Talk:Mass killings under communist regimes/Archive 35

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US mention regarding Cambodia

The line which mentions the US in the Cambodia section doesn't grammatically make sense so someone should probably correct it or preferably just remove as I have previously mentioned. The line is completely undue and its inclusion is almost nonsensical but at very least it should make sense.Stumink (talk) 23:29, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, the sentence "Following the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge regime, thetheir coalition parters, which included former Khmer Rouge members, received aid and assistance from the United States government." is grammatically incorrect. Moreover, the statement seems to be unsourced. I propose to change it as follows:

"Upon destroying a significant part of Cambodian population, Khmer Rouge regime was ousted from power by Communist Vietnam, however, the KR led insurgent coalition stationed in the camps near the Thailand border continued their activity, supported primarily by the US and China. "

--Paul Siebert (talk) 00:29, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

By the way, the same source describe KR as follows: "The Khmer Rouge was the party ousted from power by Vietnam after brutally murdering more than one million people in an attempt to restructure Cambodia into a primitive egalitarian agrarian society." In connection to that, I propose to change the first sentence of the section as follows:

"Khmer Rouge, a ruling party of Democratic Kampuchea started an ambitious program aimed to restructure Cambodia into a primitive egalitarian society; Helen Fein, notes that, despite a nominal adherence of Khmer Rouge leaders an exotic version of agrarian communist doctrine, the xenophobic ideology of the Khmer Rouge regime resembles more a phenomenon of ... etc".

--Paul Siebert (talk) 00:35, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

reference

Oppose. Undue weight to non-historical claim, far beyond the scope of this article. As Cambodia specialist Nate Thayer wrote, there is "no credible evidence" that the US gave "any material aid whatsoever to the Khmer Rouge." (Thayer, "Cambodia: Misperceptions and Peace," Washington Quarterly, Spring 1991.) Note that PS is against including famine deaths in the article (except in the case of Cambodia), even when sources explicitly refer to them as mass killing or democide—-but he is willing to include conspiracy theories about US support after the killings were over. The Vietnamese propaganda about Western aid helping the KR is particularly insidious, given the reality that Vietnam was misusing foreign aid and deliberately perpetuating famine conditions to weaken resistance to their rule, while the PRK was run entirely by former KR members. Western aid went to the non-communist forces of Son Sann and Prince Sihanouk, not to the defeated Pol Pot regime. (Stephen J. Morris, "Vietnam’s Vietnam," Atlantic Monthly, January 1985, and "Skeletons in the Closet," The New Republic, June 4, 1990.)TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 00:56, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Actually, another source (Presidential Studies Quarterly 36, no. 1 (March), p. 75-88), which I've found few minutes ago, says that, whereas the US and China supported the anti-Vietnam coalition, the US supported non-Communist members of this coalition, and China supported Khmer Rouge. Therefore, it would be more correct to say that the US more opposed to Vietnam (who stopped that genocide) then supported the murderers themselves. However, this is just a small part of the changes I propose. What are your objections against my other proposals? (Please, remember that the undue weight claims should be adequately supported).--Paul Siebert (talk) 01:03, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Regarding your personal attacks, let me explain you again that I am not against inclusion of famine deaths. I described my viewpoint for several times, and this viewpoint is as follows: if some reliable source describes famine deaths as a mass killings, that opinion should be included, along with other viewpoints, and these views should be represented proportionally to their weight.

Regarding "conspiracy theories", I expect you to provide an evidence that the sources I am using are unreliable or fringe. Your scheme ("your source says "A", but my source says "B" so your source is a crap") is deeply flawed. Please, stop.--Paul Siebert (talk) 01:11, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict)PS. Next week I'll be busy, so I hardly will be able to respond. If you plan to modify the text proposed by me, feel free to do that, and we will discuss it after April 2nd. I insist the following theses to be reflected in the proposed text: (i) that the society KR wanted to build was a "primitive egalitarian society", (ii) that they started profound social transformations to implement this goal, (iii) that KR were ousted from power by Vietnamese intervention, which stopped the genocide, (iv) that the US and China were major opponents of Vietnamese rule in Cambodia, although the US did not want to restore KR power (upon reading the second source I agree with you).--Paul Siebert (talk) 01:24, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Just remove the sentence per Stumink - it just doesn't make sense, brings in a side issue of a side issue, and, especially, as the first sentence in the section, it is just completely off-point - nothing to do with the actual mass killings. Who should be blamed/praised for helping/hurting related parties during the aftermath? We've got better things to deal with. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 01:20, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I proposed an alternative (well sourced) version of the sentence, which explains who put an end to the genocidal regime, and what happened after that. Isn't it important?--Paul Siebert (talk) 01:26, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Oppose There is not reason to remove a sentence because there is a grammatical error, just remove "the" so "the their coalition parters" becomes "their coalition parters." TFD (talk) 01:41, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I support removing the sentence per Stumink and Smallbones--support given to "KR coalition partners" after 1979 is undue synthesis beyond the scope of this article.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 01:45, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Ladies and gentlemen, please, do not !vote. I made several concrete proposals, and I expect to hear a detailed responce from you.--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:09, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I have no problem with mentioning the KR goal of creating a "primitive egalitarian society". I agree that the US supported the non-communist members of the anti-Vietnam coalition, rather than the KR; however, this only makes the text less relevant to MKuCR. The article currently gives undue weight to Fein's revisionism; I previously suggested adding sources that disagree with her thesis (World Fascism, "State Violence in Democratic Kampuchea"), a proposal you ignored. But if we are proposing changes to the text, I will again suggest updating the mass grave count to 1,386,734 and adding the following source:

Demographic analysis by Patrick Heuveline suggests that 2.52 million Cambodians died unnatural deaths during the 1970s due to political violence, "the vast majority of them during the mere four years of the 'Khmer Rouge' regime." Source: Heuveline, Patrick (2001), "The Demographic Analysis of Mortality Crises: The Case of Cambodia, 1970-1979," in Holly E. Reed and Charles B. Kelley, eds., Forced Migration and Mortality, National Academies Press, pp. 123, 102.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 03:05, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

I have no idea why did you decide Fein is a revisionist. Again, a habit to call other's sources "revisionist" is a bad habit. With regard to the rest, I think we have a chance to come to a consensus. Let's return to that in early April. I'll try to find more sources by that time (and to read them).--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:22, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

He says that "most estimates now cluster around one and a half to two million deaths" accountable to the Khmer Rouge, with executions ranging from 500,000 to 1 million (p. 105). That is reflected in the article. No idea why you consider Fein revisionist. Do you have any sources to support your view? TFD (talk) 09:26, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Why do you bring up the "most estimates" Heuveline refers to at the start of his article? Do you object to adding him as a source? Why are you repeating what PS said above? Do you have anything constructive to contribute? If not, you could just go away. The claim that the KR were not communist is textbook revisionism; I've previously provided many sources to that effect, as have other editors, while you've blocked their inclusion in the article. It's undue to only include Fein's POV, as the article currently does.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 09:40, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Because per WP:WEIGHT we should provide greater emphasis to what most scholars think. The resemblance between the Khmer Rouge and fascists is usually mentioned in reliable sources, although most agree that it had more in common with Maoism, which of course was a form of communism. It is important to mention how they differed from orthodox communism (racism, nationalism) because this article is about mass killings under Communist regimes. TFD (talk) 10:02, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

The article currently cites several sources that call the KR fascist, and none that disagree. I do not see how adding sources that disagree, such as World Fascism or "State Violence in Democratic Kampuchea," could possibly violate WP:WEIGHT.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 10:27, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Also, as I've previously argued, there is no solid evidence that the KR were racist. There is more evidence of racism among the Vietnamese and Laotian communists than the KR. Purges that disproportionately impact racial and religious minorities have occurred in most communist states.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 10:35, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Support for reasons I have previously stated. There are obvioulsy far more important things that could be mentioned. To me it seems that mentioning just this "support" is somewhat dishonest. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stumink (talk • contribs) 09:17, 25 March 2013‎ (UTC)

• Support removing the sentence per Stumink, Smallbones and TheTimesAreAChanging - we need to keep the article on WP:SCOPE. --Nug (talk) 11:26, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
• Support due to germaneness issues Collect (talk) 11:51, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Since it seems we have agreed, can we now remove the line? Stumink (talk) 11:18, 27 March 2013 (UTC) Also the Hungary section is dubious since it claims the State Protection Authority committed "mass genocides". The line is not sourced and seems hyperbolic to say the least.Stumink (talk) 18:55, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

I'll certify that we have a consensus here. Nobody wants to keep the sentence as is. Four editors just want to remove it. Two editors want to make changes to it, that do not have support. So the consensus is; Just remove the sentence: "Following the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge regime, the their coalition parters, which included former Khmer Rouge members, received aid and assistance from the United States government." in the 3rd paragraph in the Cambodia (Democratic Kampuchea) section. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 20:24, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

The recommended change was to change "thetheir" to "their". I did not see any argument against that. TFD (talk) 20:30, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Yeah but most people decided that the line itself should not be there. Stumink (talk) 22:23, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Y:our summary made it sound as if the proposed change was about POV or accuracy, and that removal of the sentence was uncontroversial and enjoyed consensus support. It might be helpful to generate discussion at WP:NPOVN. TFD (talk) 00:10, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

• Done. I've removed the sentence per the consensus above. This shouldn't be taken as a rejection of Paul Siebert's proposal; that proposal or a variant of it could be added if there is a consensus after further discussion. And for next time, discussion is not required before requesting that obvious spelling or grammar mistakes like "the their coalition" be fixed; no-one is likely to disagree with those kinds of edits, and further changes can always be discussed afterwards. Best — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 06:56, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Suggested changes

Firstly the Hunagry section is strange. It has no source and it claims that the State Protection Authority "committed mass genocides". Is this true? Are there good sources for this. Plus the wording is at the very least hyperbolic.

Also would the Communist purges in Serbia in 1944–1945 be good enough for inclusion? Another suggestion which I think would fit count as a mass killings under communist regime would be the Fractionism purges in Angola. 10 of thousand appear to have been excecuted in a couple year, so would this count? There are a number of source on the Angolan Civil War page. At the very least couldn't Angola and possibly the Partisans/Yugoslavia be mentioned in name as place where mass killing have occurred. Thoughts? Stumink (talk) 14:58, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

The Hungary section isn't even sourced, so it should be revised or removed.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 06:08, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Possible sources exist - but would need consensus for inclusion per the article restrictions. Meanwhile, the blue-linked articles do appear sourced.

During the anti-Tito campaign in 1949-1953, the prominent leader, Laszlo Rajk (see Rajk, Laszlo), was executed together with others after a show trial. A wave of purges followed, "cleansing" the party of social democrats who were coopted after the enforced merger of the two parties. Further show trials were conducted against prominent church leaders and noncommunist organizations. However, some leading communists, who remained in Hungary in the underground party, were also subjected to the horrors of torture and show trials. These included Janos Kadar (see Kadar, Janos) and Gyorgy Marosan (see Marosan, Gyorgy). About 7,500 communists fell victim to the purges, of whom about 2,000 were killed. Altogether, almost 750,000 Hungarians were investigated for possible political opposition. Many thousands were expelled from their homes, and about 250,000 were placed in concentration camps. There was hardly a family in Hungary who escaped persecution. [1]

appears sufficient to retain this section for sure. Collect (talk) 13:16, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

The rewrite of this article

Sorry, but this is going to take longer than I had anticipated. My life is currently at a stand still and I need to deal with things before I can take the time to go through and expand/alter each and every single section. Kurtis ^(talk) 09:33, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Understood. AmateurEditor (talk) 19:47, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Please add wiki-link to "George G. Waton"

Please add initial "G." to "George Watson" in this article and add wiki-link: George G. Watson. Thank you. --Aboudaqn (talk) 02:19, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Done. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 21:47, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Relevance?

What is the relevance of an article like this? There could as well be an article about "Mass killings under Capitalist regimes" (which could probably lead to far higher numbers) or an article about mass killings in general (which apparently doesn't exist), eventually mentioning the political or social system of the committing society.

This article makes it seem like mass killings would be somewhat a probable or even unique consequence of communism or supposedly communist societies and that is some serious political bias and not constructive at all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.17.64.182 (talk) 13:56, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Actually there is an article on Anti-communist mass killings. One person did try an article such as you describe ... Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Mass_killings_under_Capitalist_regimes where the primary problem was that the "mass killings" were not specific to "capitalism" thus making the article entirely WP:SYNTH. It made for a really, really bad article. Cheers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Collect (talk • contribs) 18:27, 5 June 2013

How does that differ from this article? TFD (talk) 19:05, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Been there, done that - the relevance of this article and its place in Wikipedia have been settled for a long time by about 6 AfD attempts. Why not think of something new to say? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 20:06, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

This is the editor's first posting and it might be more helpful to explain why the article exists than to make appeals to authority. In case you were unaware, nothing is ever settled in Wikipedia. TFD (talk) 20:18, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

@TFD - I was addressing you. Why not just admit, once and for all that there is no case to delete this article. To the extent possible on Wikipedia, this is a settled matter. See WP:Dead horse. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 20:45, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

It is very difficult to get any article deleted. The article Richard Tylman for example was only deleted on the 4th nomination, yet clearly the subject failed notability. A large number of AfDs for an article made by different editors may be evidence that there is something wrong with it. TFD (talk) 22:08, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

TFD, if you have forgotten how this article differs from the "Mass killings under Capitalist regimes" article, then maybe we should start a FAQ for this talk page so we don't have to spend time reminding you. The Richard Tylman article you linked to does not have an established consensus one way or the other regarding deletion (a consensus was only established on a previous version), whereas there is a clear consensus over two consecutive AfDs to keep this article. AmateurEditor (talk) 22:16, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

The Tylman articles were not all about the same person at all -- counting AfDs for such is a pointlesss exercise indeed. Collect (talk) 23:55, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

The first four AfDs including the one I proposed and that successfully led to the article's deletion, were about the same person. An article about a person with the same name but who lived hundreds of years before was then created and it survived AfD. TFD (talk) 00:04, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

This article had a number of AfDs that did not have a clear consensus and looking at the votes of those that supposed did there was substantial support for deletion. By all means start a FAQ. Answering why there is a MKuCR article but not one for capitalism, fascism, nazism, liberalism, imperialism, democracy, etc. could be one of them. TFD (talk) 22:35, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm willing to do it. Do you have any other questions about the article that you want added to the list? AmateurEditor (talk) 23:08, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Why is this article so terrible?

