Talk:Mass killings under communist regimes/Archive 39

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"Communist holocaust"?

Can a book title and a political declaration be considered a scholarly terminology? I am not sure this item belongs to this section, because we need to demonstrate it the term "Red/Communist holocaust" was proposed as a scholarly term, not just a polemic formula. I would like to see scholarly sources that support this claim.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:22, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

It doesn't have to be scholarly. However, the information is misleading. The Foundation was a project of the U.S. Right which pushed for inclusion of the Foundation and the wording through Jesse Helms and Dana Rohrabacher. Also, there seems to be no reason to use the adjective "Communist." It's not used for any of the other other terms. TFD (talk) 20:13, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

The "terminology" section begins with the statement: "The following terminology has been used to describe separate mass killings of unarmed civilians by Communist governments" In connection to that, I am asking: if "Communist holocaust" is the term, or it is just a word that happened to be used to allegorically describe MKuCR?--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:08, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

RS tell this is terminology [2]. My very best wishes (talk) 03:53, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for the source. Added it to the article.--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:20, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

The scholar of that source calls the label and discourse "anti-Semitic" and based in "ignorance." So it's far from a scholarly term.-GPRamirez5 (talk) 13:39, 6 June 2018 (UTC) GPRamirez5 (talk) 13:39, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Actually, that is what I added to the article. If you want, please, expand.--Paul Siebert (talk) 13:45, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Vietnam

Just so everyone here is aware, archival evidence from Vietnam indicates that the number of executions during the North Vietnamese land reform was "fixed in principle at the ratio of one per one thousand people," or approximately 13,500 of North Vietnam's 1953 population of 13.5 million, although this ratio was flexible and it is not known whether actual executions during the land reform were greater or lesser than planned; recent scholarship has accepted a somewhat higher figure of 15,000 executions. The 50,000 estimate given in the Black Book of Communism was widely accepted for a time but has long since been abandoned by most Vietnam scholars, and the astronomical numbers in Rosefielde's Red Holocaust (which he derived from Radio Free Asia, in turn citing—without attribution—Rummel's "Statistics of Vietnamese Democide," Table 6.1A, line 347) demonstrate only that Rosefielde is not an expert in Vietnamese—as opposed to Soviet—history. Also, Valentino's total estimate for all political killings in communist Vietnam is 80,000–200,000, which is lower than his estimate of 110,000–310,000 "democidal" killings by the U.S. and South Vietnam during the same period. It seems odd to omit that given how widely Valentino is used in this article. Happy editing!TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 10:09, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

I've tagged the current "Democratic Republic of Vietnam" section as POV due to its use of highly dubious statistics and lack of balance. It should probably be rewritten from scratch.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 10:23, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Why tag? You are very welcome to fix this section by providing all alternative estimates as you just outlined above, along with other sourced estimates that are already included. No one will object. Same for other sections and the entire page. By providing a range of estimates in academic sources and explaining the origin of the differences (per sources) we can make it consistent with WP:NPOV. However, we should only talk about people killed by their own governments on this page. The deaths of combatants at war should not be included here and probably should not be even discussed, maybe only very briefly. My very best wishes (talk) 11:41, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Regarding the accuracy of Rummel's data, you may be interested to read the "Rummel and other genocide scholars" section of this talk page. It was also a dispute between Margolin and Courtois about that. --Paul Siebert (talk) 11:17, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

If this is true, then Vietnam does not fit this article, because it was not a mass killing per Valentino. What do you think?--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:27, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

It tells "Valentino attributes 80,000–200,000 deaths to "communist mass killings"". So, why this is not a mass killing per Valentino? My very best wishes (talk) 03:06, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Valentino defined "mass killings" as incidents where more than 5,000 people were killed. So not all killings by Communists were mass killings. TFD (talk) 13:51, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

