Talk:Mass killings under communist regimes/Archive 44

Deletion/renaming
I favor deletion, with any sourced material here moved to a more appropriate article, such as the general history of communism or the biography of Mao Tse Tung. I expect most of the sourced material here is already there. I do not think changing the title to "Victims of Communism", as Davide King suggests, would be an improvement. As a general principle for any encyclopedia, articles should not have titles that take sides. For example, we would not have an article titled Victims of American Wars or Mass Killings by Napoleon. Rather, we have articles on America and Napoleon which cover history in context, rather than picking and choosing to make a point. This is the major difference between NPOV and propaganda. Propaganda only says bad things about the subject it is hostile to, not putting those events in context. Rick Norwood (talk) 12:55, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Non-neutral titles are allowed if they are commonly used, per Neutrality in article titles. Victims of Communism is the actual term used in anti-Communist literature. We have a precedent in Jewish Bolshevism, which is the theory that Communism is part of the international Jewish conspiracy. I don't see anyway that "Mass killings under communist regimes" is any less neutral. For one thing "communist regime" is an oxymoron: communism is a theoretical stage of development after the state has withered away. Communist should be capitalized. TFD (talk) 14:27, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * , I agree, but if this article must exist, it would be better the main topic is that and is re-structured to describe a popular but anti-communist and fringe theory in academia. As noted by, non-neutral titles are allowed if they are commonly used and Victims of Communism is indeed "the actual term used in anti-Communist literature and I agree that the current title is any less neutral and Communist should be capitalised as is done in The Black Book of Communism, of all sources, to distinguish Communist party rule from small-c communism. Either way, would any of you support a scholarly analysis article of Communist regimes not limited to mass killing et al., rather than having so many coatrack and POV fork Communist-related articles? This article should be either merged or renamed Victims of Communism and restructured similar to Cultural Bolshevism or Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory to describe this popular but anti-communist and fringe theory amounting to double genocide theory rather than act like it is a mainstream or widely accepted view in academia as the current article implies. Davide King (talk) 15:08, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I would be in favor of renaming it for the reasons Davide King elaborated on above. This restructuring could possibly allow for an expansion of the article into new territory (with much discussion on talk for sure), such as discussions in some academic circles on the "victims of communism" narrative and "double genocide thesis" being ideological constructs and a pushback against the rising tide of anti-capitalist sentiment around the world to the precarity of the contemporary global capitalist system. Some sources on this are already present in the article in fact, such as Kristen Ghodsee's 2014 journal article on this very subject.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 16:16, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * , thanks! Does this mean you would support a single scholarly analysis about Communist regimes, including background, context, the rising of living standards, modernisation, lives saved (as discussed by Ellman et al.) and political repression, religious persecutions, mass killings and famines with context and scholarly debates, as discussed here, in a single article rather than having so many Communist-related coattracked articles, many of which would be merged there and only having their own article again if there are issues relating to size? And a Double genocide theory or Victims of Communism (the name is not so important as much as the outlining is, i.e. the theory itself; theory's acceptance, with support from various mass-media and popular literature as well as fringe media such as The Epoch Times and anti-communist organisations such as the Victims of Communist Memorial Foundation, and/but criticism from academia and most scholars in the field, with people like Courtois being the minority and revisionist; and its current status as a fringe yet popular especially in Eastern Europe view)? Davide King (talk) 01:24, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I would be open to the idea. On the one hand such an article would provide lay readers with a much broader and deeper analysis of a complex issue, but over time such an article could become a bloated mess, resulting in the restoration of the articles that were merged into it and deleted. Given that Double genocide theory is already its own article and the proposed title "Victims of Communism" is already hitting roadblocks, perhaps we could create the article you describe and move some material from this article to that one, and the rest could be moved over to Dgt. MKuCR could then be deleted.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 14:12, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Why "victims of Communism" is bad? Let me demonstrate that using two example. In this article, we can discuss Cambodian genocide pretty neutrally, and we can explain that the mass killings that happened in Cambodia were a result of at least three factors, and ultra-Maoism (which seems too Maoist even to Chinese) was just one of them. Therefore, we can explain that, contrary to common beliefs, Communism was not the only, and not the primary reason of that genocide. we can also explain that KR "Communism" had little in common with, e.g. Soviet Communism. We can also explain that KR genocide was stopped primarily due to Communist Vietnam intervention. Can we tell the same in the article "Victims of Communism"? I doubt.
 * Second example. Majority of sources describe the Great Purge not in a context of Communist ideology. It is seen as Stalin's attempt to get rid of those who were perceived dangerous to his personal rule. A significant part of them were Communists. Can we describe them as victims of Communism or victims of Stalin's  authoritarian ambitions? Majority of sources prefer the second interpretation.
 * Finally, per Ellman, "repression victims" is a vague term that reflects political views of each particular author, "Victims of Communism" is even more vague. That would be a terrible title, please forget about it.
 * The current title allows us (at least theoretically) to separate real events (mass killings and mass mortality that really took place) from interpretations (to which extent Communist doctrine affected those events). That is why I propose you to stick with that title.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:28, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Victims of Communism isn't necessarily a vague term since it is used with a specific meaning by the anti-Communist community: "the historical truth of 100 million victims murdered at the hands of communist regimes over the past century." (Source: https://victimsofcommunism.org/) Wikipedia policy does allow articles about specific interpretations of history. For example the Great man theory is a theory that history can be explained by the actions of great men. The fact that other interpretations of history are possible or even preferred does not mean that we cannot explain this theory in its own article. TFD (talk) 20:05, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * TFD, you perfectly know the problem with that article: if Rummel says that 150+ millions were murdered by Communists (ca 100 million in USSR alone) we cannot say the overall figure is wrong using modern sources that present the numbers for USSR only. Per our policy, that would be synthesis, because no modern historian takes Rummel's estimates seriously, and they just ignore him. However since Rummel is the source that perfectly fits the topic, whereas Ellman, Maksudov, Zemskov or Erlichman are just country expects, the obsolete and incorrect Rummel's opinion is still here, and the opinia of modern experts play subordinated role.
 * The same problem will be with "Victims of communism": since most country experts prefer to use different terminology, and because they write about separate countries, their views will play a subordinated role. In addition, the article will become a collection of killings that were described as "victims of Communism" by at least one author. That will inevitably create a huge NPOV problem, because the views of anticommunists will be presented as mainstream, and views of their critics as revisionist.
 * In reality, such authors as Courtois are revisionists, because they challenge the old concept that Nazism was the greatest evil. Their views caused hot debates, and their POV has never been mainstream. Moreover, there is a direct connection between the attempts to present Communism as greater evil and Holocaust trivialisation (including resurrection of antisemitism), and whitewashing of former Nazi criminals. Therefore, is we decide to rename the article, the title should minimize a probability of further drifting of this article into that direction.--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:56, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Re Great Man theory, the articles about some theory that is not universally accepted should always have at least three major components that allow a reader to get an impression on:
 * The theory itself;
 * Theory's acceptance (support and criticism);
 * Its current status (is it a majority, minority, or fringe view).
 * I can see how it can be done under MKuCR title, but I absolutely do not see how the article named "Victims of Communism" do that.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:35, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * It wouldn't be a collection of killings any more than the Great Man Theory is a collection of biographies of great men. In both cases we are interested in how the theory interprets the facts not the facts themselves. Note too in the Great Man Theory we don't pull out historians' writings on Cromwell, Edison, Churchill etc. and present their interpretations of their biographies in order to rebut the Great Man Theory. There are lots of articles about theories about history from mainstream to fringe. None of them assemble facts in order to prove the theory but explain the theories using reliable secondary sources. If people want to know about the lives of great men, they can read the articles about them. There's no need to cut and paste all of them into the Great Man Theory article.
 * Basically it would follow your outline. but it would use the name used by the proponents of the theory.
 * There's an article about the Captive Nations, which is how anti-Communists described non-Russian nations under Communism. Presumably Russia was the captor nation. Note that while it lists the captive nations, it doesn't try to prove they were captive nations by providing extensive details about their relationship to Russia or the USSR. And we don't call the article "Communists countries except Russia," which would be more neutral.
 * TFD (talk) 00:21, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * , is right, especially about the fact "it would follow your outline. but it would use the name used by the proponents of the theory." If we are going to report the events, which I do not think we should since they are or should be already widely discussed elsewhere, we can not follow your proposal of adding context and background, which I would support, because the only few sources on the topic all represent a POV; and it would be original research to add context and background from scholars who are either not responding to Courtois et al. or are not even discussing the topic because they do not believe in it.  I still believe the best solution would be to make a scholarly analysis article about Communist regimes not limited to mass killings but discussing the topic there and have an article here about the theory only, without devolving in the events which we would already describe at the scholarly analysis article. If you disagree with Victims of Communism, we may name it Double genocide theory and the topic as proposed by The Four Deuces and mine would essentially be the same, so think about it. It would also be more accurate since you note that Courtois is essentially proposing this. I also find it interesting it is the proponents of this theory that are revisionists, not the ones opposed to it; because I believe many who have argued for Keep probably believed the reverse was true. It is indeed true that they are revisionists in proposing the double genocide theory and that Communism and Nazism were equal. Davide King (talk) 01:11, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * If you believe it wouldn't be a collection, what exactly will prevent that scenario? Why the new name will prevent it to be a collection, and what is the problem with the current title that made the this article such a collection?--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:23, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Regarding this, I would say we will deal with that the same way we deal with vandalism, i.e. reverting. The new name would prevent the current scenario because it would be clearly described as a theory in popular literature and outside scholarship and it would be outlined exactly as you described, without reporting the events of all Communist countries as the article currently does and which under my proposal would be done in a single article about scholarly analysis of Communist regimes. In this article, we would limit to describe the theory, its acceptance and current status; and if you have any doubt about the proposed Victims of Communism title, we could rename it Double genocide theory, which is essentially the same thing. Finally, the current article inherently leads to collection because it says Communist regimes and still implies that mass killings are inherent to communism. I will let responds above, which is why I did not indent my comment, but I hope this was helpful. Davide King (talk) 04:15, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I recall, last time the implementation of that plan lead to multiple blocks and full protection of the article for several years. The fact that the users who disagree with any change of status quo are inactive now does not mean that they will not activate if you attempt to do some changes. The number of people who trust the Black Book (in reality, its infamous introduction) and do not want to go into details is much bogger than you think.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:08, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The current problem is that the article is about a topic that does not exist in reliable sources, hence is synthesis. "Was it a mass killing? Did it occur under a Communist regime? If the answer to both questions is yes, then add to article." If the article was about VOC, then sources would have to be reliable and discuss VOC. A source that provides a template for an article is the beginning of the introduction of The Criminalisation of Communism in the European Political Space after the Cold War by Laure Neumeyer (Routledge 2018). TFD (talk) 05:41, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Being a "devil's advocate", I am arguing that Valentino, Rosefielde, Courtois and Rummel are sufficient to claim the topic does exist. And, we have Ellmann's opinion, who noted that "victims of Stalinism" is intrinsically vague topic, which is extremely politicized. Actually, about 30% of humankind may claim that they are, to some degree, victims of Communism. --Paul Siebert (talk) 15:30, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * , arguing that "Valentino, Rosefielde, Courtois and Rummel are sufficient to claim the topic does exist" does not mean the article must exist. A topic existing does not mean it is notable or widely accepted in scholarship. They may be sufficient to discuss the topic, for example as a subsection, not as a standalone article. To exist, it would need to be notable or widely accepted, but this is not the case, as you yourself note that it is actually ignored, implying we should not have an article about it, when we can discuss their views at their own article, at Mass killing, or include their views as part of a scholarly analysis of Communist regimes article. Since for all your good efforts and intentions, the article is still the same, another attempt at deletion/merge may be worth trying. You wrote "there are experts in history of each separate country, and they use totally different approaches." I support this approach but I do not support it for this article because they are not actually discussing the main topic, i.e. mass killings under Communist regimes as a general concept, which either does not exist or is not notable for a standalone article as currently structured. I argue that your approach, which I support, can only be implemented in a broad article about scholarly analysis of Communist regimes which also discusses mass killings, otherwise it would be still be synthesis just like the current article is. This can not be done as the article maintains the current name, which is problematic as explained below by and The Four Deuces, and this structure. Davide King (talk) 16:40, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * , this is a very accurate and good summary, as always. This is exactly what I am talking about and referring too. That is why I believe should reconsider this article existing because the main topic is synthesis and does not exist in reliable sources. Mass killings under Communist regimes is itself a synthesis topic and is not supported by reliable sources, for even The Black Book of Communism and Rummel's work do not support this, as they are about "the evils of Communism in general" and "mass killings by governments in general" rather than mass killings under Communist regimes, the supposed topic of this article, resulting in the synthesis highlighted by The Four Deuces. Davide King (talk) 05:54, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * , I agree but that is why I believe the implicit and systematic bias in favour of keeping the article, simply assuming sources support the main topic and having yet to rebuke or debunk all arguments against this, should be kept in mind by the closing admin and is also why I am preparing a RfC rather than a RfD. As for The Black Book of Communism, I believe a neutral discussion would result in the Introduction not being reliable or green but yellow at best. As noted by, the introduction was not peer-reviewed. I also believe The Four Deuces gave a convincing argument that the book is about "the evils of Communism in general" rather than mass killings under Communist regimes; and even Rummel's work is about "mass killings by governments in general", not mass killings under Communist regimes. I assume you think this will not be enough to convince those "who disagree with any change of status quo" but I believe an attempt is worth making after all those years. Perhaps those obstructionists to any change or improvement to the article that you mentioned should be sanctioned for disrupting behavior. Davide King (talk) 05:48, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Rick Norwood, you say "As a general principle for any encyclopedia, articles should not have titles that take sides." How is "Mass killings under communist regimes" a title that is taking sides? How is it any different than these titles: History of slavery in Indiana, Piracy in Somalia, Ulysses S. Grant presidential administration scandals, Slavery in ancient Greece, War crimes committed by the United States, Nazi human experimentation, Forced settlements in the Soviet Union, Torture and the United States, Persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire, Christian terrorism? Just because a topic is unpleasant does not mean that it is taking a side. AmateurEditor (talk) 06:49, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Both "Mass killings under communist regimes" and "anti-communist mass killings" do take a side by implying that the killings are related to the regime being Communist or anti-communist, which is not supported by the bulk of scholarship. In contrast, for example, Indiana laws permitted slavery and Nazi regime deliberately practiced human experimentation as a matter of policy. The article title "human experimentation under fascist regimes" would not be allowed because there is no demonstrated connection between human experimentation and fascism in general. [ed. and if you can't see the bias in such article titles, just imagine "slavery under capitalism"!] (t &#183; c)  buidhe  14:55, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, and, what makes a situation even worse, the bulk of scholarship do not criticise these views, but essentially ignores them. Therefore, majority of criticism cannot be added because that would be OR per our policy. Thus, the only scholar who criticised Rummel approach in general was Dulic, who discussed his estimates for Yugoslavia. That criticism is equally applicable to Rummel in general, but no author bothered to do that. As a result, we have a paradoxical situation: we know that Rummel's data are obsolete, and his statistical approach is flawed, but we have to keep his data because his conclusions and estimates has not been debunked: they are just ignored by country experts.
 * There is a lot of theorizing in the article that discusses a linkage between Communism and mass killings, and emphasise commonalities between mass killing in different Communist states. However, I am not sure we can add articles that do not criticize these views, but just provide an alternative view: for exampole, see commonalities not between Cambodian genocide and Stalinist repressions, but commonalities between Communist and non-Communist genocides in East Asia.
 * However, I still cannot see how renaming this article to VOC can resolve a situation: I anticipate such sources as Rummel, Courtois, Valentino and Rosefielde still to form a core of the article, even if we change the title. How do you propose to change a situation?--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:28, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * , ironically by searching "communist mass killings" at Google Scholar, I get more results discussing anti-communist mass killings than communist mass killings. This just goes to show this article is synthesis. Anti-communist mass killings may be simply renamed List of anti-communist mass killings. Only for Communism such blatant NPOV violation is allowed and that this article has been existing for this long and with this name, despite three out of five AfDs showing no consensus and the topic not being supported by the bulk of scholarship, is beyond me. Davide King (talk) 16:47, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Off topic but clicking through it appears most results are for the Indonesian anti-communist mass killings of 1965–66, regardless of quote marks (t &#183; c)  buidhe  16:54, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * , if that is true, both should be deleted and merged, with useful content to be moved to relevant articles. The problem with this article is that most sources I find through Communist regime, Communist genocide, etc. on Google Scholar et al. discuss Communist genocide in Romania, Communist mass killings in Cambodia, Stalinist repression in the Soviet Union, etc.; they do not discuss it as a single thing, a general concept, or as mass killings under Communist regimes like the current article does in its synthetisation. The only few sources are Courtois, Rosefielde and Rummel, with only Rosefielde being a Soviet and Communist scholar but ending up promoting the double genocide theory or Holocaust trivalisation with Red Holocaust, and Courtois and Rummel being either non-experts, or too controversial or merely representing one POV rather than scholarship consensus. Valentino discusses a different topic, mass killing, with Communist mass killing as one subtype of mass killing; the other being ethnic mass killing and "mass killing as leaders acquire and repopulate land." Davide King (talk) 17:07, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * buidhe, you say "The article title "human experimentation under fascist regimes" would not be allowed..." but it absolutely would be allowed if there were reliable sources that discussed that topic sufficiently for a standalone article. That's what WP:GNG states, and that is the situation we have here. Whether we can have an article or not does not depend on our understanding of things, it depends on reliable sources and what they contain. AmateurEditor (talk) 06:54, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * , in most of your examples there is a clear connection between the place and the problem. The Soviet Union had for example a policy of forced settlements for at least part of its history. The Soviet Union therefore was responsible for the policy. But "communist regimes" is not a place and therefore does not act like the government of ancient Greece, or the Roman Empire or Nazi Germany. China, Vietnam, Laos, North Korea and Cuba are not an empire that follows a single government or version of an ideology.
 * Christian terrorist is of course a problematic term because it can imply that Christianity causes terrorism, which is why the Obama administration banned the use of the term Islamic terrorism. But we use these terms per "Non-neutral but common names" because "When the subject of an article is referred to mainly by a single common name, as evidenced through usage in a significant majority of English-language sources, Wikipedia generally follows the sources and uses that name as its article title.... Sometimes that common name includes non-neutral words that Wikipedia normally avoids (e.g. the Boston Massacre or the Teapot Dome scandal). In such cases, the prevalence of the name, or the fact that a given description has effectively become a proper noun (and that proper noun has become the usual term for the event), generally overrides concern that Wikipedia might appear as endorsing one side of an issue." But that exception does not apply here because the only two sources that use the term are Wikipedia and Metapedia, which copied the term from this article. Of course the editors of Metapedia believe that mass killing is part of communist ideology and communism operates as a world-wide conspiracy.
 * TFD (talk) 15:54, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * TFD, wikipedia policy doesn't say anything about a topic needing to be "a place" and, as you say, not all of the examples are, so I don't know what point you are trying to make there. If your point was that "communist regimes" are not a thing, then you should be trying to get the Communist state article deleted. It's not up to us what reliable sources decide they will cover or what words they choose, and there are reliable sources that cover "communist regimes". The exception for non-neutral common names is irrelevant here because WP:NPOVTITLE has two subsections, "Non-neutral but common names" and "Non-judgmental descriptive titles". "Mass killings under communist regimes" falls under the second one, "Non-judgmental descriptive titles". "Mass killing" is neutral, according to multiple reliable sources already included in the article. "Victims" would be much less neutral and also much broader as a topic. AmateurEditor (talk) 06:54, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