The very first sentence starts out with a verifiably false statement, or at least an extermely controversial statement stated as fact, something inappropriate for wikipedia. The entire article seems to just be a coatrack of any violence or deaths associated with communism. I wonder under what "mass killing" article would be placed the millions killed in war by the Japanese during the 30s, 40s, and under what article would we place the tens of thousands of children who starved to death today in Africa? Furious Style (talk) 02:23, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

The article is in its present state because of the editing restrictions it is under, which are detailed in the header at the top of the page. You can propose changes here on the talk page but have to establish a consensus before having them implemented in the article. Your complaints about the entire article echo some of the criticisms which were raised - and answered - in the deletion discussions which can also be found in a header. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:13, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

The original creator of the page could not have possibly been neutral when first creating a page entitled "Mass killings under Communist regimes." Hundreds of millions more have been killed due to oppression and starvation under capitalist or imperialist governments, yet there is no page entitled "Mass killings under Capitalist regimes" or "Mass killings of Imperialist regimes." This just goes to show that the very existence of this page is to deliberately slander communism. Wotwunite (talk) 05:13, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

There's nothing un-neutral about this very straightforward descriptive title (which is not the original title, but a later consensus compromise). WP:NPOV applies within articles only, not between articles, so the existence or not of WP:OTHERSTUFF is irrelevant. Articles are kept or not kept based upon their sourcing. And something can only be slander if it is false. AmateurEditor (talk) 00:34, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

Actually, the person who created this article, User Joklolk, called it Communist genocide[2] and has been blocked. TFD (talk) 02:00, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes, and the FAQ on this page addresses the specific point about other counter-articles not existing. Maybe we should increase its prominence somehow. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:10, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

Bulgaria

The 50,000 - 100,000 deaths for Bulgaria are absurd. The number of political executions in 1944 was 2,700. The total number of political prisoners until 1962 ranges from 12,000 (lowest estimate) to 186,000 (highest estimate) pp. 39-40. Another source gives 23,531 people imprisoned in camps between 1944 and 1961. The online memorial of victims of Communist repression in Bulgaria has 17,922 records, including deportations (not executions). For the sake of adequacy, the hyperinflated number on the page should be removed. - ☣Tourbillon ^A ? 15:12, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

It's important to make sure we are comparing like with like from different sources. And there is a very significant degree of uncertainty in some areas of this topic. "Mass killing" may also include deaths resulting from agricultural collectivization if there is evidence that the authorities were responsible for them. In the example of Bulgaria, the source for the sentence used in the article (Valentino) includes deaths there from "agricultural collectivization and political repression" from 1944 onward only as a "possible case" due to insufficient documentation. Mention of the fact of this uncertainty should be added to the existing sentence so as not to mislead people (and it should also be added to the other four "possible cases" he lists). AmateurEditor (talk) 01:43, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

While the last source is mostly a database, it does include victims of collectivisation and forced resettlement. My point is that no matter what the number might reflect, it is simply impossibly high. The total number of victims of regime policies in Bulgaria is, by most available estimates, much smaller than the number of killed listed here. It's even worse if the numbers are merely proposed by the author without any evidence. I fail to understand why these guesstimates are used as a primary source for the number of casualties. - ☣Tourbillon ^A ? 07:45, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

I very much doubt it is impossibly high. If the examples of the USSR and China are indicative, agricultural collectivization deaths can be very high. Valentino is a high quality source. 50,000 to 100,000 is a wide range and reflects the high level of uncertainty involved. Likewise, the range of political prisoners you found is also a very wide range (12,000 to 186,000) for the same reason. Your last source is missing "many more thousands of names" according to itself[3]. I agree with you that the current wording in the article is unacceptable. But that is because it does not adequately reflect its source, not because the figures are impossible. The current wording is "Between 50,000 and 100,000 people may have been killed in Bulgaria beginning in 1944 as part of agricultural collectivization and political repression." I propose we change it to "Available evidence suggests that between 50,000 and 100,000 people may have been killed in Bulgaria beginning in 1944 as part of agricultural collectivization and political repression, although there is insufficient documentation to make a definitive judgement."AmateurEditor (talk) 23:05, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Probably better to combine the information from the tables. Since Valentino does not say "available evidence suggests," we should not add that. We should also provide inline citation. Generally however we should avoid using tables that provide no sources for numbers or indicate how likely the numbers cited are to be accurate. TFD (talk) 01:28, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Please check sources more carefully, TFD. This isn't the first time you have overlooked key information. "Available evidence suggests" is a direct quote from Valentino (from the fine print under Table 2 on page 75). We can, of course, use inline citation if you want by adding "According to Benjamin Valentino,..." at the beginning of the proposed change. I think that would be an improvement. The fine print under Table 2 does touch on sourcing and accuracy without being very specific, but since we would now be attributing this to Valentino personally, rather than as objective fact, it is sufficient. AmateurEditor (talk) 01:46, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

The footnote says, "Episodes are listed under the heading "possible cases" in this and subsequent tables when the available evidence suggests a mass killing may have occurred, but documentation is insufficient to make a definitive judgment regarding the number of people killed, the intentionality of the killing, or the motives of the perpetrators." That is different from what you are suggesting and I suggest also that you avoid personal attacks. TFD (talk) 02:29, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

How is it different? Every single piece of the proposed sentence comes directly from page 75 of Valentino. There's no difference. And what personal attack? It is not a personal attack to tell an editor that they are mistaken on a key point and need to be more careful in reading sources because it isn't the first time that this has happened, when 1)both things are true, and 2)we are trying to arrive at a consensus. In no way is it an attack on you. We all make mistakes. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:53, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

You can read the complete discussion to which you refer at Talk:Mass killings under Communist regimes/Archive 33#Creating a workpage for the Estimates section. I was asked for and provided a source. Your comment was, "This isn't the first time you have overlooked key information." A non-personal attack phrasing would be, "This is not the first time we have disagreed."

How is the phrasing different? Valentino says, "available evidence suggests a mass killing may have occurred" but says that there is insufficient evidence for estimates of the number of victims. You write, "Available evidence suggests that between 50,000 and 100,000 people may have been killed."

TFD (talk) 04:12, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

I did reread the complete discussion. You had dramatically mischaracterized your source because you missed key information in the footnote, just as you did this time. We can't learn from our mistakes if we don't notice them, and me pointing them out to you on an issue we are discussing is not an attack on you. You saying that Valentino did not use the words "available evidence suggests", when he did use those exact words is not simply a disagreement between us, it's a mistake on your part. We can't have a productive discussion if you can't admit such things, TFD. If you go check the information in Table 2 and the information in the footnote to the table, you will find that Valentino does not specify that the uncertainty lies in the numbers alone (it may also or only be in the intent and motives of the perpetrators) and Valentino specifies 50,000 to 100,000 as the range. There is no difference. Everything comes from Valentino. My proposal is to replace the existing sentence with the following: "According to Benjamin Valentino, available evidence suggests that between 50,000 and 100,000 people may have been killed in Bulgaria beginning in 1944 as part of agricultural collectivization and political repression, although there is insufficient documentation to make a definitive judgement."AmateurEditor (talk) 04:44, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

I have explained to you why you are misreading the source. I do not understand why you want to bring up a discussion from 8 months ago, but I will outline it for you. Rummel said that estimates of Soviet victims ranged from "a highly unlikely low figure of around 28,000,000 [to] an equally unlikely high of nearly 126,900,000...." While he places the low and high estimates outside the realm of probability he places them inside the realm of possibility. He does not for example say that the numbers are "impossibly" low or high. I do not recall any other sources using the figure of 126 million as a high estimate, most of them use 100 or 110 million over even lower numbers for the upper level. TFD (talk) 05:21, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not going off on this tangent with you. Your complaint about this present proposal is baseless and you're simply wrong when you say that Valentino "says that there is insufficient evidence for estimates of the number of victims". That may be but we can't conclude that because he does not specifically say that. He includes the number killed as one of three possible sources of the insufficient documentation (which apply to all five of his "Possible Cases" of mass killing on that table): "the number of people killed, the intentionality of the killing, or the motives of the perpetrators". We cannot conclude from this that the numbers for Bulgaria are the reason for the documentation being insufficient. It could be purely related to the motives of the perpetrators or it could be a combination of things. The proposed sentence accurately characterizes Valentino on mass killing in Bulgaria.AmateurEditor (talk) 05:38, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

While we cannot "cannot conclude from this that the numbers for Bulgaria are the reason for the documentation being insufficient", it is wrong to conclude that Valentino meant the opposite. We should not resolve ambiguity to favor one or another interpretation. TFD (talk) 05:57, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. The present wording of the proposal sentence leaves the reason for the "insufficient documentation" out altogether. AmateurEditor (talk) 06:00, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

I think this discussion is going in a completely wrong direction. The numbers are impossibly high. Bulgara is neither China nor the Soviet Union, and of all available sources, Valentino is obviously the one giving the highest number. The boldest Bulgarian estimates do not go higher than 40,000. Yet another source for the entire 45-year period: "The total number amounts to 31,000 victims of the Communist regime, which is nine times higher than the victims of political repression before September 9, 1944". Sharlanov, Dinyu. History of Communism in Bulgaria, Siela, 2009, p. 226. Don't make me pull out a library of sources to disprove Valentino's nonsense. - ☣Tourbillon ^A ? 07:08, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

This article is about the large-scale killing of noncombatants by communist regimes. The sources you gave in your first post were mostly about other things: executions, political prisoners, prison camp members, etc. I expect that most of the 50,000 to 100,000 range would be attributed to agricultural collectivization, but Valentino doesn't say, as far as I know. Asserting that this estimate is "impossibly high" is original research on your part unless you can prove that it is wrong from other sources (and simply presenting another source with another estimate does not do that). Your most recent source with the 31,000 "victims" is interesting, but I can't read it so I can't evaluate it. English language sources are preferred. If it is an estimate of the same type of thing, then it can also be included. AmateurEditor (talk) 07:27, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

So, if I'm understanding you correctly, victims of forced resettlement and political executions are combatants ? And when a total number of victims of all kinds of repression is presented, it's still not valid because it does not narrowly correspond to "mass killing" ? Brilliant reasoning. What you "expect" is original research, not my remarks on a source that presents a completely unsubstantiated claim. - ☣Tourbillon ^A ? 07:56, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Resettled people are not killed people (although brutal conditions may kill people as part of the process). Political executions tend to not be "mass" events, but if they are all being treated as a lump sum by the source, they may qualify, depending on how the source characterizes them. "Victims" may not mean "killed" and may not include famine deaths due to agricultural collectivization, for example. It is important not to compare apples to oranges here. What I "expect" about Valentino's estimate was my own opinion, yes, but I am not trying to impose my own opinion on the article. Removing the Valentino sentence about Bulgaria because you think it is "impossibly high" (or even because you have a different estimate from a different source that you prefer) is imposing your own opinion on the article. The point is, the article must reflect what relevant sources say and that alone. AmateurEditor (talk) 08:15, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Nobody is imposing any opinion on the article, I'm just saying that there is no way there could be such a high number of people killed when most estimates on the victims of the regime (including killed) are much lower. If you have a problem with the last source, here's a summary of Sharlanov's book with the 31,000 number, with a breakdown of numbers: 26,850 killed without sentence, 1,050 executed in 1944, another 680 executed until 1975, 160 killed in the late 1980s, 1,500 killed while trying to defect. - ☣Tourbillon ^A ? 17:40, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. I have no problem with also including this material in the Bulgaria section. AmateurEditor (talk) 18:01, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

It does not appear to be a reliable source, and has the same problem as Valentino's table - we do not know where the numbers are from. TFD (talk) 21:14, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Why doesn't the source appear to be reliable? And Valentino's numbers are from Valentino, essentially (he says the range is from "numerous sources" but doesn't specify them, so he takes full responsibility). That's why it is better to say "According to Benjamin Valentino,..." in the Bulgaria section sentence. AmateurEditor (talk) 22:33, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

I cannot find any information from third parties about the centre, the conference or the authors of the report. TFD (talk) 23:04, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Such information may be hard to find in English. Our failure to find it does not mean that it doesn't exist. Perhaps Tourbillon will have better luck. AmateurEditor (talk) 00:28, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Here is a link to a description of the conference from the Robert Schuman Foundation. Presumably the authors based their report on already published research, whether by them or others, which would be a much better source. Then we could assess the weight it has received. As noted, the estimates are lower than the lowest range in Valentino - Rummel also. TFD (talk) 04:02, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

As I already said, the report is based on History of Communism in Bulgaria (2009) by Dinyu Sharlanov, who has a number of works on the Communist period. I've provided a link to the book above, unfortunately not available in full view at Google Books. - ☣Tourbillon ^A ? 16:39, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Since the book is the ultimate source, the conference paper (by an organization internationally recognized for their work) serves to justify the inclusion of the information, as far as I am concerned. How about the following: According to Benjamin Valentino, available evidence suggests that between 50,000 and 100,000 people may have been killed in Bulgaria beginning in 1944 as part of agricultural collectivization and political repression, although there is insufficient documentation to make a definitive judgement. Dinyu Sharlanov, in his book History of Communism in Bulgaria, accounts for about 31,000 people killed by the regime between 1944 and 1989. (with citations) AmateurEditor (talk) 01:48, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Sounds good enough, although I believe "killed under the regime" would be more accurate, as many of those deaths were not state-sanctioned and occurred as reprisal killings by individuals in the months immediately after regime change. - ☣Tourbillon ^A ? 07:21, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Ok. So the proposed sentences are: "According to Benjamin Valentino, available evidence suggests that between 50,000 and 100,000 people may have been killed in Bulgaria beginning in 1944 as part of agricultural collectivization and political repression, although there is insufficient documentation to make a definitive judgement. Dinyu Sharlanov, in his book History of Communism in Bulgaria, accounts for about 31,000 people killed under the regime between 1944 and 1989. (with citations) AmateurEditor (talk) 22:14, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Seems good to me. - ☣Tourbillon ^A ? 18:18, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Sorry AmateurEditor but I am not following your reasoning. How does your link support inclusion? TFD (talk) 08:29, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

The link demonstrates that the "Hannah Arendt Center – Sofia" is a legitimate and recognized organization in its field (it is described as one of the group of "European organizations that study the totalitarian past" and was a signatory member of the described international agreement which was attended by the Prime Ministers of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, showing that this is not some fringe group) and so including information from one of its publications (or one of the authors of the publication) in one sentence in this article surely does not violate undue weight. AmateurEditor (talk) 22:14, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

If there are no more objections in the next 24 hours, I'll post the edit request. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:25, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

