Talk:Mass killings under communist regimes/Archive 52

For Reference: Aggregator Sources in Rough Chronological Order with Bolded Keywords
AmateurEditor (talk) 09:51, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't think this approach is productive. Instead of providing quotes, which may be incorrectly interpreted if taken out of context, let's discuss the main author's ideas, and their relation to the topic. And, providing extended quotes without any specific reason is not good, because it may violate our copyright policy. I suggest to collapse this section.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:28, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, interpretations can be wrong. But that means we must start with direct quotes and minimize the risk of our own interpretations deviating from the author's views. The quotes are large enough that context is preserved, to address any "cherry-picked" concern. AmateurEditor (talk) 17:23, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
 * AmateurEditor, are you going to join the work on the "Causes" section? My impression from the quotes provided by you is that you aren't. The quotes are only marginally relevant to the topic (if relevant at all). In addition, providing more than 40 years old quote from a rightist newspaper (Chritchian Science Monitor) is a kind of disrespect. Please, do not derail the discussion.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:30, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Paul Siebert, I am trying to respond to criticism by multiple editors at once with different and sometimes conflicting criticisms, including yours. Davide King still misunderstands the topic, what secondary sources there are that include the topic, and what "cherry-picked" means. These quotes are about the article topic in general, not necessarily the causes section in particular. You will notice that the Christian Science Monitor source is one of the sources cited by Valentino from our previous discussion. There is no disrespect in using it in context of its publication date. There is disrespect in deciding that we must now rewrite the causes section. You have not shown that the causes section needs a rewrite and your entire approach to using Search engine tests is wrong. Your attempt at Mediation didn't give you the result you wanted. I am getting the impression that you are determined to rewrite the article regardless of what I say or policy forbids. AmateurEditor (talk) 18:09, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I expected mediation to lead to something productive. Instead, the same arguments were repeated again and again, so I gave up.
 * No, it is not a disrespect. I described a number of severe problems with that section, including direct and blatant misinterpretations of the sources. My concern has not been properly addressed, which means my criticism was valid. To additionally check if my criticism is correct, I proposed to summarize what each author says about causes of MKuCR (without taking author's opinia out of context). For the beginning, I summarized Rummel's and Valentino's views on that account. Do you have any problems with those summaries? Do you agree with them? If we do the same with other authors, we can easily see if the section was written correctly, and if not, we can easily decide which authors should stay, and how their views should be presented.
 * It seems that must be absolutely obvious to any reasonable person: If a concern is raised about a possible misinterpretation of sources, the first step should be: let's summarize briefly the main idea of that source and check what exactly the author says about the topic in a context of the main author's idea. That is exactly what I proposed - and still no reaction from you. Why?--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:05, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Again, I agree with Siebert on the approach. In regards to accusations, again, they can go both ways:
 * "AmateurEditor still misunderstand the topic, what sources there are that include the topic and those that do not, and what authors support and do not support. ... There is disrespect in deciding that we must not rewrite the Causes section because they are the one who wrote it and say there is nothing wrong with it. You have not shown, and have repeatedly failed in doing so, that Siebert's analysis of causes section and their entire approach to using Search engine tests are wrong. Your attempt at bludgeoning the process gave you the result you wanted so far (no rewrite) but not the one you needed (we did not go away). I am getting the impression that you are determined to push a wall against any attempt at an article rewrite, which would greatly improve the article towards NPOV, regardless of what our policies say or forbid." I think that such accusations are clearly blown up, as no rewrite has actually been put in place and you are perfectly free to make your own edits without getting reverted by us. Finally, clearly one of us must be wrong but I think that the implications would be much different. If we are proven wrong, and the reason why we are still passionate about it and are still here is that we have not been proven wrong (no matter what you say or think), about the topic, Valentino, all other authors, etc. — we will be the first, I will be the first to admit defeat, showing that we may be passionate, and sometimes 'aggressive', but always in good faith and never disrespectful, so your accusations are false; on the other hand, to retrieve a correct point raised by Siebert, if we are proven correct, you and many, many other users would have been engaged for years and years in willingly defending numerous policies violations in this article, despite Siebert and others giving enough evidence in their support, and this can have, and already has had (many users take this article as the Gospel, and I was one of them), serious consequences. Davide King (talk) 09:26, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Just a quick note regarding this edits. I didn't check the current article text, but if that is the last edit, then it is another example of tendentious editing. In reality, the dispute was summarized as follows:


 * "A critic of Rummel’s democide estimates for Yugoslavia (Dulić, 2004a) argued, on the basis of considerable documentation, that Rummel’s estimates for democide in Yugoslavia during World War II and in the immediate aftermath of the war were much too high. He also questioned whether similar data problems might occur in other democide estimates. Rummel (2004a, b) thanked him for his contribution to research on democide, but dismissed the overall claims of the critique, since Dulić had only commented on a portion of the time period covered by Rummel. Dulić (2004b) was not convinced."


 * I am too lazy to give a reference, that is one of the sources I cited previously. There were TWO articles authored by Dulic, and the last one said that Rummel's responce was not convincing. What is the reason to ignore it?. Again, the current text is very, very biased. It must be fixed. --Paul Siebert (talk) 21:23, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
 * If I may leave a quick comment, I am glad that you noticed this. It appears as we give any author the same weight but they do not hold the same weight, so according to this low standard, we must add Rummel's response, even though WEIGHT and academic sources do not find it due precisely because it was not convincing and ultimately it appears that Rummel lost the debate. I think that this quote by Fifelfoo from the 2018 peer review will always be relevant as long as this article continues to be this way: Either the topic is an accepted significant scholarly belief about the nature of the external world first and foremost, and therefore claims are put as fact. Or it ain't, in which case the article needs to be refactored to strip fact and discuss the "theory." ... Throw the fringe, harshly criticised, and narrowly received scholars on the bonfire. Get it out of the body of the article where it is unweighty. If the only claims which give the article notability are unweighty there shouldn't be a section on historical phenomena at all, the article should be about a fringe or rejected scholarly position. If there are some rejected and some accepted scholars, guess where the rejected scholars belong? Davide King (talk) 21:59, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Quick comments
I really can not wait for to take down each source one by one, which is why I open this section to improve readability and give the above space all to AmeteruEditor and Siebert themselves, but it is still worth a quick comment. At first glance, the above section ironically just prove that Siebert is correct, and does not address our points, which is not that no source exists but that you are selective about them, they all come from the proponents, and you have failed to explain how and why such sources represents the majority view, or how somehow this means we cannot use country experts. Worse of all, we actually have a bunch of Main, See also, etc. but ironically those are to be used when we are making a summary of such articles and the link is there precisely if one wants to find out more. In this case, the 'summary' completely contradicts them because, well, country experts disagree with genocide studies, and I do not see why they should hold any weight considering that they are scholars of Communism, and this article is very much centered on Communism, especially when they are more mainstream, while genocide studies are a minority and did not appear in mainstream political science academic journal.

I will stop here from now, it was longer than I wished. I cannot wait to see Siebert's response, and I also encourage to analyze given sources, especially the authors and the publishers, since they are very good at determining whether they are academic, popular press, their expertise, their lack of it, etc.

Davide King (talk) 13:00, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

On the approach
, in regards to this, I agree in that you are correct this is not a productive approach, it should be collapsed, and I prefer the approach you outlined above (that is exactly what we should be doing, especially to avoid further OR/SYNTH) though I really wish I could see you take on each source like you did with the ones currently at Causes, especially because way too many users may just look at those sources, and like WP:OVERCITE says, it can call the notability of the subject into question by editors. A well-meaning editor may attempt to make a subject which does not meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines appear to be notable through quantity of sources. Ironically, this serves as a red flag to experienced editors that the article needs scrutiny and that each citation needs to be verified carefully to ensure that it was really used to contribute to the article.

This applies equally well to the article because on the surface it appears to be well-written, thoroughly researched, with tons of references, and all of them converted into sfns, which is something I really like and most good articles have, but we do know that this is not true. Yet, many users may fell for it, or be misled from those apparently tons of sources (again, our concern is not sources but how they are used, and NPOV and OR/SYNTH violations, not that there are no sources), etc. This is why I think an in-depth analysis from you, as you did for Cause, will be helpful to let our readers choose from themselves, rather than just look at the numbers of space used and sources, and think they are all good and there are no issues. You may do this at your own talk page and simply leave a link here to there, but I think that you should do it. Sources should not be taken at face value but scrutinized to make sure that there are no policy violations; VERIFY is but one policy, unfortunately it usually triumphs over much more relevant ones like NPOV, OR, SYNTH, and WEIGHT. We need to prove this beyond any doubt because this article has different rules, and so we need to do the double work just to prove it. If it was any other article, this discussion would have been over a long time ago. So just criticizing the approach for cherry picking quotes and sources is not enough for this article, we need to take them down one by one; unless we do so, such sources will continue to be misread and taken at face value, and defenders will continue to point at them to dismiss any attempts or approach at a solution or rewrite.

And even then, it may not be enough because I think TFD is right when they said that A would be synthesis. It would be like mass killings in English speaking countries. Some connection between speaking English and mass killing would have to be made. There are I think two versions of B: (i) Some writers have connected mass killings in Stalin's USSR, Mao's China and Pol Pot's Cambodia. The thinking is that Stalin influenced Mao, who influenced Pol Pot. In all cases, mass killings were carried out as part of a policy of rapid industrialization. (ii) The other version is that mass killings were dictated in otherwise forgotten works of Karl Marx. Under this view, COVID-19 can be seen as the latest attempt by the Communists to wipe out the world population. Anyone who argues for A probably believes B (ii). We simply cannot argue or win a debate with believers. No matter how we show that authors are misinterpreted by their own reading of primary sources, and we do so by providing secondary reliable sources that are specifically about their work and published in peer-reviewed academic journals, they will continue to argue that Valentino et al. support MKuCR, and support policy violations or twisting them to justify this.

