Talk:Mass killings under communist regimes

Due to the editing restrictions on this article, a sub-page has been created to serve as a collaborative workspace or dumping ground for additional article material.

Main topic and primary sources

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yeah but that is all just incorrect."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Possible summary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Manual of Style italics for terms

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

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

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

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

Moving forward and real attempts at improving the article

This comment by Paul Siebert, or more correctly the source provided by Siebert ("The Political Science of Genocide: Outlines of an Emerging Research Agenda"), is why the article as currently structured must be deal with. Unless things have changed, and it should be easy to provide a proper source that summarize it, genocide studies, the relevant field for this article, are a minority school of thought that does not enjoy yet support from mainstream political science; this means the current article, as it is, is unacceptable and contrary to sources. What we need to look at are sources like "Second-Generation Comparative Research on Genocide", and you will see that they support the topic as understood by Siebert et al. vis-à-vis AmateurEditor et al. They do not limit themselves to Communist states, as we currently do by violating several of our policies and guidelines in doing so. Yet, the lead treats it as a done thing, as a clear consensus among relevant scholars when that is not the case at all, and the reverse is true.

This is a case of undue weight given to a minority, unsupported view, and treat it as fact or consensus, as in the lead. Again, the lead state it as fact that mass killings happened under Communist states (they did not happen in most Communist states, and the high body count mainly comes from three out of many Communist states that at one point covered one third of the global population), when the fact is that mass deaths (excess deaths, excess mortality, etc.) indeed occurred but there is no consensus that communism was the link (I would argue the opposite is true, that most scholars and experts do not make the link, but a significant, and popular among the population, minority seemingly does), and there is no consensus on terminology, only attempts (but this is not reflected in the lead).

More importantly, Mass killing, like Democide, is a proposed concept, not a fact, and they are not as widely accepted as Genocide, and even then there are debates about its definition, legal or not; this means we need to restructure the article to better clarify and reflect this, as argued by The Four Deuces and Siebert. Both concepts have been applied to many, widely different regime-types, yet only for Communist states do we do this; this can be done but not the way it is currently done.

Davide King (talk) 13:55, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

What Is to Be Done?

What I propose, as discussions are not leading nowhere (even though I always appreciate Siebert's comments), is to do something about it:

1. If no source is provided that say genocide studies enjoys mainstream status, this needs to be fixed. This is a lead that better respects our policies and guidelines by actually outlining the topic (mass deaths indeed took place under several nominally Communist states, scholars have attempted to find a terminology to define them, some engaged in body counting and proposed the narrative that those are victims of Communism, others completely reject the latter, or simply discuss the events individually or through specific phases, such as Stalinist repression, reject the lumping, or highlight differences between them, etc.) and not treating it as a fact, majority view, or worse as consensus, as we currently do directly or indirectly.

2. At the same time, the body will also be worked on to reflect the new lead, and vice versa. This will include the following:

• Removal of tagged primary sources. I will give you a month to fix this and find secondary sources that supports the paraphrasing work done by AmateurEditor.
• Removal of non-notable, clearly unreliable estimates and undue opinions not sourced to secondary sources, plus fringe views and clear non-experts (Stephen Hicks, George Watson, etc.).
  • You have nothing to worry about it because I have already saved or moved the content to more relevant articles, so nothing will actually be lost.
• Addition of criticism of the lumping process, as was done in The Black Book of Communism, which popularizing both the body counting and the narrative.

3. Name change

• I like Siebert's proposals here, and they would surely be an improvement. I just think all of that can easily be done at Mass killing, and apart from their proponents, most scholars do not treat it as a sperate subject worthy of a main article, they discuss it within mass killing, so we should do the same.
  • I would avoid any wording that mention communism or Communist states et similia because for that we need a clear link that sources do not make or do not agree with, and it would give unwarranted weight to those who lump Communist states together or treat them as monolithic. Excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin is neutral because it is limited to a single period (very specific) of a single Communist state.
  • An alternative, as proposed by TFD, would be Victims of Communism. It is the name used by memory studies, and it is what Courtois and Rosefielde consider the dead to be, i.e. victims of Communism. It could be argued that the aforementioned criticism above equally applies here, as it can be seen as giving unwarranted weight to those who support the narrative, but this mainly rests on what to prioritize: scholarly analysis or the narrative?
    • This seems to be the only significant difference between TFD/Siebert's proposal. The former proposal priorities the narrative, while the latter prioritize the scholarly analysis but essentially the topic is the same and the only main disagreement is about the name. This should be discussed once all the other issues are fixed.
    • Another alternative is to greatly expand the Mass killing article, which should be done anyway, and make it a broad scholarly analysis of mass killing, as scholars do not make any clear separation between regime-types, so why should we do it? We should only do it if there are spacing issues, which is not the case, as Mass killing is very short and concise. If following this, this article will be mainly about TFD's proposal of narrative ("Some writers have connected mass killings in Stalin's USSR, Mao's China and Pol Pot's Cambodia. The thinking is that Stalin influenced Mao, who influenced Pol Pot. In all cases, mass killings were carried out as part of a policy of rapid industrialization. (ii) The other version is that mass killings were dictated in otherwise forgotten works of Karl Marx. Under this view, COVID-19 can be seen as the latest attempt by the Communists to wipe out the world population.")
      • It would be written in a way to address Siebert's concerns (NPOV, treating Courtois et al. as minority rather than majority view as the article currently implies, etc.), as it would still have to include scholarly analysis and criticism (the narrative is a minority or at worse fringe view but very popular at that and legitimized in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states, and by the European Union through the double genocide theory and comparison and equiparation of Communism and Nazism, both of which are revisionist, controversial views among scholars), and AmateurEditor's (it will not be outright deleted but it will be structured neutrally at Mass killing, where we can easily discuss Courtois and Valentino's theories as a section in the same article).

4. Expand the Mass killing article

• That article needs to be expanded to summarize scholarly views, as is done in "Second-Generation Comparative Research on Genocide"; this is the kind of secondary sources we need in support of author's interpretations, as sources like this summarize for what authors actually say (establishing weight in what relevant they said and what was not) and do the interpretation for us, thus avoiding any issue of original research and synthesis, as is the case for this talk page's article.