As I pointed out, the paper was not presented at an academic conference, but at a conference sponsored by a foundation of the European Peoples Party. All your evidence shows is that the organization presenting the paper was endorsed by three right-wing governments in Eastern Europe. I am sure that if an organization had been supported by the pre-1989 governments of the same countries, you would not consider it to be a reliable source merely because those governments supported it. TFD (talk) 12:42, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

If it is covered by reliable sources - the fact that you "know" it was sponsored by "right wing governments" is totally irrelevant. Perhaps if it were sponsored by "left wing governments" that would be equally irrelevant by the way. We do not interject what we "know" into discussions about sources. Cheers. `Collect (talk)

It does not matter whether it comes from the left, right or center - it is a paper from a political conference presented by a political group. I have equally opposed using documents from the Socialist International, and would reject papers from Communist, fascist, green and liberal sources as well. It does not matter what I Josh Billings WP:KNOW, but whether it can be demonstrated to be a reliable source. And whether the source has been supported by the government of Hungary, Russia, Venezuela, or Cuba does not make it a reliable source. TFD (talk) 14:15, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

It may not make it the WP:TRUTH but the issue of "reliable source" does not encompass your views here. The question is whether WP:RS would call the source "reliable" and you have not shown that it is not. Collect (talk) 15:15, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

It is not my understanding of rs that any and all sources are considered to be reliable until evidence is provided that they are not. In fact, it is reasonable to obtain information about sources before determining their reliability. TFD (talk) 15:33, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Your stated reason above for saying the source is not usable and is not valid per WP:RS. Your "evidence" is "right wing governments" supported the conference. That is not a "valid reason." You need reasons which actually make sense per policy. Cheers. Collect (talk) 15:36, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

That is not the reason at all. AmateurEditor said the source was reliable because the Czech, Polish and Hungarian governments supported the organization that wrote the report. I am sure you would not be impressed that an organization had the support of the pre-1989 governments of those countries or of other governments you do not support. TFD (talk) 16:06, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

TFD, I did not say that the source is reliable because those governments "supported" the organization. I said that the recognition of the group by those governments demonstrated that it was not fringe, because I was answering your complaint about weight. You are right that those who want to add a source must show that it meets the minimum requirements for inclusion (and the conference paper is the evidence for that; I presented the link about the publisher of that conference report to show that it is not fringe itself), but your complaint itself is baseless. Collect is right that the politics of those particular politicians is irrelevant. Not only because they did not have a hand in creating the conference report and academics did, but because political bias has no bearing on whether a source is reliable anyway. Per WP:RS, "Wikipedia articles are required to present a neutral point of view. However, reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective. Common sources of bias include political, financial, religious, philosophical, or other beliefs." Since we are neutrally presenting this information by attributing it to Dinyu Sharlanov, rather than describing it as objective fact, we sidestep this entire issue. AmateurEditor (talk) 22:00, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

It was a paper presented at a conference for a political party. That does not mean it is not reliable, but it does not mean that it is. If the "facts" presented in the paper enjoy any degree of support then it should be no problem to find a good source that supports them. Jobbik and the Hungarian Workers' Party (2013) are political parties in Hungary too. Do you think papers presented at their conferences would be good sources? TFD (talk) 22:16, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

As Tourbillon said, the source is the book by the academic. The conference paper speaks to the information from the book having received wider recognition, sufficient for a one-sentence mention in this article. If you want more weight for this information in the article, you are welcome to find justification for it. AmateurEditor (talk) 22:26, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I'll still wait the rest of the 24 hours before posting the edit request, just in case there's something else. AmateurEditor (talk) 23:58, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

You still need to explain why it is a reliable source. Why do you think it is a reliable source? Do you think that because it was presented at a Christian Democratic conference it is reliable and does that mean that papers presented at fascist or Communist conferences are reliable too or if not why not. I noticed that Collect objected to a book published by International Publishers because it is Communist. What makes this party any more reliable. BTW the highly partisan nature of this source, the poor translation, the lack of footnotes would make me embarrassed to present it as a reliable source. AmateurEditor cannot even identify the authors or where they teach or what they have written. Normally before I believe something I read I want to know those things. TFD (talk) 04:38, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Are you addressing those questions to me (you refer to both me and Collect in the third person at various points)? Again, the source is the book. The paper, being in English, is a convenient backup. My acceptance of Prof. Dinyu Sharlanov's book History of Communism in Bulgaria has nothing to do with the politics of that conference, as it shouldn't. Again, any political bias is irrelevant in this situation, because we are attributing the material to the author, rather than presenting it as fact. I never opposed including sources from communists because they were from communists. If you have a source by self-declared communists, it and its proposed use must be evaluated independently and stand on its own merits. In this case, the information Tourbillon found from the book is relevant and academic, regardless of the fact that it is in Bulgarian or the number of English errors made in the conference paper. He is a historian, after all, not a professor of English. I'm sure that Tourbillon will find it easier to look up which institution he is with (by the way, the other academic with the conference paper is Venelin Ganev, who you can read about here). The publisher of the book is Ciela, in Sofia, Bulgaria[4]. Other publications by Dinyu Sharlanov can be found here, under "selected titles". AmateurEditor (talk) 07:36, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Where one, and only one, editor has voiced objections, it is apparent that the consensus is to allow the source. If that editor wishes to start an RfC, that is his right, but this discussion has reached a conclusion. Cheers. Collect (talk) 11:37, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Are you presenting the paper or the book as a source? TFD (talk) 14:26, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

In case you missed it I am not the one "presenting" the material. Collect (talk) 16:47, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Collect, I agree that we do not need TFD's agreement to have a consensus here, but in the interest of fairness and thoroughness I asked Tourbillon to see if he could find the institution that Prof. Dinyu Sharlanov is associated with and he has agreed to try. I have no problem waiting a little longer before posting the edit request. AmateurEditor (talk) 17:19, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

I have not found this information online (and I have not yet gotten a response to a cold-call email I sent to one of his publishers) and Tourbillon says that he also did not find it. Its easy to forget sometimes just how much is not yet available online. But it is less important to know which academic institution Dinyu Sharlanov is with than it is to know that he is a professor and has been cited by others in this area, as has been shown already (and here are a few more examples of him being cited), so I am going to go ahead with the edit request tomorrow. AmateurEditor (talk) 04:42, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Please replaced the current sentence in the "Bulgaria" section with the following two sentences:

According to Benjamin Valentino, available evidence suggests that between 50,000 and 100,000 people may have been killed in Bulgaria beginning in 1944 as part of agricultural collectivization and political repression, although there is insufficient documentation to make a definitive judgement. Dinyu Sharlanov, in his book History of Communism in Bulgaria, accounts for about 31,000 people killed under the regime between 1944 and 1989.

Thanks. AmateurEditor (talk) 22:28, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

• Support Though finding something to link Sharlanov to would be a great help. Collect (talk) 18:47, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose Since no one has been able to find anything about the author, we cannot determine what weight his opinions have. TFD (talk) 21:21, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

There's no need for all four of us to repeat our positions when they are clear in the above exchanges. And we have more than enough information about Dinyu Sharlanov. Where he is a professor does not change that he is one, or that he has published historical works under a reputable publisher, or that he is cited by others in this field, or that his estimate for Bulgaria is relevant here, all of which is evident above. Debating about what weight to give him in the article would only be relevant if we were giving him more that the absolute minimum weight, which we are not at this point. AmateurEditor (talk) 22:46, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

• • We know the Hannah Arendt Centre in Sofia calls him "Professor" and "Historian." [5], We know that centre is not fictitious [6]. We would be presenting his opinion properly ascribed as his opinion, and not placed in Wikipedia's voice. What is the problem? Collect (talk) 22:53, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
    • We know that the Workers World Party exists too. It does not mean that articles published on their website are accurate. Why are you linking to Hanna Arendt? She died long before the center was set up and had nothing to do with it. Collect, if a local newspaper asked you to write about a topic and you had to use your real name, would you use an article on the internet as a source, when you knew nothing about the author or whether his facts had any acceptance? TFD (talk) 23:12, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
      • As I linked above, we know that the author has been cited by other reliable sources in this field. That's all we actually need to know about him to use him here. We aren't covering any new ground here; further repetition of our positions serves only to muddy the water for the admin to slog through. AmateurEditor (talk) 23:22, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
      • As we are not citing it as a fact in Wikipedia's voice, all we need to know is that he was published by a reliable source publisher, is cited by others, and is associated with a specific organization for some of his work. Arguing otherwise is sheer tendentiousness akin to arguing that the US does not contain several territories. It is sophistry at its most kabbalistic. Cheers. Collect (talk) 00:49, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

• Done After reading through the discussion above, it seems there is sufficient consensus to include the proposed wording. This is not set in stone, though. TFD, if you are concerned about the reliability of any of the sources, I suggest that you start a new thread at WP:RSN to see what other editors think. Best — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 06:22, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Proposal to alter the existing sentences in the East Germany and Romania sections

The two sections of one sentence each are currently as follows:

• "Between 80,000 and 100,000 people may have been killed in East Germany beginning in 1945 as part of political repression by the Soviet Union."

• "Between 60,000 and 300,000 people may have been killed in Romania beginning in 1945 as part of agricultural collectivization and political repression."

I propose we change them to be in line with the clarification we agreed on for Valentino in the Bulgaria section. The new sentences would be as follows:

• "According to Benjamin Valentino, available evidence suggests that between 80,000 and 100,000 people may have been killed in East Germany beginning in 1945 as part of political repression by the Soviet Union, although there is insufficient documentation to make a definitive judgement."

• "According to Benjamin Valentino, available evidence suggests that between 60,000 and 300,000 people may have been killed in Romania beginning in 1945 as part of agricultural collectivization and political repression, although there is insufficient documentation to make a definitive judgement."

The existing citations would, of course, stay the same. AmateurEditor (talk) 00:29, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Pretty close - though perhaps the last part could be "there is insufficient information for precise figures" would work as well? "Definitive judgemant" seems, to me, to be a confusing term for readers in general. And as we refer to Valentino in multiple places, we can forgo the "Benjamin"? Collect (talk) 00:50, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

I combined the two proposals to avoid confusion. I used "definitive judgement" only because that is the phrase used by Valentino in the footnote to Table 2 (page 75) and I wanted to minimize grounds for objection. Yes, I think you are right that the precision simply isn't there (hence the use of such round numbers), but Valentino specifies three different possible sources of the "insufficient documentation" without saying which applies to which of the five "possible cases" on Table 2 of his book. One is the figures, one is "the intentionality of the killing", and one is "the motives of the perpetrators". I would like to stay as close as possible to the source, but a I am open to different wording as well. We can drop "Benjamin" if you want. The full name is repeated fairly often and in close proximity there at the moment, but I was thinking that this might not be the case in the future. AmateurEditor (talk) 01:11, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Actually, I don't think that qualification heaped on qualification does much except confuse the reader (and sometimes the grammar) compare the the East German sentences:

• Between 80,000 and 100,000 people may have been killed in East Germany beginning in 1945 as part of political repression by the Soviet Union."
• According to Benjamin Valentino, available evidence suggests that between 80,000 and 100,000 people may have been killed in East Germany beginning in 1945 as part of political repression by the Soviet Union, although there is insufficient documentation to make a definitive judgement.

The first has "may" and perhaps that qualification is enough

The second has "According to Benjamin Valentino" "available evidence" "suggests" "may" "although" "insufficient documentation to make a definitive judgement". The additional 5 qualifications don't add much in terms of information or grammar except in adding Valentino's name. Perhaps:

• "According to Valentino, between 80,000 and 100,000 people may have been killed in East Germany beginning in 1945 as part of political repression by the Soviet Union." It really says the same thing. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 01:43, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

I am not wedded to any particular wording. But I think the "insufficient documentation" part is valuable to explain the "may" part. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:13, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

OTOH, if we had "sufficient documentation" we could give an exact figure -- the "insufficient documentation" phrasing remains simply a source of puzzlement for readers. And we do not need Valentino's first name in every place in the article <g>. Hence my proposed compromise clarification. Collect (talk) 13:21, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Dropping Valentino's first name is fine by me. I take Smallbones' point about redundancy in the proposed wording (and the lack of precision is strongly suggested by the given range of very round numbers). Do we all agree to add "According to Valentino,..." to the beginning of both sentences? AmateurEditor (talk) 21:49, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

I guess I should take this as silent consensus, considering that both of you essentially supported the "According to Valentino,..." portion in your comments. I'll post the edit request for this more restricted version after we've reached the minimum 72 hours. AmateurEditor (talk) 21:46, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Please make the following two changes to the article. Change the sentence in the East Germany section to the following:

• According to Valentino, between 80,000 and 100,000 people may have been killed in East Germany beginning in 1945 as part of political repression by the Soviet Union.

And change the sentence in the Romania section to the following:

• According to Valentino, between 60,000 and 300,000 people may have been killed in Romania beginning in 1945 as part of agricultural collectivization and political repression.

The existing citations should stay for both. Thanks in advance. AmateurEditor (talk) 21:28, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Done ~Adjwilley (talk) 21:58, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Extremely biased

This article makes some very controversial claims about communism and does not explain how Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao's regimes' death had anything to do with communism's ideology. Nor is there a sufficient counterpoint section in the article that challenges the claims of communism being especially murderous.

Thevideodrome (talk) 19:30, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

There are a large number of changes I would like to make, as well. Editing the article has been very difficult since the sanctions were imposed. They require clear consensus for an edit to be demonstrated on the talk page before being made to the article (the details can be read at the top of this page) and the result has been that proposed changes are held to a very high standard. If you have specific changes in mind, you are welcome to propose them. AmateurEditor (talk) 21:48, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Proposal to include photo

A remembrance on Lubyanka Square in Moscow, posted by the organization Memorial, states that 40,000 people were shot in Moscow during the several repressions.

to be placed directly under Soviet Union.