P.S. When it comes to genocide, modernity and/or industrialization all have a bigger, clearer link than communism. Davide King (talk) 16:25, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Davide King, you have too many errors in your comments for me to respond to them all, but:
 * 1) These are all secondary sources for the topic of mass killings under communist regimes. You don't need secondary sources for how to understand secondary sources. You either continue to misunderstand what secondary sources are or you are secretly assuming a different topic for the article than what it actually is. We are supposed to be searching for sources with content on the article's aggregation topic, not our own OR analysis of google; finding sources about the article topic is not what Cherrypicking means. A source does not have to be only about the topic.
 * 2) If you think they are cherry-picked, meaning that they misrepresent the author's views, then prove it with quotes of the missing information. Just asserting that they are cherry-picked is not enough for me to take the point seriously. Again, a source can discuss a topic without it being the only or even main topic they discuss. Noting that a source discusses other topics in addition to this one, is not relevant.
 * 3) the two sources that predate the fall of the Soviet Union are cited as sources by Valentino, a professor at Princeton. They are currently in the article in the context of their publication dates and their estimates fall within the range of the other sources. Including them does not run up numbers. You seem to be adding artificial conditions to the article that wikipedia policies do not require.
 * 4) the essay WP:OVERCITE is about too many inline citations, not about too many citations in the article where each sentence has one or two citations. AmateurEditor (talk) 17:53, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Do not worry, it is reciprocal. Thanks for keeping it short. (1) Except they are not about MKuCR but Communist death toll ("Available evidence indicates that perhaps 100 million persons have been destroyed by the Communists ... The number of people murdered by communist regimes is estimated at between 60 million and 150 million, with the higher figure probably more accurate in light of recent scholarship ... If the precise numbers have always been, and continue to be, in dispute, their order of magnitude is not.") You are mixing the two, mixing sources that follow Valentino's methodology, which is what this article should be about, with those who have completely different criteria; how is this a good thing is beyond me. Just call it for what it is, and rename it Communist death toll then, but do not use mass killing when you are not using it in reference to Mass killing but to any killing with at least, like what, 4 people dead. It makes no sense to base an article on the latter; the former is also backed by scholarly sources like Valentino, so why do we not just limit to them?  (2) That is exactly what I was going to do, and I had my comment finished and was about to publish it, then I saw you responded, so I reply to you back and then publish it below. As stated by Siebert, quotes are not a good way to do that because they can be easily cherry picked and missing context. It is also why I believe Siebert and I should engage them. It is clearly relevant, as it shows you cherry picked them; either way, this can be easily solved if you could do what Siebert did and provide sources commenting such works in support of MKuCR as you see it.  (3) Clearly, Wikipedia requires that we use reliable sources, the two ones you cited are not; one is published by a conservative website, is obviously outdated, and pushes fringe estimates from Solzhenitsyn as facts, the other is a op-ed, which certainly is not the kind of definitive source one would expect from an aggregator. Also Valentino is not the ultimate source on estimates, and is certainly a better source about mass killing than their estimates; again, see Harff 2017 ("Compiling global data is hazardous and will inevitably invite chagrin and criticism from country experts. Case study people have a problem with systematic data because they often think they know better what happened in one particular country. I have sympathized with this view, because my area expertise was the Middle East. But when empiricists focus on global data, we have to consider 190 countries and must rely on country experts selectively. When we look for patterns and test explanations, we cannot expect absolute precision, in fact we do not require it.").  (4) You missed my point, which was that, like the essay said, too many citations may raise a red flag about whether they have been cherry picked to show the article has sources, to give it legitimacy, etc. Similarly, this article gives a false impression because it appears to be well-sourced and well-written but in reality violates NPOV, OR/SYNTH, and WEIGHT. Of course, you disagree. Davide King (talk) 18:20, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Neutral research
I am not sure how Siebert's neutral research work exactly but it appears that they really did cherry pick the source by typing communism and mass killings, or something like that, which is not a neutral approach, as that only yields what you want to find. You should type mass killing and then "mass killing", or genocide and mass killing and then "genocide and mass killing", to reduce the research and then actually analyze sources; however, the wording needs to be neutral and should not include the conclusion you are searching for, so no communism and the like. We need to find out how many of those articles or book are about Communism only (1), discuss Communism (2), briefly mention it in passing (3), or do not mention it at all (4). By looking at sources, the majority are (3) and (4) in any order, followed by (2), and finally by (1). The fact you cherry picked up or typed words to get the results you wanted is proven by the fact I could not find most of your sources, apart from the likes of Jones and Valentino, who are neither about MKuCR.

Incidentally, as an example, I got several sources that we use at Mass killing like Atsushi and Tago, Esteban, Morelli, and Rohner, Staub, Valentino, etc. I also find out "Mass killings in the United States from 2006 to 2013: social contagion or random clusters?" Is this really the "generic mass killing" you refer too? Clearly, we should not rely on either "generic Communism" or "generic mass killing" but on mass killing as defined at Mass killing and follow Valentino's, so the scope must be limited to Stalin's, Mao's, and Pol Pot's regimes; both Jones and Valentino limit to them in their chapters, no matter how many quotes you can cherry pick without context. You must decide, you either want it to be a sub-article of Mass killing, or you want to make it about Communist death toll, in which case just rename it to the latter but at least do not confuse readers with terminology and the made-up "generic mass killing", when it does not follow from the main article Mass killing. Davide King (talk) 18:21, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
 * A neutral search works as follows. You use different keyword sets and compare results. Each set may be non-neutral, but if you try the whole spectrum of reasonable keyword sets, you may find sources that (i) are the same in most search results, (ii) are frequently cited by peers. These are the sources that will probably be found by any unbiased Wikipedian with no preliminary knowledge of the subject.
 * With regard to your search results, I am not sure what exactly you are looking for. It seems you are trying to find generic sources about genocide and mass killing. Why?--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:14, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
 * , thank you. I did type different keywords related to the topic, including not using and then using quote marks. So what keywords should I type? My goal was to find out how much Communism and Communist states are discussed within mass killing and genocide as a topic. As I said, most sources either briefly mentioned it in passing, without any chapter, or do not mention it at all (apart from Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot), followed by those who do (again, mainly Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, not MKuCR), and the least are those who specifically focus on Communism as a whole ("generic Communism"), which are a tiny minority of all sources on the topic. What I was trying to demonstrate is that we fix on Communism when it is not even the major topic of mass killing and genocide, which focus less on regime-type and much more on genocide and mass killing in wildly different societies, i.e. they compare the Holocaust, Rwanda, and Cambodia, etc. By the way, thank you so much for your summary of the author, which is what we should be doing when we disagree on what they support (so you are right on this). After you have done that, I still wish to see you take down those sources right above because Davide King (talk) 08:50, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
 * A further example that shows how most of those sources were cherry picked, or at least do not clearly represent all or majority sources on the topic, is as if AmateurEditor searched for sources comparing Nazism and Stalinism but only chose those that emphaisized the similarities and ignored all those that either emphasized the differences, or ignored and rejected the comparative approach because, to quote The Oxford Handbook (2019), such a perspective, in reality a recapitulation of the long-discredited totalitarian perspective equating Stalin's Soviet Union with Hitler's National Socialist Germany, is not tenable. It betrays a profound misunderstanding of the distinct natures of the Stalinist and Nazi regimes, which made them mortal enemies. Stalin's primary objective was to forge an autarkic, industrialized, multinational state, under the rubric of 'socialism in one country.' Nationalism and nation-building were on Stalin's agenda, not genocide; nor was it inherent in the construction of a non-capitalist, non-expansionary state—however draconian. This is what AmateurEditor did, and what most defenders of this article do. Is this a fair and relevant comparison to make? In my view, it certainly is. Davide King (talk) 08:57, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Thought experiment on Communist death toll
, you are free to correct if wrong, but it appears to be that the whole body-counting and Communist death toll is sloppy scholarship. It is one thing for a country specialist to estimate the dead in a single event, it is a whole lot another on not just to estimate every single event in the country's history but to do it for any country considered to be Communist. This is why it is mainly biased and controversial scholars like Courtois and Rummel who did that; if we were to use and apply their same standards to similar regimes, Communism would not be the worst system ever by death toll or other measures (like considering the duration, pre- and post-population numbers, deaths by population percentage and by the number of countries ruled by the same system, etc.), and Rummel apparently believed that colonialism and fascism were forms of socialism (per ), not of capitalism. Even a similar anti-communist like Conquest, at least in his academic works that I am aware of (again, what one writes in a book published by the popular press does not hold the same weight as what the same author writes in a book published by the academic press), did not do that and limited himself to the Soviet Union, in particular the Stalin era.

If one would want to provide a more accurate and reliable numbers on Communism, e.g. relying on the most accurate and reliable figures by country experts, one could not do that because it would be OR/SYNTH, as none of them engaged in Communist death toll; is this a correct view, Siebert? And yet, by relying on Courtois and Rummel, both of whom Karlsson and Schoenhals (2008) describe as being on the fringes, no matter that Valentino may rely on them for the estimates (again, Valentino is reliable for mass killing, not for their estimates, and I believe that he mainly reported them for historic purposes, which is fine, not that he necessarily support or endorse them), we violate NPOV and WEIGHT. Therefore, the only real solution to improve NPOV and WEIGHT is to at least rely on country experts and specialists for the events, especially where genocide scholars and other authors are clearly contradicted and wrong, and mention the criticism for both the highest estimates and the whole methodology of body-counting by ideology. I do not see how this would be controversial or OR/SYNTH. OR/SYNTH would be what I explained about the death toll, not what Siebert suggests. Davide King (talk) 11:51, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
 * First. Rummel is NOT a controversial author. He is just misused. His main goal was to find worldwide correlations between various parameters of regimes and state violence. To do that, he needed a global database of death toll. Since no such database existed, he decided to collect ALL available data and, since some of those figures were inaccurate and noisy, he performed statistical treatment and found a lower and upper boundary of reasonably accurate estimates. Actually, he didn't care about accuracy, and Harff explicitly wrote about that (at least in two separate publications). However, for Rummel's own conclusions that inaccuracy was not a problem, because even if we put modern and correct data to his database and perform factor analysis, we will see the same correlations (with minor modifications). Rummel's figures are old, obsolete and blatantly inaccurate for all countries where correct numbers were not known during the Cold war: for Yugoslavia, USSR, China and some other countries (but not for Cambodia, where the original data set appeared to be correct). The problem with Rummel is quite simple: first, he used old and very inaccurate estimates, and, second, he treated statistical data as if the distribution were normal. That was a serious mistake, which was noted by Dulic: if the distribution curve is normal, by averaging lower and upper bounds you get the average value. However, in his data set, the curve is always skewed: it is limited by zero, but it has no upper limit, which means a set of noisy data is always skewed to higher values. Imagine, you have a set of several numbers: 1,1,1,5,2, 10. You calculate lower and upper bound of distribution, and they are, e.g. 1.2 and 7. If you take an average value, you get 4.1, which is much higher than the most probable value (which may be 1.5, because 10 is most likely an unreliable figure, which should be just disregarded).
 * Anyway, Rummel is good for his overall conclusions about "democratic peace" and that totalitarian regimes are more prone to violence (although it seems to be obvious even without him). And he is bad an obsolete for figures.
 * Second, Courtois is controversial. But he does not speak about "Communist mass killings", he speaks about the death caused by Communists (which is not the same).
 * Third, the problem is not in Courtois figures, but in their interpretations. Not only he produced the "Total Communist death toll", he did that with some very concrete purpose: to demonstrate that Communism was worse than Nazism. Which is an ahistorucal manipulation. Many authors pointed at various flaws and errors in Courtois texts, and it is fundamentally incorrect to present Courtois' opinion without explaining why and how he tried to manipulate with the data. And that is exactly what this article is doing.
 * In general, we have NO reliable figures for "Communist death toll" for two reasons.
 * 1. This issue is beyond the scope scope of serious authors.
 * 2. Different authors disagree on what categories of mass mortality should be ascribed to Communists's activity.
 * However, we DO have reliable and trustworthy figures for each country, and it will NOT be OR to combine in one chapter if we do not add them together. We just take raw numbers from each source (thus, some consensus figures exist for Great Purge, for Soviet famine, for collectivization, for Chinese famine etc). We do not need to add them, let a reader see them and make a conclusion. Global figures should be moved to the bottom and supplemented with explanations of their historical context.
 * However, I would like to finish with "Causes" first. It needs major rewrite, because it is a collection of twisted and cherry-picked statements, some of them are totally false and unsuppoted by the cited sources (in contrast to User:Schetm's assertion).--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:14, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
 * , I think that this was very helpful, so thank you.