, please read the link I provided which would provide a template for the article. It doesn't mention Rummel, Valentino and Rosefielde. It does provide discussion about Courtois, because the Black Book of Communism is a central text of the Victims of Communism theory. The book "contributed directly to the rise of the totalitarian paradigm. The best-selling publication was the subject of violent controversy among among historians specialising in communism, to the point that some of its co-authors distanced themselves from the introduction written by the French historian Stephane Courtois. Its detractors criticied its lack of methodological rigour, its conception of historical work as 'work of justice and memory' and the ideological dimension of its approach. In any event, by making criminality the very essence of communism, by explicitly equating the 'race genocide' of nazism with the 'class genocide' of Communism in connection with the Ukrainian Great Famine of 1932-1933, the Black Book of Communism contributed to legitimizing the equivalence of Nazi and Communist crimes.... [This anti-Communist narrative] is based on a series of categories and figures used to denounce Communist state violence (qualified as 'Communist crimes', 'red genocide' or 'classicide') and to honour persecuted individuals (presented alternatively as 'victims of Communism' and 'heroes of anti totalitarian resistance')." It's not as if the source merely repeats Courtois. Note too the sources we should use come from political science not genocide studies. If readers are interested in what the actual numbers are, they can read articles that discuss them. The focus of this article should be describing the political narrative. TFD (talk) 16:28, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * TFD, thank you for summarising the ideas I myself have been advocating at that talk page for years. I perfectly know all of that. My question is different: what will prevent some users from adding more and more sources (newspaper publications, popular books etc) telling about various victims of Communism and moving the scholarly publications similar to what you cite to some separate section at the very bottom of the article?
 * Let me remind you that this article started as the article about Cambodian genocide (which was a pretty legitimate topic), but it quickly became a collection of all events that were characterised as mass killing by at least one author. What will prevent the same scenario in the new article?
 * If we follow the ideas expressed in the source you cite, this article can be converted to something what I already proposed at that page:
 * What happened in Communist states, and how various scholars explain mass killings in each concrete Communist country;
 * Which books are attempting to find a common cause? What is their political motivation (if any)?
 * Support/criticism of these theories.
 * If we cannot do that in this article, how can renaming help us?--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:48, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * There will always be editors who want to add information that doesn't belong. But that can be better handled by defining the topic and using an appropriate name. If you call the article MKuCR, then expect editors to add various incidents of mass killings. But VOC has a specific connotation.
 * I would not detail what happened in Communist countries because the article is about how it was interpreted not what happened. In my example, the Great Man Theory, we don't provide detail about the history of the world, then how historians interpret history and finally how the great man theory interprets it. We begin with the theory, what it argues, who supports it, then why some historians reject it. We don't even get into detailed examination of the alternative theories.
 * Another problem with detailing opposing views is that it presupposes that the explanation of the mass killings is the subject of scholarly debate. The VOC school attributes it to Communist ideology and conspiracy, while others attribute it to different causes, such as the political history and traditions of violence in which it occured. But scholars of mass killings who see no connection between mass killings in various Communist states don't specifically try to rebut the VOC narrative, just as historians of world history don't set out to rebut the great man theory. When they write for example that a war was caused by economic rivalry, they don't then explain why the personalities of the leaders was not the cause. It's just assumed.
 * TFD (talk) 22:38, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * VOC's connotation strongly depends on political views of each concrete author. Some authors claim all victims of Russian Civil war (from both sides) are victims of Communism, some authors disagree. In my opinion, VOC is worse, because it creates more opportunities for adding totally unrelated materials.
 * You say "the article is about how it was interpreted not what happened". In reality, this article is about "how many were killed, and how do various authors call that". Can you show me the mechanism that can prevent similar scenario for VOC article?--Paul Siebert (talk)
 * The source I provided says that the term VOC is used by anti-Communists to honor individuals persecuted by Communism. Of course the same term may mean different things. Mars for example can mean either a Roman god or a planet. But per disambiguation, we decide which topic the article is about and define it in the lead. The way you keep an article on topic is to provide a recognizable title and a clearly defined and sourced definition. VOC "is the term used by anti-Communists to explain mass killings and other crimes against humanity carried out by Communist-ruled states as being a result of Communist ideology or conspiracy." That type of phrasing rules out other things that might be called VOC. If you title the article MKuCR and begin, "Many mass killings occurred under 20th-century communist regimes," then expect a list of these killings and an assumption that they are connected in some way. TFD (talk) 23:50, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree with TFD that VoC would be a better way to frame the article as a theory and avoid a ton of synth, OR, and coatracking. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  23:58, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Sure, there is a connection, and this connection is Communism. I see no problem with that, as soon as this connection is the main topic. Some authors argue the connection was strong, and Communism explains the mechanism of those deaths, some authors believe the connection is mostly just nominal. In addition, there is some connection between political views of some concrete author and the theory they advocate: as a rule, the proponents of "double genocide" theory are anti-Communists, some of them are neo-nationalists, some supporters of "generic Communism" theories are engaged in Holocaust trivialising, some are suffering from Vichy syndrome. Some authors are just superficial, and they prefer simple explanation of complex phenomenae. All of that can be explained in the MKuCR artilce, and I see no reason why the current title can prevent that.--Paul Siebert (talk) 00:28, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * If two things are connected then there is little reason to pay much attention to the connection in an article. Onion for example describes various types of onions with no explanation of what connects them. They're all onions after all. Essentially if you believe they are connected, then there is nothing to complain about. TFD (talk) 03:27, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I think this discussion is becoming fruitless. Can you please explain why VOC may help us to remove all POV garbage from the article? That is a question number 1. The question number 0 is why do you believe an attempt to rename this article will be successful?--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:49, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * As I explained above, establishing a topic for this article that has been documented in reliable sources as opposed to one based on editors' synthesis is the only possibility of having a neutral article. Then we can rely on WP:BALASPS and WP:TERTIARY to determine the weight to provide various aspects of this topic. Right now we have no criteria for determining weight, which is why it is biased. TFD (talk) 05:06, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * TFD, weight is based on the sources that discuss the topic, per WP:BALASP: "An article should not give undue weight to minor aspects of its subject, but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject." Tertiary sources are not required, per WP:PSTS. We already have what we need for a neutral article. AmateurEditor (talk) 07:08, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Sorry but I don't understand your comment "We already have what we need for a neutral article." WP:BALASP is not about having what we need, but ensuring that (as you quoted) we do not "give undue weight to minor aspects of its subject." And you missed the relevant sentence in WP:PSTS: "Policy: Reliable tertiary sources can be helpful in providing broad summaries of topics that involve many primary and secondary sources, and may be helpful in evaluating due weight." Due weight does not mean putting in anything that can be sourced and that we find important but giving the same weight to information about a subject that one would find in reliable secondary and tertiary sources about the topic. What do you think these policies mean? TFD (talk) 14:35, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Amateur Editor caused me to stop and think for a few hours before responding. He asked (to summarize) why I object to "Mass Killing under communist regimes" and not to "War crimes committed by the United States". It is a hard question, and needed some serious thought. It seems to me that "Mass Killings under communist regimes" exists primarily to attack communism, is intellectually dishonest, and is written by people who want to destroy communism, while "War crimes committed by the United States" is written by people who are appalled that a country like the United States would commit War Crimes, and is trying to report this fact, rather than trying to destroy the United States. That, as I said, is how it seems to me. But Wikipedia requires evidence. And in the above, the only evidence is evidence of intellectual dishonesty, which I fight even if I agree with the cause. If I can't support my causes in an intellectually honest way, then I need new causes. Therefore, in the future, I'll try to focus on this question: is there any intellectually honest way to support this article? I have not seen it. But I'll try to be objective and honestly consider any connection between communism and mass killings, as contrasted with authoritarian dictatorships, whether on the Right or on the Left, and mass killings. If not, then the article should at the very least be broken up into several articles, "Mass killings under Stalin", "Mass killings under Mao Zedong", "Mass killings in Cambodia", and so on, along with "Mass killings in Chile", "Mass killings under Hitler" and so on.

I was interested to discover while researching my response that Mao Zedong is number one, with several times more than Stalin, who beats out Hitler by a hair. Rick Norwood (talk) 22:55, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Re Mao, the same approach would lead you to the conclusion Ford is a much more deadly car than Lamborgini, so the best way to prevent road accidents is to ban Ford and sell more Lamborgini instead. Mao was a ruler of a huge country with a population that was permanently living at the brink of famine. It is not a surprise that any political perturbations were leading to massive deaths. In relative numbers they were huge, but even the most deadly event, the Great Leap forward famine, was not the most deadly famine in Chinese history in relative numbers.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:19, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Rick Norwood, thank you for engaging in serious thought. The "intellectually honest way to support this article" is to look at the sourcing (see here for four of them) and compare that to the requirements of Wikipedia policy for an article, such as the general notability guideline. We do not have to individually believe that there is a "connection between communism and mass killings" to support the article's right to exist. We need only acknowledge that reliable sources sufficiently cover the topic of mass killings under communist regimes to support a standalone article. By the way, regarding ranking, sources usually say Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge was the worst because, per Paul Siebert's point, although the absolute number killed was smaller, the percentage killed was higher. AmateurEditor (talk) 06:23, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The problem with this is that the article is not merely a report of events that did indeed happen. As noted by, the title and topic imply they "take a side by implying that the killings are related to the regime being Communist or anti-communist, which is not supported by the bulk of scholarship." As argued by , we should describe the theory or concept, "not detail[ing] what happened in Communist countries because the article is about how it was interpreted not what happened." The events are already discussed elsewhere and they should be discussed again only to provide a context and background for the scholarly analysis article, not limited to mass killings, that I propose. On this, I agree with Buidhe, The Four Deuces and . Davide King (talk) 06:43, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * If this article is a kosher topic then we should also have slavery under capitalism and capitalist genocides, because there is a fringe position that such connections exist. But actually all of these are POV titles because they imply a connection that is not made by the majority of sources. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  06:47, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * , I agree. They should be discussed at Genocide and Slavery; similarly, this one should be discussed at Mass killing. That is why I propose a scholarly analysis of Communist regimes not limited to mass killings et al. In this article, we would actually report the bulk of scholarship of Communist regimes, without following this article's fringe theory. Davide King (talk) 06:53, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * buidhe, if you want other articles to exist, then identify reliable sources that justify them, per WP:GNG. AmateurEditor (talk) 07:01, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I think he meant that it would be tendentious to create articles about topics that don't exist in reliable sources, which we have done here. Creating these articles would be pointy: trying to prove that this article is tendentious by creating similar tendentious articles. TFD (talk) 14:51, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

AmateurEditor seems to be the main person supporting the article, and he has, on his own Wikipedia page, provided four citations in support of keeping the article.