5. Merge or rewrite Crimes against humanity under communist regimes into Mass killing, as it is the same topic just under a different name because, guess what, scholars disagree on the terminology, there is no consensus, and we should not treat it as fact. Davide King (talk) 13:56, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

Summary

In short, Mass killing would become the scholarly analysis and debates (Siebert's proposal) of genocide and mass killing in general; it will include discussion of Communist states but it will not be limited to that because scholars do not divide or make such categorisations as this article implies, and it will become its own article only when there are space issues. Victims of Communism* (or whatever the name of this article) would incorporate both TFD/Siebert's proposal, and be an expansion from Mass killing more specifically focused on Communism, and the neutral, not-policies violating AmateurEditor's proposal.

To repeat, you have time to provide sources that establish genocide studies as mainstream, rather than the minority school of thought it seems to be, and secondary sources for the authors' interpretations. If you cannot do that, I and others will attempt to do something about it by removing currently-tagged content and start the restructuring process. Davide King (talk) 14:00, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

Since there is a body of literature that connects mass killings by Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, it would be a section in a proposed mass killings article and would probably be large enough to spin into its own article, leading back to what we have now. TFD (talk) 22:38, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

The Four Deuces, problem is that needed to be done first; both this and the other article were created as content forks, when they should have been first added in their main articles. Either way, the spin to its own article would result in a much different article that would not have such problems because it would be treated as the theory you correctly outlined below and not as fact. Davide King (talk) 14:52, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

• I am still not convinced any change is required minus removing all the tags recently added. PackMecEng (talk) 22:52, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

• The problem has always been that the topic does not exist in reliable sources. There are sources that connect killings under Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. There's also considerable literature about the anti-Communist theory that tries to prove that Communism is a greater threat than Fascism. This article argues in favor of the second, thereby treating a fringe theory as a consensus view. TFD (talk) 00:33, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

  I am not really seeing that though. I am seeing a fairly neutral and balanced assessment of extremely reliable sources about mass killings under communist regimes. PackMecEng (talk) 00:36, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Notability says, "if no reliable, independent sources can be found on a topic, then it should not have a separate article." In this case while reliable sources exist for the two topics I mentioned, none exist for this article. Without reliable sources for the topic, we cannot write a balanced article. It would be like writing an article called "American conservative sexual perverts." No doubt we could find many reliably sourced examples, but the article would promote an implicit thesis that there was a connection between being a conservative and being a sexual pervert. The article could only be neutral if we said who made the connection and how accepted the connection was. TFD (talk) 01:02, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

Sources have been provided, repeatedly, throughout the years this article has been debated. For the past decade they have been provided and given in the article itself. Your assessment is not accurate. Looking through the FAQs here it looks like you have been repeatedly making the same argument and repeatedly it has been shutdown by the community at large.[19] PackMecEng (talk) 01:10, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

In fact few if any sources have been provided. Could you please name one? TFD (talk) 01:22, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

PackMecEng, at 19:25, 23 August 2021 (UTC), I provided the example that demonstrates that an overwhelming majority of sources describe the Great Chinese famine (which, along with the Great Leap forward, is responsible for lion's share of "Communist death toll", aka "Communist mass killing", aka, "Communist democide") using a totally different terminology. That means, the sources you are talking about represent a minority view. The same can be said about almost all mass mortality events under Communist regimes, except the Great Purge, Cambodian genocide, Red Terror, and several others.

The logic of those sources is faulty: by combining two indisputable facts, namely, that mass killings did occur under some communist regimes, and that the total population losses amounted to nearly 100 million, they imply all those deaths should be considered as mass killings. However, this viewpoint is not shared my the majority of country experts. Thus, it is broadly recognized that Red terror did take place during the Russian civil war, however, it is also well known that majority of deaths were a result of typhus, hunger, military deaths, and, in addition, White terror also took place to some extent. If we combine these number together, we obtain a very impressive figure. However, only few sources claim all those deaths were a result of Communist mass killings.

Therefore, I would like to ask these questions:

• Do we agree that mass mortality events took place under Communist regimes, and the total number of deaths was nearly 80-90 million?
• Do we agree that some sources combine those death together under such categories as "Communist democide", "Communist mass killings" etc?
• Do we agree that majority of country experts describe a majority of those events using totally different terms, separately, in a different historical context, and do not see any common cause in them?

I personally cannot see how an educated and good faith user can answer "no" to any of those questions. If you agree with that, let's think how to fix the article. I have a solution, and I can discuss it when the answer to these three questions will be obtained from all participants of that discussion.--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:56, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

Yeah but your logic on a lot of the sources you provided is basically original research and synth. The sources in the article support the premise of the article. Full stop. The fact that you found some sources you think disproves or challenge some of the content of the article does not change that. That is the problem I keep seeing in this talk page. It's a few editors that over and over, for years now, push the fringe view that this topic as a whole is not real. Even in the face of overwhelming and continued rebukes by the community at large. That is the reason we have that FAQ at the top. PackMecEng (talk) 11:55, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

You did not answer the questions, you are diverging. "It's a few editors that over and over, for years now, push the fringe view that this topic as a whole is not real. Even in the face of overwhelming and continued rebukes by the community at large." I find it funny because the reverse is actually true; you are the one pushing the fringe, or minority, but widely popular view that "tries to prove that Communism is a greater threat than Fascism" because it killed "100 million", and state it as fact or consensus among scholars; you are also misrepresenting us because this article should not be about the events but about the theories and interpretations. I have provided sources that prove it is yours that is the minority, if not fringe, view among sources, not ours. You are the perfect example of what TFD said, namely that "Anyone who argues for A probably believes B." Davide King (talk) 14:26, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

See my responce to AmateurEditor few minutes ago.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:01, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

Until reliable sources are found that discuss a topic of something like "mass mortality events took place under Communist regimes", it is original research to argue for such an article. In my response to Paul Siebert's response I also argue that, if such sources are found, a mass mortality topic is different enough that it should probably be a separate article anyway. AmateurEditor (talk) 21:00, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

No. The article discusses events, not interpretations. These events include the Great Chinese famine, Soviet famine, and several less deadly events like Cambodian genocide or the Great Purge. And that dictates the choice of sources. Majority of sources do NOT call GCF "mass killing" or "democide", or some other "-cide", and these views are dramatically underrepresented in this article. You are persistently advocating violation of NPOV with the reference to NOR. That is unacceptable.--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:37, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

