisionist scholars who are still struck in the Cold War era and the discredited 1950s totalitarian model.2

2. Doumanis, Nicholas, ed. (2016). The Oxford Handbook of European History, 1914–1945 (E-book ed.). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. pp. 377–378. ISBN 9780191017759. Retrieved 2 December 2021 – via Google Books. At first sight, accusations that Hitler and Stalin mirrored each other as they 'conducted wars of annihilation against internal and external enemeis ... of class, race, and nation,' seem plausible. But such a perspective, in reality a recapitulation of the long-discredited totalitarian perspective equating Stalin's Soviet Union with Hitler's National Socialist Germany, is not tenable. It betrays a profound misunderstanding of the distinct natures of the Stalinist and Nazi regimes, which made them mortal enemies. Stalin's primary objective was to forge an autarkic, industrialized, multinational state, under the rubric of 'socialism in one country'. Nationalism and nation-building were on Stalin's agenda, not genocide; nor was it inherent in the construction of a non-capitalist, non-expansionary state—however draconian. Davide King (talk) 23:01, 2 December 2021 (UTC) [Edited to add] Davide King (talk) 23:28, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

We may simply change it to anti-communist per sources — as noted many times by The Four Deuces, anti-communism, by which we mean the movement and not any criticism (ironically, this is very Soviet-like), which is common even on the Left (e.g. about Communist states), is largely a right-wing phenomenon. We already have secondary and tertiary sources for this, so there is no need to put primary sources. Davide King (talk) 22:39, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

DRN participants

Should users who are active in editing this article be involved in the resurrected dispute resolution? The baton seems to be passed to others in disputing this territory, whereas previous participants may be constrained once more, after the temporary lifting of a moratorium on editing, arising from the AfD, is presumed to be active again. I don't intend to edit the article myself, excepting perhaps removing the worst examples of coatracking, my concern is bringing the previous discussion, well moderated, to bear on active participants. ~ cygnis insignis 06:54, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

"No consensus" and preliminary conclusions

Here is my summary of the recent AfD.

The AfD text was very poorly written.
The discussion has drawn attention of many new users, who may join the work on this article and improve it.
The verdict is "No consensus", which is not an endorsement of the current article's version by a community. That means this version cannot be seen as a stable one.
The summary of the article's problems made by the panes was accurate. It says:

"To the extent there were substantive attempts to engage between the two sides, the discussion centered on whether the references given in support of the article actually represented a significant, mainstream view in reliable sources, or were 'cherry-picked' examples from a non-significant, 'fringe' minority. A subsidiary debate concerned whether the sources presented were correctly interpreted. In our analysis, these questions represent the core of the dispute, and are critical to deciding whether the article should be deleted. Unfortunately, we can find no consensus on them, and consider it unlikely that further discussion in this forum will produce one.

In connection to that, I am going to focus exclusively on those two issues, which I propose to fix. If that will not be done in one-two years, I am going to write a good AfD, which will correctly formulate all core problems and demonstrate its fundamental incompatibility with article's existence. As this AfD demonstrated, admin's panel will not count votes, so, if the article will not be fixed, the outcome of a well written AfD will easy to predict. Paul Siebert (talk) 19:05, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

@Paul Siebert: Even if there is a well-written AfD in the future, I fail to see how that would stop the same disagreement and lack of consensus that plagued the last deletion discussion. I don't think we will ever be able to get rid of this article, not that I want it to be deleted since I voted Strong Keep in the last discussion. X-Editor (talk) 20:32, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

The panel did not make a summary of the article's problems as Paul suggests, they made a summary on what the discussion was centred on. --Nug (talk) 21:28, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

The media organizations that reported the deletion discussion were Fox News, Not the Bee, Media Research Center, Breitbart News and the Telegraph. Since those sources tend to attract both misinformed and far right readers (there's a strong overlap there), that no doubt had an influence on the outcome. TFD (talk) 21:31, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

@The Four Deuces: Yet another reason why there should not be a future deletion discussion anytime soon. It will inevitably be canvassed by these kinds of media organizations which will poison the well, or in this case, Wikipedia. X-Editor (talk) 21:45, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

I’m not seeing your logic here. Because dishonest extreme right-wing media organisations will distort the process by canvassing for the article to be kept, the article should be kept? If you have any regard for the integrity of Wikipedia, that’s an argument for deleting the article outright, not for retaining it! Bizarre reasoning. DublinDilettante (talk) 22:42, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

I hardly think that The Daily Telegraph is "far right". Even if half the keep !votes were discarded as "canvassed", there are still double the keeps compared to deletes, so I think this canvassing issue is somewhat overblown. --Nug (talk) 22:48, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

That you think an arbitrary hypothetical figure would be higher than another arbitrary hypothetical figure is not an argument for anything, but it’s pretty much been the standard of this debate, unfortunately. DublinDilettante (talk) 23:02, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Nug, that's the second time today you misrepresented someone who used the term far right, the other being at 02:56, 1 December 2021. IIRC you once accused me of calling you far right. The term seems to hit a raw nerve in you. FYI I did not say that the Telegraph is far right, which should be obvious to you, but that they attract far right readers. Here for example is a link to a picture of Steve Bannon, who has been described as far right, reading the Telegraph. Similarly, I have never called Fox News far right, but note that it is the go to network for U.S. right-wing extremists. Incidentally, the only other encyclopedia I could find with an article with this name was Metapedia. TFD (talk) 23:21, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

I'd think that Newsmax might be the go-to network for those who are really on the fringe right, rather than Fox News... — Mhawk10 (talk) 09:08, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

@DublinDilettante: What I'm saying is that it is impossible to have an honest deletion discussion because outside right-wing canvassers will ruin any future deletion discussions. X-Editor (talk) 23:15, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Which is functionally the same thing as giving right-wing canvassers a veto over the content of Wikipedia. DublinDilettante (talk) 23:28, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Absolutely no. This AfD demonstrated that admins do not count votes. If they did, the outcome would be "Keep". "No consensus" means the article barely survived deletion, and that "barely" is because the AfD text was very poorly written. Paul Siebert (talk) 23:34, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Alternatively it means that admins had no way of discerning consensus because of the disruptive canvassing. There's a big difference between a discussion that experiences canvassing disruption that makes things more uncertain and one that's really 50-50 either way without any disruption. To say that it barely survived deletion is the wrong conclusion in this case. — Mhawk10 (talk) 09:08, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