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 21:36, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Can you tell us something about the monument? The file note describes it as the "Memorial about Repression in USSR at Lubianka Square, Moscow, Russia," but that appears not to be correct. TFD (talk) 22:09, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

What's incorrect about it? The English translation on the right is correctly translated. It looks like Lubyanka to me, and I've been there 100s of times. Don't you recognize it? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 22:54, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

TFD, the photo checks out. Here's one with a wider angle. And here's a link to a google maps photo showing its location at Lubyanka Square. I have no problem with this proposal. AmateurEditor (talk) 00:08, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

AmateurEditor, the monument in the center of the picture in your link is the "Memorial about Repression in USSR at Lubyanka Square", also called the "Solovetsky Stone". It does not say what the monument on the right is. Smallbones, I have never been to Moscow. In any case, we need to identify this monument. TFD (talk) 14:20, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

But you're the one who calls this sign a "monument". Smallbones' caption calls it a "remembrance", which seems to be a perfectly appropriate term, based upon what the sign says. There is no mystery about this object. Are you objecting to this edit or not? AmateurEditor (talk) 22:44, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Smallbones called it a "memorial". The definition of a monument is "[a] statue, building, or other structure erected to commemorate a famous or notable person or event."[7] The definition of a memorial is "[S]omething, esp. a structure, that reminds people of a person or event." Unless you can identify this memorial/monument/remembrance, I cannot support including it. I like to know the origin of material we choose to include in articles. The caption says it was put there by Memorial (society), but that has not been established. TFD (talk) 17:31, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Apparently the plaque is part of the Solovetsky Stone monument. Here is an article about it. The momument was erected with the permission of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and the Communists choose the date of its establishment as the "Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repressions". I do not see the relevance. Admittedly the KGB were Communists, but the memorial does not pin the blame on Communism. If we do use, we need to be clear on how it was erected and what it actually says. TFD (talk) 18:08, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

1) Thank you for looking into this on your own.

2) Smallbones never did call it a "memorial", by the way, although he certainly could have, but this is a very minor point.

3) The memorial does not need to pin the blame on Communism in order to be about the killing which took place under the Communist regimes there. It is relevant because it is about killings which are the subject of the Soviet Union section of this article.

4) You are welcome to propose an alternate caption which you think would satisfy everyone.

AmateurEditor (talk) 18:48, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Just to be clear - I never called this a "memorial", but would have if it wouldn't cause confusion with the "Memorial (society)" which placed it there. It might be called a "plaque" which explains the Solovetsky Stone itself and the whole thing is the memorial. It's all semantics as far as I'm concerned. The "remembrance" itself gives all the info that The Four Deuces is asking for both in Russian and English - you should all read it. Memorial, the society, identifies itself at the end and even gives a website. It should be noted that Memorial is a very well respected group that has been around since at least 1990. While I was in Moscow it was common knowledge that they placed the Stone at that location, and they used the site for an annual remembrance ceremony. I believe that there was a smaller plaque when I was there, with essentially the same information on it. So this particular version might have been placed in the last 6 years. Oh, and having reread the remembrance, it says "shot", not "killed", in both languages, so I changed that on the caption. And I agree with AE that blame need not be meted out for anything in this article: the title is "Mass killings under Communist regimes" not "Who's to blame for mass killings under Communist regimes". There is, of course, a clear connection with "mass killings" here, as well as "under Communist regimes." Smallbones_(smalltalk) 00:19, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

On his talk page here, TFD proposed this caption for the photo: "Plaque of the Memorial about Repression in USSR at Lubyanka Square. The memorial was erected in the USSR by the human rights group Memorial in remembrance of 40,000 innocent people shot in Moscow under Stalin." Is this ok with everyone? AmateurEditor (talk) 23:06, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

I'd add "the" for grammatical reasons and just leave out "in the USSR" which is confusing (this plaque seems to have been posted much later), and the USSR was falling apart at the time - so perhaps the RSFR (or whatever they called themselves) was really in charge. In any case "in the USSR" might be easily mistaken for "by the USSR", which is definitely *not* the case. So with links the caption should read:

Plaque of the Memorial about Repression in USSR at Lubyanka Square. The memorial was erected by the human rights group Memorial in remembrance of the 40,000 innocent people shot in Moscow under Stalin.

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 01:36, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

The wording makes clear that it was erected "by...Memorial". It was erected Oct. 30, 1990, while the USSR dissolved at the end of 1991. The first Solovetsky monument was erected June 1989. It is not an anti-Communist monument but an anti-Stalinist one, otherwise Gorbachev and the KGB would not have been invited to its unveiling, and which is why I question whether its relevance. Why not choose an image with an unequivocal anti-Communist message? Like the one in Washington. TFD (talk) 12:05, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

We can add a photo of the memorial in Washington in some other section, if you want. If you propose it, I will support it. This is specifically about the Soviet Union, which is why it is relevant to the Soviet section. But being erected under a Communist government does not have any effect on the memorial's relevance to the killings during the Terror. This topic is not about "anti-Communism", as the existence of this particular memorial, erected as you say under a moderate Communist government, demonstrates. AmateurEditor (talk) 19:21, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

The memorial is not about MKuCR. To use an example, suppose someone wanted to add an image of a monument to the victims of Hiroshima to "United States and state terrorism". That would be tendentious unless the monument actually attributed it to the subject. TFD (talk) 20:00, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

The memorial is about 40,000+ people killed in the Terror in the Soviet Union, which is a significant part of this topic. The Terror is addressed specifically in several of the broadest sources for this article, and has a dedicated subsection in the Soviet section of the article, so it is obviously directly relevant. The memorial was erected under the Soviet Union and the text of the sign specifically mentions the Terror, so there is nothing tendentious about it. Your proposed alternate caption, additionally, has been accepted almost verbatim. I don't see what more can be done to accommodate reasonable concerns. AmateurEditor (talk) 20:23, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

You have repeatedly stated that MKuCR is a real topic and the article can be written with sources about that topic. Otherwise it would be coatracking and synthesis. The KGB which sent a representative to the unveiling was not representing that these killings were caused by Communist ideology. Sources used to support a topic should support it. TFD (talk) 21:45, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

TFD, it is not just me saying that this is a "real topic" with "sources about that topic". It has been established repeatedly at AfDs and such sources have been shown to you repeatedly for a long time now (these four in particular). None of the sources need state that the killings "were caused by Communist ideology" in order to be about the killings under Communist regimes; they do state that communist ideology played a role. The precise role of ideology (as opposed to level of radicalism or other causes) will differ somewhat from source to source, even as they mostly agree on the broad strokes. In this case, there is no question that this memorial is about mass killing under a Communist regime. So, if that is your only objection at this point, I think we have done all we can to satisfy you. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:11, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Then you need a source that connects the monument with MKuCR. You could just as easily add the image to "Jewish Bolshevism". But it would be tendentious to say that that the monument laid the blame on Jewish Bolshevism unless it actually said that. Why is it a problem to find a monument with an anti-Communist message? TFD (talk) 03:43, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

It's not an image for the lead, so it does not need to encompass the entire topic. It is an image for the Soviet section of the article, to which it directly relates. And blame is irrelevant here. This is about what happened, not why. AmateurEditor (talk) 04:02, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Can you find any source that says this monument is relevant to MKuCR? TFD (talk) 04:17, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Valentino specifically lists the "Great Terror" as part of the Soviet Union's killing on the chart on page 75 called "Communist Mass Killings in the Twentieth Century"[8]. This memorial commemorates victims of the Terror. We do not need a source linking this memorial to all Communist killings everywhere, since it will be used to illustrate only the Soviet section of the article.AmateurEditor (talk) 04:36, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

He does not draw a connection between the monument and MKuCR. Again, your logic would justify including the monument in Jewish Bolshevism since some of the Bolsheviks were Jews. Please explain if you disagree. If the sources do not see this image as relevant then neither should we. TFD (talk) 05:00, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Logic would not justify using this image at Jewish Bolshevism because it has nothing to do with Jewish Bolshevism. Valentino does not need to mention the memorial itself; he mentions what the memorial memorializes. It is directly relevant to the Soviet section here because it is about mass killings under the Terror, which is specifically mentioned in the Soviet section. Here's a New York Times article about Putin's visit to the memorial which describes it as being about "mass killing" under Stalin.[9] AmateurEditor (talk) 05:38, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

add the photo and caption. 40,000 qualifies as "mass" and it happened in the soviet union.Darkstar1st (talk) 09:19, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Are there any other objections to this? AmateurEditor (talk) 19:38, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

We have not agreed on a caption. TFD (talk) 20:01, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

What is wrong with "Plaque of the Memorial about Repression in USSR at Lubyanka Square. The memorial was erected by the human rights group Memorial in remembrance of the 40,000 innocent people shot in Moscow under Stalin."? AmateurEditor (talk) 21:17, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

I think we should say that the memorial was erected in the USSR. Also I would also remove "under Stalin" because the dates show that the killings began under Lenin and it is not clear whether they ended upon Stalin's death. This illustrates the problem of introducing an image of that is not explained in the article. If the article explained the memorial, then it would only be necessary to mention its name in the caption. TFD (talk) 17:59, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

If you look at the fullsize picture, start and end dates for what is commemorated are included (with the highest date being "through the 50s") so certainly the bulk of dates were under Stalin, but a more general term such as Soviet or Bolshevik may be more appropriate (As the Bolshevik party eventually became the Communist party, the terms is accurate, but probably confusing, so I agree Soviet/USSR is best) Gaijin42 (talk) 18:07, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

The plaque says, “During the years of terror, over 40,000 people were shot in Moscow on groundless political charges. Their bodies were buried in the cemetery of the Yauza Hospital (now Hospital 23) from 1921-1926, at Vagankovo cemetery from 1926-1935, and cremated at the Moscow (Donskoi) Crematorium from 1934 until at least the early 1950s. Beginning in 1937, two NKVD (KGB) execution sites in Moscow neighbourhoods (Butovo and Kommunarka collective farms) were used as burial places”. The reason for this wording is probably that they did not wish to offend the Communists by placing blame on them or any of their leaders. A representative from the KGB actually attended the opening. That is why I find it problematic to include and if it is included requires explanation. TFD (talk) 18:27, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

As Smallbones mentioned before, this appears to be the second sign erected at the site, replacing an earlier version which can be seen in other photos, such as this one from 2006. So, while the Stone was erected under the USSR, this sign was not. On the other hand, I think Gaijin42 is right that "under Stalin" is too narrow. I think we ought to say "during the years of terror" instead, to be closer to what the sign itself says. How about this: "Sign for the Memorial about Repression in USSR at Lubyanka Square. The memorial was erected by the human rights group Memorial in the USSR in 1990 in remembrance of the more than 40,000 innocent people shot in Moscow during the "years of terror"." AmateurEditor (talk) 22:09, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

I think that is a fair description for the image. TFD (talk) 14:23, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for responding. AmateurEditor (talk) 04:44, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Request

Per the above discussion, please include the following photo and caption in the section on the Soviet Union (numbered 4.1 in the Table of contents), directly under the heading Soviet Union.

[[:File:Memorial Moscow(5).jpg|thumb|upright=1.1|Sign for the Memorial about Repression in USSR at Lubyanka Square. The memorial was erected by the human rights group Memorial in the USSR in 1990 in remembrance of the more than 40,000 innocent people shot in Moscow during the "years of terror".]] Smallbones_(smalltalk) 12:13, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

 Added — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:31, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

High Estimate

R. J. Rummel estimated that the number of people killed under the regimes of China, USSR and Cambodia is 140 million. Considering only the periods of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, the numbers are: 34 + 38 million under Mao, 49 million under Stalin and 2 million under Pol Pot, summing 123 million. Could someone change the section "The estimates of the number of non-combatants killed by these three regimes alone range from a low of 21 million to a high of 70 million." to "The estimates of the number of non-combatants killed by these three regimes alone range from a low of 21 million to a high of 123 million."? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Leandrocaracol (talk • contribs) 15:59, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

You need to show that any attention has been paid to these figures in reliable sources. I notice also that Rummel says, "I have changed my estimate for colonial democide from 870,000 to an additional 50,000,000." (He explains it here.) TFD (talk) 17:58, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

This article is not about colonial democide, so there is no reason to note that estimate here. I agree that we should not change the range as proposed in the sentence currently in the article, but only because doing so would contradict the source cited for it. I think it would be best to qualify the range given by the Courtois intro by stating in that sentence who made it and when. The article actually needs a section specifically on total estimates, where the proposed addition would belong, as well as the 21 to 70 estimate and any others. (But Rummel's revision of his earlier estimate is valid for inclusion on its own because his earlier estimate already appeared in other reliable sources.) AmateurEditor (talk) 19:21, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

I mentioned colonial genocide because it shows how far the blog is departing from what is generally accepted. I do not think we should include estimates unless they are generally recognized. TFD (talk) 19:59, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

But Rummels's estimates for Communism have already been recognized by other reliable sources, including Valentino. That makes Rummel himself a reliable source on the topic, as an expert, at least as Wikipedia defines it for purposes of inclusion. And so any updates he makes to his estimate would be important to note. I still think every estimate should be attributed to its source in-sentence. And I don't think it is acceptable to have just one source for this range when we know there are others out there. It's undue weight. The lead is supposed to reflect what is written in the body of the article anyway. An estimates section would help with both of those things. AmateurEditor (talk) 20:30, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

The issue is not reliability but weight. While his previous estimates attracted attention, you need to show that his new estimates have. I notice that he found another 28 million democides in China, which doubles his estimate for them. Are any other scholars commenting on these estimates? Weight actually requires us to source our range, rather than make it up ourselves. Presumably genocide scholars are more qualified to determined which estimates are significant than we are. TFD (talk) 20:53, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Rummel is such a qualified scholar and his estimate has already been repeated in our most reliable sources. Since he updated that estimate after the publication of those sources it is unreasonable to expect those sources to reflect his most recent number. And so it is also unreasonable to exclude it for that reason. But I think it would be most appropriate to only include it as an addendum to the earlier estimate mentioned by other scholars in their works. I think the most appropriate place would be in an Estimates section, where we could also flesh out the reasons for the 21 to 70 estimate range among the Black Book scholars and any other total estimates. AmateurEditor (talk) 01:12, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Rummel's updated estimate for China is included in Rosefielde's book on page 107, by the way. AmateurEditor (talk) 01:18, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

The Black Book says that between 20 and 43 million people died during the famine (p. 4, 463) (Rummel says 38), yet still comes up with a total of 100 million victims of Communism. Anyway you should be able to source a the range of reasonable estimates for total victims of Communism. You have asserted that there is extensive literature on the subject, so it should be simple to find it. TFD (talk) 05:20, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't understand what you meant by your first sentence. I agree that finding sources should not be a problem. We already have many sources cited in the article already and I don't think we need to find any more in order to start an Estimates section. AmateurEditor (talk) 06:05, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