"Until reliable sources are found that discuss a topic of something like 'mass mortality events took place under Communist regimes', it is original research to argue for such an article." I am baffled, is not that exactly what you support? At least mass mortality events are a fact. The difference is that you treat mass killing as a fact and agreement among scholars, rather than as a popular but controversial minority theory and categorization within a minority itself (genocide studies), which does not appear in mainstream political science journals. This is exactly our point. You are the one supporting this, while Siebert only support it through a rewrite and restructuring that makes it neutral and not-policies violating, and their proposed topic is fine because mass mortality events are a fact (we do not need source for this, we do not need "reliable sources ... that discuss a topic of something like 'mass mortality events took place under Communist regimes'" because it is a fact, and is what reliable sources actually support at best), what is not a fact is their whole categorization as mass killing, as this article clearly implies. Does not this contradict the whole article and your support for it? That is precisely the point, there are no such sources, only theories and interpretations. Which is why I support the interpretations/narrative, not the events. What you propose may done but it needs to be limited only to Stalin's USSR, Mao's China, and Pol Pot's Cambodia (only three very specific periods of three different Communist states out of dozens and dozens), as noted by TFD (those are the only events where mass killing can be applied), and it also needs to discuss all relevant sources, as noted by Siebert. If you want to discuss Communist states, that can only be done under the narrative, and as a popular but controversial theory not accepted by most scholars. No matter how this is spinned, the article should be rewritten. Davide King (talk) 21:58, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

• We have a dedicated sandbox for this article - any rewrite should start there. I, and others, would take massive exception if the article becomes a laboratory experiment for repeatedly failed proposals. schetm (talk) 01:57, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

  That is a fair point but we are going to respect our policies and guidelines. You need to do something about it, too. You have plenty of time to substitute tagged primary sources with secondary sources that support the paraphrase. If you cannot do that, it could mean our analysis is actually correct and it needs to be rewritten. Davide King (talk) 14:21, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

  It could mean that. But it does not. And, before demanding my time, you should familiarize yourself with WP:NOTCOMPULSORY. Again, the sandbox is the place to start. schetm (talk) 21:59, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

I am not aware of any rule that requires us to use a sandbox for rewriting articles. If you know such a rule, kindly drop a link.

In contrast, a talk page discussion is considered a universal and highly desirable tool for achievement of consensus. Here, we are discussing a new concept of the article, and you are welcome to join this discussion. Of course, Wikipedia is not compulsory, and we cannot demand you to do so, if you have no time for that, or just don't want to participate. However, if you remove yourself from the consensus building process, the attempts to invent some artificial rule (such as usage of a sandbox) does not look productive.--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:48, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

As you'll be aware, this article has been indefinitely locked in the recent past. I should know - I got the thing unlocked, and it could very well be locked again if edit warring persists. If a small group of editors wishes to make changes against longstanding consensus, it would be helpful if they would actually demonstrate in concrete fashion what those changes are, to allow for specific line by line discussion and input from other editors. To prevent edit warring and page disruption, that's best done in the sandbox. I was on vacation for the past two weeks, hence my absence from the process. Indeed, I've participated in the consensus building process for three years, and have provided line by line critiques when new leads have been proposed, among other things. That's the best way to not only build consensus, but to build an article, and that's best done in the sandbox. schetm (talk) 23:17, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

As you probably know, I am trying to avoid editing the article unless a talk page consensus is achieved about some concrete change. That is why my approach is 100% consistent with our policy, and if someone will try to request for a full article protection, my voice will be heard by admins. I am perfectly aware of your request to unlock the article, and I agree that was a highly commendable step. I doubt, however, that the article, which was locked for several years, and after that is under a strict 1RR is a long standing consensus version. IMO, "frozen accident" is much more appropriate term. Many, many users are dramatically dissatisfied with the current version, so it is by no means reflects consensus.

By saying that, I by no means imply I am going to make significant changes to the article before some consensus has been achieved. My approach is as follows:

1. Start a discussion about a new article's concept.

2. Come to some consensus.

3. Start rewriting, section by section, on the talk page.

4. After the draft is ready, put it into the article space.

The main difference between my and your proposal is that you de facto ghettoize those who are dissatisfied with the article in some sandbox, and propose to spend a significant time and efforts for writing a text, and implicitly reserve a right to approve/reject the results of that work. That is somewhat disrespectful. You respect your own time and efforts, but show much less respect to others. It would be much more respectful if you expressed your opinion on the new concept in advance, thereby allowing us to include your opinion into the draft.

In connection to that, I propose to come to an agreement about a new concept, and, after the agreement is achieved, to start writing a draft.

You must agree that my approach is more respectful to all participants of the discussion.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:30, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

Viz the new article concept, I've in the past described the dueling concepts as events vs. narrative. I oppose any rewrite that shifts the focus from events to narrative. I have not yet seen a proposal of that nature that shifts the focus to the narrative that satisfies my NPOV, GNG, WP:UNDUE, and WP:V concerns. Those concerns may be satisfied if there's actually some text to scrutinize, but, as I think the article is fine as is, I have little incentive to initiate a rewrite myself.

If, however, I was motivated to work on a rewrite, I'd switch 2 and 3 in your outline above. The fact is that significant time and effort (11 years worth!) has been spent on discussion, and to what end? Time and effort would be saved if those who want to see the article changed actually draft something concrete to be scrutinized. And, as to ghettoizing to a sandbox, I could care less whether there's a new draft in the sandbox or on the talk page - just not in the mainspace before consensus is reached! schetm (talk) 00:51, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

Schetm, I actually agree that it would be better to start a draft because clearly discussions are not leading us nowhere but I would need some help from The Four Deuces and Paul Siebert. Or a RfC about the main topic but we need to be very careful about it because it needs to be neutral and correctly represent both sides' views, and we can not fuck that up too.