The AfD said: "Even before examining the strength of arguments, and allowing for canvassing, this 4:1 ratio strongly suggests that there is no consensus to delete the article." Therefore, canvassing indeed played a big role in the result to not delete the article, so while barely survived deletion may still be a far stretch, I think Siebert still got the AfD's conclusion mostly right and is closer to reality than saying admins had no way of discerning consensus because of the disruptive canvassing — the fact they counted strength of arguments and not votes shows that they clearly had way of discerning consensus, but due to canvassing and a 4–1 ratio they could not establish that there was consensus to delete. Davide King (talk) 00:30, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

@X-Editor: I can explain. AfD revealed all possible arguments in support of "keep", and they were not impressive. If I were an Wiki-LZW, I would archive them into just few sentences that express just a couple of thoughts. As we all know, LZW is a good measure of redundancy: if some massage significantly shrinks upon archivation, it is redundant. All "keep" votes shrinks into just a few, and I know how to address them. A new AfD will contain their refutation, and I have a strong doubt the "keep" proponents will be able to properly respond. The 4th AfD demonstrated that admins do not just count !votes, and that means a new AfD may have serious chances for success. That is not my goal, but we all should keep that in mind. And, since the admins havev demonstrated that they do not count !votes, the only problem with canvassing is that they put an additional psychological pressure on admins. Personally, I was satisfied to see that every canvassed voter just repeated the same superficial arguments.

@Nug: The panel summarized the votes, and the votes described all serious problems of this article. Therefore, the panel de facto summarized the problems that may lead to potential deletion of this article in future. If we don't want this article to be deleted, we must fix them.

@The Four Deuces: That far right (or rightist) mass media criticized this deletion does not mean the article is leftist. It means it is rightist. And our goal is to restore the balance. Paul Siebert (talk) 23:11, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

This comment illustrates what hasn't been addressed about the whole AFD process. If you go through the discussion, it's all but impossible to come to the conclusion that several of the editors most engaged in the discussion view the article as an ideological battleground, which directly conflicts with the goal of providing neutral, informative content. In particular, I would ask those reading this if the following statement tracks: "That far right (or rightist) mass media criticized this deletion does not mean the article is leftist. It means it is rightist." Paul Siebert, can you explain how you came to this conclusion? AShalhoub (talk) 09:42, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

I cannot speak for Paul Siebert, so I ping them, but the fact that coverage came from right-leaning sources, most of them either unreliable or far right, shows that this topic is indeed a rightist one rather than mainstream scholarly discourse,1 and that if there is a battleground, it does not come from us or from the Left. If it truly was a mainstream scholarly discourse, as this article attempts to make it out to be, surely mainstream scholars of Communism would have expressed their thoughts and mainstream press would have reported it; even The Telegraph, the only reliable source to cover the story, cherry picked the opinion of a single 19th-century France specialist, who engaged in Holocaust trivialization and slippery slope that Wikipedia is going to delete genocides, when they could have asked prominent mainstreams scholars of Communism (Ellman, Getty, Fitzpatrick, Kotkin, Snyder, Suny, Wheatcroft) what they really thought, and chose Clifford May, of all people, saying that over 100 million have died under Communism, a claim not even supported by Courtois — it further proves mine and Siebert's point.

Here's the issue with that logic. This article is a long list of atrocities that everyone agrees took place. If it could be shown that the push for article deletion was promoted in leftist media, or that the people in support of deleting were leftist, would that prove that the atrocities were leftist atrocities? AShalhoub (talk) 08:32, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
Notes

1. Again, if it is not a mainstream scholarly discourse and/or does not even represent a majority view, then what is the point and why are we discussing it in the first place without secondary/tertiary coverage? We cannot write a NPOV article from the POV of a minority view and without tertiary sources that help us establish weight. Davide King (talk) 00:24, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

I am satisfied by the panel's closure, and I hope that now we will no longer be dismissed — there is no longer any consensus, and that is now 4–2. Personally, I think AfDs should be restructured because No consensus should not by default result in Keep — the onus should always be on those making a positive claim, not asking us to prove a negative. Because I simply see no way this article is going to be 'deleted' (content certainly will not, nor it should be, as it is already covered elsewhere and can be easily moved, and Siebert, The Four Deuces, and I have proposed the same topic but with a totally different and NPOV structure) other than a 'supervote', and I understand why no admin would want to take the burden considering the right-wing media shitstorm to follow. There are always going to be more users that vote to 'Keep' simply because the events indeed happened and are notable on their own, which add to those who think it meets notability as a grouping and has no significant NPOV/SYNTH/WEIGHT issues. Therefore, the only way I can see this article being deleted is through repeated 'No consensus', and that if we cannot achieve consensus in the next one, two years after over a decade by now, we should restart all over, which is not an outright deletion either, so it could be seen as a compromise. I agree that sources must be analyzed and scrutinized, and I hope that Siebert can do that at DRN — their source analysis has been published in an academic journal and they know better than me. Davide King (talk) 22:01, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps that should have been considered as one more reason to delete? The fact that this has attracted right-wing media, and apart from The Telegraph, most of it either unreliable or far right, should have showed that this article represents a very specific and minority POV view of Communism that not even Conquest made

(at least in his academic published works that I have read — e.g. Conquest did not write about mass killings under Communist regimes, he wrote about the Red Terror, the Holodomor, and the Great Purge in the Soviet Union. He treated these as separate subjects and did not develop a theory of mass killings under Communist regimes)
and that if it truly was a majority or even significant minority view that is part of mainstream scholarly discourse, surely a majority of academics and specialists, not a single historian whose main speciality is 19th-century France and who may have engaged in Holocaust obfuscation and slippery slope for saying we are going to delete the Holocaust next (which shows how laymen, no matter how educated, have not the faintest idea of how Wikipedia works), and non-rightist mainstream press, would have come out. Or are they all Communist puppets for not covering it? Certainly this means we are not crazy or Communist apologists, and any such false accuses should be seen as personal attacks.