All four are equivocal at best. If there are unequivocal academic studies of "mass killings under communist regimes" it would be good to see them.

Here, briefly, are quotes from the books cited by AmateurEditor:

Valentino: "Communist regimes have been responsible for this century's most deadly episodes of mass killing." This is a strange quote. Almost everyone would include Hitler's anti-communist regime in a list of regimes responsible for this century's most deadly episodes of mass killing. We have already looked at Valentino's quote "most regimes that have described themselves as communist ... have not engaged in mass killings."

Mann: The title of his book, "The Dark Side of Democracy", suggests that communist killings are not the main topic. He says explicitly "No Communist regime contemplated genocide." (adding that the Khmer Rouge is a borderline case).

Sernetin: I do not have a copy of this book, but the sentence at the beginning of the quoted passage makes me curious about what the preceding sentence was. "also developed by communist regimes". It at least suggests that "mass killings under communist regimes" are not the books main focus.

Chirot: Here we have a more explicit statement that communism is not the book's main focus. He explicitly groups communist mass killings with killings by "the Community of God or the racially pure Volksgemeinshaft."

All of these examples are from brief quotes supplied in defense of the article. All suggest or state that the books are not explicitly linking mass killings with communism. Rick Norwood (talk) 12:40, 18 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Here is a link to Mann's chapter "Communist Cleansing: Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot." His thesis is that Stalin carried out mass killings (mostly by famine) in order to industrialize the Soviet Union, and the method was copied by Mao, Pol Pot and some other Communist leaders.
 * The reason I think that an article about Soviet mass killings would be neutral while one about communist mass killings is not is that the first type assigns responsiblity to a person or state, while the second type assigns collective responsibility. In a similar situtation, it would be neutral to speak about war crimes by Israel but not neutral to call them war crimes committed by the Jews and bundle them in with war crimes committed by Jewish leaders in other countries. While the state of Israel is reponsible for what it does, Jews do not bear collective responsibility for what every other Jewish person does.
 * TFD (talk) 19:14, 18 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Either you incorrectly transmitted Mann's ideas, or he himself is not completely right, because many other authors point and a principal difference between Stalin's killing and KR: whereas the former were (partially) dictated by a desire to industrialise the country, the KR's strategy was a full de-urbanization and conversion of the country into a rural commune. In addition, KR killings had obvious ethnic components: ethnic Vietnamese and Chinese were targeted first.


 * I totally agree with what you say about Israel and Jews, and that is an additional argument for a global modification of this article.--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:32, 18 November 2020 (UTC)


 * According to Mann, the Khmer Rouge intended to triple agricultural output and export the surplus "to pay for the import of machinery, first for agriculture and light industry, later for heavy industry." (p.343) So it was a long term goal that was never realized. TFD (talk) 20:56, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Terminology section
It seems this discussion is becoming hard to follow. I prefer a stepwise approach, so I propose to resolve the "Terminology" issue first. AmateurEditor objects to removal of the "Terminology" section, because "it is well sourced, important to understanding the article topic, and follows the aggregator sources' example." Below, I demonstrate what is wrong with that rationale.
 * The section "is well sourced" This argument cites WP:V, whereas the reasons for removal are violations of WP:NOR and WP:NPOV. In addition, the verifiability policy explicitly says that not all verifiable information deserves inclusion, and The onus to achieve consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content. Therefore, I expect you to prove the text you are advocating does meet NOR and NPOV criteria.
 * The section important to understanding the article topic. I don't see how this section help a reader to understand the topic. I would say the opposite, the section is deeply misleading, because it creates an impression that some well developed terminology exists in this field. In reality, the section is the list of terms coined by a bunch of authors, who apply them to the same events, so the same mass killing is called "politicide" by one author and "classicide" by another. These new terms explain nothing, and that is why the overwhelming majority of experts in history of separate Communist states do not use these terms at all. If you want to prove I am wrong, try to propose an alternative explanation to these search results. I made a very neutral search, and it gives the following results:
 * - democide (22400) +democide (833, mostly Rummel himself)
 * -classicide (22700); + classicide (80)
 * -politicide (22500); +politicide (1230)
 * -"red Holocaust" (21800); +"Red Holocaust" (79)
 * I used "repressions", because it is a very specific term applied to Stalinist crimes, and it is really universally accepted'
 * All these search results are nearly the same, which means country experts, do not use this terminology. This terminology in totally useless, it has no explanatory power, it is ignored by experts in the field. If you believe something is wrong with my search or interpretation, please provide your own search and/or your own interpretation.
 * Therefore, "Terminology" by no means helps a reader to understand the topic, it mislead a reader, and it must be removed. With regard to "Red Holocaust", not only it is not the term, its usage is tantamount to the Holocaust trivialisation, and it must be removed, because it is a stain on Wikipedia.
 * "There are two exception. First, the term "genocide". It was introduced by Lemkin to describe Nazi crime and to prevent future crimes of that kind. It is a legal term, and its application to some events (by a court) may have some concrete legal consequences. It is quite necessary to explain what this term is, but this term was not proposed for Communist mass killings. It is much more general, and that is why I moved it to the Mass killing article. Interestingly. many experts in Soviet history argue that Soviet mass killings were, by and large, non-genocidal by their nature.
 * The second term is demo/politicide. This term is being used by so called "genocide scholars" in attempts to find some general dependencies between regime type and a probability of onset of mass killings. Again, this term does not explain "Communist mass killings", it is used to assemble a very crude and indiscriminate worldwide statistics of mass killings (Barbara Harff conceded that Rummel's statistics was very inaccurate, and it was never expected to be accurate, because the goal of his study was different). This terminology is relevant to the mass killing article, but it is absolutely not helpful for understanding this article's topic, and it is absolutely misleading.
 * Actually, what this section is doing is a pure cheating. It says: "the following terms were proposed to describe MKuCR", but that is a direct lie. These terms (with one exception, "classicide") were proposed for mass killings, not for MKuCR specifically.
 * Of course, it is possible to fix that by adding an explanation that majority of the terms in that section were proposed for mass killings in general, and they were applied, by some authors, to MKuCR. However, if we do that, and remove a total bullshit about Wheatcroft (who never proposed the term "repressions", that term was used by Khruschev after the XX congress of CPSU, and since those times was used in Soviet historiography), remove the Holocaust trivialization, etc., then the section will be converted to something reasonable. However, it would become nearly identical to the analogous text in the mass killing article. It would be ridiculous to have the text, which is only marginally relevant to the article's subject, and which can be easily accessible in one click (the link to mass killing is already provided in the article).


 * The section "follows the aggregator sources" The aggregator source is adequate if it is in agreement with the opinia of major experts in the field. If Ellman writes that the very category "victims of Stalinism" is a matter of political judgement, his opinion is not in agreement with Valentino's attempt to lump all Soviet population losses into one category to advocate a very questionable idea (the idea, which is not universally accepted by "genocide scholars" themselves). My no means Valentino or similar authors are adequate and neutral "aggregator sources". They could be good aggregator sources if they provided a neutral summary of research in this field. In reality, each of them proposes some very concrete idea, and all these ideas are not universally accepted. Moreover, some of them sacrifice factual accuracy if it contradicts to their ideological constructs. Thus, Rummel refused to reconsider his estimates for the USSR despite the fact that numerous evidences became available in 1990s that the scale of GULAG mortality was by an order of magnitude lower that he predicted. I think it is a shame that we cite his outdated and, according to Harff, inaccurate estimates (but that is a different story).
 * Finally, I looked through the article, and I found virtually no mention of terms listed in this section, except "genocide" (which already has its own article, so a link would be sufficient). Other terms are either not used at all, or they are used just a couple of time. Do you really think that justifies an existence of such a misleading section?