P.S. "I have not yet seen a proposal of that nature that shifts the focus to the narrative that satisfies my NPOV, GNG, WP:UNDUE, and WP:V concerns." I have yet to seen scholarly sources that satisfies my NPOV, GNG, WP:UNDUE, WP:V, etc. concerns. It goes both ways. About the topic and sources, let me quote TFD. The article title implies a causal connection between Communist regimes and mass killings. Unless we can show that reliable sources have made that connection, it is synthesis or the topic lacks WP:Notablity. ... If there is no connection, then what is the point of an article? Sources given in support provide "little that connects them" and only discuss "Stalinist USSR, Maoist China and Kampuchea." If we actually follow the literature, the article's scope needs to be reduced, and it still needs to be restructured. Davide King (talk) 01:32, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

If there is no connection, then what is the point of an article? - The connection is that these mass killings/mortality events occurred under communist regimes. I am less interested in presenting ideological motivations behind the mass mortality events. However, the proposed causes section is well written and well sourced. schetm (talk) 15:11, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

Then you ought to support mass killings/mortality events occurred under any other type of regimes. I would not support such articles because we need a clear connection, not just that they are all Christian, capitalist, Communist, or whatever regimes, otherwise it is clear original research and synthesis. See Dallin's review of The Black Book of Communism. "Whether all these cases, from Hungary to Afghanistan, have a single essence and thus deserve to be lumped together—just because they are labeled Marxist or communist—is a question the authors scarcely discuss." See also A 'Red Holocaust'? A Critique of the Black Book of Communism by Jens Mecklenburg and Wolfgang Wippermann, and "On the Primacy of Ideology: Soviet Revisionists and Holocaust Deniers (In Response to Martin Malia)" by Michael David-Fox. It was even mentioned in Malia's foreword ("... commentators in the liberal Le Monde argue that it is illegitimate to speak of a single Communist movement from Phnom Penh to Paris. Rather, the rampage of the Khmer Rouge is like the ethnic massacres of third-world Rwanda, or the 'rural' Communism of Asia is radically different from the 'urban' Communism of Europe; or Asian Communism is really only anticolonial nationalism. ... conflating sociologically diverse movements is merely a stratagem to obtain a higher body count against Communism, and thus against all the left.") The lumping itself is clearly disputed, and you have to prove Courtois, Rummel, Valentino, and the like are the majority; Courtois is actually a revisionist in positing the equivalence between Communism and Nazism, which goes back to the Historikerstreit. You are acting like those authors are the majority or that their views are the scholarly consensus! So no, "[t]he connection is that these mass killings/mortality events occurred under communist regimes" is not good enough and is actually disputed, as shown by such sources, something that you never provided to reply to any of our arguments; you just assume that your sources are the majority and consensus; you assume that all the events are and can be categorized as mass killings just because they were mass deaths events, when mass killing is a proposed concept and the mass killing categorization for Communism is a theory, not a fact (the fact is that mass deaths occurred), and is not actually applied to Communist states, only to Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot's. I am not parroting my opinion, I am just summarizing what sources actually say. Davide King (talk) 22:43, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

Alas, your claim that "the proposed causes section is well written and well sourced" just demonstrates you unfamiliarity with the subject.

Thus, per Scott Straus, (World Politics, Vol. 59, No. 3 (Apr., 2007), pp. 476-501) Valentino claims that ideology is insufficient as an explanation, although he conceded it may shape the choice of some leaders (in his theory, leader's personality plays a key role). This is an example of usage of Valentino asa primary source, whereas it could be much more appropriate to use Straus' interpretation of Valentinio's view.

Second, the "Proposed causes" should be actually re-named to "Proposed common causes", for each of the event had its own cause/causes. To demonstrate that, just read what such experts as O'Grada or Sen writes about teh causes of the Great Chinese famine.--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:31, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

In my opinion, the proposed causes section is extremely well sourced and I thank schetm for saying well written, since I wrote much of it. Every sentence can be traced to a high quality source and often to an excerpt from that source. About using Strauss on Valentino, rather than Valentino: there can be no more reliable source for Valentino's analysis than Valentino himself (and likewise for the other authors' views), so we should not be using Strauss to write about Valentino's analysis of communist mass killing when we have access to Valentino's analysis itself. This is not an example of Valentino being a primary source for the topic of mass killings under communist regimes, it is just Valentino being a primary source for Strauss' 2007 analysis of what he calls "Second-generation comparative research on genocide". The Straus book reviews can be a helpful source for this article to the extent he mentions the topic (he only does so in passing), but it seems to include at least two major errors:

1) he says on page 484 that "Weitz also includes communist cases, whereas Semelin does not." However, Semelin certainly does include communist cases in his book (at least the 2007 English translation found here): Semelin has a sub-chapter called "Destroying to Subjugate: Communist regimes: Reshaping the social body". There is even an excerpt cited in the "Proposed causes" section of the article right now (excerpt "at").

2) he says on page 496 "Some authors, such as Weitz, Valentino, Mann, and Levene, incorporate communist cases, which generally involve targeting class groups (not ethnic or racial ones). Other authors exclude communist cases." The authors whose works he is discussing are those four that he acknowledges discuss communist cases plus two others: Midlarsky and Semelin. Both of them do discuss communist cases. Semelin I just mentioned above. The Midlarsky book discusses communist cases on page 310 here (which is also currently excerpted in the article as excerpt "x"): "Indeed, an arc of Communist politicide can be traced from the western portions of the Soviet Union to China and on to Cambodia. Not all Communist states participated in extensive politicide, but the particular circumstances of Cambodia in 1975 lent themselves to the commission of systematic mass murder." AmateurEditor (talk) 22:27, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

Since you are perfectly aware of my editorial style, I cannot understand why you decided I could made/advocate any significant change until a consensus has been achieved on the talk page

Regarding events vs narrative, both approaches are ok. The problem is, however, that the description of events is strongly biased towards a small group of sources that describe this huge topic as a single event, whereas more specialized sources, which are more recent, more accurate and more professional, are placed in a subordinated position. One of the most blatant example is Rummel, who claimed 70+ million of Soviet citizens perished in "Communist democide", despite the fact that this claim is based on very rough estimated made according to a criticized algorithm, which uses Cold War era outdated figures, and which are ignored by all country experts. Meanwhile, more recent and broadly recognised works, including Erlikhman, Wheatcroft, Ellman etc are ghettoized into the country-specific section, which attenuates a dramatic conflict between obsolete and incorrect Rummel's data and them.

If we want to discuss events, let's stick with what majority sources say about each separate event. I already provided the example that demonstrates that the Great Leap Forward famine (which is responsible for up to 50% all excess deaths under Communist rule) is NOT described as "mass killing", "democide", "genocide" or other "cides" in an overwhelming majority of sources. Therefore, if we want to discuss events, the story should be as follows:

"A large number of mass mortality events occurred under Communist rule. They occurred as a result of (... various explanations are provided ...), the scale of each separate event was (... figures are provided ...). Some authors (author's list is provided) call that "mass killing", "democide" etc, whereas others describe them otherwise (description is presented). Some authors (author's list is presented) link those events together under a category "Communist mass killings", "Global communist death toll" etc, whereas others (a long list follows) see no direct linkage between them, or group them with other mass killing/mass mortality events (e.g. Cambodia, Indonesia, and China are grouped in a category "Genocides in East Asia, which has little in common with the events in the USSR).