Certainly it is also going to be a problem if the article is nominated again in the next years if we have failed to fix such issues, and I do not think there will ever be consensus for 'Delete' unless a panel of admins decide to summarize the dispute as unfixable, with no consensus, and that we should either start all over or give up trying until perhaps scholarly sources that treat it is a majority, mainstream scholarly discourse topic (again, what topic and context though? 20th century? Genocide? Human rights?) come out en masse. Davide King (talk) 00:34, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

The fact that right-leaning media report on a topic that right-leaning people are likely to click on doesn't really seem like as one more reason to delete, any more than left-leaning media reporting widely on a topic is a reason to delete. The fact that a Wikipedia article deletion discussion got media coverage while it was going on from a quality press outlet probably indicates that there's something that's a bit newsworthy and surprising about the fact that there was even a proposal to delete the article. — Mhawk10 (talk) 09:12, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Which of the far-right media outlets which manipulated this debate is a "quality press outlet?" I've really got to hear this...DublinDilettante (talk) 01:40, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

I should have made it clear that it was not to be taken literally, it was more of an observation that I still maintain. The fact that this got media coverage by largely right-leaning and unreliable sources should be telling that this topic reflects a rightist POV and popular press rather than majority scholarly discourse. I fail to see how a single, mainstream right-leaning paper (The Telegraph, which we describe as "generally reliable" but also say that "[s]ome editors believe that The Daily Telegraph is biased or opinionated for politics", which showed in their coverage) gave coverage to it "indicates that there's something that's a bit newsworthy and surprising about the fact that there was even a proposal to delete the article." You may have had a point if it was also reported by other mainstream papers. That was my point, which I do not think you have rebuked.

P.S. As for Fox News and the radical right, check Google Scholar, which supports what The Four Deuces said, namely that it is not far right but it has certainly attracted the radical right. Davide King (talk) 10:40, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

The issue is that the coverage in these publications encouraged the participation in the AfD of a lot of uninformed extremists, which affected the outcome.

Fox News averages 2.5 million viewers. 18% of Fox News viewers believe the media and government are "controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles."[9] That means the Fox News story reached 450,000 viewers [18% times 2.5 million = 450,000]. The argument that because most Fox News viewers are not far right, that they did not reach any members of the far right because none of them watch Fox News is bogus. I understand that some editors may have difficulty with basic arithmatic (apparently Courtois does too.) Anyway, Fox News and The Telegraph were not the only media that have far right fans. Not the Bee, Media Research Center and Breitbart News also have far right fans.

TFD (talk) 02:02, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Considering that the AfD said: "Even before examining the strength of arguments, and allowing for canvassing, this 4:1 ratio strongly suggests that there is no consensus to delete the article." Therefore, canvassing indeed played a big role in the result to not delete the article,1 and this article is never going to be deleted if we consider a ratio to be reflective of consensus on whether to delete the article because there are always going to more users that would !keep — this is a serious problem because it is going to happen again if we renominate it after attempts to fix it have failed, hence why I said the only way this article is going to be deleted is through a panel's decision and/or admins consider it that if there is no consensus to keep the article again, and we have indeed tried to fix the issues, we should restart all over — either through deletion and/or reduction to stub with name change.

Notes

1. The fact that it did not result in 'Keep' either shows that our arguments were either stronger, or strong enough to not consider it to be consensus to keep the article, so I consider that as a win — it is 4–2 now. Davide King (talk) 11:42, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Which quality press outlet? Levivich 02:09, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

I assume they meant The Telegraph but even then their bias showed, e.g. mentioning Clifford May. Davide King (talk) 11:42, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Indeed, I meant The Telegraph, which is indeed a quality press outlet. — Mhawk10 (talk) 01:57, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Here's another article in a right-wing source: "Wikipedia continues to rewrite history, this time prepares to delete page on mass killings under communist regimes: Here are the reasons they gave" (Opindia, Nov. 28) This source is right-wing and has routinely published fabricated stories, according to their Wikipedia article. I cannot provide a link because the site is blacklisted. TFD (talk) 18:02, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Notice to DRN Participants

@Paul Siebert, Cloud200, Nug, and Davide King:

In case you haven't noticed, the DRN has been resumed. Now that the DRN has been formally closed, you are invited to make the statements that I described.

Maybe you don't remember that DRN Rule 5 says: "It would be better not to discuss the article on the article talk page or on user talk pages while moderated discussion is in progress, because discussion elsewhere than here may be overlooked or ignored." If all of you would rather discuss here, then I can close the DRN as abandoned by the participants, perhaps because you think that discussion without a moderator will be more productive, or because you will be more likely to "win" the discussion (which doesn't mean that you will "win" any content disputes). The discussion of the FAQ can reasonably be here, because it isn't about article content, but some of the discussion that just restarted is about article content.

Robert McClenon (talk) 05:40, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

@Robert McClenon:, I asked you a question on your talk page. I am not sure DRN can continue in the old format. There are two reasons. First, many other users has come to the page, they do not seem to be interested in participating, and they do not feel the DRN decision has any binding effect. Second, as we can conclude from the message on the DRN page, it is "an informal place to resolve small content disputes as part of dispute resolution." The dispute about this article is by no means small. Thus, the dispute must include a comprehensive analysis of a representative sample of sources, which by no means fits into a current format, which was specifically designed for minor disputes.

Nevertheless, I would love to continue to work with you as a mediator. I propose to switch to another format: to discuss more local issues, step by step. That will allow us to be more focused and that gives us a hope to find a way out of an impasse.

I have some concrete plan, but I would like to hear your opinion first. Also, I have a feeling that some participants quit the DR (@AmateurEditor: does not seem to be active, @Cloud200: did not respond to my invitation to join the DR.

In connection to that, the best approach would be to let the talk discussion to proceed for several days, to find the most important local points of disagreement and to, probably, include new participants into the DR.