 * Third, the problem is not in Courtois figures, but in their interpretations. This is precisely what I meant when I said Communist death toll is sloppy scholarship. It is not that we cannot have reliable numbers about them, it is precisely that the whole Communist death toll exists to push an anti-communist narrative. The problem is that actually using the reliable numbers could be OR/SYNTH because such specialists do not engage in the whole Communist death toll narrative, so if there is one thing AmateurEditor may be correct is that this could be OR/SYNTH, but they are dead wrong on everything else, and even in this case, it is a shame that this would be considered OR/SYNTH because it would be providing much more accurate and reliable numbers that would show the Communist death toll to be much lower than the 100 million figure; if supporters loves to cite that the numbers may not be completely accurate but the order of the magnitude is correct, then why fixate on the 100 million figure or the estimates from the higher-end? I mean, even just the 6–9 million figure used by Snyder 2011 for the Stalin era is awful, so I do not really get what is the point of inflating it to the point of absurd, which is very disrespectful to the victims, many of whom were communists or leftists themselves (unsurprisingly, this is totally ignored in the victims of Communism narrative). Perhaps because there are worse regime types than Communism, and this goes against the narrative? I do not know but that looks like the only likely reason for their fixing in the highest numbers.
 * But back to the main point, I would like to see how you could structure the more accurate and reliable estimates from country specialists; it could still be OR/SYNTH according to AmateurEditor but perhaps it can be done without violating it exactly as you wrote, i.e. it will NOT be OR to combine in one chapter if we do not add them together, the latter, bolded being exactly what I meant when I said that it could be OR/SYNTH, while the first part would not be OR/SYNTH, so we agree on this. Anyway, the main point is that the process itself of such body-counting is not NPOV because it is used to push the narrative, and we are violating WEIGHT because we are giving disproportionate weight to the few (controversial) scholars who have done, and the many non-experts authors who have done it to push the narrative, not to reach the most accurate and reliable numbers based on consistent and highly-regarded academic methodology. In short, as you wrote, we have NO reliable figures for "Communist death toll" ... . However, we DO have reliable and trustworthy figures for each country .... Yet, AmateurEditor insist that we do not rely on country experts and specialists, or the best sources in general, but instead rely only on a tiny minority of genocide scholars (again, as you noted, minority school of thought that has failed to achieve mainstream status in political science academic journals), which incidentally are also the main proponents, and goes contrary to Wikipedia's rule of using independent sources of a topic. There is still a disagreement about the topic: you and I want it to be about the events and use the best sources for them, and are even willing to use some of those genocide scholars, while AmateurEditor want it to be about the events but only from the perspective of a tiny minority of genocide scholars, which makes your assertion that they actually support the narrative–theory correct. Because writing about the events only from their perspective is precisely the narrative–theory. Davide King (talk) 17:10, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
 * David, may I ask you something? Please, stop posting anything here that is not relevant to the "Causes" section. We have already had enough fruitless discussion that lead to nothing. We need to do something concrete. Let's see if we will be capable of rewriting that section, which is an outstanding collection of original research, cherry-picking and direct misinformation (as I can conclude from my analysis of just one subsection). If we face an opposition to re-writing that ostensibly "well written and sourced section", then some other, more radical steps will be needed. So far, I got ZERO objections or refutations of my criticism, and I conclude that other users either agree with that criticism or they just are not reading the talk page. I am going to make some signifocant changes (as required by our core content policies), and see the reaction. If there will be no serious opposition (except copy editing), or if some productive couter-proposal will me made, that means we will be peacefully and gradually improving this article. However, if that step will trigger an edit war... well, let's think about that later. Hopefully, that will never happen.
 * Maybe, if you collapse (for a while) all your recent posts (along with my responces) that are not relevant to "Causes", that may make this discussion more readable, and more users will join us. I have a feeling that your wordy posts have an opposite effect: noone is reading them.--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:05, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I hope that my recent 'collapses' were helpful in this, including all the sources; they are still there, just collapsed. I am just very passionate about all this but you are correct and I see your point. Besides, you explain better than I could all the problems, so if that will help us moving forward, then I am all for it. So be it, I leave the space. Davide King (talk) 21:14, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Causes
Before we started to rewrite it, let's summarize the view of each author that will be used in that section. So far, it is clear that Rummel and Valentino will stay. If someone wants to add some other source, add it to the list and describe the author's position as whole, as well as a linkage between the author's theoretical views and our topic. Cherry-picking is not welcome.

I suggest the following approach:


 * 1 What is the main author's concept?


 * 2 Which category of events the author analysed?


 * 3 How author's conclusions are related to our (sub)topic?

For example, if the subtopic is "Causes of MKuCR", and the author writes about MKuCR specifically. then we can just reproduce what they say. If the author writes about, e.g. "democide" and totalitarianosm, and Communism is just a subttopic of their study, we should briefly explain that the author found the linkage between totalitarianism and democide, and then explain how that (in author's opinion) relates to our subtopic (mass killings and Communism). If the authors writes about, e.g. Great Purge only, we explain their view of the causes of Great Purge.

If you believe the procedure is incomplete, propose your amendments/corrections.
 * Rummel.


 * Main subject: State violence in general, and killing of civilians by their own state ("democide") as a subset thereof.
 * Major findings:
 * Factor analysis of the global genocide database (collected from Cold-war era data) demonstrates a significant correlation between democide and such regime parameter as totalitarianism. Based on that correlation, author concluded that "absolute power kills absolutely", and links totalitarianism with democide (a.k.a. mass killings). Since Communist regimes are totalitarian, the author concludes their totalitarianism is the primary cause of mass killings.


 * How the author links ideology and mass killings. He actually draws no direct casual linkages, his main approach is to find correlations (and we know that correlation does not imply causation). However, since the author is libertarian, and he believes that the less state, the better, it seems obvious to him that totalitarianism, which is an opposite to libertarianism, is the worst possible state system, and the absolutist ideology (as he sees Marxism) exacerbates the worst features of totalitarianism.


 * Valentino.
 * Main subject:


 * Explanation of the onset of "Mass killings" (i.e. killing of more than 50,000 civilians in less than 5 years, reproduced from memory, correct me if some figure is wrong ).


 * Major findings:


 * This author developed a new theory of mass killings. This theory states that mass killings occur when a small group of elite leaders decides that mass killings is the optimal way to achieve their goals (i.e., in their perception, "advantages" of the mass killing approach outweigh their "disadvantages"). He performed comparative analysis of eight cases of what he defines as mass killings, including three cases that took place under Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, and one case in Soviet controlled Afghanistan (other cases were non related to Communism), and this analysis corroborated the theory. A main practical consequence of this theory is that elimination of a small group of leaders from power may prevent mass killings even if the social structure stays the same.
 * How the author links ideology and mass killings. According to Valentino, and contrary to earlier Rummels conjecture, the regime type, ideology or similar factors are insufficient to explain onset of mass killings. Valentino conceded that ideology, to some degree, may shape a strategy of some leaders who are prone to mass killings.--Paul Siebert (talk) 00:00, 12 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Goldhagen, Pipes, Gray.
 * Existing information is insufficient for making a summary. If found the brief description of their view in the article, and it is as follows:


 * "Scholars such as Rummel (already discussed) Daniel Goldhagen, Richard Pipes, and John Gray consider the ideology of communism to be a significant causative factor in mass killings."


 * The sources for this statement are Harff, 1996 and Harff&Gurr, 1988. The first source is a review on Rummel exclusively, which means it is totally unrelated to other authors. Moreover, it contains not a single word "Ideology". The second source does not mention Goldhagen (which is not a surprise, because his own writings were published after 1988), Gray and Pipes. That means the whole statement is fake. Note, I just started to analyze this text, and I have already found so many blatant errors, twistings and distortions. --Paul Siebert (talk) 23:39, 12 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Goldhagen.


 * Main subject


 * In his "Worse than war" the author put forward the idea that the desire to eliminate peoples or groups should be understood as the overarching category and the core act, and makes it the focus  of his study.
 * Major findings:
 * The author delineates five principal forms of eliminationism - transformation, repression, expulsion, prevention of reproduction, extermination, where difference between destruction of people and other forms of repressions (not always lethal) is blurred.
 * How the author links ideology and mass killings. At page 207-9, the author explains that some Communist regimes use ideology to raise a new generation of indoctrinated eliminationists and to justify elimination of some groups. It seems ideology is seen as a tool rather a cause by him. I saw no direct or indirect clam that Communist ideology was a causative factor.


 * One more false statement. Continue digging.--Paul Siebert (talk) 00:01, 13 September 2021 (UTC)


 * My concern is that "compare and contrast" is original research and should be sourced to secondary sources. Also, it is difficult to establish weight, that is, how to we determine how accepted the various approaches are? Pipes, Goldhagen and Rummel (particularly what he posts on his website) have extremely controversial views.
 * Also, they disagree on mass killings in Afghanistan. While the other authors attribute them to Communism, Valentino categorizes them as counter-insurgency mass killings along with killings carried out by U.S. backed death squads. IOW, he does not see the ideology of the perpetrators to be significant, but rather attributes it to how imperial powers treat people in war zones.
 * As I said before, it's not possible to write this article without considerable OR and weight issues. At some point someone may write an article or book about the subject, but without that we can't really go forward.
 * TFD (talk) 16:11, 14 September 2021 (UTC)


 * TFD, we may try to write this article without OR. As I explained, that can be done according to the following scheme:


 * Soviet Union (description of each separate case, or group thereof, if most sources group some of them)


 * China
 * Cambodia




 * Generalizations. (The latter section will be a description of those author who, like Courtois, draw some general conclusions; these narratives will be put in a proper context).
 * This approach is purely descriptive, which rules out a possibility of original research.
 * We have a choice between keeping this article in a current state (which is a piece of original research, POV pusing and fact distortion), or to try to make something reasonable. Your position by no means helps to make some progress. Can you please join the work on article's improvement? I propose to re-write this section for the beginning. Can you try to summarize other authors mentioned in this section or to comment on my summaries? That will help us to come to a joint decision on which authors should be included in this section, and in what context.--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:09, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't think that providing an accurate description of what sources say will address the weight issue: to "fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources." Imagine writing an article on climate change by summarizing various views without regard to their acceptance in scientific literature. It would be neutral in the sense that views of both scientists and cranks would be explained, but it would not be consistent with Wikipedia's neutrality policy. That article treats climate change as a fact and says that climate change denial is misinformation funded by the fossil fuel industry. While some people, such as Larry Sanger, argue that Wikipedia articles should give parity to various views, it's not current policy.
 * WP:TERTIARY says, "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, especially when primary or secondary sources contradict each other." If we had such sources, then we could write a neutral article. But we don't.
 * TFD (talk) 17:12, 15 September 2021 (UTC)