If you want to move in that direction, I will totally support the focus on events, not the narrative. However, to do that neutrally, a focus must be shifted from the general sources that describe the whole topic (although they provide one sided interpretations and present very inaccurate facts) to modern country specific sources. For example, if you want give more weight to Rummel than to Ellman just because the former wrote about totalitarian regimes as whole (although was doing that very inaccurately and superficially), whereas the latter provided more reliable figures for the USSR only, I will strongly oppose to that, because that would be a dramatic violation of neutrality. --Paul Siebert (talk) 02:24, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

more recent and broadly recognised works...are ghettoized into the country-specific section - Can those sources be included in the general discussion of communist regimes and mass killings without violating WP:SYNTH? And good, some text to critique. I very much like the language of "some authors" vs "other authors." Previous lead proposals have presented those who draw a harder connection between communist regimes and mass killings as a minority opinion - something that I think we absolutely must avoid, unless we get sources saying specifically that x-opinion is the minority opinion. And, I agree with you that, when it comes to calculating a death toll, we should go by the most hyper-accurate sources we can find, while writing something like "Sources estimate a death toll between x and y, with z being the most widely-accepted toll." schetm (talk) 15:11, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

Re "Can those sources be included in the general discussion of communist regimes and mass killings without violating WP:SYNTH?" They can, but only if the structure of this article will be modified as I propose. The primary reason is that country-specific sources we are talking about and the sources this article are based upon exist in two different domains: the former do not cite the latter, and there is no direct dispute between them. For example, Rummel says the death toll of Soviet democide amounted to 70+ million, including 10+ million in 1960s-70s, whereas Erlichman provides the total number of population losses that directly contradict to Rummel, and Ellman says that the number of victims cannot be reliably calculated because the very term "victim of Stalinism" is vague, and it strongly depends on political views of a concrete author. In other words, we have an obvious conflict between Rummel and other two authors. However, we cannot adequately reflect that conflict in that article, because both Ellman and Erlikhman do not cite Rummel, they ignore him as an obsolete source authored by a non-expert, so it is hardly possible to find a source that says "Rummel contradicts to Ellman".

That situation is not resolvable until theh structure of the article is modified, because the very fact that the section "(Global) Number of victims" goes first, and country-specific sections go after it, a false hierarchy is created that gives more weight to the authors like Rummel and less weight to the experts like Ellman or Erlikhman.

However, we can solve this problem if change the article's structure by providing a neutral description of events, which will be based on the work of country experts, and, at the end of the article, put the sections like, "attempts to propose a common terminology", attempts to calculate the global death toll", "attempts to propose the common mechanism/causes".

And, taking into account that the overwhelming majority of sources do not apply the term "mass killing" to the majority of those events, especially to the Great Chinese famine, Volga Famine, Great Soviet famine, which are responsible for lion's share of Communist death toll, the article should be renamed accordingly, for example, to Mass mortality and mass killings under Communist regimes.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:38, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

The current article's structure is suitable for description of such events as the Holocaust of Cambodian genocide, which were relatively simple and uniform, and about which there is a consensus among scholars. In contrast, when you try try to apply that scheme to wide range of events, from the Great chinese famine to Russian Civil war, you inevitably face serious problems with neutrality and/or synthesis.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:21, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

I agree with what Siebert has written above. I too can accept the focus on the events, but only if we provide the whole background, scholarly analysis without limiting ourselves to killings (we should mention, for example, the lives saved by the Soviet Union for helping the Allies in defeating fascism, and by other Communist states by simply modernizing, that it was Communist Vietnam to put an end to the Cambodian genocide, etc.) and give weight to all those scholars (majority) who disagree with Rummel and Valentino (minority). Either way, in which way you spin it, it ought to be rewritten anyway. Davide King (talk) 14:29, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

Why should we be mentioning, in this article, the USSR's involvement in WWII? That is massively out of scope. In fact, all of that is almost entirely out of scope. Further, I am not convinced that Rummel and Valention hold the minority viewpoint, apart from that of death toll. I need specific sourcing that says they hold the minority opinion. Barring that, any rewrite must not imply that they hold the minority viewpoint. schetm (talk) 15:11, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

Yes, WWII is out of scope. However, since we are discussing "global Communist death toll", which includes mass mortality due to war, famine and disease (and which is considered, by a small fraction of authors as Communist mass killing), lets present a complete picture. As Ellman noted, Communist rule lead not only to a large number of excess deaths (a.k.a "Communist mass killings"), but to large number of "excess lives" (the life expectancy in the USSR was arount 35 years in the beginning of Stalin's rule, but it increased to nearly 60 by the end). If excess deaths (actually the death of 40 old man due to harsh living conditions, which was likely to occur in 1925, but which was far less likely to occur in 1955) are attributed to Coummunists, shouldn't the prevention of those death be attribited (and mentioned) to them? We can easily do that under the topic "Population dynamics".

Similarly, as O'Grada writes, Great Chinese famine was the most deadly (although only in absolute figures) famine in China, but it was the last famine in the centuries long chain of deadly famine that routinely and regularly hit China. I think it would be fair to explain that in the article.

Regarding Rummel, I already explained that on this talk page, but I can repeat my explanations in a hope that you will take it seriously, and will join the work on the new article's structure. Rummel's expertise, and his main contribution is application of Factor analysis to social sciences. That is the field where he is a real expert. He also was an author of the "democratic piece" theory, which demonstrated that democratic countries are much less likely to wage a war against each other than non-democratic ones. To use his factor analysis tools, Rummel needed to have a world wide statistics of all wars, genocides, and other deadly events, and he obtained that statistics by collecting all numerical data without any Source criticism (which is a necessary part of teh work of any professional historian), and, based on those data, estimated lower and higher boundary of mortality in each event. Dulic pointed at fundamental problems with this approach, which inevitably leads to inflated figures, and Rummel failed to defend his point in the subsequent discussion. Other authors just ignore Rummel's views. Moreover, as I already pointed out, Rummel is arguably the only author who never reconsidered his views after 1990s, when tons of new archival sources about USSR became available, and all his data are based on obsolete figures.