I anticipate there will be a series of RDs about more local aspects.

What is your opinion on all of that? Paul Siebert (talk) 15:41, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Going Forward with Dispute Resolution

I am ready to restart moderated dispute resolution at the Dispute Resolution Noticeboard. I will first reply to a few comments. Two of the principals in the suspended discussion say that the AFD has rendered the previous dispute resolution moot. I am not sure why that would be. In particular, an RFC on the overall structure of the article still seems to be a good idea. It is not clear to me such an RFC has been overtaken or superseded. If there are issues with the article overall, then they are likely to complicate or even corrupt efforts at local dispute resolution. If the principal editors in the DRN think that the previous dispute resolution process is moot, I can close the dispute resolution, but I think that then the overall neutrality and verifiability issues will bog down any local dispute resolution.

A suggestion was made to focus on what sources to use. Questions about the reliability of sources should be addressed at the Reliable Source Noticeboard, and can be discussed there without suspending DRN. Other questions about sources have to do with what classes of sources to use, which are questions of overall structure.

User:Paul Siebert correctly quotes the DRN page as saying that DRN is intended for small content disputes. It is also true that the English Wikipedia no longer has a formal procedure for the resolution of large content disputes, and how to handle such disputes was the topic of one of my questions to the ArbCom candidates. However, I was deliberately ignoring the restriction to small content disputes when I opened this case. This was not the first time that I have accepted a DRN case knowing that it could last for months because of its size.

If any editors have any specific ideas for how to direct the dispute resolution, they may post them either here or at the dispute resolution page.

I will comment further within 24 hours. Robert McClenon (talk) 08:12, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

If anyone wants to start an (appropriate and relevant) RfC, they are of course welcome to do so. If some of the contributors to this article want to use the existing DR thread to decide on wording for such an RfC, they can do likewise. However, it has to be made clear that absolutely nothing decided during DR is in any shape or form binding on anyone not participating, and that none of those participating in that discussion - including the moderator Robert McClenon - have any special authority over this article. My personal advice to participants in that process would be to shut it down, before the obvious issues of ownership that were apparent during the AfD come to a head once more. Issues which involved, amongst other things, citing DR as a reason not to edit the article, or even discuss potential edits: a clear attempt to stall progress. This is a divisive and complex issue, and it isn't going to be resolved by splitting contributors into two different groups discussing the same topics in two different places. Or by giving, intentionally or otherwise, the impression that one group has more say regarding the process than the other. AndyTheGrump (talk) 09:31, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Follow-Up on Going Forward

There have been what may be two different ideas on the next steps for dispute resolution. First, User:Paul Siebert has said that they will propose a plan for how to continue the dispute resolution, and that they will describe it in more detail shortly. Second, User:AndyTheGrump has said that, with the large number of editors who have come to this article talk page during the AFD, the DRN should be shut down.

My opinion is that, due to the large number of editors who are now involved in editing the article, it is very unlikely that any progress can be made other by RFC. If Paul Siebert or anyone else has a proposal for moderated discussion, I will be glad to read it and comment on it. If any editor wants assistance in formulating a neutrally worded RFC, I will provide that assistance either at DRN or on this article talk page. I would prefer to provide the assistance at DRN simply as a "quiet corner" in a noisy talk page. I will cancel the rule against editing the article and the advice against discussing anywhere else, and will allow any editor to take part in DRNMKUCR, regardless of whether they are one of the listed editors.

So, for now, DRNMKUCR is open for the development of RFCs. I will consider the proposal to shut it down, and any proposal for any other sort of moderated discussion. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:35, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

I think it might be good to do a source analysis of the currently in-use references and to summarise what they say on the topic. It doesn't necessarily need to cover every reference, but just the ones being used for the content disputes (i.e. is there a tie between communism and mass killings). Dark-World25 (talk) 17:41, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

@Dark-World25: that would be a quite reasonable approach, except the sources this article is currently using do not fully represent scholarly views on that subject. Paul Siebert (talk) 05:55, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

@Robert McClenon: Currently, a possible way to start the DRN is as follows. In text few days, I am going to propose some local but significant change. Most likely, that will be a removal of the "Terminology" section. If there will be no serious explicit objections, I am going to implement these changes. Most likely, those changes will face a serious opposition and support. In that case, I propose to start a new DRN devoted to this specific issue, and include all parties into it. Do you think that may work? Paul Siebert (talk) 06:00, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

User:Paul Siebert - What would you expect to be the result of the DRN? Would you expect it to result in approval of your idea, compromise, an RFC, what? Robert McClenon (talk) 07:40, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

@Robert McClenon: sorry, but your question doesn't look serious. If I wanted just an approval of my idea, it would be senseless to resort to DRN.

My proposalis as follows: I outline a problem, and I propose a possible solution. If this solution is supported by others, there will be no need in DRN. If this solution faces a serious opposition, that means we have a disagreement, which I propose to decide via DRN (which consists of several rounds of a mediated discussion), where will lead either to approval of my solution (which is unlikely), or to development of some other mutually acceptable solution (which is what DRN is needed for).

Actually, the first part of my plan has already been implemented. We already have a point of disagreement, where I propose to remove the "Terminology" section by rearrangement or removal its content. @Nug:, @XavierItzm:, and @Vanteloop: disagreed with that, although their rationale seems unclear. @Levivich:, @Fiveby:, @Davide King:, @AndyTheGrump: (and I) believe the section have serious problems, and its removal is one of possible solution.

A course of the recent discussion demonstrated that we need a mediated discussion to achieve some consensus. IMO, DRN would be the best platform for that.

Can you please suspend the current DRN and start a new one (or, maybe, I should do that? I am not completely familiar with the procedure)? IMO that issue is much more local than the discussion about the article as a whole, and, therefore, it has much more chances for a quick success. Paul Siebert (talk) 17:33, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

An increasingly drawn-out farce

It's clear that, having failed to make any plausible case for retaining this article (even with the organised support of far-right media outlets), the Keepist camp is attempting to "win the peace" by locking in a hard-line, POV intepretation of history through a series of bureaucratic manoeuvres and "sandbagging" of those they see as their opponents. There is no good faith being exercised, and none is possible in these conditions.