In addition, this sentence in the lead "Terms used to define these killings include "mass killing", "democide", "politicide", "classicide" and a broad definition of "genocide"." is also is a disaster. Do we really think that is the most important thing that should be said about MKuCR? This sentence in the lead draws reader's attention to the worst and useless section in the article, which adds nothing to reader's understanding of communist crimes. It should be removed also.--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:31, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Paul Siebert, sorry about the delay in responding but it takes me a lot of time to thoughtfully respond to you and I think it is better to have a late and thoughtful response than a quick and faulty one. Thanks for starting a new section here on the talk page. I agree the previous discussions were getting hard to follow. If this discussion follows the pattern of our past discussions, it may branch so much that it could also become hard to follow, so I will number my responses to your points.
 * 1) "The section "is well sourced"". By this I meant that it is not only verifiable, but appropriate for the article (that is, directly related to the article topic and not OR/SYNTH). Something can be "sourced" (that is, verifiable), but still not appropriate for an article. You cited WP:ONUS, which states "While information must be verifiable to be included in an article, not all verifiable information needs to be included in an article. Consensus may determine that certain information does not improve an article, and that it should be omitted or presented instead in a different article. The onus to achieve consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content." The consensus for the material in question was achieved 10 years ago, in my opinion, which is why it is in the article today. Of course, consensus can change, but since it is already in the stable version of the article, the onus now would be on those who want it changed. Per WP:NOCONSENSUS, "In discussions of proposals to add, modify or remove material in articles, a lack of consensus commonly results in retaining the version of the article as it was prior to the proposal or bold edit." This is consistent with BOLD, revert, discuss cycle, which favors the status quo before the proposed change, whether an addition or subtraction. Having said that, I am willing to discuss particular sentences and citations if you wish. I have tried to make it obvious with excerpts in the article itself that material in the terminology section is appropriate and not taken out of context. In order for me to "prove the text you are advocating does meet NOR and NPOV criteria", I would be basically pasting that here on the talk page for each citation in the section, which doesn't seem practical without some focus from you on what you object to in particular.
 * 2)"important to understanding the article topic.". I agree with your sentence that the terminology section is a "list of terms coined by a bunch of authors, who apply them to the same events, so the same mass killing is called "politicide" by one author and "classicide" by another". I disagree that it is "deeply misleading, because it creates an impression that some well developed terminology exists in this field." The point of showing the variety of terms is to show that there is not "well-developed terminology" for this topic (and I would call this a "topic" only, not a separate "field" of study, but maybe I am being pedantic). The variety of terms is a sub-topic for this topic in the sources that justify this article. They are a significant part of this topic in reliable sources and that is why it is appropriate to include them. You say "These new terms explain nothing" and "are useless", but they do explain the perspectives of the authors that advocate for them. It is important to include the lack of consensus on terms among the sources. A term does not need to be a consensus term (or even a popular term) among the sources on a topic to be a part of the the body of reliable, published material on the topic, let alone be the consensus term among sources focused on a single country that do not address the wider cross-country topic in the first place. In the case of "Red Holocaust", it is a gross exaggeration to say that it is the same as ("tantamount to") Holocaust trivialization. Holocaust trivialization is when the term "holocaust" is applied to a relatively trivial thing, such as the defeat of a sports team. In this case, it is being used to describe the deaths of tens of millions of people. That is not trivialization. Having said that, it is true that the term is controversial, but the criticism is well represented for that term. In the case of "genocide", the article does not say that it was "proposed for Communist mass killings", it says that the term has been used for communist mass killings. Adding well-sourced sentences about the inappropriateness of the term for communist mass killing is fine with me. Likewise, in the case of demo/politicide, the helpfulness of this term here is that some sources use it for discussing communist mass killing. It does not have to "explain" communist mass killing to be be relevant to the topic as one of the terms used. You say "what this section is doing is a pure cheating. It says: "the following terms were proposed to describe MKuCR", but that is a direct lie." No, the section does not say "...the following terms were proposed to describe...", it instead says "The following terminology has been used...". The terms do not have to be specific to communist mass killing to be relevant to the topic, according to the reliable sources cited. You propose "adding an explanation that majority of the terms in that section were proposed for mass killings in general, and they were applied, by some authors, to MKuCR", but that is what the first two sentences of the section are already saying. If they need to be reworded to make them more clear, then let's do that. You say "remove a total bullshit about Wheatcroft (who never proposed the term "repressions"...", but again the section doesn't say that he proposed the term (I agree it would be incorrect to say he was the first to use the term).
 * 3)"follows the aggregator sources". You say "The aggregator source is adequate if it is in agreement with the opinia of major experts in the field." I would say instead that aggregator sources are adequate for this purpose for the same reason that they are adequate for any use at all on wikipedia: if they meets the standard for reliable sources at WP:RS, then they can be used for wikipedia articles. The aggregator sources are the basis of the article/topic, so the article should be based on them primarily. If "major experts in the field" disagree with these sources, then that disagreement should, of course, be included. We can't, however, cite a source's silence on a topic as rejection of that topic because that would be original research on our part. Per WP:RS, articles should be "based on reliable, published sources, making sure that all majority and significant minority views that have appeared in those sources are covered". You seem to be saying instead that we should only be considering a (aggregator) source if it is in agreement with another (non-aggregator) source.
 * 4)"virtually no mention of terms listed in this section". The article uses "mass killing" as the generic term. The terminology section is explaining the variety of terms used in the sources, rather than terms used throughout the article.
 * 5)"Lede sentence". The sentence is "Terms used to define these killings include "mass killing", "democide", "politicide", "classicide" and a broad definition of "genocide". "I didn't write it, but calling it a "disaster" seems excessive. I think you are objecting more to the section of the article it is trying to concisely summarize, rather than the sentence itself as a sentence. I would not say that the sentence is, in your words, "the most important thing that should be said about MKuCR", but it is an important part of the topic and article. Per WP:LEAD, sentences in the lead are supposed to, among other things, "summarize the most important points, including any prominent controversies". The variety of terms used is both an important point and controversial in some instances. According to the "This page in a nutshell" box at WP:LEAD, the lead is supposed to "identify the topic and summarize the body of the article with appropriate weight". The article has a section about terminology, so a sentence on terminology in the lead is not undue weight relative to the body of the article. AmateurEditor (talk) 05:32, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
 * No worry, take your time. I myself have an opportunity to respond just 1-2 times a week, so your "delayed" response is not delayed at all.
 * Right now there is a discussion at the policy page about WP:ONUS, and it seems that consensus is that there is no symmetry between removal and inclusion. There is not a big difference between re-addition and de novo addition of some material. I could delete the section, because I already explained why it should be deleted, but if I do that, that would be disrespectful to your work (which is technically very good). Therefore, I am trying to achieve consensus first, although that is not a strict requirement of our policy.
 * You are right, this text stays is here since 2010, but you forget that the article was frozen during several years, and after that it was under strict editing restrictions. Therefore, it would be incorrect to speak about any consensus in that situation. In addition, a significant part of the text was added later, and I never objected to that because I decided that would be a waste of time, but I never agreed with these additions. Therefore, it would be totally incorrect to say this version reflects consensus (neither past nor current).
 * In connection to that, I am expecting you to prove that each item in that list:
 * (i) is a term that was proposed specifically for MKuCR. Obviously, "Mass killing", "democide", "genocide", "politicide", and "crimes against humanity" were not proposed specifically for the MKuCR topic. Therefore, they belong to the mass killing article, not to this one. We do not explain the term DNA replication in the article about DNA polymerase gamma, and even in the DNA polymerase article: the link to the higher level article is quite sufficient. However, some of those terms were applied, by some authors to describe some mass killing events during communist rule. Let's take "mass killings" as one of the most extreme case: Valentino himself did not apply this term to Afghanistan (the Afghan case was not included into the Communist mass killing section of his book). Nevertheless, this article does include Afghanistan into the Communist mass killing category. Other terms, such as "genocide" were applied only to a very narrow category of cases. Therefore, it would be correct to move the discussion of applicability of those terms to the corresponding sections.
 * If some term was not proposed specifically for MKuCR, it may belong to the article (if it is mentioned in the article's body) but it must be excluded from the "Terminology" section. WP:NOR says that "analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to reach or imply a conclusion not stated by the sources" is prohibited. By adding e.g. "genocide" to this section, we imply that that term was applied to MKuCR as whole (and the lead literally says that). That is misleading, and that is a piece of original research, which must be removed.
 * (ii) is a term. By that, I mean that we must discriminate terminology, which has some explanatory power and is helpful for understanding a subject, from just allegoric or emotional words, which do not explain anything. Thus, "Red Holocaust" is just another way to say that MKuCR were a very bad thing. Is it helpful for understanding the causes, mechanism or outcomes of MKuCR? Is it being used by anybody besides Rosenfielde and a couple of political journalists? No. It is not a term, and it is useless, misleading and not helpful
 * (iii) are used by country experts. So far, just "genocide" is used in the article. Other terms are just mentioned once, at best.
 * You write "The variety of terms is a sub-topic for this topic in the sources that justify this article." If that is the case, that justifies the article's deletion. In reality, your statement is not correct: the topic does exist, but a bunch of "genocide scholars", who are attempting to propose their own buzzwords, are a just marginal group of authors, who are being essentially ignored by real experts in Russian Civil war, Stalinist repressions, Chinese Cultural revolution, Cambodian genocide, etc (see gscholar results, which you ignored). Believe we, if we throw away all those "theorists" (or move them to a small section at the end of the article), it still would be possible to keep this article, for Communist mass killings really had something in common. There were significant differences between all these events, but that does not mean there were no commonalities. The main flaw of this article is obsession with commonalities and ignoring differences, as well as factors other than Communism.
 * Regarding Holocaust trivialization, any metaphorical usage of the term "Holocaust" is trivialization. You cite Wheatcroft, read his comparative analysis of Stalinist and Nazi mass killing, because I am 100% he would be totally dissatisfied by the use of his name in this section. There was a long academic dispute between Wheatcroft and Rosenfielde, both authors put forward strong and convincing argiments; the POV of the latter is overrepresented in this section, and Wheatcroft's views are selectively cited in such a way that his ideas were either ignored or distorted. That is a violation of NPOV, and it is not acceptable.
 * "The terminology section is explaining the variety of terms used in the sources rather than terms used throughout the article." We cannot, and should explain the terms that are used in cited sources if these terms are not used in the article. Wikipedia is an encyclopedic reference, not a textbook, and that is a policy.
 * Regarding "aggregator sources", you again refer to V when NPOV is violated. If an aggregator source advances some idea that contradicts to the idea or ideas of the sources that are being aggregated, it is not an aggregator source, but a separate source, which should be used in parallel to other sources. If an author X adequately summarized works written by authors A, B, and C, X is an aggregator source. However, if the authors A, B, and C propose one explanation/interpretation for the events described in their book, whereas the author X proposed some new theory that differs from what A, B, and C say, the article must present all these views fairly and proportionally. Currently, the article's structure follows the ideas expressed by a small group of political writers and genocide scholars, and the viewpoint of historians, especially, experts in history of some concrete country is provided mostly to support the ideas of "genocide scholars". That is a blatant violation of NPOV.
 * Regarding the lead, you write that "the variety of terms used is both an important point and controversial in some instances." That is not true. Majority of historians do not care about all that terminology. The only term that causes debates among historians is "genocide", and they organize separate conferences and devote whole journal issues to the question, e.g., whether Great Soviet famine was genocide. But that debates are local, they are devoted to some specific cases, and historians never discuss a possibility to apply some term to MKuCR as whole.
 * Meanwhile, a real controversy, which was a reason for serious debates is whether MKuCR should be presented as some single phenomenon, or that was a group of separate poorly connected events. The lead and the article essentially ignores this important question, and that is a serious NPOV problem. That is why the lead is a disaster.
 * Therefore, this section must be removed, because at least three policies are violated in it, and that is not fixable.
 * --Paul Siebert (talk) 08:44, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Regarding "Red Holocaust", a 30 second gscholar search gives a source that openly call "Red Holocaust" an example of the Holocaust trivialization. It says:
 * "Contrary to the hard-core version, soft-core denial is often not easily identifiable. Often it is tolerated, or even encouraged and reproduced in the mainstream, not only in Germany. Scholars have only recently begun to unravel this disturbing phenomenon. Manfred Gerstenfeld discusses Holocaust trivialization in an article published in 2008.7 In Germany in 2007 two scholars, Thorsten Eitz and Georg Stötzel, published a voluminous dictionary of German language and discourse regarding National Socialism and the Holocaust. It includes chapters on Holocaust trivialization and contrived comparisons, such as the infamous "atomic Holocaust", "Babycaust," "Holocaust of abortion", "red Holocaust" or "biological Holocaust.""
 * The reference is: Heni, Clemens.SECONDARY ANTI-SEMITISM: FROM HARD-CORE TO SOFT-CORE DENIAL OF THE SHOAH. Jewish Political Studies Review; Jerusalem Vol. 20, Iss. 3/4, (Fall 2008): 73-92, 218.
 * Note, Rosefielde did not propose "Red Holocaust" as a scholarly term, so the responsibility for addition of the Holocaust trivialization is on those who added this text to this article (I didn't check the history, and I don't know who added it).--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:02, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Paul Siebert, I apologize for posting a response later than I had promised on your talk page.
 * If the ongoing discussion at the WP:ONUS talk page results in a change to policy then we should follow the new policy, but until then we should follow it as currently written. When I say the material had achieved consensus years ago, I mean WP:IMPLICITCONSENSUS. Although it is true that this article had editing restrictions in place for several years requiring talk page consensus to be established prior to edits to the article being made (apparently from March 5, 2011 to May 6, 2018), the section was in the article long before that. A "Terminology" section header was created (by me) on October 21, 2009 for material added earlier that mentioned "mass killing", "democide", "politicide", and "genocide". You were actively editing the section both before (example from 2010) and after (example from 2018) the editing restrictions were in effect, indicating implicit consensus on your part at those times (although I could be misremembering the state of things if we were having side discussions at the same time). Consensus can change, of course, but I don't think the onus is on me to justify this well-referenced and long-standing material. After the amount of time it has been there (outside of the editing restrictions), the onus is now on those who want to change it, per WP:BRD. Since you have already indicated that you want to make bold edits that would probably be reverted, we have skipped straight to the discuss stage, which is reasonable, but a lack of consensus in the discussion would result in the status quo, not deletion of the material. Otherwise, a disruptive editor could get any material in any article deleted simply by arguing about it. Having said that, I do still need to respond to your objections now. You are insisting on three criteria to be met for each term included in the section: that it is a term "proposed specifically for MKuCR", has "explanatory power", and is "used by country experts".
 * 1) Where are these criteria coming from? They are not based on any policy that I am aware of. We need only follow the normal criteria for any material to be included in an article: Core content policies. Restricting inclusion to terms with "explanatory power" or only those sources deemed by us to be "country experts" (which would mean ignoring, presumably, all the aggregator sources on which the article is based in the first place), is going way beyond those policies. If reliable sources include something in their discussion of the topic, it can be included in the article about that topic.
 * 2) Your example of Valentino not using killing in Afghanistan in his chapter "Communist Mass Killings: The Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia", forgets that he did mention "Communist" as an "additional motive" for the killings in Afghanistan in his table on page 83.
 * 3) You say that by including the term "genocide" in the section as it is "we imply that that term was applied to MKuCR as whole (and the lead literally says that). That is misleading, and that is a piece of original research". I object to the word "proposed", which your comments seem to be suggesting means "coined" or "invented" specifically for this article's topic. Both the lead and the second sentence in the section explicitly say the terms have been "used" ("The following terminology has been used by individual authors to describe mass killings of unarmed civilians by communist governments, individually or as a whole:"), which is accurate. I don't know why you think there is an implication that the terms were "proposed" specifically for Mkucr when there is an explicit statement clarifying what the list is. It could only be an implication if someone does not read the text, which means there is not such implication in the text. The "genocide" paragraph explains the UN definition and explains how the term has been applied to the events under specific communist regimes. Incidentally, a sourced sentence on the more general use of "communist genocide" ("According to Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine, "historians and philosophers close to politically liberal groups" in Europe, especially in Romania, have made the term Communist Genocide part of today's vocabulary.") was removed by you on October 25, 2018, although I don't think that removal was justified. It is valuable to address each of these terms in the section so that readers understand how they relate to the article's topic. As you may recall, the article was originally titled "Communist genocide". No doubt there are readers out there looking for that information ("especially in Romania", apparently).
 * 4) You say ""Red Holocaust" is just another way to say that MKuCR were a very bad thing." The word "holocaust" has been used about the topic and it is not our role to censor its use because of controversy. Instead, we should add sources that explain why there is controversy, as we have done. If you think that is insufficient, then add more.
 * 5) You say "So far, just "genocide" is used in the article. Other terms are just mentioned once, at best." I have no problem with the terms being used throughout the article, as long as it doesn't make things confusing for the reader, but the terms are in the terminology section because they are in the sources, not because they are elsewhere in the article.
 * 6) You say "the topic does exist, but a bunch of "genocide scholars", who are attempting to propose their own buzzwords, are a just marginal group of authors, who are being essentially ignored by real experts ". Wouldn't the "genocide scholars" be the "real experts" for this particular topic? The narrowly focused single-country authors would be "real experts" only in their individual fields of focus, not on this wider cross-country topic. I ignored your google searches because they are irrelevant to the topic existing and to the due weight considerations that apply only to the body of reliable sources who address the topic. Wikipedia has plenty of articles on very specialized topics with relatively small numbers of reliable sources. We need only to write the article to reflect what is in those reliable sources that address the topic. Per WP:PROPORTION, "An article should not give undue weight to minor aspects of its subject, but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject."
 * 7) You say "if we throw away all those "theorists" [...] it still would be possible to keep this article". I doubt it. Without the aggregator sources, the charges of synthesis would have a point.
 * 8) You say "The main flaw of this article is obsession with commonalities and ignoring differences, as well as factors other than Communism". There is all the time in the world to improve the article. Adding well-sourced sentences about the differences and factors other than Communism can start immediately.
 * 9) You say "any metaphorical usage of the term "Holocaust" is trivialization". You are entitled to your opinion on that. I would say that most metaphorical usage could be seen as trivialization, simply because there is very little that compares to the horror and scale of the Holocaust, and even less that might exceed it. The scale of this topic is one of the few where such a metaphor is actually reasonable, but there are other reasons one might not want to use the term. Our role as editors is just to make sure that we are accurately reflecting what reliable sources say and not imposing our own points of view. I think the criticism of the term's use is adequately represented in the article currently (it says the term might be " Holocaust obfuscation", rather than trivialization), but reasonable people can disagree. If you feel strongly about "trivialization" and have a source for it, then you should add something to that effect in the article, but it is not clear from the quote you provided whether "red Holocaust" was seen as a trivialization or as a "contrived comparison", which is not the same thing. Regardless, we are supposed to "describe disputes, but not engage in them", per WP:YESPOV. Removal would be engaging in the dispute.
 * 10) You say the current use of Wheatcroft is "a violation of NPOV" because his "views are selectively cited in such a way that his ideas were either ignored or distorted". The solution to this is to add relevant material that is ignored and/or edit material that is distorted.
 * 11) You say "Wikipedia is an encyclopedic reference, not a textbook, and that is a policy." You say this in reference to using terms in the terminology section that are not used in the rest of the article. Per WP:NOTTEXTBOOK, "Wikipedia is an encyclopedic reference, not a textbook. The purpose of Wikipedia is to present facts, not to teach subject matter. Articles should not read like textbooks, with leading questions and systematic problem solutions as examples. These belong on our sister projects, such as Wikibooks, Wikisource, and Wikiversity. Some kinds of examples, specifically those intended to inform rather than to instruct, may be appropriate for inclusion in a Wikipedia article." The terminology section is clearly written to inform, not instruct as a textbook would.
 * 12) You say "Currently, the article's structure follows the ideas expressed by a small group of political writers and genocide scholars, and the viewpoint of historians, especially, experts in history of some concrete country is provided mostly to support the ideas of "genocide scholars". That is a blatant violation of NPOV." The topic would be synthesis if not for the aggregator sources, so it is only reasonable that an article on a topic follow the sources that justify that article's existence (I call them "aggregator" sources because they aggregate multiple regimes in discussion of the communist mass killing topic, not because they aggregate multiple country-specific sources together as a tertiary source would. As I mentioned before, both the aggregator and single-country sources should be considered secondary sources of varying scopes). This is not a violation of NPOV policy. Per WP:YESPOV, "Achieving what the Wikipedia community understands as neutrality means carefully and critically analyzing a variety of reliable sources and then attempting to convey to the reader the information contained in them fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without editorial bias. Wikipedia aims to describe disputes, but not engage in them. Editors, while naturally having their own points of view, should strive in good faith to provide complete information, and not to promote one particular point of view over another. As such, the neutral point of view does not mean exclusion of certain points of view, but including all verifiable points of view which have sufficient due weight." The article does not exclude single-country points of view, it just cannot be based on them, due to synthesis policy.
 * 13) You say "Regarding the lead, you write that "the variety of terms used is both an important point and controversial in some instances." That is not true. Majority of historians do not care about all that terminology. The only term that causes debates among historians is "genocide", ...". As you say, "genocide" is controversial. As you indicated above, the use of "Holocaust" is also controversial. Other terms are not controversial, but have sometimes subtly distinct definitions that are important to note if we are trying to present the information found in the aggregator sources fairly. I understand that you think we should minimize the use of the aggregator sources and emphasize the single-country sources, but I have significant synthesis concerns with that approach. It is also based a reading of the weight policy that is inaccurate: weight is based on the proportions found in the body of reliable sources on the topic and should not be based on the proportion of reliable sources that do not mention the topic (i.e. single country sources that do not mention this article's topic should not be counted for weight among the sources that do). They can still be used, as long as their use is not OR or SYNTH.
 * 14) You say "... whether MKuCR should be presented as some single phenomenon, or that was a group of separate poorly connected events. The lead and the article essentially ignores this important question, and that is a serious NPOV problem." This material needs to be sourced before it can be included, otherwise we have an OR/SYNTH problem. If there are such sources, then there is no problem including this in the article. AmateurEditor (talk) 01:48, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
 * It would read better if we integrated the terminology into the article. So for example when we explain the different views we should also explain why the writers used their terminology. TFD (talk) 03:07, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Totally agree. The same idea came to my mind few hours ago. Indeed, "Terminology" section is needed only if these terms are being massively and frequently used in the article. If the term "classicide" is used by Mann only, we should introduce it during the discussion of Mann's views. The term "genocide" was never applied to MKuCR as whole, it is universally applied to Kampuchea, to some cases during Great Soviet famine, to some deportations, and it should be used there. Majority of terms and ("terms") are not used at all, and I see no need to keep them.
 * --Paul Siebert (talk) 06:01, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Agree too. "You say', if we throw away all those 'theorists' [...] it still would be possible to keep this article'. I doubt it. Without the aggregator sources, the charges of synthesis would have a point." That is exactly my point and perhaps my only disagreement with Paul Siebert. Of course, AmateurEditor is free to disagree on this, but that was an accurate summary. Regarding the point "[w]ouldn't the 'genocide scholars' be the 'real experts' for this particular topic? The narrowly focused single-country authors would be 'real experts' only in their individual fields of focus, not on this wider cross-country topic." I would still argue we would need at least a majority of Soviet and Communist studies scholars to agree. The truth is that genocide scholars and Soviet and Communist studies scholars disagree and is my point and reason why the article as currently structured should not exist, but it can fit well an article that scholarly discuss Communist regimes without limiting to mass killings; is really no one going to support this? Finally, as noted by Siebert above "[the term 'genocide' was never applied to MKuCR as whole, it is universally applied to Kampuchea, to some cases during Great Soviet famine, to some deportations, and it should be used there. Majority of terms and ("terms") are not used at all, and I see no need to keep them." Hence, those few genocide scholars are not enough in my view to support the topic as currently structured; however, they can be used to add a Communist genocide or Communist mass killing section at articles about genocides and mass killings. I have already added content from this article to other articles, where it would be more appropriate such as at Criticism of communist party rule (which may be copy edited and title-changed to add Analysis or Scholarly analysis in the title), Communist mass killing at Benjamin Valentino and democide, among others. Davide King (talk) 07:26, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
 * As I said in my number 5 comment above: "I have no problem with the terms being used throughout the article". I just don't think having a terminology section depends on that being done. AmateurEditor (talk) 06:49, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * AmateurEditor I disagree. We can speak about a longstanding consensus version only when a consensus building process is normal. If the article is fully protected or it is under severe editing restrictions, it is more correct to speak about a "frozen accident" (using physicists jargon). With regard to the rest, I would prefer to respond to #1 only, otherwise our exchange will be impossible to read and understand.
 * re 1. About criteria. The rule that was violated is as follows Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources. Similarly, do not combine different parts of one source to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by the source. If one reliable source says A, and another reliable source says B, do not join A and B together to imply a conclusion C that is not mentioned by either of the sources. How it is applicable to the section? There are many examples. The name "Terminology" implies that terminology is used by scholars who works in that area. Although some reservations are made that explain that is not the case, a reader will be mislead.
 * Indeed, if some article has a "terminology" section, a reader interprets that as the section that introduces some terminology that is relevant to that article. That is what this section implies. And it is simply false.
 * Imagine some article with "Terminology" section that starts with the words: "no commonly accepted terminology exists". That immediately causes cognitive dissonance: if no commonly accepted terminology exists, what this section is about? Is it about some terms thatg are being occasionally used by some authors? If that is the case, why all of that is needed? In reality, even genocide scholars themselves devotes no space in their works to the discussion of terminology issue.
 * Secondly, this section implies that the "terms" are used by leading experts in the field. That is also false. No counytry experts use this terminology, the only real term is "genocide", which does not need a separate definition.
 * Third, the section makes unjustified generalizations. For example, "repressions": it is a specific term used mostly for Stalinism. And this example is a good demonstration that it is much better not to keep a single section, but discuss each term where it is being used (or not to discuss it at all, because these terms are self-evident).
 * I see only one way to preserve this section. To move it to the bottom, and to change the title to "Attempts of genocide scholars to develop common terminology for Communist mass killing". That would be something I supported, because it may be useful to demonstrate who and why tries to introduce a common terminology, and that would not be misleading, because a small fraction of authors do see a significant commonality between these events and try to find a common mechanism in each of them.--Paul Siebert (talk) 06:01, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
 * , sorry if I interject, I suppose Attempts of genocide scholars to develop common terminology for Communist mass killing would be an accurate title but then why not simply add a section about Communism at Genocide, Mass killing, etc.? Why there must be an article about it when it is just "attempts of genocide scholars to develop common terminology for Communist mass killing" rather than a clear, main topic. I still would like to hear your thoughts about my proposal of creating a single article discussing scholarly analysis of Communist regimes that includes background, context, the rising of living standards, modernisation, lives saved (as discussed by Ellman and others) and repression, mass killings and famines with context and relevant, expert scholarly views highlighted rather than having so many Communist-related coatrack articles? Davide King (talk) 07:32, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I can provide many reasons why any attempts to delete this article will be fruitless, but one reason is sufficient: that will never happen. a significant part of Wikipedia community will be against that, and they will present several sources, including Valentino, Rosefielde, Black Book to support their position. And that will be sufficient for any closing admin (or an ordinary user) to conclude: "No consensus to delete/rename".
 * Therefore, let's better focus on article's improvement. --Paul Siebert (talk) 18:35, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
 * , this is interesting. Could you please clarify whether you think it should be deleted but you are for Keep only because a Delete "will never happen", or you are for Keep because you think a clear, main topic exists? I think a topic may exist, but it is no clear nor mainstream, so in my view it should not be a standalone article. Either way, I try not to be so pessimistic and I hope that if our reading of sources not supporting the main topic is indeed correct, then I would hope the admin will do the right thing and that those who are for Keep would not oppose deletion/merge, if our reading is indeed correct. I am working on a RfC about the main topic and I think it is more neutral than a RfD because many for Keep may be to keep the article, but they may disagree on the main topic, so it is a Keep for one topic and a Delete for another. If my reading of guidelines is correct, an article is supposed to have a clear, main topic; and that if there is no consensus for a clear, main topic, then delete/merge would be the obvious result. I would also argue that your reading of WP:ONUS is correct and that the status quo would be deletion/merge, considering the controversy of a sockpuppet creating the article in the first place. Finally, I believe my compromise of saving the actual content (I have already added most of it to more appropriate articles; it remains mainly the mass killings in the states that can be moved to each individual Communist country and event as part of an Estimates section) having a single Communist-related article about scholarly analysis not limited to mass killings and a Victims of Communism article structured as a popular fringe theory and something that "appears very frequently in various mass-media and popular literature" rather than an academic theory would be a fine compromise and may actually work. Is really no one going to support this?, , , , . Davide King (talk) 03:53, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I would object to deletion, because the topic really exists. The Black Book is one of the most influential books of late XX century, and one of the most controversial. My objections to this article is primarily its unencyclopaedic structure, a blatant lack of neutrality, and original research. The topic of this article is a discussion of the idea of "generic Communism", because this idea has many supporters and many opponents, and the discussion of the role of Communist ideology in mass killing. That would be the third part of the article. The first part should neutrally summarize the views of experts in history of each Communist states about the mechanism of mass killing onset in each particular case. For example, for Cambodia, experts see three important factors, and only one of them is the Maoist ideology. The second part of the article should provide a comparative analysis of separate mass killings events in communist states and other states. Thus, there are good studies that find commonalities and differences between mass killings in Cambodia and Indonesia, in Cambodia and Rwanda, etc. Taken together, that will allow us to paint a complex picture of events in Communist states, and to avoid both whitewashing Communist crimes and creating an image of Communism as the greatest evil of XX century.--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:48, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * , it would not be an actual deletion because I would propose this to be renamed as Victims of Communism, or something like, following the structure you outlined while making clear this is a more a popular theory and something that "appears very frequently in various mass-media and popular literature" rather than a widely accepted academic theory. I would definitely support the restructuring you suggested and outlined here, removal of all synthesis and original research. But until that actually happens, I will continue to propose a scholarly analysis article that includes background, context, the rising of living standards, modernisation, lives saved (as discussed by Ellman) and repression, mass killings and famines with context and relevant, expert scholarly views highlighted; and a Victims of Communism article about the popular theory and a merge of coatrack Communist-related articles such as Crimes against humanity under communist regimes, among others, here. Finally, which main topic do you actually support among those I listed here? You are free to add the one you propose, if I have not listed it there already. Davide King (talk) 05:06, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Paul Siebert, about your comment "We can speak about a longstanding consensus version only when a consensus building process is normal. If the article is fully protected or it is under severe editing restrictions, it is more correct to speak about a "frozen accident" (using physicists jargon)". I linked to diffs to show that there was substantial time (about 16 months) when the terminology section existed prior the period of the editing restrictions on the article. You're under no obligation to respond to each point in my last post, but I would rather you would respond to the numbered points where you have a significant disagreement, rather than bringing it up again later on. I thought the numbers would help keep things straight. About your comment "The name "Terminology" implies that terminology is used by scholars who works in that area. Although some reservations are made that explain that is not the case, a reader will be mislead.", scholars do use this terminology: the aggregator source scholars. Multiple excerpts are included in the article already showing the terminology discussion for several of the terms. See excerpts "a" through "d". Are more examples required? About your comment "if no commonly accepted terminology exists, what this section is about?", the section is about the variety of terms used and to explain the specifics of there being no commonly accepted terminology. We are supposed to be presenting the topic as we find it in the sources, warts and all. About your comment "this section implies that the "terms" are used by leading experts in the field. That is also false. No counytry experts use this terminology", I see you are ignoring my number 6 comment above, when I asked you "Wouldn't the "genocide scholars" be the "real experts" for this particular topic? The narrowly focused single-country authors would be "real experts" only in their individual fields of focus, not on this wider cross-country topic." About your comment "For example, "repressions": it is a specific term used mostly for Stalinism." As can be seen the in the excerpts section, "repression" has also been used generally, as in the title of "The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression" (and in excerpt "t") and by Krain 1997 (excerpt "ak"). If you insist on looking at just the single-country sources, you can find the term used by them for single countries as well. You seem to still be pushing the idea that the single-country sources are the sources we should be emphasizing, despite the obvious SYNTH problem that causes. AmateurEditor (talk) 06:49, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I skipped your #6. I looked through the excerpts "a - d", and my impression is that them, as well as the section as whole tells a story about a bunch of non-experts who are truing to propose various buzzwords to combine several tangentially related events into some single phenomenon.
 * Look, all of that seems to start from Rummel, who performed factor analysis of very crude (according to Harff) data for all state killings that he named "democide". He observed some significant correlation between totalitarianism and the number of victims. And, despite the fact that Correlation does not imply causation, that set a new paradigm, and some scholars continued to dig in that direction using either statistical approaches (such as Harff or Wayman&Tago), or speculations (like Valentino or Mann), or falsification (read the literature about a scandal around BB). Do they represent majority view of scholarly community? No.
 * In another, big world, there are experts in history of each separate country, and they use totally different approaches. They ignore writings of genocide scholars because they have little explanatory power. These country experts paint much more complex and accurate picture of the events that took place in Communist countries. And their views are dramatically underrepresented in this article, which provides a primitive and oversimplified picture of thoese very complex and conraversial events.
 * The only conclusion any attentive reader would draw from the "Terminology" section (including excerpts a-d) is "no terminology exists for MKuCR". However, if no "terminology" exists why this section is needed? That section is harmful, because, less attentive readers may get an impression that some well developed theory or theories exist for MKuCR, and that topic in a focus of modern scholarship. That is obviously not the case. Therefore, the section is harmful, misleading, and it wastes precious article's space, which could be used for much better purposes.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:16, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