 * , I'd be curious to read your response to, and also hope to see the conclusion of your good source analysis. Davide King (talk) 22:08, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Outside comments
I would really like if would respond you on this, so I respond to the OP to leave some space for both of you to discuss this. I sympathize with them that "it's not possible to write this article without considerable OR and weight issues" but I am willing to work with you and see what a rewrite would look like. Certainly, OR/SYNTH is not a good enough reason to dismiss you or a rewrite effort since, no matter what one may think or say, this article clearly fails both already, and also NPOV, and WEIGHT, and even basic VERIFY, as you digged deeper. On the other hand, this article is clearly not going to be deleted because so many users do not understand the topic, sources, etc. Your proposal is a good compromise, and I am curious to see how it would look like, all the differences, if it would really solve all issues of NPOV, OR/SYNTH, etc. Because all that matters to me is that we actually respect and follow our policies. Davide King (talk) 16:23, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

I agree with TFD's latest comment, and is why tertiary sources can be so important and helpful, yet AmateurEditor dismiss them, and actually did admit that there are none but that the article can still be written because it is notable by giving all views minority status; yet, this still clearly violates NPOV and WEIGHT. Even if an article may be notable (I am curious about TFD's response of AmeteurEditor's reading of criteria for notability, general sources, etc.), if it cannot be written without respecting NPOV and WEIGHT ... it should not be written, it is simple. Clearly, keeping the article as it is would be much worse than at least trying to fix it and rewrite it by trying to respect our policies; I do not think in the end it will respect our policies (per TFD) but trying does not hurt, and it would still be a great improvement; when both articles violates our policies, and cannot be written without not violating them, they should be deleted but rules do not apply to this article, so if both articles still violate our policies, I prefer a better-written article, one that does not even fail basic VERIFY as the current one, over the awful mess we have now. , apparently previous wording was Daniel Goldhagen,[35] Richard Pipes,[36] and John N. Gray[37] have written about theories regarding the role of communism in books for a popular audience. It makes more sense but it is all sourced to primary sources, so a reader does not get what are those theories nor how accepted, or not, they are. But yeah, this article fails basic VERIFY ... but sure, it has no problems. Davide King (talk) 07:51, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
 * While is correct that policy does not require tertiary sources for a topic to be notable, it does require secondary sources. While sources such as the Black Book are secondary sources in that they "provide[] an author's own thinking based on primary sources," they are primary sources for their opinions. We need a secondary source that reports them in order to establish their significance. In an article I created, Radical right (United States), I did not cite the theorists who created the concept, but used secondary sources writing about them. One editor wrote, "it is unimaginable that this article does not cite Hofstadter's seminal The Paranoid Style in American Politics." I replied that he was discussed in the article. While not required, using secondary sources helps to correctly interpret opinions, establish what is relevant and determine weight. TFD (talk) 13:03, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
 * , you are right on this and all articles should actually follow your lead and article's example; that is the only way to actually respect our policies and guidelines. Perhaps the problem is that the Black Book is a secondary source, but AmateurEditor ignore that it is a primary source for its own interpretation, so they can dismiss our concerns by claiming that we are wrong about saying they are primary sources for their opinions and theories. To stay on topic, this is the problem of the whole Causes section. Apart from Rummel, everything is sourced to the authors' own work, rather than follow secondary sources, which results in all the problems of NPOV, OR/SYNTH, and even SYNTH because if we do not have independent, secondary sources for their own interpretation, we are engaging in OR/SYNTH by paraphrasing their own primary sources (worse of all, it is done wrong, hence even fails VERIFY), is this correct?
 * This could be fixed if we use secondary sources, like did for Valentino; the problem is that such sources are not about the topic because MKuCR exists only in some users' minds, and the only good secondary source (Karlsson and Schoenhals 2008) says that Courtois and Rummel are fringe, and Siebert is still correct when they wrote sources that try to propose some theoretical schemes connecting Communism in general and mass killings (the BB, Rummel) are either obsolete or not mainstream, which is the point. The whole MKuCR is a rightist, anti-communist POV exercise, which makes it impossible to write a NPOV article about it, unless we follow the narrative topic. If we want to report on the events, we need to report all sources but limit it to Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot (if we want to report all events in all Communist states, the topic must be much broadened to be a scholarly analysis of Communism, and not limited to mass killings, because that is what scholars do, they provide all the necessary context and societal analysis); if we want to report on the narrative, we need to present it as such and not as fact; if we want to do both, the article needs to be rewritten. The current article pretends to do both but it follows the generic Communism grouping and treats it as an established fact, violating NPOV, OR/SYNTH, VERIFY, and WEIGHT in doing so, and merging the topic with Communist death toll. I am very curious about a comparison between Siebert's and TFD's full article, and then between the current article; I think this could help us to (1) highlight any differences between Siebert's and TFD's, and hoefully to (2) make it even more obvious how not-NPOV-adhering the current article is.
 * To remain on the topic of this section, I will try to summarize Courtois:
 * Courtois.
 * Main subject: equivalency between class and racial genocide (Jaffrelot & Sémelin 2009, p. 37). In The Black Book of Communism, only Courtois made the comparison between Communism and Nazism, while the other sections of the book "are, in effect, narrowly focused monographs, which do not pretend to offer overarching explanations." The Black Book of Communism is not "about communism as an ideology or even about communism as a state-building phenomenon." (Paczkowski 2001)
 * Major findings: Courtois does not actually discuss mass killings, as he is not a genocide scholar. His views are considered to be on the fringes by Karlsson and Schoenhals.
 * How the author links ideology and mass killings. Courtois does not actually discuss mass killings but propose the equivalency between class and racial genocide, and between Communism and Nazism, which is controversial. Within the context of Communism and Nazism equivalence, Courtois is a proponent of the "victims of Communism" narrative, which he listed at 94 million, while he estimated that Nazis killed 25 million, hence Communism was worse.
 * Siebert, is this a good enough summary analysis of Courtois? Davide King (talk) 14:01, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll
Just a note for those who may be interested. I was just fixing some citation errors at List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, and edits made there may relate to the discussion going on here. ActivelyDisinterested (talk) 13:30, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
 * "Who killed more: fascism or communism?" is like when people argue about whether Superman or Batman would win in a fight. (Obviously Batman. And fascism.) Levivich 03:26, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
 * It actually has major consequences for political debates in modern Europe. If Nazism was the lesser evil, then collaborators were the true heroes of WWII, while the Resistance were traitors. The modern Left and even centrists and the moderate Right that opposed Nazism (such as Gaullists) can no longer claim the moral high ground. The Left must also bear responsibility for the crimes of Nazism, since they were necessary to fight the greater evil of Communism. Additionally, some on the Right argue that Hitler was actually a socialist (which both makes the Nazis less evil and allocates their crimes to the Left) or even that the Jews (since Communism was a Jewish project), were responsible for the Holocaust, which was necessary to stop Jewish Bolshevism.
 * That's why numbers become the only matter of importance. The 100 million victims of Communism is twice the 50 million victims of Nazism. The 10 million victims of the Ukrainian genocide (called the Holodomor for its similarity to the word Holocaust) is far greater than the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis.
 * In the U.S., it proves a cautionary tale for the dangers of universal health care, gun control, vaccine mandates or whatever else is the issue of the day.
 * TFD (talk) 12:25, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Maybe, but some argue this apparent denialism of communism's tendency towards mass murder is a manifestation of the Left's romance with tyranny and terror. --Nug (talk) 22:27, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Nug, please, stay civil. Noone here denies such terrible events as Cambodian genocide, Great Purge or Katyn massacre. The main point is that some users, including you, are trying to push a (minority) view that (i) all premature deaths under Communists, including famine deaths were a results of a deliberate program that was implemented by Communist authorities and was aimed to exterminate their own people, (ii) that all those deaths are directly linked to Communism, and (iii) they had more commonalities with each other than with other mass killing events, and some common causes, and, therefore, should be presented as a single topic. That view is not shared by majority of scholars, and your attempts to accuse your opponents of denialism cannot change that. I respect your right to have your opinion, but I do not respect your right to have your own facts.
 * In addition, there is one important consideration here. Recently, the tendency to equate Communism and Nazism (or even to claim thet Communism was a greater evil) suspiciously coincide with attempts to push a "double genocide theory", to glorify former Nazi collaborators as "fighters against Communism", or "fighters for national independence". Therefore, in is sometimes hard to find the line where condemnation of Communism is becoming whitewashing of Nazism. We should be very careful with that. Paul Siebert (talk) 23:58, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Wrote this at the same time as Siebert.
 * If by some you mean the WorldNetDaily, which I assume is the owner of WND Books, which published the book you linked and has more to do with Islamo-leftism than MKuCR — you just proved that this is a right-wing talking point. Siebert, TFD was right — you're arguing with believers, which is why it is not going to take us anywhere. They actually believe there is such link, even though scholars do not draw such a link or conclusion, and focus more on leadership than ideology, and there may not be a difference for you but there actually is a difference between communism and Stalinism among most scholars. Just like Cloud200, you seem to take it as the ultimate truth that Stalin was the inevitable conclusion of Marx, even though that is one POV and mainly within anti-communist historiography (it may be mainstream among the popular press, especially on the Right, but that is not the view held by the most respected and neutral scholars); centre-right Jean-Claude Juncker defended Marx's legacy, so you are literally echoing Fidesz's reactions to it. This obsession with body-counting, especially in regards to communism but for every other ideology, too, is honestly disturbing and does not do justice to the many victims and all those who perished, it is in fact disrepectful.
 * While many, many people have died under Communist regimes, it is equally true for many other regime types on the other side, including even some who were and/or are democratic (e.g. the anti-communist politicide in democratic Sri Lanka, millions of preventable deaths under capitalism, etc.) — it appears to be that this is indeed a fetish of the Right to support their views of Communism as worse than Nazism; it really is done only for Communism, which is conflated for communism. By your own standard, there is a denial of capitalism/liberalism's tendency towards colonialism, ecocide, genocide, imperialism, and excess mortality due to distribution of resources (there are no memorials to commemorate them, nor remembrance days for victims of colonialism and imperialism, or resolutions against them, other than those rightly against Nazi-Fascism and Communism-Stalinism) — authoritarianism seems to be a much better link, irregardless of any ideology.
 * That communism is necessarily prone to authoritarianism, rather than one specific strand which simply feeds or breeds it, and vice versa (do I have to remind you that unlike — say fascism — there have actually been plenty of democratic communists?), is also not as a clear link as you would like to make it appear, and anyway is the job of scholars and other historians, not ours. If that is the kind of sources you have got, retry.
 * P.S. We actually had a RfC about this, which it was a snow close. Davide King (talk) 00:20, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
 * This is my read of the situation as well. This is Kienger all over again. Levivich 00:25, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
 * There is even a university course on Mass Murder and Genocide under Communism. --Nug (talk) 06:13, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