The point of the Black Book is that it considers that the famine deaths may have been as high as what Rummel would later estimate, yet comes up with a total of 100 million deaths. And its estimates are considered high. So I think you need to show that Rummel's total estimate of 140 million is mentioned in metastudies that review reasonable estimates of total deaths. Why for example would Valentino write, "Estimates of the total number of people killed by communist regimes range as high as 110 million" if in fact reasonable estimates ranged as high as 140 million? In the footnote, he references Rummel's 1994 Death by Government for the high figure of 110 million. It could be that he was only including estimates published in books rather than blogs. Or it could be that the 1994 figure had so little acceptance that it was pointless to include the later estimate of 140 million. Anyway, just find a source like Valentino's book that says, ""Estimates of the total number of people killed by communist regimes range as high as 140 million". TFD (talk) 06:44, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

The reason Valentino's book uses Rummel's 110 million estimate rather than his higher revision is obviously because Valentino's book was written in 2004 and Rummel's revision occurred in 2005, in response to new material. And the sourcing required for a statement depends on the particulars of a statement, so we don't necessarily need any new source. The Rosefielde book is adequate for a sentence mentioning Rummel's revised numbers on China, and it could be included after a sentence cited to Valentino giving his "as high as 110 million" range in an estimates section. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:05, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

You need to show that Rummel's revised total on his blog has received any attention. One editor above said that the Communists killed billions of people, so that is an estimate too, but only significant if it is mentioned in books. Since this topic has generated an extensive amount of ongoing literature, can you please explain why in the last eight years no one had mentioned Rummel's higher figure? TFD (talk) 02:39, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

TFD, I already provided a link to the page in Rosefielde's book that "gives attention" to the revised number. Here it is again, page 107. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:49, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

That is the total for China, where Rummel is in the range reported in the Black Book. Find me the 140 million figure reported anywhere other than on a blog. Incidentally, Valentino appears to be the only person to mention the 110 million figure. Most books that report totals mention only the Black Book range which was 85-100 million and they are reported as being at the high end. TFD (talk) 02:58, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Rummel's figure for China is all we have been talking about. He changed it from 38,672,000 to 76,692,000 because he added 38 million for the Great Famine (which he had previously omitted entirely in the belief that Mao had been unaware of the deadly impact of his orders and those deaths were thus accidental). His revision from 110 million to 148 million is entirely due to this addition to China's total. He explains it all in his blog post here. And here is the 148 million figure "reported anywhere other than a blog." AmateurEditor (talk) 03:26, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

I do not know why Valentino considered Rummel's 20071997 estimates signficant, or whether he looked at the breakdown or whether if he updated his volume today he would mention it. Just search through google books for the 21st century with keywords such as "mass killings"[10] and find a source that provides a range of estimates. Thanks for finding the new source, but we should be using books about mass killings not forensic archeology.

If you're talking about China, that section does not provide an estimate. Are you suggesting it should?

TFD (talk)

The book is fine for the statement it will support: that Rummel made the 148 million estimate. For that statement we don't really need to reference anything other than Rummel's web post, but I'm willing to accommodate you there. I think you are confused on the dates. I don't know where you are getting "2007" from, but Valentino's book was published in 2005 (copyrighted, and thus written, in 2004) and it references Rummel's 110 million figure from his 1994 book. He updated that figure to 148 million in 2005 on his website, based upon an increase in the number for China to include the Great Famine.

I am suggesting the following: creating an "Estimates" section; moving the sentences about estimates from the lead to that section (the sentence with the 85 to 100 million estimate as well as the sentence with the 21 to 70 million estimate); adding a sentence sourced to Rummel's website, Rosefielde's book, the book on mass killing forensics, or whatever other RS you prefer, saying that Rummel increased his estimate from 110 million to 148 million. AmateurEditor (talk) 00:27, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Feel free to come up with an estimates section and set it out for approval, but please don't remove any figures from the intro - they are the only meaningful material in the intro. We can then review the entire intro and come up with a meaningful intro that reflects the body of the article. I believe that the intro was argued over so much, that most of the material other than the figures was agreed to simple because one person (now departed) simply wouldn't agree to anything reasonable. In particular the following sentences - most of the intro - are unreferenced, don't reflect the body of the article, and are misleading or just confusing:

Scholarship focuses on the causes of mass killings in single societies, though some claims of common causes for mass killings have been made. Some higher estimates of mass killings include not only mass murders or executions that took place during the elimination of political opponents, civil wars, terror campaigns, and land reforms, but also lives lost due to war, famine, disease, and exhaustion in labor camps. There are scholars who believe that government policies and mistakes in management contributed to these calamities, and, based on that conclusion combine all these deaths under the categories "mass killings", democide, politicide, "classicide", or loosely defined genocide. According to these scholars, the total death toll of the mass killings defined in this way amounts to many tens of millions; however, the validity of this approach is questioned by other scholars. As of 2011, academic consensus has not been achieved on causes of large scale killings by states, including by states governed by communists. In particular, the number of comparative studies suggesting causes is limited.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Smallbones (talk • contribs) 20:14, December 3, 2013‎

Yes, I agree with you that the lead is currently inappropriate. I won't try to remove those sentences if doing so isn't unanimous. But I don't want to work on a complete section by myself and the submit it to what is effectively an up or down vote under these sanctions. If we all agree that an estimates section should be added, then I think we should all work on it together on the dumping-ground page. Then it will just be a formality to get our agreement on record here to get it added to the article. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:30, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Edit request - date formats

In order to remove this article from Category:CS1 errors: dates, could someone please change:

• reference # 34 from "Nov., 1999" to "Nov 1999"
• reference #169 from "09 2005" to "Sep 2005"

Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 03:24, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Done --Redrose64 (talk) 13:59, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Edit protect

Can a main link please be added in the section Cambodia (Democratic Kampuchea), to Cambodian genocide Darkness Shines (talk) 16:07, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Done. I made it the see also link. Ping me if anyone would like that editing at all. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 17:40, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 17 January 2014

Can you remove |small=yes from the lock template? The lock will therefore be visible. George Ho (talk) 04:02, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Not done: per my comment at Talk:Stephanie Adams/Archive 5#Protected edit request on 17 January 2014. I think there needs to be a wider discussion about making banner-style protection notices visible on indefinitely fully protected articles. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 05:59, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Khemer Rogue & Pol Pot said they were not communists, wanted Cambodia to belong "to the west"

There are so many things here that are just blatantly wrong, that this whole article should be deleted. But I'll start with the Khemer Rogue.

In the 1970s Leng Sary (the deputy prime minister / #2 guy to Pol Pot) said "We are not communists ... we are revolutionaries" who do not 'belong to the commonly accepted grouping of communist Indochina," as quoted by Vickery, Cambodia: 1978-1983, p. 288

Pol Pot himself said "When I die, my only wish is that Cambodia remain Cambodia and belong to the West. It is over for communism, and I want to stress that." (http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/assessment/1997/11/the_new_pol_pot.html)

Basically, they were ex-communists who endorsed the people (the West) funding them. And they were fighting a war against real (self-described) communists.

In contrast, to explain this better, if a bunch of people joined "capitalist party of maine" & took it over, then became Marxists & argued that capitalism was dead & said "we are not capitalists", then they actually would not be capitalists. Pol Pot & his allies took over a formerly communist party & then became ex-communists fighting a war against actual (again self-described) communists.

ie, at the very least the Cambodian atrocities (which are arguably capitalist-funded atrocities, & could be on a page like "The Mass Killings Funded by Capitalists") should not be on this page. 174.97.165.159 (talk) 00:09, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Your problem here is that the reliable sources do not concur with your opinions. Cheers. Collect (talk) 00:18, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Actually, the absolute best source for whether a person practices a philosophy is their own words. Pol Pot & the guy behind him (essentially vice president) both said either they (the Khemer Rogue) were not communists / no longer communists. And again, they were funded by capitalists to fight communists. Frankly, your post is just baseless assertions, & it's not surprising specifically because (again) there is no greater sources than the #1 & #2 guys in the Khemer Rogue *both* saying they were no longer communists. HistoryAndVeggies (talk) 01:46, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Forget about just making things up from the Slate article

• "(In the 1970s Pot) was enthusiastic--too enthusiastic, he realizes now--to bring glorious Marxism to his suffering people, to free Cambodia from the yoke of Vietnamese invaders, to abolish the twin evils of Western materialism and class privilege."
• "Today (1997), the elder statesman (Pot) advises Cambodia's leaders to seek rapprochement with the West." This is from the part that the author calls "parody"

Folks have given all sorts of nonsense reasons for wanting to delete this article, but this one has to have the worst source ever. Parody does not make for an WP:RS Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:12, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

You must be having reading problems. First, it was the 1970s when the Khemer Rogue said they were not communists (via Leng Sary.) Next, I specifically said they were ex-communists, not never communists. Here's what that means: at one point they endorsed communist philosophy, but then they changed (and eg took money from US capitalists) to fight and kill actually communists. To make this clear: the atrocities committed by ex-communists (who took money from the US capitalists) should not be in this article. HistoryAndVeggies (talk) 02:47, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

HistoryAndVeggies, I don't think people are having trouble reading, they just don't trust your interpretation or your two sources, both of which have problems. Wikipedia relies on high quality secondary sources because it is easy for any one of us to misinterpret primary sources and essentially introduce our own original research into an article that way. In the Slate article you gave, most of the information is followed by "OK, OK, I give up. It won't work, not even as parody.", indicating that what was written prior cannot be taken literally. And the quotes are from 1997, long after the period in question here. But even if it could have been taken literally, a Slate article is not the highest quality of reliable sources. Specialist academic works from mainstream academic institutions are the gold standard here. The book by Michael Vickery, "Cambodia: 1978-1983", also has problems as a reliable source. I wish I could read the context of the quote you gave from page 288, but the googlebooks snippit preview cuts the sentence off.[11] According to its Wikipedia article, the publisher, South End Press, publishes books by "political activists". The publisher's tag line is "Read. Write. Revolt."[12] It does also publish books by academics such as Ward Churchill, Noam Chomsky, and Howard Zinn, but it is not an academic publisher. And the author, Michael Vickery, an associate professor at Universiti Sains Malaysia, does not appear to be in the academic mainstream on this topic. AmateurEditor (talk) 21:02, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

> And the quotes are from 1997, long after the period in question here.

Frankly, you are having the *exact* same reading problem, by ignoring that Leng Sary said "we are not communists" in the mid 70s. This (because of the year) is the most important quote, & Pol Pot's later quotes verify what Sary said.

> they just don't trust your interpretation or your two sources,

Actually, *zero* interpretation is needed. In their own words they said "we are not communists," "communism is dead," and that Cambodia should "belong to the West".

Please do not simply push the West's POV.

> it won't work

To be frank, you again seem to have misread again. This statement ("it won't work, not even as a parody") is not said by Pol Pot- it's just interpretation by a capitalist owned news website. That's 100% irrelevant.

What's relevant is what Pol Pot said himself.

> It does also publish books by academics such as Ward Churchill, Noam Chomsky, and Howard Zinn, but it is not an academic publisher.

This is irrelevant: if journalists interview people that's relevant. If a journalist, book writer, & interviewer does not claim to be an "academic" that does not mean you can ignore their reporting.

174.97.165.159 (talk) 22:24, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

All you have to do now is to convince an admin that yours is the consensus viewpoint. I doubt that will happen. The rest of us will likely just ignore you now. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 23:02, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

I'll give it another shot:

1) When I said the quotes were from 1997, I was referring to the Pol Pot quotes in the 1997 Slate article, not the leng Sary quote from the 70's. The leng Sary quote came from the Vickery book, which I addressed later in my comment.

2) It is original research on your part to conclude that, because of what leng Sary said in that quote, the Khmer Rouge were not communists at the time. They are considered communists because our highest quality reliable sources consider them to be communist, even if less reliable sources disagree. If we have a high quality reliable source saying that the Khmer Rouge were not communists, then that can also be included in the article, but it doesn't cancel out the other sources that don't take that view. All the views of reliable secondary sources can be included here, but not every academic is mainstream. Fringe sources do not get equal weight.

3) I never said the "It won't work, not even as parody" quote was from Pol Pot. It wasn't. It was from the Slate writer, referring to his own writing and the interpretation of Pol Pot's statements in it. Taking Pol Pots statements at face value (or leng Sang's statements at face value) is original research on your part. It would be like using Nixon's statement "I am not a crook" to argue that he was uninvolved in Watergate. We would only include that interpretation in the article if it was made by reliable secondary sources. Coming to that conclusion on our own is not permitted because it is original research.

4) My comments on the publisher not being academic are about their reliability, not their relevance. Unreliable sources are ignored in Wikipedia. Fringe sources are downplayed. The publisher South End Press appears to be fringe. If Micheal Vickery's work is noted by more mainstream work in this area, then it can included with the appropriate weight. AmateurEditor (talk) 01:08, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

> Taking Pol Pots statements at face value (or leng Sang's statements at face value) is original research

It's **irrelevant** whether anyone believes them. No one's personal opinion changes the fact that they themselves (the best possible source) said they were not communists. As the best possible source, it fully outweighs the accusations (subjective opinion) of Western philosophers.

> It is original research on your part to conclude that, because of what leng Sary said in that quote, the Khmer Rouge were not communists at the time.

It's not original research- it's basic reading *without interpretation.* The two highest ranked KR leaders said "we are not communists," "communism is dead," and that Cambodia should "belong to the West".

> They are considered communists because our highest quality reliable sources consider them to be communist

Again- the highest quality reliable source is *their own words,* not the West's philosophers.

> [attacking a publisher of Howard Zinn, Chomsky, etc]

This is standard ad hominem. No matter how hard you try, you can not delete such statements- they are part of history.

> I was referring to the Pol Pot quotes

Your "point" here is simply not relevant. Pol Pot's later quote matches the 1970s quote.

For clarity, I am also "HistoryAndVeggies" & misplaced my password.

CarrotsAreHealthy (talk) 03:05, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

You might as well give it up. The purpose of this article is to say bad things about communists, and the people who control the article will get you banned from Wikipedia if you try to confuse the issue with facts. Rick Norwood (talk) 23:57, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

The article is under sanctions, it isn't being controlled by anyone; we must achieve broad consensus on any changes. I think we all find these restrictions frustrating. And who has been banned for trying to "confuse the issue with facts"? Do you really think that is a constructive comment? AmateurEditor (talk) 01:08, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your honesty. I strongly suspect you are correct that this article was just created as a political attack towards a philosophy. I believe this article was created by obvious POV-pushers, & that it's almost entirely made of misunderstandings & bad information. I hope if we simply tell the truth, that in time, wikipedia will follow.

CarrotsAreHealthy (talk) 03:10, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Alas -- what you "believe" is not how Wikipedia articles are edited. It has this horrid rule that articles use WP:RS reliable sources, and that is where your problem appears to lie. Cheers. Collect (talk) 15:21, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Please read above: I made factual objections above with good sources, which directly quoted Pol Pot & Leng Sary.