The article should never have been retained. Someone really needs to take this in hand, because it's clearly not going to stop. DublinDilettante (talk) 01:53, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

If you think a user is engaging in disruptive editing, take them to ANI and provide specific evidence. Vague statements alleging that a keepist camp is engaging fully in bad faith is not something generally fit for an article talk page. — Mhawk10 (talk) 01:59, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

You know what's going on here is way beyond bad or disruptive behaviour by individual editors. Let's not pretend, after everything that's happened on and off Wikipedia over the past week, that this is a simple edit dispute which can have a negotiated outcome. No-one here is that naive. DublinDilettante (talk) 02:04, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

I don’t think anybody thinks that this is a simple edit dispute—the series of disputes on this article is complex—but I don’t think that a lack of simplicity implies bad faith behavior by editors. If DR processes (mediated outcomes) don’t work, that’s the whole point of launching requests for comment to bring the whole community to work on an issue. I think this is what the mediator is saying anyway at this point, though obviously Robert McClenon can speak for himself in that regard. — Mhawk10 (talk) 02:11, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

User:Mhawk10, User:DublinDilettante - I am not the mediator here. I am only in the role of mediator at DNRMKUCR, and I was not really trying to mediate there either, but to formulate one or more RFCs, so I am really a facilitator there. If anyone wants to come there and talk about RFCs, they are welcome. We have one RFC in progress here, but it is a tagging dispute, and it is my opinion that tagging disputes are a useless distraction; and one or more substantive RFCs can run while the tagging dispute is also argued. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:21, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

I think you meant WP:DRNMKUCR. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:21, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

@DublinDilettante: To add on to my first-indent comment above, I would kindly ask you to strike this comment and to close this section. If there is a legitimate complaint you have about long-term behavioral issues, then it should be handled respectfully at the relevant editors' talk pages or at AN(I). An article talk page is not the right place for a discussion primarily on user conduct. — Mhawk10 (talk) 02:16, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

User:DublinDilettante, User:Mhawk10 - I would advise that complaints about user conduct are more likely to be dealt with more effectively at Arbitration Enforcement than at WP:ANI. Dealing with conduct in areas covered by discretionary sanctions is what Arbitration Enforcement is for. But that is the call of a filer. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:25, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

@DublinDilettante: If you want to improve the article, the best way would be to completely abandon the manner to discuss another party's intentions (and to stop discussing any behevioural issues). If you see that some user is engaged in disruptive editing, POV-pushing and misinterpretation of sources, report them at AE. You may warn them once at their talk page. The users who were sanctioned previously per ARBEE do not need even a DS warning. If you are ready to blame them of misbehaviour, go to AE. If you are not ready, please, focus on the content issues exclusively, and do not discuss their behaviour here. In general, this talk page is a bad place for discussion of such topics as "attempting to "win the peace" by locking in a hard-line, POV interpretation... etc". This may result in your own topic ban, which will eliminate you from this dispute. I am not sure that is an outcome you want to achieve. Paul Siebert (talk) 06:18, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

@DublinDilettante: I am not gonna sugarcoat it for you, but your entire comment smells of hypocrisy. With that aside however, although I am not gonna reiterate what I have said previously at the AfD which I am fairly certain you remember, there is the matter of fact that your display of maturity confirmed both my comment's assertion, and my own suspicion that you do not care about the article's quality, and only wishes it gone because you do not like it. Checking your talk page makes it evident that you are politically motivated to edit on Wikipedia since 2021 and will actively push unsourced POV until you get blocked following multiple warnings, all the while going as far as to accuse other editors of pushing their political agendas; quite as exactly as you did right here by implying motives with your comment about the keepist camp, a rhetorical word salad that definitely gives off the impression that you only view your own opinions as correct.

Think about my comment strongly before you say another word, please. I know you can be better than this. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 13:22, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

I think we're all probably a bit embarrassed for you after that puerile little outburst, so I'll simply remind you that you always have the option of deleting it, and of thinking about what you're doing with your life, and your time on Wikipedia. DublinDilettante (talk) 15:37, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

So you seriously think he's wasting his life time because he didn't vote to delete or disagrees with you? --TheImaCow (talk) 19:02, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

The article has been retained. Complaining about it is a waste of time, unless you're planning a fifth AfD. GoodDay (talk) 15:46, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

lol "keepist" camp. This is beyond parody. I recommend closing this talk section. WeifengYang (talk) 22:22, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

@WeifengYang: Agreed. Opinionated screeds do not belong here. X-Editor (talk) 23:26, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Undue. weight

I've noticed a lot of new sources have been introduced recently and it appears that many are given undue weight. For example why should we give any weight to Engel-Di Mauro when his paper is cited by nobody and his main area of expertise seems to be in the field of ecology? --Nug (talk) 19:02, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

@Nug: That is a rational argument. I wish you will apply it uniformly to all sources.

Yes, we need a common approach to assess weight issues. I already proposed you to express your thoughts on that account, but you did not respond.

WRT this concrete source, it is ridiculous to expect that the article published in May 2021 may have a large number of citations. In that case, the approach would be:

Evaluate a publisher: Taylor&Francis is a reputable publisher, but I don't know if this concrete journal is respectable. Try to find its impact-factor.
Evaluate the author: what is his main works? How well are they cited? and so on. Paul Siebert (talk) 19:13, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

It was discussed at RSN. As it was published this year, and is corroborated by other sources already cited there (Ghodsee 2014, Ghodsee & Sehon 2018), it seems premature to dismiss it like this. Apparently that is undue but Watson or Hicks (who is writing about criticism of postmodernism) are not? It is interesting how you find undue any form of controversy and criticism related to the topic, even if published in academic journals (e.g. you removed David-Fox too). Davide King (talk) 19:16, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Did Nug really remove David-Fox? If that is the case, he should self-revert, othervise he must be reported at AE for tendentious editing. Paul Siebert (talk) 19:39, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