 * A syllabus is not an RS. AFAICT the prof who teaches that course has been published but has published nothing about "mass murder and genocide under communism", which, to me, reinforces the lack of source for this topic. When editors ask about sources, providing examples of non-RS is just wasting everyone's time. Levivich 06:25, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Nug, I don't find your approach productive. It seems every participant of this discussion agrees that some mass killings, mass murders, and even genocide were committed by the authorities of some Communist states, and there is some commonality between some of them. That fact (and it is really a fact, not just someone's opinion) is a quite sufficient ground for existence of such a course, and the very fact of its existence proves nothing. The question is somewhat different, namely: can we pick a couple of sources, which, like Courtois, combine all premature deaths under Communists into one, single huge category, and by adding the works authored by mainstream authors, who do not share Courtois' views, write an article as if the Courtois views were universally accepted, thereby creating an absolutely false impression of the existence of some consensus among scholars that Communists, by using mass murder, deportations, deaths camps, engineered famine and similar tools deliberately exterminated 100 million people AND Communism is the greatest murderer of XX century? Paul Siebert (talk) 06:52, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
 * To add to what Levivich wrote, even your source proved my point, which is that events under Stalin's, Mao's, and Pol Pot's regimes can indeed be categorized as mass killing events, which is what I have been arguing the whole time — if we follow the article's name and scholarly sources, this article should be limited only to them, at which point Siebert's comment that we already have each article for them and very little comparative analysis is correct, and another topic and scope should be pursued. If it was not clear enough, read my lips — we all agree that "some mass killings, mass murders, and even genocide were committed by the authorities of some Communist states, and there is some commonality between some of them."
 * No one is disputing the events, and all your arguments have been missing the point. What we are disputing and discussing is their interpretations and links, which are not universally supported among scholarly sources — can anyone answer Siebert's question about it? If none of you can do it, I hope can do it for us and be done with, so that we can move forward to the next pass. Davide King (talk) 09:46, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Siebert's question around whether this article presents Courtois' views as universally accepted and fabricates a "consensus among scholars that Communists ... deliberately exterminated 100 million people AND Communism is the greatest murderer of XX century" is just a red herring, the article did not do this. In fact it was you yourself who added the 100 million figure to which TFD brought up the comparison with Nazism being the lesser evil with his "The 100 million victims of Communism is twice the 50 million victims of Nazism" comment above. --Nug (talk) 11:01, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, let's see.
 * 1. The article says that scholars are trying to propose some common terminology for MKuCR (the "Terminology" section.
 * 2. The article creates an impression that the question of the total number of killed under Communists is a subject of a mainstream scholarly discourse ("Estimates" section)
 * 3. The article outlines three groups of common causes ("Causes" section), and totally ignores historical context of each event, as well as opinia or country experts.
 * 4. The article creates a false impression that famine (as a single phenomenon) is a subject of some "debates" ("Debates over famine" section), which is the case only for Holodomor (and even not the Great Soviet famine of 1932-33).
 * All of that is a minority viewpoind advocated by Courtois and few other authors, and all of that creates a core of teh article.
 * And after that you dare to claim my question is "red herring"? Paul Siebert (talk) 17:05, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Mass killings under authoritarian regimes would be the right title for an article about, e.g., comparisons of the Holocaust and Holodomor. Levivich 15:35, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Is such a comparison a mainstream topic? I tried to look at this, and it seems that when these two events are being discussed together, the discussion mostly focudes on their perception in Ukrainian society and globally. Therefore, such an article would be not about the events, but about views/theories that compare, link, contrast etc these events. Paul Siebert (talk) 16:43, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I'd put a moratorium on any Mass killings under ... regimes article. It'd still be bordering on SYNTH because though it may seem obvious, such link is not so clear either — e.g. Harff 2017's counter-example of anti-communist politicide in democratic Sri Lanka. Why not just title it Comparison of the Holocaust and the Holodomor (or something this — there are other different variants and possibilities), The Holocaust and the Holodomor (politics/memory) in Ukraine, etc.
 * Just like Victims of communism would be a better title for this article — it is, in fact, what the topic is called by scholars (e.g. Ghodsee 2014, Neumayer 2017, Neumayer 2020, and Dujisin 2020), though another possibility, in regards to the only notable topic as summarized here by Siebert, could be Communism/Communist state and mass murder. Both titles would be acceptable as long as the article's topic is that summarized by Siebert, which is nothing other than this same topic but neutral and without OR/SYNTH. Davide King (talk) 00:44, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Status and Action ?
A request was made on 4 November for moderated discussion at DRN. Some of editors here, User:Cloud200, User:Paul Siebert, and User:Davide King, were participating in moderated discussion, and my intention as moderator was to develop one or more RFCs to try to resolve some of the controversy about this article. User:Levivich then proposed to take the article to a deletion discussion. I was then asked by User:Paul Siebert to put the moderated discussion on hold, because he could not take part in the AFD and the DRN at the same time. An AFD takes priority over all other content dispute resolution mechanisms including any RFCs. I put the DRN on hold as requested. I also said, here, at this talk page, that I recommended that a formal community process be initiated, which could be AFD (as proposed by Levivich) or one or more RFCs (as I was planning to take the DRN). More than four days have elapsed since User:Levivich proposed to start a deletion discussion, and there has not yet been a deletion discussion, and discussion seems to have become defocused again. If no one is planning to file an AFD, but the interested parties still want moderated discussion, I will resume the DRN. If there is to be an AFD, it might as well be started now. If the editors who originally wanted moderated discussion have decided that they do not want moderated discussion after all, but would prefer to continue unfocused discussion here, I will close the DRN as abandoned, although I think that will be a mistake, because there seems to be agreement that something should be resolved. So: Do the editors want a community process? Robert McClenon (talk) 05:44, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not going to AFD it. I think this page should be turned into a disambiguation page, but I'm not sure if anyone else agrees. Either way no need to hold up DRN on my account. Levivich 06:04, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
 * If we all agreed that the article will survive AFD, so there is no need to start it, I definitely can continue with DRN. However, I expect all parties to take into account and address the thoughts and arguments that have been put forward during last few days here, on this talk page. One possible way is to summarize them briefly on the DRN page. Paul Siebert (talk) 06:42, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm open to any kind of moderated process and I think how was leading it in the DRN was the best way to get constructive result. Cloud200 (talk) 11:38, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
 * IMO unless you define the scope/topic (not the title) of the article you'll be mired in hopeless complexity and have difficulty in moving forward. But, either way, if you have an excellent person like to help moderate/resolve/organize your efforts,  and a structure to do that under, you should grasp that great opportunity.North8000 (talk) 15:02, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I have taken the DRN discussion back off of hold to resume it. As requested by User:Paul Siebert, I am requesting that each of the editors summarize the thoughts that were put forward here, before we go on with further discussion.  I will add that my objective is to define the scope of the article, and suggestions in that direction are welcome.
 * I will add that other editors are welcome to comment in the DRN, and will not be required to comment every 72 hours, but that I plan to move the discussion along, typically every 48 to 72 hours, occasionally more frequently, as I think will be productive. So please summarize the arguments and thoughts at the DRN.  Robert McClenon (talk) 15:50, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you, Robert. On further reflection, I realized I have one more preliminary condition.
 * I would like to make sure I am arguing with rational persons, not believers, otherwise, as Levivich correctly noted, the whole discussion is senseless.
 * To do that, I propose each party to describe their main ideas again, and to demonstrate that it is falsifiable. Concretely, that included a description of possible evidences that may prove that those ideas are wrong. As an example, I can do that first. Paul Siebert (talk) 17:20, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I am afraid that is not possible, . One user has cited a far-right publisher (WorldNetDaily Books), the other has literally said that the double genocide theory and Holocaust trivialization in the lead is fringe, completely ignoring that while it may be mainstream where they live, it is in fact their beliefs that are fringe, not the quoted part from the current lead, which they want to remove outright, along with any other edit I have made in the last month to make it more neutral, clarify that there is no consensus on terminology or estimates, and fix the article from treating this as a mainstream, scholarly discourse and consensus. Davide King (talk) 17:20, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, you are absolutely right, but, as I already said, that question was repeatedly raised on this talk page. Paul Siebert (talk) 17:06, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The problem is that the topic you correctly individuated here, which is the only notable topic that can be written about in respect with our policies instead of MKuCR, they actually believe in it and think it is a fact that Communism, which is conflated even for those on the Left who are anti-authoritarian and fully democratic, and in general is used to describe the Left in toto, is the greatest murderer of all-time — which clearly lacks any nuance and context, and is indeed a form of Holocaust trivialization and obfuscation because most scholars would say Nazism was worse, and Communism also has a good challenge from colonial and imperialist crimes (even by sheer numbers if capitalism is given the same standard in both relative and absolute terms), which correctly summarized the link with capitalism in the quotes below. Rummel thought that colonialism is socialism, I would not be surprised if he thought fascism was far left or socialist, either — do other users understand that those are, in fact, what could be called fringe? The Soviet Union is not to be considered even pre-1941 on the Axis side, Trump did not win in 2020, and the U.S. Capitol attack was not a false flag from the radical left. Holocaust trivialization and double genocide theory are, in fact, very real and the latter is fringe.
 * Defenders of this article have shown such a low standard for which sources are fine, and is why we have a SYNTH problem. Cherry picking a few sources is not good research, and is not following scholarly literature, but perhaps that is the problem — there is no scholarly literature for what they want (OR/SYNTH is excluded) but there is plenty for what we propose. When we have users who want to put an unjustified overemphasis on primary sources that would fail due weight, it is a problem. When they fail to understand that Wikipedia must rely on independent secondary sources, which is why this whole article is a problem because it is "He said, she said" but, apart from very few exceptions, we are citing this to the ones who said it in the first place, rather than secondary sources which summarize their thoughts for us, and is also the main reason why many authors have been misinterpreted and there is OR — this is a serious problem and there can be no rational discussion when we are continually misunderstood, strawmanned, and insulted, for it is an insult to anyone's intelligence not to see there are problems with this article. Of course there are no problems with it, if you are a believer in it and you engage in Holocaust obfuscation through double-genocide lens. Davide King (talk) 17:20, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Dispute resolution
To summarize I have some reservations about a RfC for this controversial topic and article per the outlined issues I have raised in * above, but I accept 's offer to mediate. I also have a few questions on whether they already have in mind what would be the questions for a RfC, and I express my belief that it should be based on an analysis of sources, our policies, and whose's side reading is 'correct' on the topic, and those involved should have a broad context and understanding of both sides, and a summary of the dispute, which users like Siebert can concisely do. Davide King (talk) 06:07, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