My opinion on why this article exists (to push POV) is a different topic.

CarrotsAreHealthy (talk) 16:32, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Removing obnoxious tags

In the section "States where mass killings have occurred: Soviet Union" someone spammed a bunch of needed tags. I also see that most likely someone monkeyed with the text of the footnotes sprinkling the word "Purportedly" through out, implying that the actual information is not in the sources. Can we clean this up?

1. First one says: Purportedly to be found in Courtois (ed.) Black Book but no author, chapter or page given.[full citation needed]. Replace by:

<ref name="blackbook">{{cite book | title=Livre Noir Du Communisme: Crimes, Terreur, Répression | publisher=Harvard University Press | author=Courtois, Stéphane | author2=Kramer, Mark| year=1999 | pages=4 | isbn=0674076087}}</ref>

(can add a footnote that the specific number in this source is 20 million)

2. Second one: Ponton, G. (1994) The Soviet Era.[full citation needed] - can't find the page so just remove it. If you want to put the reference in then replace by:

<ref name="soviet era">{{cite book | title=The Soviet Era: From Lenin to Yeltsin | publisher=Wiley | author=Ponton, Geoffrey | year=1994}}</ref>

3. Third one: Tsaplin, V.V. (1989) Statistika zherty naseleniya v 30e gody - can't find a copy, remove it.

4. Fourth: Nove, Alec. Victims of Stalinism: How Many?, in Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives (edited by J. Arch Getty and Roberta T. Manning), Cambridge University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-521-44670-8.[page needed]. This is a thorough discussion of the numbers and their estimation so best to give a page range. That would be 260-274

5. Fifth: Davies, Norman. Europe: A History, Harper Perennial, 1998. ISBN 0-06-097468-0.[page needed] - not sure if there's a page where a specific number is given. The subject is treated in several places (due to the way that the book is written). So we could either list a couple of relevant pages or remove.

6. Six: Purportedly to be Rummel Death by Government no page given.[page needed]. Replace by:

<ref name="dbg">{{cite book | title=Death by Government | publisher=Transaction Publishers | author=R. J. Rummel | authorlink=R. J. Rummel | year=1997 | pages=10, 15, 25 | isbn=1560009276}}</ref>

Volunteer Marek (talk) 20:12, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

Seems fine, since it is providing the details that the tags requested. TFD (talk) 20:24, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

Also support. The page for the fifth item, Davies, does not appear to be available in the googlebooks preview, as far as I can tell, but an endnote on page 1164 discusses this and seems to endorse a number of "tens of millions" of "Stalin's victims".[13] AmateurEditor (talk) 01:26, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Support. --Nug (talk) 21:18, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

So can an admin implement the changes? Volunteer Marek (talk) 00:04, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

 Done per request on my talk page: replaced 1 & 6; added page numbers cited in 4; removed 2, 3, 5. {{editprotected}} is the template to be used in future cases. T. Canens (talk) 15:48, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Proposal to change the protection level of the article

I propose that full protection be replaced with semi-protection so that minor and uncontroversial edits, like those mentioned in the "edit request: harmonization of punctuation" section above, can be made more easily. The sanctions will still be in place and Semi-protection will still prevent unregistered users from editing directly. AmateurEditor (talk) 04:12, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Not necessary. Full protection allows both non-controversial and controversial changes to be made by administrators, provided they have support, while semi-protection merely prevents IPs and new editors from making changes. TFD (talk) 10:43, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

"Necessary"? Do we agree that out goal here is to eventually return this article to normal, unprotected status, if possible? AmateurEditor (talk) 22:33, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

I do not think that when the article was indefinitely protected, there was any suggestion that the article would ever be unprotected. Certainly indefinite protection has prevented edit-warring and talk page discussion. TFD (talk) 17:12, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Neither was there any suggestion that it was permanent. And it has been more than two years. I think things have cooled off considerably. If people start edit warring again, with the sanctions still in place, then they alone should be blocked. What is your opinion? AmateurEditor (talk) 02:33, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

IIRC, not much news has come out on the topic -- perhaps it is best that it be regarded as stable at this point, which means that the protection level need not be eased. If you have major stuff to add -- asking for consensus first is not that onerous. Collect (talk) 15:54, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

This change would only affect minor edits, like those proposed two weeks ago here (and which still haven't happened). Editors interested in these kind of uncontroversial edits are not willing to spend much time slogging through a talk page discussion and jumping through hoops that weren't obvious to even more interested editors, like Volunteer Marek above. Everything else will still require talk page consensus, per the sanctions. That part doesn't change. AmateurEditor (talk) 19:14, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

The reason those edits haven't been done yet is that no-one added a {{edit protected}} template. There's nothing there to flag down an admin to look at them. As for the protection, the first thing you would need to do is ask Timotheus Canens, who protected the page back in 2011. And if that doesn't work, then you would need to file a request at arbitration enforcement, as T. Canens imposed the protection as an arbitration enforcement action. Hope this helps. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 14:06, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

It's difficult to tell if the lack of response here is silent consensus or not. I'd much rather have firm declarations of opposition rather than silence.AmateurEditor (talk) 01:30, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Two demurrals != consensus at all. Collect (talk) 23:45, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Proposal to change a couple section headings

For neutrality, accuracy, and conciseness, I propose the subsection headings under the section "Proposed causes" be changed:

1. "List of claims linking communism and mass killings" be changed to "Ideology"

2. "List of claims relating to a failure in the rule of law or economic conditions as cause" be changed to "Crisis conditions"

AmateurEditor (talk) 01:26, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

• I'm fine with these two changes. (As far as the section above - I'd like to see how a series of changes can be made before removing full protection) Smallbones_(smalltalk) 22:18, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

  Done No opposition in four days, so done. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 14:14, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

edit request: harmonization of punctuation

Punctuation needs to be harmonized and sometimes corrected, as, among other things, em dashes for ranges ("1931—1933", "1891 — 1924") are clearly wrong according to WP:MoS > MoS:PUNCT > MoS:HYPHEN & MoS:DASH. I'd have done it myself, but can't due to the article's "locked" status. – ὁ οἶστρος (talk) 16:22, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

We really ought to just change the protection level of the article to allow for these kinds of minor edits, in line with the "discretionary sanctions" box at the top of the talk page. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:53, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Maybe we should try semi-protection for a while, rather than full protection, with the same sanctions in place. AmateurEditor (talk) 01:28, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

@Ὁ οἶστρος: If you (or another editor) make the necessary changes in a sandbox somewhere, just place an {{edit protected}} template here and I'll copy them over for you. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 14:09, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Actually, let me be more specific: what you should put in the sandbox is the wikitext of the entire article, with your proposed changes applied. And to avoid categorising the sandbox, blank the sandbox after you're done, or put <pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">...</pre> tags around the whole thing. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 14:20, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 28 March 2014

I would just like to point out that there are several double spaces in this article that should be deleted. This is a minor edit, of course. But I guess an admin will have to do that.

Kndimov (talk) 00:41, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Not done: No need per WP:DOUBLE SPACE. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 02:53, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Yugoslavia

This article needs subsection about Yugoslavia. It should at least include leftist errors, Communist purges in Serbia in 1944–45, Foibe killings, Bleiburg repatriations...--Antidiskriminator (talk) 11:05, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

I'll support it if its properly sourced, but you'll probably have to take the lead on this. AmateurEditor (talk) 21:34, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

You also need to explain how this relates to the topic. TFD (talk) 07:06, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Those articles describe massive killings under Communist regime in Yugoslavia. Isn't that obvious? --Antidiskriminator (talk) 08:52, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

I support your proposal, but in order for such a subsection to be inserted your proposed text will have to be posted here first due to the restrictions imposed on this article. --Nug (talk) 02:48, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

Supposedly this article is not just about mass killings and Communism, which would be tendentious, but explains the connection that scholars have posited. Otherwise we would have articles like red-headed serial killers, bank robbers like nascar racing and any other two subjects one could possibly combine. TFD (talk) 04:41, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

There is a difference between the sources which justify the article's very existence and those used in the article additionally to flesh out the details. Not every source used in an article needs to provide the broad overview. Details from sources with a narrower focus are also OK, provided that they are relevant to the overall topic. It's pretty clear that the subtopics Antidiskriminator listed above are relevant, but well know for sure when we see the exact wording and sourcing. AmateurEditor (talk) 05:37, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

We need to show that sources that provide the broad overview contain the detail we want to include. For example if there is some event that happened in U.S. history, but no comprehensive U.S. history book mentioned it, one would probably not be justified in having a section about it in a brief article. Surely when in defending this article from deletion, one is not saying that the article should be written very differently from the sources that justify its subject's notability. TFD (talk) 06:39, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

No one is arguing about deleting the article anymore. That horse is dead. But I agree that the sources used here to add this information must frame the events in terms of Communist action, rather than just action. AmateurEditor (talk) 07:09, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 29 March 2014

Please link to genocidal massacre on the term's first use in the article. Wbm1058 (talk) 02:38, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Not done: per WP:LINKSTYLE, "Items within quotations should not generally be linked". The only appearance of "genocidal massacre" is within a quotation. Wbm1058, maybe you could link it in the see also section instead? I'd prefer to leave time for others to comment before making that edit, though. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 04:40, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Good point, this was just a WP:BOLD request, as I was responding to an orphan tag placed on genocidal massacre, and your refusal is a perfectly valid "revert". I'm fine with including the link in the "see also" section. Wbm1058 (talk) 12:38, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 19 May 2014

Replace contents with this version. This is a technical change to references with no changes to the main content of the page except AWB general fixes (e.g. change "_" to " " in wiki-links, etc.). Changes include:

• Reformat citation |isbn= and |id= to eliminate citation ISBN errors.
• Hyphenate ISBN numbers in all cases, per ISBN specification (spec requires separation of components via hyphens or spaces when displayed, with hyphens explicitly preferred).
• Remove use of deprecated |coauthors= (move to |authors2=)
• Date format unification to mdy per WP:DATERET based on the first addition of mdy date in this edit at 04:11, August 5, 2009.
• Apply AWB general fixes.

— Makyen (talk) 00:20, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Here's the diff of the changes. They're fine by me. AmateurEditor (talk) 01:04, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

The diff shows the addition of {{pp-protected}} in the 4th line. This is an artifact of my removing that template when I originally cloned the content into my sandbox. The inclusion of that template has not been changed from the current article content. Removing that template was the only change I made when originally cloning the content. I belatedly realized that it would be easier to ask for a direct copy-and-paste replacement without the need of the editor making the change to re-insert that template. Thus, I restored it in the copy I was editing.

I forgot to mention that the changes include the addition in some references of "." or "," after or before ISBN entries when it appeared that doing so was consistent with the format used for individual references. No effort was made to unify reference formats throughout the article. That should be done at some point in the future, but I do not currently plan to do so. — Makyen (talk) 05:08, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Done. Thanks for the fixes! Actually, you can create a diff from the actual article by using Special:ComparePages, like this. I removed the timed POV template from the top of the article as well, as it expired in January 2012. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 14:22, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for making the changes. I appreciate the pointer to Special:ComparePages.

I agree with the removal of the timed POV template. I saw it. But without my having any history with the page, I was unsure as to why it was there in the first place. I was concerned that it was something that did not get resolved once the page was protected. — Makyen (talk) 23:19, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 5 June 2014

In section "Hungary", change "After the Word War II," to "After World War II," to fix spelling and remove the unnecessary definite article. Chris the speller ^yack 12:56, 5 June 2014 (UTC) Chris the speller ^yack 12:56, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Done --Redrose64 (talk) 14:44, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Second East Turkestan Republic and Mongolia

We need seperate sections for the Soviet backed Second East Turkestan Republic under the Uyghur Communist leader Ehmetjan Qasim, and the Mongolian People's Republic, after the section on the Soviet Union and before the section on China.

sources for Mongolia are at Stalinist repressions in Mongolia

I propose to add this paragraph under a section titled as "Second East Turkestan Republic".

During the Ili Rebellion the Soviet backed Second East Turkestan Republic under the Uyghur Communist leader Ehmetjan Qasim engaged in massacres of Han Chinese civilians, especially targeting people affiliated with the KMT and Sheng Shicai. In the "Kulja Declaration" issued on 5 January 1945, the East Turkestan Republic proclaimed that it would "sweep away the Han Chinese", threatening to extract a "blood debt" from the Han. The Declaration also declared that the Republic would seek to especially establish cordial ties with the Soviets. The ETR later deemphasized the anti-Han tone in their official proclamations after they were done massacring most of the Han civilians in their area. The massacres against the Han occurred mostly during 1944-45, with the KMT responding in kind by torturing, killing, and mutilating ETR prisoners. In territory controlled by the ETR like Kulja, various repressive measures were carried out, like barring Han from owning weapons, operating a Soviet style secret police, and only making Russian and Turkic languages official and not Chinese. The pro-Soviet Uyghur Ehmetjan Qasim, was Soviet educated and described as "Stalin's man" and as a "communist-minded progressive".

Rajmaan (talk) 19:23, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose You need to establish that the subject is significant in studies of mass killings under Communist regimes. As a parallel, my city councilor may be a Republican or Democrat and there may be sufficient information about him or her for inclusion in the article about my town, but if I want to put him or her into the article about the Republican or the Democratic Party of the United States, I must show that articles about the party generally mention him. TFD (talk) 05:32, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
• Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit protected}} template. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 09:34, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 27 August 2014

Spelling correction: in Section 5.5 "Inclusion of famine..." first sentence, the writer's name is Seumas Milne. It really is, I know it's not the usual spelling of Seamus but you only have to ckeck the article about him: Noyster (talk), 09:01, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

It does look like Seumas is the correct spelling. Here are his Guardian [14] and Amazon [15] pages.--Wikimedes (talk) 18:54, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

Done --Redrose64 (talk) 19:47, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 31 December 2014

The death toll (numbering between 85 and 100 million) given in the introduction is based on a single source and therefore should be stated as "as per Courtois, the death toll is" such and such. Aravind V R (talk) 19:50, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit protected}} template. Per the Arbitration notice at the top of the page. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 19:53, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Wtf?