, regarding "[y]ou seem to still be pushing the idea that the single-country sources are the sources we should be emphasizing, despite the obvious SYNTH problem that causes", that is my point. We should only use the few sources that discuss all them together such as The Black Book of Communism and Red Holocaust. We should not use Conquest as a source for the Soviet Union because The Great Terror discussed the Soviet Union only; we may mention Conquest if The Black Book of Communism or Red Holocaust mentions or quotes him, but we should not directly use The Great Terror, or any other single-country book, as a source, so maybe we actually agree on this? Of course, you believe The Black Book of Communism et al. are enough and support a standalone article. On the other hand, precisely because of the synthesis you highlighted, I believe the article as currently structured should not be a standalone article and it is not only unhelpful but it is actively harmful. I do no think the currently-structured article can be supported when scholars do not even agree on the terminology and there is no consensus among genocide scholars and Soviet and Communist studies scholars. The only Soviet and Communist studies scholar is Rosefielde, which is why I assume wrote "[n]ot only does this article present a fringe concept with scant coverage in academic sources, many of which are non-experts and politically biased (e.g., Rummel, Courtois) or simply not-notable (e.g., Valentino), with Rosefielde being perhaps the one exception." The article, as currently structured, can never support NPOV when those are the main theorists and the only few scholarly sources supporting the topic. On the other hand, an article titled Victims of Communism, discussing both the popular theory that "appears very frequently in various mass-media and popular literature" and the theory supported by those scholars, with criticism and response, can be supported because it would not act like it is a mainstream, or widely accepted, concept in academia as the currently-structured article implies. In addition, if we are going to report the events, we can not do that without providing context, which brings me to the point those sources are problematic because they all represent one POV. Would it not be better to discuss repression, mass killings and famines as part of a Communist scholarly analysis article, rather than limiting to them only? This would avoid most NPOV and synthesis violations, including the issue of the main topic either not being clear or not being supported by scholarship as a standalone topic. Davide King (talk) 07:49, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Davide King, if Conquest has information in his publications that are relevant to some part of this article, what is the problem with using him to include it? Wikipedia policy doesn't require, for example, every source that contributes to the George Washington article to be a full biography of George Washington. Supplemental sources can be used where helpful. The aggregator sources you have been citing are expert scholars in their fields of study, not "theorists". The topic of this article is not a theory, it is a set of events. The framing of those events is also not a theory, it is simply a topic. If you want to create another article about another topic ("a Communist scholarly analysis article"), then find sources to justify it and go do it. AmateurEditor (talk) 06:07, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * , I do not think the George Washington example is a good one. They do not need to be a full biography of George Washington but they do need to be about George Washington. Conquest is about the Great Terror in the Soviet Union, not mass killings under Communist regimes. I believe that is also what meant when making the example. Davide King (talk) 06:11, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * If you look at the "print sources" list at the George Washington article, three of the first four sources listed there are not about George Washington: "Benedict Arnold", "John Adams", and "Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1766". The Benedict Arnold source is cited in the article for this sentence, among others: "During mid-1780, Arnold began supplying British spymaster John André with sensitive information intended to compromise Washington and capture West Point, a key American defensive position on the Hudson River." The sentence helps to provide useful information to the reader despite not being directly about George Washington. These three sources can be thought of a supplemental sources, and there is no problem with this article having such things also. In the case of Conquest being cited for info on the Great Terror, that actually seems more directly related to large-scale killing under a communist regime. AmateurEditor (talk) 06:41, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Are those sources actually used in the article? If they are, are they used to support controversial claims rather than non-controversial ones? One issue with citing Conquest, or really any other who does not discuss them together, is that it implies Conquest is a proponent of the concept. This goes back to our different views on what the main topic actually is. Mine and others' understanding is that the main topic is supposed to be a concept outlined by Valentino and others rather than a list or report of mass killings under Communist regimes. Your understanding has the problem outlined by below, namely that "[w]as it a mass killing? Did it occur under a Communist regime? If the answer to both questions is yes, then add to article." But this is synthesis when sources discuss only one country, or do not follow the concept outlined by Valentino, Rummel and others. Davide King (talk) 08:49, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * "Are those sources actually used in the article?" I literally quoted the sentence used by the "Benedict Arnold" source in the George Washington article. Just having a non-aggregator source used in this article is not synthesis unless it is used "to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources", per WP:SYNTH. If the material a source is cited for in the article is accurate to the source being cited, it is not synthesis. If the only sources cited in this article were single-country sources, then the article as a whole would be synthesis, but I have repeatedly shown you the aggregator sources that justify the article, so that is not the case. Show me a sentence with synthesis in the article, citing Conquest or anyone else. If you find one, we'll delete it. AmateurEditor (talk) 07:29, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree with for why they are synthesis. Another synthesis would be Valentino, who proposes Communist mass killing as a subtype of mass killing, not mass killings under Communist regimes. The ones who may propose mass killings under Communist regimes are Courtois, Rosefielde and Rummel. Yet, as noted by, Courtois and Rummel are about "the evils of Communism in general" and "mass killings by governments in general", respectively. In addition, the introduction by Courtois, which is what caused most of the controversy, was not peer-reviewed and Rummel's work was published outside mainstream academic press. So we are left with Rosefield, the only one who is an actual Soviet and Communist studies scholar. We can not rely on a single source and this single source is problematic and controversial for trivalising the Holocaust and not being a mainstream view. The current article act like this is a mainstream view or, to quote , the entire topic "is presented as an uncontroversial academic theory." Another synthesis issue, again as outlined by The Four Deuces, "[w]as it a mass killing? Did it occur under a Communist regime? If the answer to both questions is yes, then add to article", even though "the article is about a topic that does not exist in reliable sources, hence is synthesis." Finally, the current title and lead simply invites further synthesis in adding any mass killing under a Communist regime. Davide King (talk) 07:47, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Conquest is synthesis because the article is supposed to be about mass killing under Communist regimes as a general concept, not a list of any mass killing that happened under a Communist regime. Under the current article, single-country experts are actually synthesis for the aforementioned reason. You wrote it yourself that "[Paul Siebert] seem[s] to still be pushing the idea that the single-country sources are the sources we should be emphasizing, despite the obvious SYNTH problem that causes." This can be easily avoided by making the article about scholarly analysis of Communist regimes and not limitating it to mass killings. In this case, relying on single-country experts would not only be encouraged but it would avoid synthesis since the article would be about scholarly analysis. Please, think about my proposal. Davide King (talk) 07:54, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks to Rick Norwood's analysis, I believe Mann is synthesis too. We write that "Mann has proposed the term classicide to mean the 'intended mass killing of entire social classes'" and that he "believe[s] that 'crime against humanity' is more appropriate than 'genocide' or 'politicide' when speaking of violence by communist regimes." While this is true and verified, this is synthesis precisely because Mann does not actually support the concept of mass killings under Communist regimes and he explictily says "[n]o Communist regime contemplated genocide." It is synthesis to imply that his terminology support the current article, or that his use of classicide or genocide is the same as mass killings under all or any Communist regimes as the article implies. This is further supported by the fact the book's title, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing, Communist mass killing is not the main topic. Indeed, it says "[t]his comprehensive study of international ethnic cleansing provides in-depth coverage of its occurrences in Armenia, Nazi Germany, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, and Rwanda, as well as cases of lesser violence in early modern Europe and in contemporary India and Indonesia. After presenting a general theory of why serious conflict emerges and how it escalates into mass murder, Michael Mann offers suggestions on how to avoid such escalation in the future." In other words, this is a useful source for Ethnic cleansing or/and Genocide, not for mass killings under Communist regimes. It is the very definition of synthesis to imply otherwise. Davide King (talk) 13:21, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