They did here under the guise of "trim and tidy up", and here under the guise of "slim down and tidy up", and David-Fox has not been re-added since then. As you can see in both edits, they have also changed the heading sections to remove 'attempts' in regards to terminology and estimates. Davide King (talk) 20:06, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Yes, it seems you are right. It seems @Nug: removed this high quality and relevant source repeatedly, and under a false and misleading edit summary. It is premature to speak about that when the AfD procedure is in progress, but if the decision will be "keep", I'll ask admins at AE if these two edits are appropriate. Paul Siebert (talk) 21:52, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Here is the author's CV It is up to you decide if he is an expert. Paul Siebert (talk) 19:22, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Another problem with that source is that it uses some figures from Wikipedia. We need to discuss how to use this source to minimise a risk of citogeneicity problems.--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:42, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

There is a distinction between new opinions expressed in articles and a recitation of facts. In this case, Engel-De Mauro is merely reciting facts: that the 100 million figure has no support in reliable sources and was chosen for its propaganda value. He is not providing his own opinion. The advantage of a recent source is that the author would be aware of any changes in the academic literature.

One of the many problems with this article is that it relies too much on original opinion rather than literature that explains their weight. Why for example do we mention George Watson at all, when no academic sources on the subject have cited him? His translation of Völkerabfälle as "racial trash" is misleading, since the modern concept of race had not been invented. The Germany word for racial trash incidentally is Rassenmüll.

The other source provided translates the expression as "residual fragments of peoples." Engels did not actually call them that, but said that Hegel did.

And here we have in Talk:Mass killings under communist regimes/Archive 1 (over 12 years ago), Nug defending the translation. The discussion came up twice more, with AmateurEditor also defending it.

TFD (talk) 21:18, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

It's incorrect to say that "Volk" wouldn't be translated as "race" before "Rasse" came into use. "Volk" was the word Hitler used in Mein Kampf to refer to the nationalities he would later exterminate. He also refers to "das deutsche Volk literally dozens of times, without referring to "die deutsche Rasse" a single time; history has shown he wasn't referring to people with German citizenship. So saying that it's invalid because the modern concept of race hadn't been invented doesn't track. The genocide of Roma and Sinti is still referred to as "Völkermord", so it really doesn't make any sense to nitpick that translation of Engels. Or would you argue that "Abfall" doesn't refer to waste or trash? ^[1] AShalhoub (talk) 09:27, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Radonić in The Holocaust/Genocide Template in Eastern Europe says a closer translation of völkerabfälle is "refuse of nations". Google translates völkerabfälle to "national waste". The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination includes discrimination based upon "national origin". I guess we will get pages and pages of heated discussion over the difference between "waste", "refuse" and "trash". --Nug (talk) 22:35, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

I don’t know about that, but I certainly can read a difference between “racial” and “national”. postleft ✍ (Arugula) ☞ say hello! 02:51, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, using "race" anywhere near völkerabfälle give a completely different idea from what is actually meant, and I would question both the translation ability and motives of anyone who translated it as "racial trash". Something like "national remains" or "fragments" would be more accurate IMO. "refuse" or "debris" could also be appropriate, though more negatively connotative than I would use. None of these are literal of course, but you shouldn't translate terms like this literally to begin with. BSMRD (talk) 03:05, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

@BSMRD: Pardon the blunt question BSMRD, but are you a German speaker? The reason I ask is that I have never heard anyone translate the word Abfall as anything other than some version of trash or waste. The only way "fragments" could be used is in the sense of "fragments of trash" i.e. since Abfälle is the plural form of the word, though I would translate as pieces of trash. The semantic translation of Völkerabfälle in modern English is probably something along the lines of "garbage nationalities", but literally would be "pieces of national trash." AShalhoub (talk) 12:51, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

"Small 'degenerated' ethnic groups—'ruined fragments of peoples' such as Bretons, Basques, Scottish Gaelic speakers and most Slavs, were rightly 'destined to perish'." Tombs, Bobby. "Must Marx and Engels be cancelled?". History Reclaimed. three weeks ago ~ cygnis insignis 14:12, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

@Cygnis insignis: Is the point of this quote to argue that Engels isn't racist, or that Abfall should be translated as fragments? AShalhoub (talk) 15:28, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

What Tombs is arguing is up to the reader, what I am noting is they used the same point to discuss Engels "three weeks ago" on their History Reclaimed site. I was reading the site because Tombs commented on this article in the Daily Telegraph, leveling an accusation at those who thought it should be deleted. ~ cygnis insignis 23:52, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

I'll tag on discussion of the site for those wondering about the redlink: Lester, Alan (15 September 2021). "History Reclaimed – But From What?". Snapshots of Empire [blog]. University of Sussex.. ~ cygnis insignis 00:16, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Directing hate against someone on the basis of national origin is still considered racist. —Nug (talk) 03:26, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Is it considered 'racist' by you? ~ cygnis insignis 03:37, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

By the Declaration on Race and Racial Prejudice: "Any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, ethnic or national origin or religious intolerance motivated by racist considerations, which destroys or compromises the sovereign equality of States and the right of peoples to self-determination, or which limits in an arbitrary or discriminatory manner the right of every human being and group to full development is incompatible with the requirements of an international order which is just and guarantees respect for human rights;". So yes, by that standard Engels was a racist. --Nug (talk) 04:06, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

By that and many more modern standards, majority of 19th century people we know about were racists, and many 20th century leaders would be considered white supremacists, so I do not see why single out Engels for that, especially when both Marx and Engels still represented at least a moderately progressive stand by their standards, and why we should cite Watson, who not only had no expertise on Communism and/or Marxism but held the fringe view that Hitler was a Marxist and Marx invented genocide. It is also an example of false balance because while we cite criticism by Grant in his academic review, we cite Andrzej Walicki as if Watson's views are not as fringe as they are because they are supported by a single historian. Davide King (talk) 05:24, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

That is WP:SYNTH. What matters is the relative prominence and reputability of the sources; Watson is nether particularly reputable nor noteworthy, so his personal feelings about how it ought to be translated and what it means carry no weight and shouldn't be discussed, certainly not with an entire paragraph devoted to them. --Aquillion (talk) 07:46, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Well given that Watson’s book has 20 cites and has been subject of a review, it certainly is more prominent and notable than Engel-Di Mauro who is cited by nobody. -Nug (talk) 15:05, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Just to be clear, that's your standard, then - anything relevant with ~20 citations and one review (which can be a critical review) ought to get a paragraph devoted to it in this article? I'm not sure it's viable to include everything at that standard, but it'll be useful to at least have a baseline in mind for inclusion at this level of detail. --Aquillion (talk) 22:22, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

@Aquillion: Actually, in this section, I already explained the flaw in this user's argumentation (just scroll a little bit up). However, instead of answering to my arguments, he decided to repeat this argument again.