It's "controversial" only because so many Wikipedia editors are at least Communist-adjacent. Nobody seriously debates the correlation between Naziism and the Holocaust. Caldodge (talk) 18:15, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

OR - just going through the article
Ok, can someone show me where in the source is the part that supports this text:

“ As there are few or no comparative studies on communist regimes, it has not been possible to achieve an academic consensus on the causes and definition of such killings in more or less broad, general terms. ”

Source is this one.  Volunteer Marek  01:50, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I just read the source, and sure enough it does not contain any language even remotely close to what wrote in this edit. In fact, the review by Straus is about problems in comparative genocide studies, and only discusses communist regimes in passing. For example: "Some authors such as Valentino employ a concept that includes dozens of twentieth-century cases. Other authors, such as Midlarsky, use a narrower definition, with only three twentieth-century cases. Some authors, such as Weitz, Valentino, Mann, and Levene, incorporate communist cases, which generally involve targeting class groups (not ethnic or racial ones). Other authors exclude communist cases. Some authors such as Mann, Levene, and Valentino include colonial cases; the other authors do not." (p. 496) The suggestion that "few or no comparative studies on communist regimes" exist is nowhere to be found in the source. Davide King's well-meaning incompetence when it comes to reading and understanding English-language sources has been a problem that I've noted before, as many of his edits either fail verification or contain liberal amounts of WP:OR/WP:SYNTH. Realistically, all of Davide King's recent edits are suspect due to lack of competence and this supports the need for a rollback to a more stable version of this article. Thanks for spotting this especially egregious WP:REDFLAG claim, Volunteer Marek.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 04:08, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * That is bordering to well-meaning criticism to personal attacks. Contrary to what has been stated, I used Straus 2007 not for the quoted part but for the fact that genocide scholars have placed little emphasis on regime-type when engaging in comparative analysis. "few or no comparative studies on communist regimes" could be changed to "few or no comparative studies on communist regimes as a whole", or something like that, since comparative studies have been done for Stalin's, Mao's, and Pol Pot's regimes, and Communist regimes have also been compared to non-Communist regimes, rather than among themselves as a whole. It would be better to tag that part as citation needed or clarification needed rather than attack me like that and act as though the source I used for that quoted part is Straus 2007 — indeed, Straus 2007 is placed after Genocide scholars have placed little emphasis on regime-type when engaging in comparative analysis,[4] Davide King (talk) 04:28, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Ok, honestly I didn’t look at who put what in when, I just simply read the text of the article and this one was a red flag. Since it seems we all agree that this part is not in the source, can we remove it without controversy?  Volunteer Marek   04:39, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I'd prefer tagging it first, or reword it, before removing outright but I would avoid editing the article in general as long as the AfD is ongoing. For the same reason, you should revert yourself, as did here for the same reason. If you are not aware, we did discuss a revert of two full months edits at DRN but there was disagreement —  may be helpful in regards to this issue and what can and/or should be done about it. Davide King (talk) 04:58, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * (EC), for the record, you have no source for the statement that "there are few or no comparative studies on communist regimes"? That sentence was pure original research, or so self-evident in your mind that no citation was required?TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 05:00, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * , removal of the red flag claim would be a good start, but probably not sufficient. "Genocide scholars have placed little emphasis on regime-type when engaging in comparative analysis" is not supported by the source either, and there is much in the source that suggests otherwise: "That said, three overlapping explanatory paradigms are evident in the books: idealism, political development, and state interest. The idealism framework roots genocide in specific extreme ideologies ... " (p. 489); "Recent literature on the Holocaust has found some middle ground between these two positions, recognizing both a strong element of contingency and the importance of top-level ideology." (p. 493) [emphasis added]. In sum: Straus 2007 says that the ideology of the governing regime is the major motivating factor considered by one of the three schools of thought in genocide studies that he is critiquing. Davide King summarized that as "Genocide scholars have placed little emphasis on regime-type when engaging in comparative analysis." Davide King's summary is inaccurate and misleading.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 05:00, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I think I should have made more clear I meant within the context of Communist regimes (e.g. genocide scholars may find ideology important in causing some genocides in non-Communist regimes — your quote seems to show they have reached a middle position, but that is of in genocides general, not necessarily of Communism, as assumed the wording in question is within the context of Communism, rather than generalize. I suggest you to discuss this with (e.g. example of sourcing analysis performed by Siebert saying Valentino does not see regime type or ideology as important, and focus more on the leaders), as they can better answer your questions and fix the text and/or errors I may have made. I probably should not have generalize, I was mainly think of Valentino, who is a core source of this article — I will let Siebert explain you this better. Davide King (talk) 05:27, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Right, and Straus 2007 puts Valentino in the third school of thought mentioned above: "The third paradigm—what I label the 'state interest' framework—sees genocide as the product of leader-level planning, with Valentino and Midlarsky as the exemplars. ... For Valentino, the calculus appears to be a thought-through, rational response to particular conditions." (p. 491). However, strong competing views exist, and Straus states that all three approaches are flawed in terms of their predictive power and falsifiability.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 05:57, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * , I was trying to summary this — e.g. lack of consensus/disagreements among genocide scholars, and "all three approaches are flawed in terms of their predictive power and falsifiability." Is this correct then? If so, do you think something along those lines may be (re-)added? Thank you.-Davide King (talk) 14:01, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Same thing here — do you think you could reword it/better phrase it? Like that comparative analysis has been done mainly between Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot (Jones discuss together only Stalin and Mao, and gives Pol Pot a separated chapter) rather than a broad comparative analysis between all or most Communist regimes, and the fact such regimes have also been compared with non-Communist regimes (e.g. Cambodia, the Holocaust, Rwanda), not necessarily between only Communist regimes? Also while the two sentences should be separated (e.g. Jones and Valentino are not mentioned in Karlsson 2008), on the basis that Stalin influenced Mao, who influenced Pol Pot; in such cases, killings were carried out as part of a policy of an unbalanced modernization process of rapid industrialization is from Karlsson 2008, p. 8. Full quote:
 * "Where and how did the historical process begin that was to lead to communist regimes committing crimes against humanity? Did it begin with Marx and Marxism, or when Marxism took root in Russian ground and was remoulded to conform to Russian political culture, or when Lenin and the Bolsheviks carried out their coup d’etat in Petrograd on 7 November 1917, or when Stalin began the major, radical Soviet revolution in the early 1920s? If these crimes are an integral part of the modern project, for which there is much evidence in modern research, what marked the beginning of the unbalanced Russian modernisation process that was to have such terrible consequences?"
 * How could this be (re-)worded? Thank you. Davide King (talk) 14:13, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * While we are on the subject,, can you please provide a direct quotation supporting your statement that "Critics of communism define a 'generic communism' category as any political party movement lead by intellectuals," since I don't have access to your source? It would certainly help with verification!TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 05:17, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * While I will try to check the source, I think it should be qualified as such as Martin Malia and Stéphane Courtois. Davide King (talk) 05:30, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The extended quote (to give you an impression of the context) is as follows:
 * "''Malia flirts in the formulations cited above with the suggestion à la Courtois that communism was the greatest evildoer of them all. To his credit, however, in the bulk of the piece he is concerned with laying out a more rigorous set of desiderata that need to be addressed in any comparison between Nazism and communism. The implicit purpose of doing so is to address criticisms that have arisen over The Black Book, and chief among these was the objection that there existed vastly different kinds of communisms around the globe that cannot be treated as a single phenomenon. Malia thus counters by coining the category of “generic Communism,” defined everywhere down to the common denominator of party movements founded by intellectuals. (Pol Pot’s study of Marxism in Paris thus comes across as historically more important than the gulf between radical Soviet industrialism and the Khmer Rouge’s murderous anti-urbanism.) For an argument so concerned with justifying The Black Book, however, Malia’s latest essay is notable for the significant objections he passes by. Notably, he does not mention the literature addressing the statistical-demographic, methodological, or moral dilemmas of coming to an overall communist victim count, especially in terms of the key issue of how to include victims of disease and hunger. Paul Siebert (talk) 07:01, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * yes, you are right: these authors mentions Communism just in passing. Incidentally, the very same authors are used in the MKuCR article, which create an impression that Communist mass killings are the focus of their study. Do you have any fresh idea on how can we fix that blatant OR? Paul Siebert (talk) 07:17, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * This hardly supports the sentence as written. For starters it takes on author and turn them into a generic “critics of communism”, falsely implying that this is some definition shared by all “critics of communism”. For starters…  Volunteer Marek   07:40, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you for providing the relevant excerpt, Paul Siebert. I have taken a stab at modifying the text to avoid the implication that the definition provided by David-Fox 2004 is universal to critics of communism, as opposed to a scathing rebuke of Martin Malia's analysis.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 07:53, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * if you believe that David'Fox's opinion needs specific attribution (which is not completely the case, for his article is not op-ed), why the rest of text is full with "several authors" or "scholars"? Actually, all those statements were made just by handful of authors, so you should either self-revert or bring the rest of the text into accordance with your edits. Paul Siebert (talk) 16:36, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * To the contrary, Paul, the rest of the section is also attributed to specific authors (e.g., "According to historian Anton Weiss-Wendt"; "According to Professor of Economics Attiat Ott"; "Sociologist Michael Mann has proposed"; "As summarized by the Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence"; "Professor of History Klas-Göran Karlsson uses"; "Mann and historian Jacques Sémelin believe"; "Political scientist Rudolph Rummel defined"; "Under the Genocide Convention"; "coined by the Munich Institut für Zeitgeschichte"; "has been used by Professor of Comparative Economic Systems Steven Rosefielde"; "According to historian Jörg Hackmann"; "Historian Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine writes"; "Political scientist Michael Shafir writes"; "George Voicu states that fellow historian Leon Volovici has"; "Professor of Psychology Ervin Staub defined"; "Professors Joan Esteban (Economic Analysis), Massimo Morelli (Political Science and Economics), and Dominic Rohner (Political and Institutional Economics) have defined"; "has been defined by political scientist Benjamin Valentino"; "Political scientist Jay Ulfelder has used"; "Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies Alex J. Bellamy states"; "Professor of International Relations Atsushi Tago and Professor of Political Science Frank Wayman use"; "According to Professor of Economics Attiat F. Ott and his postdoctoral associate Sang Hoo Bae"; "Associate Professor of Sociology Yang Su uses"; "genocide scholar Barbara Harff studies"; "Political scientist Manus I. Midlarsky uses"; "Soviet specialist Stephen Wheatcroft states"). The exceptions (e.g., "Critics of communism define a "generic communism" category as any political party movement lead by intellectuals"; "as there are few or no comparative studies on communist regimes"; "Genocide scholars have placed little emphasis on regime-type when engaging in comparative analysis"; etc.) were added by your ally Davide King (,, and elsewhere).TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 19:10, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Really?