This talk page discussion is about some concrete section. I moved the posts that are not relevant to it to a separate section. Please, discuss only "Terminology" here.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:17, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

There is one more problem with that section, and that problem in not fixable. This section implies that MKuCR is some single phenomenon, so it needs, like Holocaust, some uniform terminology. That is an absolutely not true. Thus, "classicide" can be applied to dekulakizatioin, but can hardly be applied to the Great Purge (many workers and many Communists were killed as a result of it, so it was definitely not directed at some concrete class or social group). The same can be said about "genocide".

In contrast, the section implies scholars are trying to propose some single term for all deaths caused by Communist regime. Meanwhile, even Valentino didn't claim that. He applied "dispossessive mass killing" to some mass killings, whereas other cases were just ordinary mass killings, not related to Communism.

The only term that covers MKuCR as whole is "democide". However, when Rummel introduced his "democide", he defined it deliberately broadly, as any killing of people by its state. Therefore, "democide" is the umbrella term that has zero explanatory power, it by no means can help a reader to understand anything. The fact that it sounds very similar to "genocide" is also very misleading. "Democide" was introduced primarily for sake of facilitation of statistical analysis of deaths caused by government, and it is intrinsically unable to explain anything. Therefore, to claim that "Communist mass killings were a denmocide" is a pure tautology: yes, when some state kills its citizens, that is democide, so what? Killing of Chinese peasants by starvation in Great Leap Forward and killing of George Floyd in modern US are instances of democide. How calling something "democide" can explain anything?

My speciality is science, and I know that the more advanced and well developed some field of knowledge is, the less confusing terminology it uses. A misterious object with a singularity in the middle is called just a "black hole", the rate of a chemical reaction is called just "reaction rate". The principle that says that a coordinate of some object and its momentum cannot be know with absolute precision simultaneously is called just "uncertainty principle". All of that deals with a real science.

Do you really think by discussing the "terms" that explain nothing and mislead a reader we make the article more trustworthy and do not discredit Wikipedia? Do you really believe in that?--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:41, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Articles are supposed to be comprehensive of their topics and the different terms used about this topic simply are part of the topic that must be covered in some way. The current "Terminology" section does a decent job of that and I don't know what else to say about your "implies" points that I haven't already said. AmateurEditor (talk) 07:17, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Ironically, this article itself fails "to be comprehensive of their topics", especially with the lead which, as noted by, fail to clarify the topic and summarise the body. It does not "identifies a notable topic" clearly and it does not "summarizes that topic comprehensively." Davide King (talk) 03:44, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Spurious tags
The section and heading tagging is getting a bit out of hand and should be removed. PackMecEng (talk) 04:57, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * There would be no need for it if this article actually followed guidelines. We are discussing all this and there is a RfC, so they should stay until the matters are actually solved. I may remove the two about the section and leave just the two at the top. Davide King (talk) 05:11, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * While I appreciate you bringing up issues, at great length, on the talk page overly tagging an article can start to be disruptive. Especially when they all essentially repeat the same thing. PackMecEng (talk) 05:14, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I did this. I hope this is a good compromise that avoids overtagging. Davide King (talk) 05:18, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Yup, fine by me I suppose. I saw it after my previous post, sorry about that. PackMecEng (talk) 05:19, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

RfC about the main topic
What is, or should be, the main topic of this article?
 * 1) Communist genocide/mass killing
 * 2) Crimes against humanity/Mass killings under Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot
 * 3) Double genocide theory
 * 4) Excess deaths under Communist regimes
 * 5) List of Communist mass killings
 * 6) Mass killings under Communist regimes
 * 7) Scholarly analysis of Communist regimes
 * 8) Victims of Communism

What is the status of the current article's main topic?
 * 1) The topic does exist and it is mainstream
 * 2) The topic does exist, but it is a minority or fringe view.
 * 3) The topic does not exist and the article should be deleted/merged, or a new, clearer main topic established.

You are free to add more main topic possibilities. Below, I will summarise how each main topic could be structured. Please, do not just state your support for a main topic or that it does exist, without providing an analysis of sources; same thing for those who do not think the topic exists. Davide King (talk) 06:46, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

You are free to express your lack of support if you do not support any of those topics as standalone articles and answer the second question only. However, it is important that if you support one or more topics, you clarify that and answer the second question as this will help us reach a consensus on how to structure the topic. In short, those supporting at least one topic should answer both questions while those not supporting any of those topics can answer the second question only. Davide King (talk) 12:33, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * 7 and 8 as separate articles. Those are the only two clear and notable main topics. Structured as outlined below, those are the only two clear main topics that would respect NPOV as extensively discussed by me in above threads and at Discussion here. 7 would include and discuss 1, 2, 4 and 5 while this article would discuss 3 and 8 which are essentially the same thing. I argue that 1, 2, 4 and 6 should be discussed at 7 because they do no warrant a standalone article because they do not represent a consensus among scholars but only that a few authors have proposed the theory. As extensively discussed below, the author and source used to support those main topics as standalone article either fails or are problematic. Those authors are either non-notable (Valentino according to and Karlsson according to  here) or non-experts and too much politically biased (Courtois, Rummel et al.), with only Rosefield being perhaps the exception as he is the only Soviet and Communist studies scholar; yet, his Red Holocaust is controversial and represents historical revisionism in presenting Communism and Nazism as equal; so we are left with no scholarly sources for a standalone article.
 * Since this theory has appeared very frequently in various mass-media and popular literature, many users, including me, have been guilty of assuming that the topic exists and it is supported by scholarship when that is not case. If this was not enough, I argue that keeping this article as it currently is, it is not only unhelpful but it is actively harmful and may be a cause of circular reporting or citogenisis since results on Google Scholar of "mass killings under communist regimes" result in reference to this article, which is violating original research, synthesis and NPOV as is extensively discussed in my reasoning below and by others on this talk page and its archives.
 * 3 and even if 2 was true, it would only warrant 3/8 or 7 as main topic, as outlined below, for an article about mass killings under Communist regimes. When scholars do not even agree on the terminology and there is no consensus among genocide scholars and Soviet and Communist studies scholars on it, this should not be a standalone article but it should be discussed in an article about scholarly analysis of Communist regimes, at each proponent's page (as I have done at Benjamin Valentino) or at Mass killing. Finally, I conclude an implicit, systematic bias may have been at play here that avoided the article not to be deleted/merged when it should have been deleted/merged, as I see no other reason how one, who makes an analysis of sources, can conclude it is a main topic widely accepted by mainstream scholarship when it is not the case at all.
 * My argument is that this article is a mix of all those topics I listed below. The article takes the Communist genocide/mass killing concept from Mann, Straus (who is merely reviewing rather than proposing the concept) and Valentino, even though the first is about Classicide, the second is about genocide and the third is a chapter about genocides and mass killings in the 20th century (with Communism simply being one type), then listing all mass killings under Stalin, Mao and Pol Pol, and adding all excess deaths under all Communist regimes, even as only few scholars and from one side list all non-combatant victims (famines, wars, etc.), to suggest all those are victims of Communism, its more accurate title that, however, does not really solve all those issues (undue weight, original research, synthesis, more than one topic, NPOV, etc.) I have highlighted. I support 7 as a separate article and 8 as a renaming and full, complete restructuring and rewriting of this article. Davide King (talk) 07:24, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Summary of main topics
Note that the names I give are simply an example and you can support a main topic as I summarised while opposing the name I used and vice versa. You are free to propose a name for the main topic as those are not definitive and are simply possible example for each main topic.
 * 1) Communist genocide/mass killing – this main topic would mainly discusses Communism as a new category of genocide and/or mass killings as outlined by Benjamin Valentino in Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th Century ("Communist Mass Killing"). Scott Straus' "Second-Generation Comparative Research on Genocide" merely reviews Valentino's work.
 * 2) Crimes against humanity/Mass killings under Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot – this main topic would mainly discusses crimes against humanity and mass killings under Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot as outlined by Klas-Göran Karlsson et al. in Crimes Against Humanity under Communist Regimes and would likely be merged with Crimes against humanity under communist regimes.
 * 3) Double genocide theory – the main topic would be the double genocide theory as outlined in "From 'Double Genocide' to 'the New Jews': Holocaust, Genocide and Mass Violence in Post-Communist Memorial Museums", The Holocaust/Genocide Template in Eastern Europe and "Holocaust Revisionism, Ultranationalism, and the Nazi/Soviet "Double Genocide" Debate in Eastern Europe".
 * 4) Excess deaths under Communist regimes – the main topic would be about excess deaths under Communist regimes as outlined by Stéphane Courtois, Steven Rosefielde and Rudolph Rummel in The Black Book of Communism, Red Holocaust and Death by Government, respectively. I suppose the only difference with the topic of Communist mass killing(s) is that this one would include all famines, war deaths, etc.
 * 5) List of Communist mass killings – the main topic would be a List article and structured as "a list, with links to main articles about the notable incidents, and links to similar lists about Capitalist genocides, US, British Empire, etc." as outlined here by.
 * 6) Mass killings under Communist regimes – the current article which essentially includes and discusses all of the above, except the double genocide theory.
 * 7) Scholarly analysis of Communist regimes – the main topic would be a scholarly analysis of Communist regimes, including background, context, the rising of living standards, modernisation, lives saved (as discussed by Michael Ellman et al.) and political repression, religious persecutions, mass killings and famines with context and scholarly debates, as discussed here, in a single article rather than having so many Communist-related coatracked articles.
 * 8) Victims of Communism – the main topic would be the theory as outlined here and here by . In my understanding, this theory appears very frequently in various mass-media and popular literature but a minority, if not fringe, among scholars. It would be described as a popular theory outside academia and scholarship, being pushed by the Prague Declaration, anti-communist organisations and fringe media such as The Epoch Times and the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation which have recently added COVID-19 victims as victims of Communism. A good source for a start is the introduction of The Criminalisation of Communism in the European Political Space after the Cold War (2018) by Laure Neumeyer (Routledge).