Finally, if Rummel is a renown expert, he is supposed to be cited by country experts. Meanwhile virtually no expert in Soviet history cite him (he is cited by specialists in Cambodia, but mostly because his figures are pretty close to the commonly accepted ones, and because there is no significant difference between his "democide" and commonly accepted "genocide" when we discuss such a relatively simple case as Cambodia.

Similarly, Valentino may be a good source for a discussion of the causes of mass killings, but, being a "genocide scholar", not a historian, he cannot be considered a good source for facts and events. You yourself prefer to make a stress on events, so I am surprised you consider Valentino, who is not too much concerned about accuracy in description of events, and who is more interested in general theorising, a good core source for description of events.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:03, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

In addition, schetm, your assertion that Rummel and/or Valentino not necessarily represent minority views is not completely accurate. It seems Valentino is a very influential representative of the "second generation genocide scholars", and Rummel is very respected by the genocide scholars. The problem is that "genocide studies" is a separate discipline, which exists in parallel with historical schools that discuss facts and events. "Genocide scholars" are more interested in finding commonalities and general rules, whereas historians are more focused on events in their historical context. It is not surprise that the former see mire commonalities and less specifics that the latter. It also worth mentioning that this article selectively uses the work of "genocide scholars" when they support the "Communist mass killings" idea and its linkage with Communism, but ignore their opinia when they say about the absence of such a linkage.

The thesis about two "parallel universes" (historians (country experts) and "genocide scholars") can be easily confirmed by looking at mutual citations. How frequently Rummel and "democide" is used by historians writing about Volga famine, Great Purge or Great Chinese famine"?

Let's check:

• "Volga famine" 176 results, "Volga famine" Rummel 1 result (the book itself was cited just once), "Volga famine" democide 2 results (these two sources were cited just once)
• "Great Chinese famine" -democide 1880 results, "Great Chinese famine" democide 9 results
• "Great Purge" Stalin -democide 5,170 results, "Great Purge" Stalin democide 32 results.

The first three articles in the first list ("Great Purge" Stalin -democide) were cited 142, 37 and 9 times, accordingly, and they do not mention Rummel at all. The first article in the second list ("Great Purge" Stalin democide) was cited 0 times (which implies poor notability), and other two were authored by Rummel himself (self-citation). I think no further comments are needed.

If I were a naive Wikipedian with zero preliminary knowledge of the topic, and if I had to start writing the article that combines such topics as Volga famine, Great Purge, Great Chinese famine etc together, it seems the logical conclusion from my totally neutral and unbiased search results would be: Rummel is definitely not a source that represents a majority viewpoint. If you disagree, please provide a neutral and unbiased procedure that could allow us to come to a different conclusion. If you disagree with my approach, please, point at errors and omissions in my logic and my search procedure. Please, keep in mind that I am actively using search engines in my professional work, and, per this reliable source, authored by a scholar who studies Wikipedia, the approach used by me, a user Paul Siebert (yes, that article explicitly discusses me), is quite adequate, and it allows identification of pretty decent sources. You must agree that only few Wikipedians are explicitly mentioned in academic sources, and a small fraction of them are mentioned in that context.--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:19, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, correct me if I am wrong, but the key paragraph from that source that mentions you is this one on page 449: "This debate is an extended illustration of Pfister’s argument that Wikipedia “destabilizes familiar information routines”, that is, changes the criteria we use to judge expertise, albeit, I would argue, without replacing them with much that could be construed as progressive. Paul Siebert constructs himself as a model information searcher (according to his user page he has a PhD so this is perhaps not so surprising). He claims no biases, uses the information technology of choice for Wikipedia editors (Google Scholar) and applies the criteria of peer-review as a means to filter potential information sources. And the sources he finds I think would be viewed by the majority of librarians or scholars as decent enough: Pacific Affairs is a scholarly journal with a long history of publishing the work of illustrious scholars. Cold War History is a more recent journal, but is also seen as publishing quality work while Porter’s work appeared in the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars which is seen as a leftist journal, but one which adheres to standards of rigour in scholarship." The part bolded is faint praise. Using google scholar to find reliable source is perfectly normal and something we probably all do. I certainly do. There is a big difference between that, which is allowed by wikipedia policies, and using search results to define topics for articles or determine weight for sources, which is not allowed by wikipedia policies. AmateurEditor (talk) 22:51, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

But listing all deaths under Communist regimes, even though Mann, Valentino, and others limit themselves to the Big Three (Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot) is not? It is not up to us to prove that they are the minority, it is up to you to prove that they are the majority; you are asking us to prove a negative. Anyway, while Wikipedia is not a reliable sources in itself, the sources used in those two articles I am going to mention certainly are. Actually read Genocide studies and Mass killing; only a POV pusher would not realize how little consensus there is and that Siebert's proposal is the only one that does not violates our policies and guidelines, which is something you care about only when it suits you. A Perspectives on Politics (mainstream political science) article summarizing the problems of genocide studies and their minority status, courtesy of Siebert:

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

Davide King (talk) 16:36, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

"Can those sources be included in the general discussion of communist regimes and mass killings without violating WP:SYNTH?" The article is in itself SYNTH by making a link or connection that most scholars do not make, including proponents like Valentino. See this. [Main point]

While noting that mass killings have occurred under Communist regimes, Valentino provides no theory about the connection. It would be the same as if he said that there have been mass killings in Asia and we created an article called "Mass killings under Asian regimes." Valentino identifies mass killings as over 50,000 people intentionally killed in a 5 year period, which is not the definition used here, and concluded that most Communist regimes did not carry out mass killings and only three definitely did (Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia), and only in specific periods (Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot). ...

Valentino provides little that connects them and only discusses Stalinist USSR, Maoist China, and Kampuchea; it only discusses specific instances where over 50,000 people were killed and excludes "counter-insurgency" mass killings, which he groups in his book with similar killings by capitalist regimes. In other words, they were not ideologically driven according to him but resulted from the same motivations as non-Communist states. So if we were to use his article as a model, it would restrict the scope of the article. Yet, we act like Valentino is talking about all Communist states and that communism is the main culprit, hence original research and synthesis, and why we desperately need secondary sources explaining for us what those authors actually wrote.