I would think that killing 15,000 people in a specified class is the same as a "mass killing" in common English, even if they were killed one at a time. Parsing it into "but they were 15,000 individual killings" does not seem to be a strong argument at all. Collect (talk) 14:22, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Read the source, cite the source, move on. Fifelfoo (talk) 14:25, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Collect, if we use Valentino as a source (and we are not using him selectively, aren't we?) we accept his definition (actually, it was not his definition, it was proposed earlier). It says:"more than 50,000 in 5 years".--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:09, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Nope. Citing a source does not mean we are "accepting" the source's definitions except insofar as that single source is concerned. Applying a definition from one source to a claim by another source is one aspect of "original research." Nor, using my own opinion, would I consider 100,000 deaths in a population of 100,000,000 to be of the same weight I, personally, would assign to killing 10,000 people in a population of 1,000,000. But I note my opinion, and your opinion, as to a definition of "mass killing" does not mean we can apply that as a definition for a reliable source which uses a different definition. If you wish Wikipedia qua Wikipedia to adopt a specific standard, I think that you would be pushing the bounds of "original research" way too far. Collect (talk) 18:04, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Collect, what you are saying is correct. I think it makes sense to add to the article that communist regimes controlled several large countries for a long period of time, so the absolute figures are misleading (Hitler had a control over much smaller population for less than 10 years). I saw this statement in one source, so we can add it.

Regarding the definition, yes, there is no universal definition, and that makes :Terminology" section deeply misleading. Let's remove it and summarise what it says if a couple of sentences.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:45, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

• While one can certainly use the book by Valentino ("mass killing" is something he called "mass killing" in the book, and he said it about Vietnam), this is only one of good RS on the subject. Anything that has been described as a significant mass murder by "communist" governments in any academic RS can and should be included on this page per WP:NPOV. "Significant" means significant enough to be described as mass murder in an academic RS. My very best wishes (talk) 15:30, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

No problem. If we remove the "Definition" section and move Valentino's theorising to the bottom, that will be fine. Othervise you pretend the subject is well defined and mainstream (when you find it convenient), and argue that the definition is vague when you want to include something that does nit fit it. --Paul Siebert (talk) 16:09, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

This subject is "mainstream" because it was studied and described in publications by mainstream scientists, such as Courtois, Malia, Valentino, Rummel, etc. Is it well defined? No. Most subjects in history and social sciences are poorly defined. So what? Should not we have pages about them? I am simply telling that we must use multiple RS on the subject per WP:NPOV. That includes multiple definitions of the subject, those described in the "Terminology" section. My very best wishes (talk) 16:47, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

If there are multiple definitions, that means a universally accepted definition is lacking, so the subject belongs to a "controversy" section at the bottom of the page. In addition, most sources do not consider a definition as a serious problem, they call all study on this type "genocide studies", and all scholars (including Valentino and Rummes) are called "genocide scholars". Than means, less prominence should be given to the "definition" section, and it should be moved to the bottom and described as some trivia.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:32, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Yes, "most sources do not consider a definition as a serious problem" because there is common understanding what constitutes mass murder by the government. No, the definitions and terminology must be on the top. Otherwise, it may not be obvious for a reader what we are talking about. My very best wishes (talk) 18:54, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Do you sincerely believe this bunch of definitions makes the article more readable? This terminology is not used in the article almost at all.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:38, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Yes, certainly. This section provides good and necessary background with links to many wikipages, especially for someone unfamiliar with the subject. And no, this terminology is used on the page, e.g. Cambodian genocide, etc. My very best wishes (talk) 02:23, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

Source check

• This edit by Paul (current version). Main source was this book review by Barbara Harff ref #15) used for in-line referencing. Where it tells: "the intentional killing of an unarmed or disarmed person by government agents acting in their authoritative capacity and pursuant to government policy or high command"? Where it tells: "This definition covers any murder of any number of persons by any government"? I do not see it. Perhaps this can be found in some other sources? If so, this should be properly referenced. My very best wishes (talk) 19:59, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

page 112.--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:07, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

Your edit gives pages 117‒119, and her review is indeed on pages 117-119. What is on page 112? My very best wishes (talk) 20:31, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

Yugoslavia

Was there ever a summary for this section? It just links to other articles without any mention of the relevance. Passingobserver (talk) 02:35, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

No, it was added on May 6th. AmateurEditor (talk) 05:10, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

Cambodia

I think, the structure of this section is totally incorrect. It starts with the number of victims, then several random authors are cited who believe KR were communists or non-communists, and that is all what a reader learns from this section. In my opinion, the structure should be totally different.