You are free to add main topics you have individuated and to describe how you would structure the proposed article. You are free to add more research and analysis of sources. I believe it is about time we actually weight all our discussion and have a RfC about it because I agree with Paul Siebert that this is being fruitless, without a RfC. Davide King (talk) 06:47, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * 1) This should be covered at Benjamin Valentino, no need for a separate article.
 * 2) What is the connection between Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot? They were often at odds. This has the same problem as the current article.
 * No, double genocide theory is considerably narrower. It only applies to the parts of Eastern Europe that were occupied by both Nazi and Soviet powers at some point.
 * 1) I think that excess deaths should be addressed by country, such as Excess deaths in the Soviet Union, Excess deaths in the Khmer Rouge, etc. This does not meet the criteria in broad-concept article because to be an expert on deaths in one country does not indicate expertise in a different country.
 * 2) Undecided on the merits of creating such a list.
 * 3) Issues with the current article framing have been extensively discussed above. Lumping together various subjects into one is also not ideal.
 * 4) I think it already exists, at Communism.
 * 5) Moving the current article to this title would be an improvement, then we could rewrite from there. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  07:00, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * , thanks for your comments. As you can see from by vote above, I agree most of those topic are problematic but I have added them because this article actually discuss them together. As for 4, I am not sure that may warrant standalone-articles as they may be discussed in an Estimate section at each Communist country's history. As for 7, my proposal is to make it about scholarly analysis of Communist regimes, i.e. we would essentially report scholarly research and what is the consensus, the disputes, etc. in the scholarship field of Communist regimes. Communism is mainly about the philosophy and movement; and should not be limited to Communist regimes. It also does not include scholarly research the way I am intending and proposing for 7. Davide King (talk) 07:33, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Reasoning
6 and 7 are the only two clear and notable main topics that would respect NPOV. All other main topics either do not exist or exist but are a minority view, so even if the latter was true, it would still not warrant a standalone article because its proponents, to quote, are "a bunch of 'genocide scholars', who are attempting to propose their own buzzwords, are a just marginal group of authors, who are being essentially ignored by real experts in Russian Civil war, Stalinist repressions, Chinese Cultural revolution, Cambodian genocide, etc (see gscholar results, which you ignored)." They can be discussed as part of topic 6 and 7 but we can not base a main topic on them when they represent a minority. The current article and all other main topics are either non-notable (see Google Scholar et al. analysis below), filled up with original research, synthesis and NPOV violations by giving undue weight to the few authors or scholars who proposed the topic, even though they are not experts in Communist studies. If this was not enough, I would still argue that several of sources used to support the topic do not actually support it, certainly not as currently structured.

As an example, we can not use Valentino to support the topic and talks about Afhganistan and other Communist regimes not mentioned nor discussed, or that Communism is to blame, when Valentino does not do either. Valentino does not discuss Afghanistan as Communist mass killing but as counter-guerilla mass killing, so we should not either, otherwise that is synthesis. Valentino does not assert that genocide is caused by any particular ideology but rather says that it occurs when power is in the hands of one person or a small number of people, so we should not have a POV-pushing about how some authors feel Communism is to blame when they are not discussing the same main topic. In other words, we should respect and follow the structure literature follows. I mentioned Valentino, but this goes for any source. We should not mix them up as the current article does. So if you are supporting one main topic citing Valentino as proof that the main topic exists and is notable, then you actually ought to follow Valentino analysis and not discuss or make conclusions Valentino never made or wrote about it, nor discuss Communist regimes not mentioned in the literature just because both were Communist regimes; that is original research and synthesis. As another example, if you vote for the main topic to be "The Big Three", then the article ought to discuss those three only as given sources to support the main topic do. As noted by Paul Siebert, Valentino did not lump all Communist regimes together; he did not write about Afghanistan as Communist mass killing, yet this article does so, even though Valentino and other scholars did not discuss it at all. There is also no agreement on the reading of Valentino. Those who support the topic argue that Valentino does support the topic too (he does support topic 1 but he is used to support topic 2, 4 and 5) but others and I disagree. As argued here by, "[t]he [Valentino] chapter does not assert that genocide is caused by any particular id[e]ology but rather says that it occurs when power is in the hands of one person or a small number of people. A quote shows that the author's views are the opposite of the views given in this article, 'Communism has a bloody record, but most regimes that have described themselves as communist or been described as such by others have not engaged in mass killing.'"

Here and here, and  Rick Norwood, respectively, gave a perfectly good summary of what is wrong with those main topic I do not support 1–2, 4 and 6 as standalone articles. Here, Commodore Sloat went through the source and in my view gave a convincing argument for why they do not support the topic. As noted here by, "the sources quoted are either FRINGE or don't actually theorise any cause, or explicitly claim the cause is greater than, or less than, communism." Even The Black Book of Communism only "presents a number of chapters on single country studies, it presents no cross-cultural comparison, there is no discussion of "Mass killing[/Any other bad thing] in Communism." As noted here by, Valentino mentions that "other '[m]ass killings on a smaller scale also appear to have been carried out in other countries,' but this article uses a passing mention as a coatrack to provide extensive text on these other countries. As a result, the article does not follow the topic in the sources, doesn't explain what their authors concluded, but instead becomes a list article." Here, here and here, C.J. Griffin and Rick Norwood, respectively, gave a good summary of how many of the authors who may be used to support the topic are either non-expert, fringe, or non-notable. Here, The Four Deuces explains how George Watson, whose Lost Literature of Socialism we use in the article, who wrote that Adolf Hitler was a Marxist and argued that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were responsible for coming up with the idea of genocide, is fringe. Here, came closest to the crux of the matter, namely that "several of the sources cited at length [...] are not as high-profile as we treat them here, which makes me think we might be giving that argument undue weight; and more generally the entire topic of the section is presented as an uncontroversial academic theory, which is certainly not a complete summary of it."

As also noted here by, the current article feels like "there is an attempt here to group all the mass killings together and just imply it is because of 'communism', while we are talking here about many different conflicts and historical events with wildly different historical backgrounds." The only sources that may support the current topic are Courtois, Rosefielde, Rummels and Valentino; and I just went through to explain why they are problematic but let us go deeper. Sources in the article gives a misleading look, as most of them are either about a singular country (it would be original research and synthesis to lump those with the main topic), are not about the main topic or are about a different topic (i.e. they should be discussed as part of Genocide and Mass killing articles, especially since many are not actually Communist studies scholar but genocide scholars. In addition, some sources only gives a passive mention about the estimates or are simply not discussing the main topic. As an example, we cite Matthew White, who is a popular historian writer and self-described anthropologist; yet, not only he is undue and non-expert on the topic but even ignoring this, he is only discussing the estimates in passive mentions and the book is titled Atrocities: The 100 Deadliest Episodes in Human History. This is not a book about Communist mass killings and many sources follow this same pattern. In conclusion, my argument is an article that respects NPOV can not be created with such sources.

Those sources are the only few that may support the topic; and that is why I propose this, including a comparative analysis of Communist regimes such as under Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, to be discussed in a single article about scholarly analysis of Communist regimes, respecting due weight; and only in the future, either to space issues or there is a scholar literature to support it, we may have separate articles. Until then, the best solution would be to have topic 6 and 7 as a separate articles; and that both articles would mention and discuss all those other topics, giving each due weight, so they would not be deleted or removed. In my view, this is a good solution and compromise, as it would solve most of the issue related to original research, synthesis and especially NPOV, while content would be moved and better discussed and contextualised in topics 6 and 7. The currently-structured article is more harmful than helpful and may be a cause of circular reporting or citogenisis as well as confrimation bias.

Finally, I would note to be aware of ownership of content and that anti-communism, while not as widespread or relevant as in the Cold War, must be keep in mind since I have read many comments that were for Keep essentially being per sources or that Communist mass killings happened, which no one denies and both of which have missed the issue of the unclear main topic and other users' counterargument or analysis of sources. In other words, Communist mass killings appears very frequently in various mass-media and popular literature, so we are all influenced by the former, but scholarship is a different beast and is not one-sided as discussed popularly. This is not just my personal views but the views of several legitimate scholars as mentioned here by C.J. Griffin. That mass killings under Communist regimes did indeed happen does not justify we do not respect the guidelines about a clear, main topic; and that this does not change the fact a literature based on a main topic as currently structured in the article does not exist or is a minority at best.

This seems to be a good summary of main arguments against the currently-structured article. You are free to add those in favour of the currently-structured article. Davide King (talk) 07:01, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Google Scholar et al. analysis of sources

 * 1) "communist genocide" and "communist mass killing"
 * 2) "crimes against humanity under communist regimes"
 * 3) "double genocide theory"
 * 4) "communist death toll", "communist death tolls" and "communist deaths"
 * 5) "communist mass killings"
 * 6) "mass killings under communism" and "mass killings under communist regimes"
 * 7) "analysis of communism", "analysis of communist regimes" and "communist regimes"
 * 8) "communist victims" and "victims of communism"

You are free to add more research and analysis of sources. Davide King (talk) 06:48, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Continuing from here, we are left only with Courtois (The Black Book of Communism), Rosefielde (Red Holocaust), Rummels (Death by Government), Straus ("Second-Generation Comparative Research on Genocide") and Valentino ("Communist Mass Killing" in Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th Century). However, the only books who may support the topic are really only The Black Book of Communism and Red Holocaust. Rummels' work is about democide, which is another topic and is not exclusive to Communist regimes. Both Straus and Valentino's wrork is about genocide, with Communist proposed as a new category. In addition, Straus is mainly reviewing Valentino and others' work rather than proposing the main topic as Valentino did. Those are not all the same thing.

So we are left only with Courtois and Rosefielde's work. The Black Book of Communism is controversial; this does not mean it is unreliable but that it presents one views of the events. In addition, several users, as discussed above, gave convincing arguments in my view for why even The Black Book of Communism does not actually support the topic, only its introduction does. However, as noted here by, both the introduction to The Black Book of Communism and Rummel's Death by Government were published outside the academic mainstream and not subjected to peer-review; indeed, it is the introduction the major source of controversy. If this was not enough, The Four Deuces also gave a convincing argument for why neither source actually support the topic, namely that "the first one was about the evils of Communism in general, while the second was about mass killings by governments in general." This is a problem with many of the sources themselves, with fringe sources such as George Watson supporting the first topic and other being about genocide and mass killings in general, i.e. this should be discussed at Genocide and Mass killing articles. In addition, even some of the authors of The Black Book of Communism dissociated themselves from it. This was not merely about the estimates but about how Communism was compared to Nazism and even argued it was actually worse because it killed more; and in general of linking all mass killings, famines and excess deaths to communism as ideology. Rummel was a political scientist, published several of his works such as the aforementioned Death by Government outside academic mainstream press and without peer-review, his estimates have been extensively criticised and in general he is not really relied on as a mainstream source on Communist regimes. In other words, those are not experts about Communist countries and some are not notable. According to, the only exception may be Rosefielde, yet Red Holocaust is problematic. In the article, we write: "According to Jörg Hackmann, this term is not popular among scholars in Germany or internationally.[i] Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine writes that usage of this term 'allows the reality it describes to immediately attain, in the Western mind, a status equal to that of the extermination of the Jews by the Nazi regime.'[k][12] Michael Shafir writes that the use of the term supports the 'competitive martyrdom component of Double Genocide', a theory whose worst version is Holocaust obfuscation.[13] George Voicu states that Leon Volovici has 'rightfully condemned the abusive use of this concept as an attempt to 'usurp' and undermine a symbol specific to the history of European Jews.'"

That this is Holocaust trivalisation is also supported by Heni, Clemens (Fall 2008). "Secondary Anti-Semitism: From Hard-Core to Soft-Core Denial of the Shoah". Jewish Political Studies Review. Jerusalem. 20 (3/4): 73–92, 218. An analysis of sources through Google Scholar et al. shows they do not actually support the topic; they certainly do not support the topic 6, i.e. the article as currently structured, which mixes all those topics together. In my view, sources only support the topics 7 and 8 as extensively outlined above. Davide King (talk) 07:08, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Here, gave a good and concise analysis for why sources used to support the current article do not actually support it. Some of those I already analysed here, but they discussed others as well. "All of these examples are from brief quotes supplied in defense of the article. All suggest or state that the books are not explicitly linking mass killings with communism." In addition, I would note that none of those are discussing mass killings under Communist regimes as the currently article does; or, in other words, Communism, Communist mass killing and mass killings under Communist regimes "[are] not the book[s'] main focus." Davide King (talk) 12:59, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

In this sense, the currently-structured article, apart from synthesis and other issues, also violates WP:RS/AC. Davide King (talk) 13:49, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Comments
I will support what, will support. All section (including this) became so much flooded with information, comments, like an online blog or chatlist, 30 days would not even be enough to investigate or read fully. You should a little bit stop flooding, you expressed countless times your stance. More WP:WALLOFTEXT will likely to be ignored, don't expect anyone to be convinced just becuase they will be fed up being bombarded with lengthy long essays (upwards, down, Jesus, just this section has 3 flood subsections, practically you discuss with yourself...).(KIENGIR (talk) 01:36, 19 November 2020 (UTC))
 * This comment amounts to unsupported and unsubstantiated personal attacks. We have, , , , and  who all gave very convincing and reseanoble summaries of the problem of this article. You seem to assume that since mass killings indeed happened under Communist regimes, then there ought of be an article documenting them, but this completely misses the point of mine and all those users' arguments. Maybe it is not us the problem but those who essentially amount to ownership and a bias in favour of keeping this article, which showed when you argued for Communism to be a category at both Authoritarianism and Totalitarianism. So it is not me or all those users who are 'pro-Communism' or 'Communists'; it is those who are in favour of keeping this article exactly as it is that are the problem to any solution. Davide King (talk) 03:41, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * RfCs should be concise. Bear in mind that we are inviting editors who are not familiar with the article to comment. I would withdraw it until we can offer a concise question. TFD (talk) 04:18, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * , this is a fair criticism I can agree with. However, since we have been discussing this at length, I supposed this could be helpful in helping us understand where we stand on the main topic and whether it does actually exist or not, and whether it is mainstream, fringe or something else. I agree that for those who have not actually followed the whole discussion is problematic but something must be done, as it is clear this article has problems and denying this will only take us farther apart from finding a solution. Davide King (talk) 04:32, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * No, it has not nothing to do with any "personal attack", just don't try again with this. Your answer is evading away of what I said, there was no no need for mass pinging or describe again what you think, and assuming content inssues. Also, I did not own any article, as well never supported any bias (just because you were not aware correctly about some procedures and guidelines), as well I did not say anything about your or other user's stance of "pro-Communism or Communists" or whatsoever, please avoid such speculations. Simply you have to see not the number of repeating arguments or the length will convince people, but possibly they will make them WP:TLDR.(KIENGIR (talk) 07:47, 19 November 2020 (UTC))
 * The reason why I started this RfC was exactly to avoid we continued to have long and fruitless discussion as above. We should discuss this one only now and decide one clear, main topic. So you would have a point if this was just another thread, but it is not; it is a RfC. Maybe can help in make it more concise, but I tried to summarise all the arguments above exactly so that those who have not followed the discussion could understand it. Davide King (talk) 08:19, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, anyone who ended up here saw an RFC header, and after three subsections + 1 collapsible (!) section full with lengthy contemplations mostly from one user, so this is the point to stop and let others to have time and read, if they did not lost so far the incentive for it. In case the discussion will grow in a near exponential way/amount as well here, then regardless of any intended goal this "section" won't be different like the others.(KIENGIR (talk) 14:43, 19 November 2020 (UTC))

I agree with KIENGIR that that RfC is poorly formulated, and it will not lead to anything useful. There should be preferably a single question with a binary answer. Davide King, taking into account that RfC is supposed to be closed by an uninvolved user, I doubt they will be able to adequately summarize all responses to each question. Therefore, it is quite likely there will be no closure, and it will be archived. I propose you to withdraw it, to discuss that with other participants of the talk page discussion, and to reopen the RfC again when a better question has been proposed.