Davide King (talk) 16:45, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

Yes. Actually, Valentino's theory of "strategic mass killings" says that, under some circumstances, some leaders of some regimes may resort to mass killings as a tool for implementing certain social transformations. That happens when they feel that may be the most suitable way to achieve their goals. Valentino never provided any significant link between Communism and mass killings, and between mass killings and any ideology. He also openly says that most Communist regimes were not engaged in mass killings, the idea that is significantly attenuated in the article.

In conection to that, I recall I saw the article (can find it if somebody wants to see it), where Valentino's approach was applied for camparative study of the Great Purge and Rwandian genocide, which means "strategic mass killings" is not a concept that describes Communist mass killings only. Again, the role of ideology, and Communism in particular, is minimal (if not zero) in Valentino's theory. That fact is carefully attenuated in the article, which is an example of original research.

Moreover, "Communist mass killings" is just a chapter in the Valentinio's book, he never wrote specifically about Communism and mass killings.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:21, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

"Moreover, "Communist mass killings" is just a chapter in the Valentinio's book, he never wrote specifically about Communism and mass killings." No, a chapter on communist mass killings in his book is in fact Valentino writing specifically about communism and mass killings. This is becoming absurd. AmateurEditor (talk) 22:55, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

What is really absurd is the attempt to defend a blatant NPOV violation by reference to NOR, and, simultaneously, making event worse NOR violations. Valentino never wrote about "Mass killings under Communist regimes". His theory is totally different. The concept is "

PackMecEng, you may have missed my question above: "In fact few if any sources have been provided. Could you please name one? [01:22, 25 August 2021] TFD (talk) 14:31, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

Just a quick comment about AmateurEditor's comment (please, do not reply me back, at least until Paul Siebert replied to you back, because I think it is better if you discuss this and anything else with him, since I feel like he is better at doing that than me) to which I hope.

1. "there can be no more reliable source for Valentino's analysis than Valentino himself." This clearly contradicts our policies and guidelines, which I believe Siebert can agree with and better explain to you why. We need a secondary/tertiary source for all this, which is why all the tags I put in (and I could have added many more, since the whole article is like this, which just highlights the whole issue) are justified and correct. This is precisely what can avoid forms of original research and synthesis, using a reliable source that comments on what someone said and do the analysis and paraphrase for us.
2. "The Straus book reviews can be a helpful source for this article to the extent he mentions the topic (he only does so in passing), but it seems to include at least two major errors." Pretty much everything else is your personal opinion not backed by secondary reliable sources, which is the whole point; neither you nor me have the expertise to point out what the academic Straus 2007 article got wrong. If you could provide a secondary source that support this, or that criticize Strauss 2007 on those grounds, it would be helpful. Note that your own quotes show the main topic is Stalin's USSR, Mao's China, and Pol Pot's Cambodia, not all Communist states, which means the scope should be much narrow only to those three and their comparative analysis, rather than cherry pick any author, even if not an expert, who wrote about Communist states and killings.

P.S. With all due respect but I think this just highlights that you are the cause of such original research and synthesis, as you wrote most of this article, and apparently believe that primary sources are better than secondary sources about what someone meant, which is contrary to our policies and guidelines. Davide King (talk) 22:44, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

Responce to AmateurEditor

It will be somewhat long, so, for sake of readability, I put it into a separate subsection.

Yes, you are right, it is becoming absurd. Under "absurd" I mean persistent attempts to defend a blatant NPOV violation under pretext of NOR, and, simultaneously, making event worse NOR violations. Below, I am explaining that.

First, the claim that Valentino can be used as a core source because this source defines the topic is WRONG. Valentino never wrote about "Mass killings under Communist regimes". His theory is totally different. To demonstrate that, I propose to stop providing quotes from Valentino, because we may misinterpret him (which, actually, already takes place, as I'll demonstrate below). Instead, let's take a look at the description of Valentino's ideas in reliable secondary sources. I took all reviews on his book that I was able to find in google.scholar or jstor using keywords: "valentino final solutions mass killings", and read most of them. After I found many of them repeat each other, I stopped reading, because I believe I got a full impression on how scholars interpret Valentino's ideas. If someone finds a review or another source that provides a different interpretation, please, feel free to present it here.

• Gregory H. Stanton. Source: The Wilson Quarterly (1976-), Autumn, 2004, Vol. 28, No. 4 (Autumn, 2004), pp. 116-117

"...That's traditional perspective on it, but Valentino believes otherwise. In his view, mass killing represents a rational choice of elites to achieve or stay in political power in the face of perceived threats to their dominance. Valentino develops his argument through eight case studies. Three fit the legal definition of genocide (the intentional destruction, in whole or in part, of a "national, ethnical, racial, or religious group"): Armenia, the Holocaust, and Rwanda. The remaining five amount to what political scientist Barbara Harff calls "politicide," mass killing for political reasons: Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China, the Khmer Rouge's Cambodia, Guatemala, and Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. By emphasizing cases of politicide over those of genocide, Valentino stacks the deck in favor of his politics-centered argument from the start."

• Jessica Priselac. Source: The SAIS Review of International Affairs, Winter-Spring 2005, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Winter-Spring 2005), pp. 207-209

"After defining mass killing as the intentional killing of noncombatants resulting in 50,000 or more deaths within a five-year period, Valentino examines a number of specific cases to explain his theory. In this “strategic approach” to assessing mass killing, Valentino divides his case studies into three types: Communist, ethnic and counter-guerrilla. He examines the communist regimes of Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot; mass killing based on ethnicity in Rwanda, Nazi Germany, and Turkey; and mass killings during counter-guerrilla operations in the Guatemalan civil war and under the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. One of Valentino’s central arguments is that “characteristics of society at large, such as pre-existing cleaves, hatred and discrimination between groups and non-democratic forms of government, are of limited utility in distinguishing societies at high risk for mass killing.” Valentino’s strongest arguments in support of this statement are his comparative studies of regimes that committed mass killing with similar regimes that did not."

• Matthew Krain. Source: Perspectives on Politics, Mar., 2006, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Mar., 2006), pp. 233-235

" Valentino lays out the strategic logic of mass killing at length and proceeds to examine in separate chapters three different types of cases-communist, ethnic, and counter-guerrilla mass killings - each with its own unique and deadly logic. In each chapter, relevant cases of mass killings are subjected to thorough historical process tracing in order to highlight the role of the elite decision-making calculus. In each chapter, the author also briefly discusses cases in which mass killings did not occur."