 * "Different general terms are used to describe the intentional killing of large numbers of noncombatants." Don't see how that general statement is related to the topic of this article. One of the sources is Wheatcroft, who focuses on Russian history only. He never proposed anything of that kind.
 * "According to historian Anton Weiss-Wendt, the field of comparative genocide studies, which rarely appears in mainstream disciplinary journalsm, despite growth of research and interest, due to its humanities roots and reliance on methodological approaches that did not convince mainstream political science, has very "little consensus on defining principles such as definition of genocide, typology, application of a comparative method, and timeframe." According to Professor of Economics Attiat Ott, mass killing has emerged as a "more straightforward" term." - That relates to Mass killing, as you perfectly know, that article barely mentions Communism.
 * "Several authors have attempted to propose a common terminology to describe the killings of unarmed civilians by communist governments, individually or as a whole, some of them believing that government policies, interests, neglect, and mismanagement contributed, directly or indirectly, to such killings, and evaluate different causes of death, which are defined with various terms." Who those "several authors" are? Are they really numerous?
 * "According to this view, which has been either ignored or criticized by other genocide scholars and scholars of communism, it is possible to have an estimated communist death toll based on a "generic communism" grouping." I saw not much critics by genocide scholars. This view is just ignored. that text gives a totally undeserved weight to it.
 * "For example, Michael David-Fox states that Martin Malia is able to link disparate regimes, from radical Soviet industrialists to the anti-urbanists of the Khmer Rouge, under the guise of a "generic communism" category "defined everywhere down to the common denominator of party movements founded by intellectuals."" Do you have other examples?
 * All of that is just an attempt to give an undue weight to a couple of sources. In reality, Malia made a claim, he was criticized by David-Fox (and some other authors), and THAT'S IT. The rest is a total bullshit: I saw no example of any real debates among "genocide scholars" about a proper terminology: everybody uses the terms they like, and nobody cares. Paul Siebert (talk) 19:31, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * With the exception of the first sentence, which is a summary expounded on later in the article, most of the text above was added by your ally Davide King. Presumably that means you agree with Volunteer Marek that "the process here has been 'Step 1, make the article horrible by stuffing it full of bad writing and irrelevancies. Step 2, go running to AfD saying "look at how bad the article is!"'" and support the idea of a rollback?TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 20:22, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Not exactly. My point is that any person who edit this section is doomed to balance between Scylla of OR and Charybdis of POV-violation. The section discusses some minor issues that are beyond the scope of majority scholars. DK tried to avoid Charybdis, and accidentally moved closer to Scylla. Yes, he is not an Odyssey, but who can throw a stone to him? Paul Siebert (talk) 20:39, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * This one is fantastic. I'm adding it to my long collection of quotes from Siebert and Kinge who run around teaching others about WP:NPOV while at the same time justifying ones between them. Cloud200 (talk) 09:29, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Not exactly. I am saying that DK's edits are far from perfect, but he has a dilemma: to keep the terribly POV text or to try to partially fix it by introducing some OR. I think he recognizes the problems with his edits, and he will not object to its improvement. If I were you, I would propose some concrete ways to fix all of that (my own proposal is to delete the section completely). Paul Siebert (talk) 19:33, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Maybe, this paragraph?
 * "The arguments in the second-generation books have some obvious differences. Weitz turns on race and Utopia; Semelin on identity and purity; Valentino on leaders' strategic goals; Midlarsky on imprudent realpolitik and loss; Mann on democracy and ethnic nationalism; and on the rise of the West and nation-states. Valentino importance of perpetrator publics; Mann, Levene, and Semeline explicitly argue otherwise. Midlarsky and Levene reject a utilitarian to genocide; Weitz implies the same (with the emphasis contrast, Valentino argues that genocide is the instrumental leaders who want to achieve a certain goal. Mann and the longue duree of modern state formation and nationalism; sky and Valentino focus more on short-term conditions. significant conceptual differences (discussed in greater Some authors use a narrow definition of genocide; one. Some include communist and/or colonial cases; These conceptual differences and the concomitant lection limit comparability of different findings."
 * Clearly, the author says that Communism/communist regimes is not considered as an important parameter in comparative studies made by the second generation genocide scholars. That is the fact that is very hard to fit into the article with that structure. And that is an additional reason for at least its major rewrite if not deletion.
 * if you honestly want to go through the article, I suggest you to start with old text: it is much more problematic from the point of view of WP:V. Paul Siebert (talk) 07:13, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Clearly, the author says that Communism/communist regimes is not considered as an important parameter in comparative studies I don’t think that’s “clearly” at all! In fact there’s nothing in there to draw the WP:SYNTH that is being presented.  Volunteer Marek   07:42, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I would also like to see where in the source this claim: which has been either ignored or criticized by other genocide scholars and scholars of communism is supported?  Volunteer Marek   07:48, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Marek, frankly speaking, I think the whole paragraph is unsatisfactory. The problem is, however, that the article contains even worse SYNTH/POV, which this para is trying partially alleviate: It create an absolutely false impression that the issues discussed in this section is a part of a mainstream scholarly discourse, which is absolutely false. In a situation when the views expressed in that article are simply ignored by most historians, it is hard to expect a widespread criticism. Do you have any idea how to fix that problem without engaging in original research? Paul Siebert (talk) 14:01, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I was just going through the article sequentially and this is the part I came to that had lots of red flags and just the wording suggested there was some non-sourced OR going on. Other parts of the article may very well also have problems but I haven’t gotten to these yet. Can we then remove this paragraph?  Volunteer Marek   18:10, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Paul, Straus 2007 states that some comparative studies of genocide specifically exclude communist killings of political or class enemies, citing the UN definition, so it is not surprising that it mentions communism only in passing. However, Straus 2007 does not support the inference that mass killings under communist regimes did not occur in the twentieth-century or are not a notable topic. The specific use of this source by Davide King was WP:SYNTH and failed verification; while Straus is somewhat critical of the scholars in question (who include some of our key sources, especially Valentino), and of the field of comparative genocide studies in general, there is no indication that Straus's view is the more mainstream view in academia. To the contrary, Straus seems to make clear that academic discourse regarding the common causes of genocide has not yet achieved consensus.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 19:10, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * "Genocide scholars" do not care too much about terminology, so they frequently use the term "genocide" in its broader meaning, i.e. it implicitly covers all other "-cides". In that sense, "genocide prevention" does not mean prevention genocides sensu stricto. You know that it was me who brought this source here, and I perfectly know what Straus says.
 * To prevent possible disruption of the discussion, let's agree that noone questions that mass killings never occurred in Communist states, or that Communist authority bear no responsibility for them. The points of disagreement are different: (i) what exactly fall into the category of "mass killings" (the answer strongly depends on one's political views), and (ii) if those mass killings have some significant common causes, and this cause was Communism. If you agree that that is the core issue, then let's continue our dialogue. If you can propose some better summary, please, do that. Otherwise, I have no desire to waste our time. Paul Siebert (talk) 20:48, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * What you are trying to do here, is to push your WP:POV that there exists any single majority view on these two issues you correctly identified. By endlessly disputing this, you have effectively blocked any attempts to improve the article since at least August, and certainly wasted weeks of people's time.
 * As it was highlighted plenty of times, if there is a debate on a particular topic subject to interpretation, the point of WP:NPOV is not to "average" it by selecting any "majority" view, but to objectively present the debate itself, which the article does to some extent. What you have been pushing in the article since September however was to frame the debate through the lens of an actual fringe "double genocide theory", which is an extreme WP:POV.
 * You have been doing that by letting King push more blatant edits, which are or are not contested, but if they are, then King steps back and you step in to defend them by watering down the criticism with Gish gallop and gaslighting. This was exactly the case with mentions of "double genocide theory being mainstream in Eastern Europe", which were added by King, defended by you and King for over a month, and "magically" disappeared after I explicitly tagged each of them as unsourced and weasel - which they were from the very beginning. And yes, what I'm doing here is accusing you of WP:DE and I'm determine to take this further as I can clearly see you have now replicated the same tactics in the DRN and AfD. Cloud200 (talk) 09:46, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
 * That becomes annoying. Accusations about personal behavior that lack evidence is a personal attack. I respectfully request you to provide evidences, or I report you at AE. Paul Siebert (talk) 19:35, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Another solution is as follows: you withdraw all your insulting posts and switch to a more productive mode, which, among other things implies a respectful dialogue devoid of inflammatory language and logical answer to my arguments. Deal? Paul Siebert (talk) 19:38, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Marek, frankly speaking, the only solution is to remove the "Terminology" section. It is awful, and it contains a lot of POV/SYNTH. What is a purpose to have it if majority country-experts just ignore all that bullshit? Paul Siebert (talk) 20:52, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * If you really want to save this article, let's talk what we can do. I have some plan, which will allow us to write a totally neutral, well sources and notable story. Paul Siebert (talk) 20:55, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