I strongly question the rationale for this article. Its very title is simply bad science. To take dozens of largely unrelated historical cases of mass casualties that can be tied together only by the extremely tenuous thread of their leader's claims to be acting on 'Communist' or 'Marxist' principles is poor historical method, imo -- which perhaps explains why this article appears to lack scholarly, secondary sources that truly justify its existence. This article makes a clear (if unstated) implication that there is a direct link between Communism and mass killings; a link which few (if any) of it's sources actually assert, and one which competent historical scientists rarely make in writing. Even Rummel and Rosefield focus largely on specific regimes such as Stalin's or Mao's. At the most they assert a link to 'Marxist Ideology' -- which is NOT synonymous to 'Communism' (in Rummel, eg, the focus is on a lack of democracy - again, not the same as Communism). Additionally, the title describes 'mass killings', which can is normally taken to mean 'intentional and deliberate killings'; mass starvations as a result of misguided (or even intentionally fatal) policies are not a form of 'mass killing'. (I am not arguing in support of the murderous policies of Mao or Pol Pot; I am arguing for historical specificity.)

Has there been an AfD on this article yet? I'd sure like to see how that consensus developed. In my not particularly humble opinion, this article is a good example of why WP:OR and WP:SYN were created in the first place. If this article cannot do a better job of justifying it's own existence (ie, by demonstrating that 'mass killings under Communism' is an accepted historical category, and not just the synthetic original thinking of the article's authors), then it should be deleted. If it cannot demonstrate that scholars propose a link between Communism specifically and mass killings generally, then this article is at best no more than a list, and at the very least should be moved to List of mass killings under Communist regimes, to correctly reflect that fact (and the definition and inclusion of 'mass killings' should be examined more carefully). My $0.02USD. Eaglizard (talk) 19:59, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

You can find links to the previous AfD discussions at the relevant box at the top of this page. Each of the points you raise have been raised before, and you should be able to find most of the responses you're looking for in those deletion discussions. For the rest, you could read the FAQ at the top of this page and check out the archived talkpage discussions. AmateurEditor (talk) 23:43, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

I dunno if this is deletable, Eaglizard, but it certainly has massive NPOV problems, especially the use of the BBoC in the bloody first sentence in Wikipedia's voice. You could try to correct that. Vanamonde93 (talk) 05:11, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

It is clearly POV. 05:34, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

TFD, are you suggesting deletion, or do you think that it needs to be worked on? Vanamonde93 (talk) 08:38, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Been AfDed a few times -- the problem is that the topic is notable, and there are sources for it. Cheers. Collect (talk) 14:13, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

• Thanks for the response; I am interested to see those AfDs (knew there had to have been at least a couple! lol) Not trying to be contentious here; if consensus says it's good, I'm good with. Eaglizard (talk) 17:22, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
  • Eaglizard, since you've brought this issue up, it wouldn't hurt for you to go over the article once; notable though it may be, it certainly has POV issues. I might do the same soon as I find the time. Vanamonde93 (talk) 05:18, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Hello, why is this page protected?

Normally we'd stick with semi-protection or PC1, so why'd you need arbitration for full protection? Antiv31 ^discuss 03:12, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

I believe the current protection level comes from this incident in November 2011. The arbitration enforcement sanctions were applied to this article in February 2011 but originated in a different dispute in 2007, before this article was even created, see here. AmateurEditor (talk) 04:13, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Ontology

Ok, Vanamonde, let's. To begin with, this article is first and foremost a list of killings. So, first, we'll need an adequately formal definition of what a "killing" actually is. Is it anything that causes another person to die, or is to deliberately and intentionally cause death? Example: to shoot someone in the base of the skull is unambiguously a killing. But what about being very self-absorbed, and forgetting to look in the rear-view mirror before backing up your car? If you run someone down and kill them, without having realized they were there, is that a "killing"?

This bears most prominently on this article, because over half the total listed are attributed to Chairman Mao, and it can pretty easily be argued that many if not most of those deaths were simply the result of Mao being too stupid to look where his car was pointed before stomping the gas pedal. Thoughts? Eaglizard (talk) 02:03, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

I agree. The thesis of this article is the Communists killed 100 million people; the Nazis, only 60 million. The Communists killed 10 million Ukrainians, the Nazis killed only 6 million Jews. No attempt is made to compare and contrast the two regimes, and no sources are presented to show that "Communist mass killings" is a topic, any more than mass killings by red-heads is. TFD (talk) 02:26, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

TFD, please quote from the article where you got that idea, so that we can fix it. I just re-read the article and the Nazi's are barely mentioned. I agree with you that that a comparison and contrast between the two could be helpful, as long as it is solidly sourced.

I find it hard to believe that you are acting in good faith when you say that "no sources are presented to show that "Communist mass killings" is a topic", since you are well aware of Valentino's "Communist Mass killings" chapter, and have been involved in discussions of other sources on the topic, including the AfD's where I quoted extensively from four of them. You also failed to respond to Vanamonde93 in the previous section, when he asked if you were suggesting deletion or improvement to the article. A consensus has been established on this article's right to exist. You are welcome to criticize the article in the interests of improving it, and you are welcome to make your case that a new consensus should be established, but making empty assertions and ignoring responses to them is not constructive behavior. AmateurEditor (talk) 18:56, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

You are misrepresenting Valentino's chapter as I explained to you before. The POV aspect of the article is that there was a causal connection between Communism and mass killings. Since no sources make that claim we are unable to balance it with other views. It would be as if we wrote an article about shark attacks and sunspot activity. The implication would be they are connected and it would be hard to find sources that claimed they were not. TFD (talk) 19:35, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

How can I possibly be misrepresenting Valentino's chapter by saying that it exists as a topic in his book? A chapter dedicated to a topic is by definition a distinct topic. And the article as a whole associates communist regimes with mass killing, not necessarily the philosophy of communism with mass killings. This association of the regimes with the killing is not controversial. It is the details (especially the numbers involved) that are controversial. Individual sources may make their own association between communism-the-philosophy and killing, but it must be attributed in the article specifically to the source that makes it, rather than stated as a fact in Wikipedia's voice.

As strange as it may sound, if several reliable sources discussed the topic of "shark attacks and sunspot activity" in sufficient depth (that is, more than just as an example to dismiss as absurd) then it absolutely could be an article in Wikipedia, according to Wikipedia's rules. There are no such sources, of course, so there is no such article. In this case, there are reliable sources for the association of Communist regimes and mass killings, and so this article is permitted, as was confirmed by the last two AfD discussions, in which such sources were presented and in which you participated. In particular, I presented excerpts from Valentino, Mann, Semelin, and Chirot & McCauley, academics who were published by respected academic presses and who spoke directly to this topic. We do not engage in original research by creating topics that have no reliable sources, and we also do not censor topics that do exist in reliable sources just because we dislike them or disagree with them. AmateurEditor (talk) 21:26, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Eaglizard, I agree with you that definitions are important here and intentional death is very different from unintentional death. Valentino's definition for "mass killing" does require intent. There is a workpage/dumping-ground for this article where some of us were trying to organize sourced definitions of the terms used. It can be found here. AmateurEditor (talk) 18:56, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Eaglizard, I agree with you that in an ideal situation, we would begin by parsing definitions. Here, however, we have a massive article full of POV language, that is permanently full protected; thus I would much rather discuss wording, and the balancing of sources, because this is going to be much more achievable than a major restructuring. My first major problem is that the lead is written entirely from the POV of those attempting to make the "100 million deaths" sort of argument; there are sources, some used in the article and many used elsewhere (ie the BBoC article) that dispute the numbers, that need to be given weight. Similarly, the comparison killings need to mention those sources that have analysed genocide under colonial regimes, or fascist regimes. In particular, this article relies far too heavily on the BBoC; even if we do give it weight, presenting such a heavily criticised book (criticized by scholars) in Wikipedia's voice is highly problematic. Thoughts? Vanamonde93 (talk) 22:46, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Who is the joker that even keeps this article locked? It might be one of the most controversial articles and yet not a single thing can be changed. Would anyone disagree with me on the claim that most of us here on the Wiki are Westeners, using Western sources? I'm saying that being one myself. There seems to be a huge conflict of interest going on here that allows this article to tell everyone communism directly mass murdered 100 million innocent people. Let's not have a Western cold war front here and keep it Wikipedia.

tl;dr:WP:WORLDVIEW

Location of Wikipedia editors: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Imageworld-artphp3.png

Location of Communist States: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/Communist_countries_1979-1983.png

Bataaf van Oranje (talk) 13:54, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Bataaf van Oranje, it is not a single person keeping the article locked. Under the terms of the sanctions, consensus is required to make any changes (some very minor changes have been made). I believe I was the last one to propose even a very slight easing of the protection level (see here) and I was opposed by one editor who was a reliable "keep" in the several AfD's and one who was a reliable "delete". The protection of the article was not to preserve the article as is, it was to preclude disruptive edit warring and force consensus on any change to be first established here on the talk page. In my opinion, Western biases have nothing to do with this particular situation. AmateurEditor (talk) 21:23, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 8 April 2015

Fix disambiguation: change land reform in Vietnam to land reform in North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam section and in the See also section). Natg 19 (talk) 21:49, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

 Done — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:30, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Second East Turkestan Republic and Sheng Shicai's Xinjiang

Resubmitted edit request with new evidence.

We need seperate sections for the Soviet backed Second East Turkestan Republic under the Uyghur Communist leader Ehmetjan Qasim, and the Great_Purge#Xinjiang_Great_Purge, after the section on the Soviet Union and before the section on China.

sources for Xinjiang are at Great_Purge#Xinjiang_Great_Purge

I propose to add this paragraph under a section titled as "Second East Turkestan Republic".

During the Ili Rebellion the Soviet backed Second East Turkestan Republic under the Uyghur Communist leader Ehmetjan Qasim engaged in massacres of Han Chinese civilians, especially targeting people affiliated with the KMT and Sheng Shicai. In the "Kulja Declaration" issued on 5 January 1945, the East Turkestan Republic proclaimed that it would "sweep away the Han Chinese", threatening to extract a "blood debt" from the Han. The Declaration also declared that the Republic would seek to especially establish cordial ties with the Soviets. The ETR later deemphasized the anti-Han tone in their official proclamations after they were done massacring most of the Han civilians in their area. The massacres against the Han occurred mostly during 1944-45, with the KMT responding in kind by torturing, killing, and mutilating ETR prisoners. In territory controlled by the ETR like Kulja, various repressive measures were carried out, like barring Han from owning weapons, operating a Soviet style secret police, and only making Russian and Turkic languages official and not Chinese. The pro-Soviet Uyghur Ehmetjan Qasim, was Soviet educated and described as "Stalin's man" and as a "communist-minded progressive".

The Second East Turkestan Republic used Communist rhetoric and terminology as justification for killing Han Chinese, admitting that it labelled all Han Chinese as "reactionary" along with the Kuomintang party.

Rajmaan (talk) 23:42, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Rajmaan, I can't support this proposal, for several reasons. I checked citations 1, 2, and 3 and there are significant differences between what you write and what the source writes. On page 178, the source attributes the massacres of Han civilians in the early stages of the uprising to a loosely organized and conservative Turkish-Islamic faction: "... 'gangs of Moslems armed only with sticks, who paraded the streets shouting slogans and murdering defenseless Chinese'. In marked contrast to this group, the Soviet-sponsored STPNLC under Ahmadjan Qasim sought..." The source does raise questions on page 179 about STPNLC complicity, but not in a way that at all justifies your phrasing. Likewise, your second citation points to the source raising serious questions about the original wording of the Kulja Declaration, which you then mis-characterize as certain. Your third citation states that the anti-Han tone of the ETR changed "after they were done massacring most of the Han civilians in the area", but the source says that the tone changed because "... the influence of the 'progressive' faction within the ETR seems to have achieved primacy during the spring of 1945..." and suggests that the reduction in numbers of Han civilians also played a role. I didn't bother to check the rest. Your sentences as written amount to original research. I also don't know that this is numerically significant enough to be included in the article as its own section, even if it were written properly. The "States where mass killings have occurred" section of the article tries to follow the lead of our sources in focusing on the Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia, and separates the rest into an "Others" subsection in order to strike a balance between comprehensiveness and due weight. If included, this incident would no doubt belong there. AmateurEditor (talk) 05:06, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Then if its rephrased, can it go under a subsection under the Soviet Union? More massacres were alleged after- The fighting in the Ili Valley during the late autumn and winter of 1944-5 seems to have been both fierce and pitiless. KMT sources continued to allege anti-Han massacres, most notably at Suiting, Kulja, and in the Tekes and Borotala Valleys, 120 whilst the ETR continued to accuse the KMT of murdering prisoners and other brutalities. In this context Graham, following his visit to the rebel zone in 1946, reported that 'Both sides allege atrocities, mutilation and murder of prisoneres, and I see no reason to doubt either.'121 Forbes goes on to detail extensive allegations of Soviet support for the ETR rebels.Rajmaan (talk) 05:25, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

I don't see that there is anything more than vague allegations in what you have cited so far. As I said above, the early massacres are attributed by the source to the "Turkish-Islamic faction" and not to the STPNLC, so they would not qualify. Maybe there is a better source out there with more specifics, but this is not enough, in my opinion. AmateurEditor (talk) 23:24, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

References

Reorder sections

The current order of the sections seems quite backwards to me. The meat of the article is buried and the fine points are up front. I suggest the order goes as follows:

Contents

1 States where mass killings have occurred

1.1 Soviet Union

1.1.1 Red Terror

1.1.2 Great Purge (Yezhovshchina)

1.1.2.1 National operations of the NKVD

1.1.2.2 Great purge in Mongolia

1.1.3 Soviet killings during World War II

1.2 People's Republic of China

1.2.1 Land reform and the suppression of counterrevolutionaries

1.2.2 The Great Leap Forward

1.2.3 The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution

1.3 Cambodia (Democratic Kampuchea)

1.4 Others

1.4.1 Bulgaria

1.4.2 East Germany

1.4.3 Romania

1.4.4 Democratic People's Republic of Korea

1.4.5 Democratic Republic of Vietnam

1.4.6 People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia

1.4.7 Hungary

2 Controversies

2.1 Democratic Republic of Afghanistan

2.2 Soviet famine of 1932–1933

2.3 Mass deportations of ethnic minorities

2.4 Tibet

2.5 Inclusion of famine as killing

3 Notable executioners

4 Legal prosecution for genocide and genocide denial

5 Proposed causes

5.1 Ideology

5.2 Crisis conditions

5.3 Other claims

5.3.1 Influence of national cultures

5.3.2 Secular values

5.3.3 Personal responsibility

6 Comparison to other mass killings

7 Terminology

8 See also

Comments? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 00:45, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

I'll be happy if we just take that absurd McCarthyism out of the very first line of the article. It's an anti-communist canard that doesn't even admit the massive increase in population China and Russia enjoyed in the latter half of the 20th century. I can't believe I have to defend communism but it just makes me cringe how biased certain parts of this article are. Bataaf van Oranje (talk) 00:10, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

How does a "massive increase in population" negate the fact that mass killings occurred? There was a Post–World War II baby boom after massive World War II casualties, populations tend to rebound after mass killings. --Nug (talk) 21:43, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

I think the current order is okay. --Nug (talk) 21:43, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Vietnam and Hungary

Vietnam:

- 172,000 executions claim is entirely fraudulent - Rosefelde's 200,000-900,000 is not really based on anything than and is WP:FRINGE, relative the work of Vietnam specialists. Like Rummel, Rosefelde has absolutely no claim to expertise on Vietnam.