I disagree with KIENGIR's position: "I will support what, will support." That is a partisan approach, and RfC is not a !vote. If you have no own ideas, voting means nothing. Remember, if an RfC was closed just by a vote count, its trustworthiness is low, and its results may be contested. By the way, walls of text are partially a result of the discussion between me and AmateurEditor, and its length is not only my fault. --Paul Siebert (talk) 16:20, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Why not a RM to Victims of Communism? (t &#183; c)  buidhe  19:10, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * , I hope you noticed my "partisan position" is an irony to the situation described (TDLR/comment commando e.g.), you can be sure I know RFC rules etc., I would add I have my own ideas, and shared as well, and I don't think your discussion with Amateureditor would be the problem (if it would be like so, I would have told it).(KIENGIR (talk) 19:18, 19 November 2020 (UTC))
 * KIENGIR, actually, I was disappointed because I wanted to see you ideas, not whom you support.
 * buidhe, thanks to AmateurEditor, I've read more on that subject, and now I see the problem at somewhat different angle.
 * First, the "aggregator sources vs single country sources" is a false dichotomy. In reality, several groups of "aggregator sources" exist, and only one group combines Communist states together. Other groups combine together backward countries with resource economy and strong political tensions (obviously, China, Cambodia and Soviet Russia fit these criteria, but many non-Communist states fit too). Another group combines East Asian genocides (China, Cambodia, Indonesia), but excludes USSR. Some sources combine Cambodia, Rwanda and Yugoslavia. I haven't finished reading, but it seems other types of aggregator sources exist. Therefore, "MKuCR" is a poor choice of a topic, because it artificially leaves certain types of aggregator sources beyond the scope. That means, the article and its topic violates our neutrality policy.
 * Second, I found that the fraction of the authors who really cares about proper terminology is negligible. They freely use "political genocide", "mass killings" etc for the same event, so any discussion of terminology is a kind of original research.
 * Third, the group of sources that combines MKuCR in one category is doing that in a context of the total number of victims, and that is done to convey an idea that Communism was the greatest evil. Therefore, if we group mass killings that happened under Communist regimes, it is necessary to explain that that is just one approach, out of many, and that grouping is accompanied to convey some very concrete idea. It is also necessary to say that that approach, and that idea is advocated by a limited group of authors, who has some supporters and some opponents. It is also necessary to briefly outline the views of other schools on the same events.
 * Therefore, the article should be totally rewritten. Currently, it tells "How many people were killed, why Communism is a primary cause of that, and how concretely those killings took place". A new version of the article should say: "Why some authors combine mass killings in Communist states together, which events fall into that category according to them, which conclusions do they draw from that, how their theories are accepted by other scholars".
 * If you think renaming to "Victims of Communism" will better serve to that goal, please, explain me why. In my opinion, both titles are bad. I would prefer "Communism and mass killings", or something of that kind: that article should discuss a linkage between Communism and mass killing, according to some authors.
 * I do not insist on that title, if you can propose some better title, you are more than welcome to do that.--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:00, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * , I absolutely support that "the article should be totally rewritten" and I think we actually have a plurality of support for doing just that. However, I disagree with your name proposal. I do not see how Communism and mass killings is any better than the current article. I would say it is even worse because it gives an ever greater link between communism and mass killings, which is not supported by WP:RS/AC.
 * Even Communist regimes/states and mass killings would be problematic because there have been Communist regimes who did not engage in mass killings (I am sure those theorists would argue because they were short-lived but we can not use what if arguments to argue that communism is inherently linked to mass killings) and even Valentino and others said that not all Communist regimes did that, so it would be a misleading and problematic title.
 * Ironically, Victims of Communism would be the perfect title because that is exactly the narrative pushed by its proponents and is a term actually used, unlike mass killings under Communist regimes. I argue that in light of your correct analysis of the terminology section, we should be especially wary of using mass killings or any of that terminology for the article's title because "any attempts to develop a universally-accepted terminology describing mass killings of non-combatants was a complete failure."
 * I also agree with that we should not repeat the events, we should only report the theory. Only a scholarly analysis of Communist regimes, not limited to mass killings, can support the context and background you propose and I support. We should simply report the estimates, link the various events but not going in detail as the current article does. If you want to do that, then we should have a Scholarly analysis of Communist regimes where we discuss background, context, the rising of living standards, modernisation, lives saved (as discussed by Michael Ellman et al.) and political repression, religious persecutions, mass killings and famines with context and scholarly debates, as discussed here, in a single article rather than having so many Communist-related coatracked articles. Davide King (talk) 05:48, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * , I can agree it was poorly formulated, but I believe the essential questions were correct. What is the actual, clear main topic? Does the topic exist? If yes, is it mainstream, or is it a minority or fringe view? If no, should the article be deleted/merged, or a new, clearer main topic established? I think the main issues were the overtly length but that was because I was trying to explain the issues and discussion to those who have not followed it and having to explain what each main topic would entail and be structured like. I think it would still be helpful if we could answer those questions and see where we stand. I do not think this is something that can be solved by univolved editors because one ought to follow our discussion to understand our arguments. Because so far, one just thinks of The Black Book of Communism and believes the topic does exist, ignoring our arguments that sources do not support the current article. Davide King (talk) 05:35, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Paul Siebert, my ideas I won't repeat especially the reasons I draw the attention, so everything I stated on that section should be regarded especially inside its framework.
 * , if we'd do the renaming you propose, would it end this issue completely? Will this stop the highly increasing comments and other issues regarding the article?(KIENGIR (talk) 17:25, 20 November 2020 (UTC))

The main problem with that article that it pretends it provides a summary of some well defined topic. That is not the case. The article creates a false impression that the linkage between Communism and mass killings was clearly established and acknowledged by a scholarly community, and the only remaining problems are how many victims were killed and what term describes this event better. That is not true, that is a minority POV, and that article is a stain on Wikipedia. Do we need this article? My answer is: definitely yes! However, its topic should be defined correctly. Below I explain why I believe "Communism and mass killing" may resolve the problem.

My rationale will be added here:
 * Wall of text
 * A long text will be added here if my proposal will face an opposition.


 * End of the wall of text
 * Conclusion

The title "Communism and mass killings" will allow us: That would be a good article that would cover an interesting and important topic (which is relevant to resurrection of antisemitism and nationalism in many modern countries.
 * to clearly explain that a limited number of authors argue that Communists killed more that all words wars, Nazi and anybody else, AND that means Communism was much greater evil that Nazism.
 * to explain how they came to that conclusion, where they obtained the numbers, and how they interpreted them.
 * to tell who supports this view, and how they interpret them.
 * to explain what political movements use these ideas, and how they are used.
 * Finally, we explain how a scholarly community accepts these views, and what other theories say about MKuCR.

The article should not tell about each separate mass killings, because each of them has its own article, so links should be sufficient. providing a summary is possible and desirable in such articles as World war II, which tells about some clearly defined topic. In contrast, MKuCR is NOT a clearly defined topic (I have already explained that briefly, but I can elaborate on that in my future WoT if I'll see that is necessary). Which topic is really clearly defined is the idea about the linkage between mass killings and Communism. This idea should be a subject of the article, and "Communism and mass killing" is the best title for such an article. Other titles, such as "Double genocide theory" may also serve that goal, however, the latter refers to some concrete term "Double genocide", which is not used by all authors whose views will be discussed in that article. In contrast "Communism and mass killing" (or vise versa) is an umbrella term that can cover all theories of that kind, including double genocide.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:11, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * , do you think you can create a sandbox about your proposed article? We literally have Talk:Mass killings under communist regimes/sandbox for that. I think it would also be helpful if and  did that, so we can see what are the differences, if there are any, or if we disagree only on the title. I could help with copy editing both sandboxes. Davide King (talk) 08:29, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Exactly. I think we need to come to some common vision of the article, and only after that an RfC can be initiated. Although seems to have a different vision of the problem, I would be glad if they joined us too. Meanwhile,  it would be good if you withdrawn your RfC as a proposer, because it is a little bit premature. IMO, other editors may feel uncomfortable if their input is too frequently requested, so their participation in the second (future) RfC will be lower that it is desirable.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:32, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * , that makes sense. already removed the RfC tag, so it is already withdrawn, although I think it would still be helpful if you and others could give a short summary of your thoughts on each listed main topic as Buidhe did here to get an idea on where we stand. Davide King (talk) 08:01, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Paul Siebert, I have not been reading the posts on this page for the last few days, but I am always willing to work with people on improving this article and I am interested to see what material will be included on the sandbox page, if that happens. AmateurEditor (talk) 08:03, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
 * AmateurEditor, I have a question. Which of the following more correctly summarises your view:
 * 1. The article, in its current form, correctly reflects the current state of knowledge of the subject;
 * 2. The article has to follow available aggregator sources, and, although there might me a contradiction between what sources say and what other authors claim, that contradiction cannot be fixed without doing OR.
 * Thanks. --Paul Siebert (talk) 19:18, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Paul Siebert, neither is exactly how I would explain my view but, if I had to choose one of those two, I would say that 2 is closer to my view. I don't presume to know the full current state of knowledge of any topic and I would not trust any wikipedia editor who claimed to. This article exists to reflect the aggregated topic found in the aggregator sources and so it's organization/structure should be whatever allows us to most effectively cover all aspects of the topic found in those sources, following policy guidance. Single country/non-aggregator sources can still be used as supplemental sources for info related to the topic or sub-topics covered in the article but cannot serve as the basis for the article's existence or structure (articles on the single countries/event topics should be based on those single country/event sources). Where there is an unresolvable conflict/contradiction between sources of any kind (and it is not simply a mistake/error in the source, since no source is perfect) then we should present both sides fairly, following policy. We should not be "fixing" contradictions between sources. Choosing one side over another could be a NPOV violation. AmateurEditor (talk) 22:34, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

The importance of remembrance to prevent future atrocities
Mass killings must be remembered in complete detail because future generations must learn not to commit these crimes again. Wikipedia is part of this collective memory. Any regime that slaughters millions is criminal, whether it is Khmer Rouge or the Nazis. Wikipedia must testify to these crimes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:644:680:6D80:6438:BD29:EBF3:8F30 (talk) 00:37, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * As noted by Buidhe above, Wikipedia is not a memorial and I suggest you to stop opening new threads repeating the same thing again; Wikipedia is not a forum and we are actually trying to improve the article. This article exists because "a rough consensus of Wikipedia editors" a decade ago established "the topic is found in high quality secondary sources and meets Wikipedia policy requirements." Consensus can change, especially when so-called "high quality secondary sources" do not actually support the topic or meet "Wikipedia policy requirements" for a standalone article, when they are based on original research or synthesis. Davide King (talk) 01:05, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * There is a question about how much the mass killings owed to Communist ideology and how much to the histories of the countries in which they occurred. By comparison the Clinton administration was responsible for 500,000 deaths in Iraq, while the Bush administration killed 1,000,000 people. But is the difference due to where the two presidents fell along the left-right spectrum or because of the circumstances at the time? TFD (talk) 03:43, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Agree with Davide, this thread should be closed, we have enough, btw., these examples by TFD are not of the same weight, but let's not start an n+1 thread/discussion.(KIENGIR (talk) 08:05, 25 November 2020 (UTC))
 * Quibling about sources is what Holocaust deniers are famous for. I know you are upset that communist genocide has ruined the reputation of communism, but you know what? The reputation of communism is well earned by their sociopathic policies. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:644:680:6D80:857F:326D:6582:97DD (talk) 22:29, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Why this page exists
This page exists because millions of human beings were exterminated to satisfy the ideology of Communism. As a matter of philosophy, Communism extends no empathy to the bourgeois human beings, showing a sociopathic tendency common to genocidal regimes. It is vital that current and future generations learn from this experience and most importantly to learn to identify such sociopathic idiologies that could lead the the slaughter of millions of lives. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:644:680:6D80:6438:BD29:EBF3:8F30 (talk) 01:56, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, IP contributor, but Wikipedia is not a memorial, nor is it a venue for moral education. Our mission does not include preventing human rights abuses. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  05:50, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The actual reason this page exists can be seen at the top of this talk page, under "Frequently asked questions". AmateurEditor (talk) 07:20, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The purpose of an encyclopedia is to educate and inform, in this case it is the MOST important education and information, that concerning the danger of genocide, or in this case, the euphemism "mass killing". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:644:680:6D80:857F:326D:6582:97DD (talk) 20:43, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Just to be very clear, that is not what Wikipedia is about and following NPOV prohibits us from pushing the fringe view that "mass murder is a key feature of [communism, socialism, the left, or whatever one wants to call it] found in its earliest documents. Hence all socialists (which the Right defines very broadly to include such people as Joe Biden) have the potential to eliminate their populations and replace them." Wikipedia is "an online free-content encyclopedia project helping to create a world in which everyone can freely share in the sum of all knowledge." Now, please, do not post this same thing again, or it will de deleted or reverted per FORUM. Davide King (talk) 22:44, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Related discussion
Please see related discussion at Talk:List of genocides by death toll (t &#183; c)  buidhe  19:23, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi Buidhe. If you're going to ping or canvass or notify or whatever discussions that I am involved in to other wikipedia discussion pages (whether talk or board) I would appreciate it if you pinged me and let me know.  Volunteer Marek   19:57, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
 * And now the list inclusion criteria is challenged: Talk:List_of_genocides_by_death_toll (t &#183; c)  buidhe  03:26, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Please, more input is needed at this discussion. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  00:10, 26 November 2020 (UTC)