misplaced comment sections
There are some comments in new sections above that seem to be misplaced !votes in the current AfD. Is moving them there appropriate? ~ cygnis insignis 16:58, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * None of the comments were policy-based, so they would be inappropriate at AFD. I've removed them per WP:NOTFORUM/WP:REFACTOR. Additionally, I've protected the page temporarily from further disruption from unregistered editors. This page is not for airing grievances regarding communism. Articles for deletion/Mass killings under communist regimes (4th nomination) is still open for editing, though everyone seems to be leaving comments on its talk page for some reason. clpo13(talk) 17:08, 24 November 2021 (UTC)


 * They almost certainly due to a thread on conspiracy-clickbait website 4Chan, which entirely misrepresented what the AfD discussion is about. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:11, 24 November 2021 (UTC)


 * This thread has clearly grown out of 4chan and into mainstream politics on platforms such as Reddit and Twitter. Nothing good will come out of it, and some conspiracy centered political leaders seems to have taken the fight. The current political situation isn't helping. Larrayal (talk) 23:45, 24 November 2021 (UTC)


 * As I say, misplaced, but I was considering how to incorporate those comments into the AfD [in an increasingly desperate attempt at providing balance in my nom] There are keep !votes that are founded on similar points of view, although I would be hesitant to link the diff of reverted edits as an example. ~ cygnis insignis 17:23, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Most of the same arguments are being made at Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Mass killings under communist regimes (4th nomination), if you're looking to reference them. Taking some of those concerns into account might be worthwhile, particularly the complaint that Wikipedia is whitewashing communism entirely by deleting this one article. clpo13(talk) 17:27, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Also, as pointed out at the AFD, the deletion discussion has been mentioned at https://notthebee.com/article/wikipedia-is-considering-the-deletion-of-the-page-titled-mass-killings-under-communist-regimes-. For context: The Babylon Bee. clpo13(talk) 17:30, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * It was a reasonable action per NOTFORUM, I'm also comfortable with the last two sections being deleted as well if the line was drawn at established v. identifiable ip swarm. ~ cygnis insignis 17:33, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Incidentally, I was one out of few persons who bothered to go to a library and take a paper version of Rummel's database. That is awful: Rummel seriously cites Cold war era rough estimates of Soviet deaths, and his GULAG figures are totally inconsistent (more than 10 times greater) with all consensus figures. Rosefielde re-considered his estimates (significantly downward), Conquest did that too - everybody. Rummel is arguably the only person who refused to take a look at new data that became available after fall of the USSR. And those figures are seriously cited by that web site? Surely, that is an additional strong reason to delete the article. Rummel already has one page, and that is more than enough.
 * The very article's structure does not allow us to get rid of that trash, because serious scholars are not interested in compiling Guinness book type figures of a "global Communist death toll''. As a result, we have a paradoxical situation: we have modern and trustworthy figures of human life loss for almost each event, but, instead of that, we put forward a lousy "Communist death toll" data from an outdated databases or from self-described anthropologist. Paul Siebert (talk) 00:02, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
 * If Rummel's "Death by government" is trash, why is it cited 1573 times? Rummel's numbers seem good enough for this genocide site, or is that trash too? --Nug (talk) 11:37, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
 * 'If Mein Kampf is cited 390,000 times, why doesn't Wikipedia use it as a source for articles? Proof by Google search results is a poor argument for anything... AndyTheGrump (talk) 11:44, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Lol, never thought Godwin's law would be invoked. It was Paul's suggestion to select sources based upon Google scholar citation counts. --Nug (talk) 12:21, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Regardless of who's suggestion it is, trying to use Google search results as a means to assess the usefulness of sources is poor practice. And WP:OR, to use Wikipedia jargon. And methodologically flawed, for several obvious reasons. Though if it is being used in this discussion, I can't say I'm surprised, given the disregard for normal Wikipedia practice (and basic academic practice for that matter) evident from this talk page. If Rummel is being cited, what is he being cited for? And what do those who cite him have to say about it? That is what matters when assessing a source. That, and whether other independent sources come to similar conclusions. Because otherwise, this article isn't discussing 'Mass killings', it is discussing what Rummel had to say about them. And we appear to already have an article on that. AndyTheGrump (talk) 12:37, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
 * That is correct. Rummel is being cited mainly for his works where he applied Factor analysis to social sciences, and for his democratic peace theory. That makes him prominent. Paul Siebert (talk) 22:43, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
 * No, it is not a poor argument. Can you please tell me how many sources that cite Mein Kampf support it? Obviously, all of them cite it mostly for criticism.
 * Of course, the number of citations per se is not a sign of reliability, it is a sign of notability. However, usually, books or articles are sited not for criticism or debunking, but as a source of information. If the citing articles contain no serious criticism (and usually that is the case) then the numer of citation is a good measure of reliability.
 * I am a little bit disappointed that I need to explain you so trivial and obvious things. Paul Siebert (talk) 22:42, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree that Mein Kampf was probably not a good comparison, for a better one, The Bell Curve has been cited over 12,000 times, but I doubt the majority of the citers agree with the conclusions of the book. but it is no doubt well known and has received much commentary. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:49, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
 * then it is by no means notable, but controversial. However, the situation described by you is hardly typical. Paul Siebert (talk) 23:04, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't exactly describe Rummel or the Black Book as typical either. Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:13, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Obvious bias.
Wikipedia is protecting this section to allow obvious abuse and manipulation by a handful of partisans pushing to rewrite history to cover atrocities by citing other partisan academics. The effort to derail this into the realm of opinion, while calling those opinions fact, is as blatant as it is absurd. If this is allowed to continue, this entire project has failed, and Wikipedia should just close up shop. 2600:1700:1260:11E0:A5CF:E379:8577:8704 (talk) 18:51, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Why isn’t there an article on mass killings under fascist regimes? 2001:569:BE89:B000:619A:78A7:10A9:88B3 (talk) 19:00, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree that there should be an article about mass killings under fascist regimes as well. X-Editor (talk) 20:07, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree as well. Th78blue (They/Them/Their • talk) 23:36, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Go for it. --Nug (talk) 23:55, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Please don't. We really don't need more of these articles. Every item you could fit there already has it's own article, a brief search for sources on the topics of general fascist mass killings only reveals sources that talk about genocide/mass killings at large, or specific incidents such as the Holocaust or Indonesian genocide. BSMRD (talk) 00:04, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Exactly. Valentino's work Final Solutions is about genocides and mass killings in the 20th century. We may want to describe all relevant events in such an article, rather than make controversial and/or inadeguate grouping by ideology or regime type. Davide King (talk) 00:11, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Don't be in denial. Valentino does in fact categorise mass killings as "communist" with a chapter called "Communist mass killings". The first sentence in that chapter:
 * "Communist regimes have been responsible for this century’s most deadly episodes of mass killing. Estimates of the total number of people killed by communist regimes range as high as 110 million.".
 * --Nug (talk) 01:12, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Did you read other chapters? How do you summarise the main concept of the Valentino's book? And hot his ostensible categorisation of "Communist mass killings" fits in hos major theoretical concept? Paul Siebert (talk) 01:49, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Do not be rude. That is a subcategory of "dispossessive mass killing", which also includes "ethnic mass killings" and "mass killing as leaders acquire and repopulate land." Neither of this explains why 'Communist mass killings' cannot be described within the context of genocides and mass killings in general article, which is exactly what scholars like Valentino did — their work was not focused on Communism but on genocide and mass killings, which is going to include also Communism and Communist regimes anyway, though mostly Stalin's, Mao's, and Pol Pot's.
 * You also ignore that Valentino says only Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot (e.g. the most radical Communist regimes) certainly fit the Communist mass killings category, while other events may also fit it but cannot verify them, and that most Communist regimes did not, in fact, engage in mass killings, and that his purpose was to explain why — all of this is missing, and can be described much better within the context of genocide and mass killings in general, especially during the 20th century, which is what most scholars do, e.g. comparison between Communist and non-Communist regimes, such as Cambodia, Holocaust, Rwanda. If you want a specific article focused on Communism, we may have a Communist death toll article, or have a separated article about links between Communism and mass killing, while merging events into a general article summary of genocides and mass killings in the 20th century, exactly as Valentino did. Can you explain what would be wrong with this, and why we should not adopt Valentino's work structure?
 * Davide King (talk) 01:59, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * (Mobile IP) Ya may wanna hold off on that idea & wait, until the AfD is closed on this article. GoodDay (talk) 09:45, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

A whole week is 'enough'. Decide the article's fate & close down the AfD.
It's nearly a whole week since the AfD was opened. Recommend an administrator or somebody who's good at judging AfDs, close it. You've got only two options - Close as 'keep' or close as 'delete'. If anybody complains about which option is chosen? Let'em complain to me, since I'm recommending closure. GoodDay (talk) 09:36, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * There is also the option of no consensus. X-Editor (talk) 02:03, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Black Book of Communism
Evidently not a reliable academic source judging by how 3 of its main contributors rejected the conclusions synthesised by the editor, and two of them alleging that death tolls had been purposely inflated. If the AfD fails then content that relies on its conclusions and sources that draw on its conclusions should be removed per WP:QUESTIONABLE. Dark-World25 (talk) 12:10, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Black Book of Communism describes the work, and its criticism, which articles display a link to the work includes those featuring Template:Anti-communism in Europe since 1989. ~ cygnis insignis 12:24, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I have no problem with that, but it should not be used as a source for academic consensus. A significant portion of the conclusions drawn in the article derives from the Black Book and its derivative sources. Dark-World25 (talk) 12:31, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The criticisms revolved around the comparison of communism and nazism, which the article MKuCR doesn’t do. The other criticism is that Courtois inflated the numbers killed as 100 million, okay, say he did and the real number is actually 50 million, does that really make a difference? — Nug (talk) 12:38, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * These are (weak) moral, political and ideological arguments on your part. They have nothing whatever to do with the extremely shaky factual basis for, or encyclopaedic nature of, this article. But they do reveal that your investment in its retention is, like the reason for the existence of the article itself, deeply and inherently political. DublinDilettante (talk) 20:37, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
 * PS, you should take it to WP:RSN rather than just tagging the article, that just seems lazy to me. —Nug (talk) 12:42, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The template "{unreliable sources}" loses all meaning when an article is so tagged because someone does not like Courtois. Dark-World25 ought to revert.XavierItzm (talk) 15:51, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Indeed, RSN is the appropriate place for this discussion. Would be good to get a formal consensus on the Black Book at least. Perhaps it may be best to wait a few days after the close of the AfD before asking for community input on anything related to this article, just to let the heat die down a little bit. BSMRD (talk) 16:13, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * All of that is superficial. "Reliable" for what? The Werth's chapter is definitely contains many reliable facts and conclusions. The problem is that the source is used mostly to advocate the most controversial and politicized statement it makes: that "a total number of victims" is a legitimate scholarly topic, that all victims should be ascribed to Communism, and that Communism (a "generic Communism") was the worst murdered of XX century, which implies it was worse than Nazism. All of that is heavily criticized, and, if that article will be kept, it should be moved to the bottom to a separate section that discusses various controversies. Paul Siebert (talk) 16:21, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * A book published by Harvard University Press is not what the "unreliable sources" tag was created for.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 17:40, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes. It is reliable. But it is reliable primarily due to Werth&Margolin, but Wikipedia uses it to advocate the views of Courtois, whom Werth&Margolin openly disagree with. Werth traces the roots of Stalinist violence in Lenin, who according to him, was a successor of Nechaev, and he emphasises specific features of pre-revolutionary Russian society. Courtois sees the roots in Marx, and he stresses commonalities. Werth is praised by majority of authors, whereas Courtois is criticised. And guess, whom Wikipedia picks? That is not an ureliability issue, that is a misuse of a pretty reliable source, which is more a conduct issue than a content dispute. Paul Siebert (talk) 18:41, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * It is not my intention to be offensive, but one possible reason is that Werth's chapter is long, it contains no simple thoughts and general facts that can be picked up and pasted to the article, and it requires some efforts to understand and summarise it. By the way, did anybody here read it in full? Paul Siebert (talk) 18:45, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The article does not use the BBoC to advocate anything, it just mentions Courtois' estimate of the death toll along with ten other estimates, along with his opinion about the linkage with communism along with the other author's opinions as to the causes, all attributed to him. Any challenge to his attributed viewpoint is either given immediately inline or as footnote anyway. So a separate section that discusses various controversies is redundant not only for that reason but also because nobody disputes that some specific mass killing did not occur under a specific communist regime, apart from certain famines for which there is a section on famine debates. --Nug (talk) 18:52, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, Courtois sets the paradigm: to collect all deaths in one category. That creates a whole section, because is we remove this source, most of the rest is garbage. Courtois's idea to collect all deaths together was severely criticized by Werths and many other authors. That alone makes the existence of this section incompatible with NPOV. Paul Siebert (talk) 19:16, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * No, Courtois didn't set any the paradigm in regard to the article. I'm sure Werth was well aware he was contributing to a book that grouped topics related to killings under communist regimes together, his issue wasn't related that grouping but to the introduction that compared communism and nazism and the claimed inflation of numbers. MKuCR does not do that comparison. As I said, even if we half the 100 million to 50 million, does it really make any difference? --Nug (talk) 21:05, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The introduction was not peer-reviewed, and the chapter themselves do not support the MKuCR narrative and structure, that was specifically Courtois and Malia's idea. By the way, why not citing scholars for what Courtois said? Why do we must rely on A said, and cite it to A rather than B? Davide King (talk) 19:20, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Before you claimed (or was it Paul?) that MKuCR narrative and structure was based on Valentino, now you are saying it is based on Courtois' introduction, make up your mind. --Nug (talk) 21:07, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * No need to be condescending. The MKuCR is the result of synthesis between core sources, which are misread (e.g. Courtois is about a Communist death toll, and equation between racial genocide/Nazism and class genocide/Communism, while Valentino is about Communist mass killing as a subcategory of dispossessive mass killing, alongside other mass killing categories and subcategories, and wrote about mass killings which happened to happen under some Communist regimes, and noting that most Communist regimes did not, in fact, engage in mass killings and shought to explain why, led him to believe that it was Communist leaders, not communist ideology, the cause and/or offset of such mass killings in such states, while many others — or "most" to use his own words — Communist regimes did not) and merged together to form MKuCR, taking the Communist grouping popularized by Courtois and the mass killing category from Valentino.
 * They are by no means the only ones — we have Mann, whose main point was that genocides, such as Rwanda, happened due to democratic transformation in the country; this is a problem of many sources, where we cherry pick any mention of Communist regimes, and ignore everything else and the context they are put in, e.g. broad genocides and mass killings in the 20th century (Mann, Valentino). Davide King (talk) 21:36, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Courtois indeed set that paradigm of Communist grouping, and in regards to Werth — considering their own reactions, it appears more plausible that they were not, in fact, aware of it. As noted by Paczkowski, the other sections of the book "are, in effect, narrowly focused monographs, which do not pretend to offer overarching explanations." So in fact even the Communist grouping itself is mainly Courtois' idea from the introduction. Davide King (talk) 21:45, 29 November 2021 (UTC)