Hungary:

- It is simply ludicrous to say that the Hungarian Government was guilty of not one but multiple "genocides" after the war. What were those exactly? I'd like to see a single reprected source which claims that. I doubt that even a single crackpot blog will has made such a claim. Guccisamsclub (talk) 18:31, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Important announcement

First of all, my apologies for being so late with this news. I have been busy recently and mostly focused on minor tasks. I'm glad Wikipedia hasn't given up on the article.

Hence, I'd finally like to bring to the attention of those involved that I recently contacted Timotheus Canens, who applied the Full Protection after WP:ARBEE, in order to ask him to reopen the article. Here are his and Sandstein's responses. The good news is that we are given the option to make our case at the noticeboard for Arbitration enforcement:

Bataaf van Oranje, if you want the underlying restriction to be lifted too, I'd like to see a discussion at AE, with the other editors of that article being notified and allowed to express their views.(link)

Once I'm certain enough editors here would be willing to participate in a discussion, I will officially open a request and link it here. Bataaf van Oranje (talk) 22:14, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Support and ideas—respond to the announcement here

• My reading is that the responses were a bit more skeptical than you suggest. No matter, I think that the only way to really get this article back on track is to come to a consensus on a full version of the article that everybody can agree is better than the current version. If we can do that, there is no way to stop us from editing it. Nevertheless, if folks go back to the old habits of trying to delete the article six times and then stonewalling whenever they can't get solid documented figures removed, then there's no way we can go forward. It's time to be realistic. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 23:07, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

• I know you have a clear preference for flashing the big numbers of 85-100 million, but the overwhelming talk page opposition to these asserted facts shows a clear disagreement among Wikipedians. I'd like to remind you that this is the only article on all of Wikipedia (as far as I know) that has a permanent full protection status. This isn't even the case at Muhammad, Holocaust, Israel, Palestine, Communism, Obama or whatever other way more warred over page is out there. This set-in-stone article actually shames Wikipedia because nothing ever changes. Sandstein himself stated that he was never in favour of this Protection, and whatever difficulties may occur upon opening the article, none of that can justify 4 years of constant stonewalling and all those who have given up on the page. The problem is that there will never be a version "everybody can agree" with, and the figures are far from "solid". This article desperately needs to be opened to the community, just like every other article. Only then we can see what the next step should be. Bataaf van Oranje (talk) 04:26, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

• I have no "preference for flashing big numbers". I do insist that in an article about mass-killing that we clearly identify how big the mass-killing was. If you have documented estimates from reliable sources, please do include them. That is the Wikipedia way, include all main stream verifiable points of view. I've been saying this for at least 5 years now, and nobody has come up with estimates that are significantly outside of this range. Rather editors go out of their way to try to delete the article (failing about 6 times now), argue that no estimates can be included at all, or that the Black Book can't be considered as a reliable source (Harvard University Press +++, come on now), or that no estimates can be included in the lede. Challenge - find a documented estimate from a reliable source of how many people were killing during the "Mass killings under Communist regimes," and I'll do everything possible to make sure that it gets into the lede. Anything other than coming up with an estimate from a reliable source at this point is just nonsense.Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:59, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

• Except that you have a magnificent misunderstanding of how academic scholarship works. One can criticize a finding, without providing an alternative; and Wikipedia policy still requires us to present both views, even if only one of them is an estimate. I also note that you are still drawing a false equivalence between deleting this article and providing in-text attribution to questionable statements, which is all this proposal is doing. None of the straw man arguments you are providing has been made by anybody except yourself. Vanamonde93 (talk) 16:10, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

• Agree with Vanamonde93. We could start with the fact that Cortois' estimate is not in accord with the data with of Margolin and Werth, the two main specialists in the BBoC. When Cortois writes down some big numbers without adequately explaining how he gets them, and when Malia then recycles Cortois' "approaches 100 million" into his own range of 85-100M, we are getting progressively further away from historical research and into the realm of gossip. I also agree that the sanctions should be lifted. Guccisamsclub (talk) 16:43, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

• So I take it neither of you is prepared to offer alternate estimates. Anybody else want to take up the challenge? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:07, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

• Smallbones, you probably know why we object presenting any single range as fact, absent very careful and documented quantitative analysis by a whole team of specialists. Nothing close to this has ever been done, to my knowledge. It's difficult enough to make scientific estimates for a particular country. Anyhow, since you asked here you are: 65-93M from the BBoC's two major authors (both specialists) Guccisamsclub (talk) 17:48, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Hallelujah! Finally, an alternate estimate. I won't quibble, let's include it. I will outline the quibbles that others might bring up. The article is in French, so my understanding of it relies more on Google Translate than on my High School French. The main quibble might be that it is not published in an academic paper, but in a newspaper Le Monde. They were also extremely tentative in giving the number e.g. "indication only". So it doesn't seem that they were presenting a formal academic opinion, only stating that they would have interpreted the data differently. Pouffe. Putting in the range of 65-100 million is not a problem (combining the 65-93 and the 85-100 million ranges). Some folks might be surprised that going from "on the order of 100 million" (Courtois), to 92.5 ((MM's midrange) to 79 (Werth's midrange) is not a problem. but that is how the data is - very difficult to come up with "precise estimates" - but we should reflect that in our article, None of the scholars dispute that. We've already got a huge range given for the 3 countries (USSR, China, Cambodia). So a difference of 15% from MM's midrange to Werth's ? It just reflects the uncertainty in the data. I'll write this up as a formal proposal by tomorrow. And I do hope others do the same. It's very nice to see the exact edit that is being proposed. Meanwhile, perhaps somebody could check newer estimates. It's been 16 years since the Black Book came out, and 4 years since any real editing was done here, surely there must be some new numbers out. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 00:53, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Smallbones, I would however urge some caution here in combining estimates in this fashion. Cortois's tally is an already maxed-out 94M, which he then rounds up to 100M for dramatic political effect. So his "estimate" is not a midrange one in any conceivable sense. Margolin and Werth's range carries far more weight, because they are specialists using their own numbers. If Coutrois's 100M is cited, M&W's 66M need to be cited as well. Martin Malia's estimate appears entirely derivative in this context, and therefore carries the least weight. It adds nothing to the Cortois's ≈100M and M&W's 65-93M estimates. Since this is not an article on the BBoC, two estimates from BBoC authors/editors are more than enough. 'In my view, Coutrois (≈100M or 94M) and M&W (65-93M) should both be cited (separately), while Malia's 85-100M needs to go. Who here agrees? Guccisamsclub (talk) 01:34, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

So including the estimate you proposed means removing the estimate already included, and then burying the whole thing lower down. That's a silly game, you should be ashamed of yourself for trying to play such a cheap trick. Watch out for your creative mathematics as well ("M&W's 66M need to be cited as well." actually their midpoint estimate is 79 million). We need a reasonable range of the size of the mass-killings near the start of the article. My challenge remains and I'll add the obvious caveat. Can anybody supply additional reliable estimates of the size of the mass-killings without removing the estimates already in the article or burying them in reams of text? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:44, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Smallbones: try to consider the actual arguments before throwing around accusations of evil intent. You have yet explain why we should blend no less than 3 estimates, all from BBoC participants, one of which appears entirely derivative. (Malia's 85-100 million is virtually identical to Courtois' 94 million, and I'd rather have the original and notable estimate from Courtois!) If that's not "playing games", I dunno what is. You furthermore completely misunderstood my proposal: !!!!!ADD Courtois' estimate!!!!! (notable and original estimate, from editor) of ≈100M or 94M; ADD M&W (notable and original range, from major contributors) of 65-93M, REMOVE Malia's (author of EngLang preface, derivative and less notable) of 85-100M. You misinterpreted my typo of 66M as a dishonest "midrange", whereas all I meant was that M&W's lower bound of 65M should be presented (i.e. the full 65-93M range needs to be cited)! Sidenote: WP:CALC would be appropropriate if we were say counting bacteria in petri dish, which is not the case here. Guccisamsclub (talk) 19:59, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Combining estimates from different sources to give a single range is WP:SYNTH, which is why I will not do it. Giving them separately is fine; I would be happy to add M&Ws (lower) estimate to my proposal. Of course, it would also have to be attributed. None of this, needless to say, addresses the basic reason for the proposal, which is that a controversial estimate cannot be presented in Wikipedia's voice. Vanamonde93 (talk) 01:56, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

I agree. But an equally important issue is not to quote the same estimates twice, thereby giving them undue weight. Dumping Malia's preface is crucial in this regard. More broadly, all estimates of this sort will be "controversial" (Cortois' more so, M&W's less so), and alternative views should indeed be presented. But readers will draw their own conclusion regardless. Guccisamsclub (talk) 02:13, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Combining estimates of ranges surely comes under WP:CALC. The current article does not present the 85-100 million estimate in "Wikipedia's voice" - it presents it as an estimate, and cites it. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:44, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Please do not insert a response where it breaks the flow of the previous conversation; Gucciamsclub was agreeing with me, not you. No, it is not covered by WP:CALC, because it is combining different methodologies and assumptions, often mutually exclusive. Also, citing a source is not the same as attribution. Please read WP:YESPOV. To quote; "If different reliable sources make conflicting assertions about a matter, treat these assertions as opinions rather than facts, and do not present them as direct statements." This is a policy, not a guideline, so we have no option about following it. Your proposal fails this requirement, as does the current lead. This has been pointed out before, so at this point you are choosing not to hear it. Vanamonde93 (talk) 16:24, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

• I would also not be too hopeful, but yes, this is the only way forward. Having a highly viewed article under full protection while carrying probably NPOV violations (in many different directions) is a distinct problem. I think we can agree to sufficient other restrictions (1RR, semi-protection, strong civility sanctions) which would make it workable. Vanamonde93 (talk) 23:17, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
• My concern is to reduce the complexity and severity of sanctions across Wikipedia, consonant with good order.
• The page protection does not seem necessary, reviewing the history of the article between February 2011 and November 2011 there is comparatively little conflict - maybe one or two "spats" - over 10 months on a contentious article this is not a major issue.
• The discretionary sanctions were placed under the now obsolete ARBEE DS. This has been converted to standard DS. While the restrictions could technically be placed under DS they are so swinging that they would benefit from being time-limited. The benefit of time-limited sanctions is recognised under § Sanctions, which gives an absolute limit of one year.
• I would propose immediate removal of page protection, and removal of specific sanctions.
• Note that the page remains subject to WP:CONSENSUS, and we should be able to rely on editors to develop the page collegially.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 10:26, 3 August 2015 (UTC).

• Reviewing my request at Arbitration Enforcement to have the restriction/protection lifted or at least ameliorated, I see that @Newyorkbrad: agreed with the idea of removing the restrictions, based on the fact that they, or more suitable ones, can be swiftly reimposed.

Subject to others' opinions, I'd be open to lifting these restrictions for a trial period and seeing if the editing environment has improved from a few years ago. I'm frankly not sure whether it will have, but if not, the sanctions can be quickly reimposed if needed. Newyorkbrad (talk) 17:17, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

The request was archive unopposed some five days later. Perhaps that means the restrictions should be lifted?

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 10:44, 3 August 2015 (UTC).

• I am not sure about necessity of full protection at this point, but if it is removed then permanent semi-protection should be a no-brainer.--Staberinde (talk) 15:21, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
• Full protection should be lifted. I can't think of another article that has been fully protected this long. Permanent semi-protection should be sufficient, as Staberinde noted above.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 21:16, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
  • Thanks for your input, C.J. Griffin. Would you care to also comment on the proposals above? Regards, Vanamonde93 (talk) 22:55, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
    • I refrained from commenting on the above proposals as I have not been keeping up with scholarship on Communist mass killings like I used to. I think the last book I read on the subject was Rosefielde's Red Holocaust (2009). But looking over the arguments, I couldn't help but think that perhaps it would be more prudent to simply say something like "while an exact accounting is heavily debated, various scholars estimate that millions, perhaps tens of millions, were killed" and then link that to another section of the article where actual debate is taking place over various estimates, methodologies, controversies, etc. Something similar was done over at the Joseph Stalin article and it seems to have worked. Perhaps something like that could also work here? That's my two cents worth anyways.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 00:27, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
      • Interesting, that's not an option I had considered, and it has some merits. Is it fair to say, though, that you do not want to see a single estimate unattributed in the first sentence of the lead, as it currently exists? Vanamonde93 (talk) 01:07, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
        • <INSERT>Correct. This, I believe, will result in endless edit conflicts and another lockdown of the article. Also, including a range of estimates with proper attribution will lead to unnecessary bloat; the lede should be succinct. Blending these into one broad estimate with a bunch of citations tacked on at the end obviously constitutes WP:SYNTH.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 01:48, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

I see not reason to lift protection unless there is agreement on what the article should say. It was the dispute that led to protection in the first place. As I stated earlier, little if any literature exists treating mass killings under Communist regimes as as a subject, although mass killing in specific Communist states have been studied. When we link it together therefore it provides POV and OR problems. It would be the same thing if we had an article called Mass killings under Catholic regimes and had sections for the St. Bartholomew's day massacre and Guernica. TFD (talk) 06:03, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

Very good point. Any article of this sort is bound to suffer from systemic bias ... which can nonetheless potentially be mitigated by opening up the article. Sidenote: Guernica as an example of a Catholic Massacre? whaa..?Guccisamsclub (talk) 03:48, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

The Franco regime in Spain was Catholic. The point is that anyone can draw connections based on their personal biases. There was a similar discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jews and Communism (2nd nomination). TFD (talk) 06:27, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

Point demonstrated, funny how the mind works. First things came to mind was the Lufwaffe, then Spanish Fascism. Never made the final connection to Catholicism.Guccisamsclub (talk) 06:54, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

• I support changing to semi-protection. Even if it results in immediate edit-warring, which I doubt, the best way to deal with problem editors is to give them enough rope to hang themselves. AmateurEditor (talk) 07:35, 5 August 2015 (UTC)