I even may try to predict what the answer to your post will be. This user may argue that that is not his standard, but Paul Sibert's approach. Which would be totally wrong: according to my approach, citations count is just one factor out of many, and it should never be taken out of context. Paul Siebert (talk) 22:34, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Number of citations may be a sign of notability, not necessarily of reliability — e.g. it may also be cited in many sources that are unreliable. Holy moly, the chapter by Valentino deveoted to Communist regimes has been cited once (considering that the book is about genocides and mass killings in general during the 20th century, the number of citations for the book as a whole should not be seen as proof that Communist mass killing is widely cited). I guess we must remove Valentino now... Davide King (talk) 00:02, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Anyway, we are getting off topic here, the issue being WP:UNDUE with respect to some of these newer additions. The problem with this is: Author XXX publishes a paper on some aspect of MKuCR, which in turn is cited by 55 other scholars. Some editor finds one cite by author YYY that criticizes author XXX's paper and tells us this is proof that XXX is controversial and/or his paper is junk, but the editor ignores the fact that the other 54 scholars cite XXX's paper without criticism. What is happening here is that confirmation bias is leading to people giving more weight to some opinion than is warranted. --Nug (talk) 04:20, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

I find it interesting you say that because confirmation bias applies to defenders of this article who are looking for sources about Communist regimes and mass killings, ignoring the fact that most of them are either passing mentions in a much broader work (Mann) or are within the context of general genocides and mass killings in the 20th century (Fein, Valentino), and where a single university syllabus, which may well be based off this article and is why this article should have been deleted long ago and recreated only when such issues were solved, by someone who has published nothing on Communism and is an expert on Putin's Russia, is seen as the smoking gun that all our assertions are false.

Again, if all those were majority views, it should be easy to prove (hell, even AmateurEditor admitted that most of them are minority views but deemed them significant and fine as long as they are attributed, but if we have to attribute everything and the article is a bunch of "He said, she said", what is the point and what does it add?) — we cannot write a NPOV article based on minority views, no matter how significant they are, and it also matters in which field they are because genocide studies does not hold the same weight as political science, historians of Communism, and country experts and specialists hold. Davide King (talk) 05:12, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

You cannot simply focus scrutiny on newer additions. Due weight is relative; therefore, if you are going to object to one source on an article, it is logical to compare and contrast it with the weight accorded to others on the same page - especially ones with opposing viewpoints. When you object to one source on WP:DUE grounds, any other sources that can reasonably be construed as having comparable or lesser weight need to be discussed as well. It's fine to say "ah, but this source has a bunch of people who treat them as reputable", but you need to actually be able to produce and discuss those (which leads to its own discussions of which secondary opinions are more weighty - not every dismissal or citation is equivalent.) --Aquillion (talk) 07:46, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

The article didn’t appear like a mushroom over night, previous additions have been scrutinised, look at the pages of talk. So of course the focus is necessarily on new additions, obviously in context of what is already there. Other we run the risk of WP:COATRACKINGing. —Nug (talk) 15:17, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Actually, this is largely untrue. The article was full-protected for six years (and the protection was introduced in the middle of a serious conflict when the entire article was unstable); this is part of the reason it's in such a sorry state, since Wikipedia's standards advanced over those years and this article didn't. As a result, many additions never received proper scrutiny. --Aquillion (talk) 22:15, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

The statement by Engels in "The Magyar Struggle" is:

"There is no country in Europe which does not have in some corner or other one or several ruined fragments of peoples, the remnant of a former population that was suppressed and held in bondage by the nation which later became the main vehicle of historical development. These relics of a nation mercilessly trampled under foot in the course of history, as Hegel says, these residual fragments of peoples [Völkerabfälle] always become fanatical standard-bearers of counter-revolution and remain so until their complete extirpation or loss of their national character, just as their whole existence in general is itself a protest against a great historical revolution."

His first example was the Scots. As we all know, Scots were "suppressed and held in bondage" by the English, then became "fanatical standard-bearers of counter-revolution" of Bonnie Prince Charlie until his defeat at Culloden in 1746, after which the Jacobite uprising ended and Scots came to regard themselves as British. Subsequently Scots played leading roles in the British Empire.

TFD (talk) 12:31, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

A quote from the opening remarks of the 1978 UN declaration, a translation of Völkerabfälle, "So yes, by that standard Engels was a racist" … @Nug: is that what happened? ~ cygnis insignis 14:55, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

@TFD These völkerabfälle Scots are seeking independence from the UK at the last I heard. You know what “extirpation” means, right? And Engels called for the complete extirpation of these trash peoples because he saw them fanatical counter revolutionaries. In the light of current human rights practice how can anyone defend that today? —Nug (talk) 15:44, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Last I heard, Scotland voted 55% to remain in the UK and 62% to remain in Europe. Whether or not the seceed from the UK, there is no indication that an independent Scotland would be governed according to the clan system. Engels' view was part of liberal ideology of the day. It is entirely disingenuous of Watson to see this view as something invented by socialists.

There is no indication either that these comments were repeated. Watson's thesis was that similar comments were deliberately hidden from the public (although the view on assimilation continued to be part of liberal ideology into the 1960s), but somehow guiding modern communists. Ironcially, the same people who bring this up also accuse the Left of supporting "multiculturalism." TFD (talk) 21:57, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Please, correct me if I am wrong, but I have a feeling that a part of what Marx and Engels wrote during that period was a description of bourgeois (nationalist) revolutionary processes in those times Europe that, according to them, were paving a way to a Communist revolution. I found no statements in Marx or Engels work where they said that some national or ethnic group must be destroyed by or during or after some Communist revolution, and that their destruction is something that a new Communist government is supposed to accomplish.