1. The story should start with a description of a Cambodian society before KR came to power (desperately poor Khmer rural population, relatively wealthy urban population, significantly dominated by ethnic Chinese and Vietnamese; traditional Khmer nationalism and revenge traditions). Source - Kiernan, one of the best experts.

2. Khmer Rouge were lead by Pol Pot who studied in Paris, and who shared Maoist views. Pol Pot's idea was to convert Cambodia in a huge agrarian commune, and all urban population was planned to destroy or forcibly convert into rural one. This doctrine was considered too radical even by Maoists, and it had nothing in common with classical Marxism and even with Soviet style communism (David-Fox may serve as one source)

3. Khmer Rouge came to power after a civil war and immediately started to implement this utopia by massive executions etc. These actions were enthusiastically supported by a part of rural population who hated urban compatriots (see #1). For nationalist nature of these killings, Fein can be a good source (in addition to Kiernan), regarding those who see a connection to communism, I think country experts are more preferable than general writers, such as Rosefielde (who is more knowledgeable about Stalinism). Their rationale should be provided: if they believe KR killings had more in common with killings in communist states, we need to explain why. In addition, several genocide scholars think this genocide had more in common with genocides in other Asian countries (commonality in history and geography was more important than ideological factors)

4. Number of victims (provide numbers, do not need to many various estimates, because dispersion is not too high).

5. How and by whom the genocide was stopped.

6. How it was condemned and prosecuted.

That is a structure that may make this section at least partially encyclopedic. I can provide sources if needed.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:58, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

I don't necessarily disagree with any of that, but to me the most important thing to convey about the Khmer Rouge is how radical it was—it literally abolished all private property—forcing 8 million people to abandon their homes to live and work in agricultural communes; destroying nonperishable food supplies such as fruit trees and banning fishing in order to ensure that everyone ate from the same communal stockpiles of food; and canceling all currency. Moreover, the Khmer Rouge destroyed almost all of the Buddhist monasteries and killed the great majority of the monks in Cambodia, still a deeply traditional and religious society. While no other communist regime pursued so radical a program, it's equally true that the complete lack of protection for private property or religious belief under Khmer Rouge rule renders it quite distinct from European fascism, as several sources have noted. (I do not oppose including Fein's attributed analysis to the contrary, however.)TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 00:18, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

That fits the #2 quite well. Regarding private property, I think, most Europeans seem to deeply misunderstand how private property was seen in Asia. For example, Vietnam communists used traditional religious beliefs about the land as a gift from gods to break new private property rules imposed by Western colonialists on Vietnamese society. By the way, similar opposition to private property existed in Russia: peasants believed no private property of land can exist, because a land belongs to the God.

And, to me, the most important thing is to explain why KR were so radical, because if you understand something you can prevent it.--Paul Siebert (talk) 00:22, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

Add #3 Actually a very large part of the Cambodian genocide was about ethnic cleansing and revenge killings. KR was desperate to weed out Vietnamese spies as documented by numerous filmed interviews with former KR members and genocide participants. Because of a thousand year long Cambodian hatred towards Vietnamese people, because of wish for revenge after a serious civil war, because of the seriousness of the Cold War situation with potential infiltrating foreign powers, and because of the internal chaos and power struggles within the KR organization, it escalated into the Cambodian genocide we all know now. It has been documented in several documentaries on the subject released after the KR trials. To couple the genocide with communist ideology as such is grabbed out of thin air. RhinoMind (talk) 19:33, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

Exactly, and that is what the article must say clearly.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:05, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