• Gerard Alexander. Source: The Virginia Quarterly Review, FALL 2004, Vol. 80, No. 4 (FALL 2004), p. 280

"Valentino sets out to diminish the role that ethnicist ideologies and other social dysfunctions play in explanations of genocides. He instead traces these terrible outcomes to small sets of committed rulers, for whom mass murder is an instrumental means to such ends as regime security from suspect or threatening minority groups. As such, his thesis touches directly on the question of whether such regimes require the active support of at least important segments of the general population in order to carry out genocides. In arguing they do not, he categorizes most citizens of afflicted societies as bystanders and frontally challenges Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's claim that a committed regime and an "eliminationist" culture are both necessary conditions for a genocidal outcome. Valentino tests his thesis against an array of evidence that is admirable in two ways. First, including Maoist China and military-ruled Guatemala retrieves often-overlooked cases for our consideration. Second, adding China, the USSR, and Soviet occupied Afghanistan may remind readers— too many of whom need reminding—just how many innocents were slaughtered by Communist regimes. For its many virtues, the analysis disappoints in two key ways. First, the study does not really identify the origins of rulers' beliefs about the threats they face. This matters because if he cannot explain in rationalist terms why Nazis believed they had to kill Jewish grandmothers in Poland, then Valentino risks inviting ideational explanations for genocides in through the back door, preserving the form of an instrumentalist account but not its content. Second, he ultimately does not explain why rulers resorted to genocide to deal with threats as opposed to other option."

• G. John Ikenberry. Source: Foreign Affairs, Sep. - Oct., 2004, Vol. 83, No. 5 (Sep. - Oct., 2004), pp. 164-165

"In this astute and provocative study, Valentino argues instead that leaders, not societies, are to blame. In most cases, he finds that power fuil leaders use mass killing to advance their own interests or indulge their own hatreds, rather than to carry out the desires of their constituencies. This "strategic" view emerges from a review of mass killing in the Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia; ethnic killing in Turkish Armenia, Nazi Germany, and Rwanda; and counter-guerrilla killing in Guatemala and Afghanistan."

• Otis L. Scott. Source: The International History Review, Dec., 2005, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Dec., 2005), pp. 909-912

" Valentino argues for a 'strategic approach' to understand the etiology of mass killing that 'seeks to identify the specific situations, goals, and conditions that give leaders incentives to consider this kind of violence' (p. 67). He tells us that this approach is more productive because it focuses the observers' attention on mass killing as a strategy to a larger end and not necessarily an end in itself. We are reminded that mass public support is unnecessary for mass killings to occur. All that is needed is a group of people - large or small - having the requisite resources: political power, the ability to employ force, and opportunity to work their murderous mayhem.

Valentino's typology of mass killings is well supported by persuasive examples of episodes of violence against civilians. These cover a wide historical sweep, from the former Soviet Union, Turkish Armenia, and Nazi Germany, to the more recent examples from Cambodia, Guatemala, Afghanistan and Rwanda."

• Aysegul Aydin. Source: Journal of Peace Research, Jul., 2006, Vol. 43, No. 4, Special Issue on Alliances (Jul., 2006), p. 499

"In Final Solutions, Valentino investigates the roots of this human tragedy and finds the answers - not in broad political and social structures within a society frequently modeled in human security studies, but in the goals and perceptions of small and powerful groups carrying out these policies. Valentino's rationalist approach to the study of mass killings is novel and insightful. He presents historical evidence that shows that leaders resorting to 'final solutions' are highly influenced by radical goals that touch the social fabric of society and their perception of effective strategies to best suppress the popular dissent that usually follows the implementation of these goals. Most importantly, Valentino's analysis is far reaching. Its emphasis on the rationality of killers and the instrumentality of mass killings shows that the scientific study of mass killings is possible and desirable, despite the ethical dimension of the issue."

• Frank W. Wayman and Atsushi Tago. Source: Journal of Peace Research, january 2010, Vol. 47, No. 1 (january 2010), pp. 3-13

" Disagreeing with Rummel's finding that authoritarian and totalitarian government explains mass murder, Valentino (2004) argues that regime type does not matter; to Valentino the crucial thing is the motive For mass killing (Valentino, 2004: 70). He divides motive into the two categories of dispossessive mass killing (as in ethnic cleansing, colonial enlargement, or collectivization of agriculture) and coercive mass killing (as in counter-guerrilla, terrorist, and Axis imperialist conquests)." It worth noting that Wayman & Tago concede that Valentino partially sees some ideological component in mass killing committed by Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, so their general conclusion is close to that of Strauss (quoted by me in one previous post)

At that moment, I decided to stop, because further reading did not add fresh information. What is the summary? It seems all sources agree that:

1. Valentino's main idea is that mass killings were the results of leader's personality, not in some particular ideology, socioeconomic , ethnic or similar factors.

2. Valentino analyzed eight separate cases divided on three subgroups. For each case (or a subgroup) he analyzes similar societies (with similar ideology, socioeconomics etc), which were NOT engaged in mass killings.

3. He analyzed NOT all mass killings committed in/by the USSR, but mass killings perpetrated by Stalin's regime only. Never in his book he states that other cases belong to the same category.

4. He considers mass killings in Afghanistan as a category that is different from Stalin's mass killings. That additionally demonstrates that the idea that "Communist mass killings" (as described in the chapter 4) do not mean "All mass killings perpetrated under Communist regimes", but the three concrete cases, i.e. Mao, Stalin, and Pol Pot.

• Therefore, Valentino NEVER wrote about Communist mass killings in general, he analyzed just THREE cases, and explicitly noted that majority of Communist regimes were NOT engaged in mass killings. If we add more cases, besides Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, we are engaged in SYNTHESIS.

• Valentino explicitly wrote that ideology is not an important factor. By adding more and more sources saying that it is, we directly distort Valentino's concept, and perform SYNTHESIS.

• Valentino wrote that leader's personality is the key factor that explains almost all. By ignoring that and replacing it with theorizing of other authors, we engage in blatant SYNTHESIS.

I argued, for many times, that the article is blatantly non-neutral, but the responce was: that is the only way to write the article without engaging in original research. Here I demonstrated, with sources, that that argument is totally false: not only this article is blatantly non-neutral, it is a blatant WP:SYN.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:36, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Primary sources and their tagging

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

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

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

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

[My example would be:]

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

[The differences were bolded.]

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

References

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

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