In contrast, from the context, it is clear that potential destruction of of some backward groups during or as a result of European nation building processes was seen favourably by Engels. However, and it must be clear from the context, these processes were expected to be accomplished before Communist revolution would occur in Europe, and that destruction was not the Communists's goal. That destruction, as well as many other brutal processes were seen by Engels as a manifestation of capitalism, and it would create prerequisites for Communist revolution. There would be no backward ethnic groups anymore that Communists would need to destroy.

If my understanding of Engels is correct (and I have a strong feeling it is), all attempts to sherry-pick some statements from Engels to demonstrate his racism or to make i=him a proponent of "Communist genocide" a pure manipulation. Paul Siebert (talk) 22:23, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

I agree. And it is ahistorical to assign modern concepts to his article. Engels for example referred to revolutionary Slavs and Germans as revolutionary peoples, and Slavs and Germans opposing them as counter-revolutionary peoples. Watson would translate people as race and say this is racism. By that logic, the allies were racists for wanting to defeat Germany and japan. TFD (talk) 23:16, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Thoughts about this? Weiss-Wendt, Anton (December 2005). "Hostage of Politics: Raphael Lemkin on 'Soviet Genocide'". Journal of Genocide Research. 7 (4): 551–559. doi:10.1080/14623520500350017. ISSN 1462-3528. Davide King (talk) 00:27, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Victims of Communism Foundation

While the BBoC discussion is underway on RSN, I propose that all references to the Victims of Communism to be stripped in the meantime. The last RSN discussion [10] concluded with all participants voting unreliable, so the fact that it still remains in the article (and other articles) is a mistake that ought to be rectified. As I have pointed out elsewhere on this page, the foundation inflates the deaths count even beyond the BBoC, including deaths of Nazi belligerents in WW2, deaths due to the covid pandemic as well as potentially unborn, unconceived children that could have been born. Dark-World25 (talk) 14:52, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

I could only find one example where it was used as a source. My understanding is that the Foundation does not conduct its own research and therefore even if it were reliable, which it obviously isn't, it would be better to use those sources directly. However, the Foundation should be mentioned in this article. TFD (talk) 14:59, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Agreed. Keep the source as appropriate. XavierItzm (talk) 15:05, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Who exactly are you agreeing with? AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:08, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

As a general rule, indentation denotes which post is being replied to. Cheerio, XavierItzm (talk) 16:18, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

While I recognise that it is used with attrition, I would still argue against the inclusion as an estimate given the reasons I have named above. Perhaps in this case we could add a sentence following it to the effect of "this figure is generally disputed by academics" or noting its staunchly conservative, anti-communist leaning? Dark-World25 (talk) 15:16, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Currently, the Foundation is used as one of three sources for the following sentence: "Holocaust – communist holocaust has been used by some state officials and non-governmental organizations." The whole sentence should be deleted. We are not supposed to compare and contrast what sources say, per no original research. Only if a source does this can we can report what they say. Furthermore, "some" is a weasel-word, that cannot be used if it is in the source. TFD (talk) 15:30, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

The sentence is appropriate and should be kept as per its sources. If you feel a need to attribute in main text, boldly go ahead.XavierItzm (talk) 16:20, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

But with attribution it would be WP:UNDUE - why is it so important what this one particular organization has said? If we're going to rely on primary usages of the term to cite that sentence, we need to attribute who is specifically using the term in each case, we can't just vaguely say "people use it" - that's WP:SYNTH. And none of them are individually that noteworthy. If we're going to mention it we should find secondary coverage instead. Compare / contrast to the much better sourcing we have discussing the use of red holocaust (which, based on the sourcing, ought to be the main focus of the paragraph.) --Aquillion (talk) 18:52, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Aquillion, this is essentially the problem with the whole article, as it is not only a bunch of "he said, she said" but apart from few exceptions (e.g. Rummel quoted through Totten & Jacobs) we all cite it to A rather than C. If we cannot find secondary/tertiary coverage for that, it means they are either undue or we cherry picked quotes in support, e.g. majority of works are about genocide and/or mass killings in general, so it looks like we just cherry picked mentions of communism and attributed to sources a separate grouping or speciality to communism — Mann's main thesis is, in fact, that many genocides, such as Rwandian genocide, were a result of democratic transformations in those countries (hence the book's title Dark Side of Democracy, but we cherry pick his mention of classicide and Communist regimes. Davide King (talk) 11:05, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

It is not properly attributed because none of the sources say, "communist holocaust has been used by some state officials and non-governmental organizations." Instead, it is an anaylsis, which is not permissable per no synthesis. TFD (talk) 20:11, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm okay with the VoCMF being mentioned in this article, so long as an efn is included to inform readers the Foundation is controversial, has strong links to the neoliberal think tank The Heritage Foundation, and its blog has published provocative and disputed material (like blaming Covid deaths on communism, and the CCP in particular [11]).--C.J. Griffin (talk) 15:34, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

At the very least we should not be citing it their blog the Estimates section. That section says that it covers notable estimates, but the cite is to their blog, which is obviously WP:UNDUE in this context - if it is a notable summary, it ought to have secondary coverage. Summarizing their view, with attribution, in sections more specifically devoted to opinions and advocacy surrounding the topic makes sense, though I would prefer to use secondary sources; citing a blog as if it is a usable source for a notable summary of estimates is absurd. --Aquillion (talk) 05:06, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

^ https://dict.leo.org/german-english/Abfall

[FOOTNOTEEngel-Di_Mauro2021-1] Engel-Di Mauro 2021.

[2] Piereson, James. "Socialism as a hate crime". newcriterion.com. Retrieved 2021-10-22.

[3] Satter, David (2017-11-06). "100 Years of Communism—and 100 Million Dead". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2021-10-22.

[4] ttps://dict.leo.org/german-english/Abfall

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