Add #4 Oh no. Most of the figures circulating actually include indirect deaths such as people dead due to lacking medical treatment, medicine, etc., starvation because of a breakdown in the completely bombed out infrastructure and annihilated agricultural sector, and what have you. There are scholars who a critical towards the death tolls usually mentioned in relation to the Cambodian genocide and if we talk mass killings, this critique is indeed worthwhile looking into because of how mass killings are usually defined. RhinoMind (talk) 19:39, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

[User:RhinoMind|RhinoMind]] , this is a general problem. 80% of all victims included in Courtois 85 million belong to this category, and that is what Valentino includes in his "mass killing" category.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:05, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

This is very problematic, but it appears that the term "death toll" is often bend out of proportion even in academic writing. It is sad to see this lack of care in academic circles regarding the mathematical aspect of things, especially in this context where so much attention is given to figures specifically. Here is a source discussing this particular problem: Cambodians and Their Doctors (2010, NIAS Press) (go to the Appendix on page 275). The source also puts the case of Cambodia in perspective and reveals that the usually cited death figures of the Cambodian Genocide even includes "statistical deaths", such as unborn babies due to population decline. This is outrageous. But read for yourself to get the details, it is a very sober 2-page writing. The source arrives at a figure of 630,000 intentional killings in the Cambodian case.

Personal comment: Every loss of life is awful, but if we want to stick with reality rather than emotion, it is of utmost importance to use numbers and mathematics correctly, otherwise numbers should not be dealt with at all. RhinoMind (talk) 18:40, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

RhinoMind, you are not right regarding academic writing: most modern country experts provide very accurate data for each separate event of country. The problems come from Rummel, Courtois and similar authors who compile data of others. For example, Rummel takes all figures from different sources, and, without critical analysis, takes a median value. The flaws of his statistical approach are described by Dulic. Harff says Rummel usually provides two figures, low and high estimate, but then he frequently takes an average to present a single figure in his tables, and that skews figures towards high values.

In general, "genocide scholars" do not need to be accurate, because this level of accuracy is acceptable for their theorizing. They are not responsible for attempts of some Wikipedians do use their data in this article. Actually, I added this explanation to the article, but is was removed by one POV pusher.--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:43, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

I've argued with RhinoMind about his genocide denial many times in the past; there is no need to relitigate it, and the sources cited in this article amply refute it. The number of Cambodians found in mass graves—presumed to be primarily victims of execution—has been estimated at 1.38 million. That 33.5% of Cambodian men died under the Khmer Rouge as compared to 15.7% of Cambodian women also suggests that in the Cambodian case—unlike in the Soviet Union and Mao's China—intentional, violent killings were the leading cause of death.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 21:46, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

It seems Cambodian case is more or less clear, even Rummel's estimates do not deviate significantly from more recent and accurate data. That also makes Cambodian genocide different from other cases described in this article.--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:43, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

@TheTimesAreAChanging: What?? "my genocide denial"? We have "argued about it many times in the past"? What the hell are you talking about? RhinoMind (talk) 13:27, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

@Paul Siebert: Please read the source I posted. RhinoMind (talk) 13:29, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

• I agree with TheTimesAreAChanging. These numbers and events are clearly described as a genocide by a "communist government" in a number of RS. Ethnic cleansings are regarded as a part of the communist genocide or repressions in many countries, including USSR and Cambodia. Debating the role of communist ideology is possible and even needed if such connection was made explicitly in RS. Yes, it was. My very best wishes (talk) 14:43, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

As far as I understand, TheTimesAreAChanging meant something else.--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:43, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

POV tag removal without discussion

This is highly non-productive. Obvious violation.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:01, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

I feel that we need to focus more specifically on whether that source belongs in the lead at all. Your RFC above is huge and complex, but misses that central question. When we cover it further down, we can go into more detail on the controversies over that number; but putting it in the lead lends it a weight and credence that the book itself doesn't enjoy. I'm going to start another RFC on the basic question of whether it belongs in the lead. --Aquillion (talk) 05:54, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

That said, if we really need sources to say that the Black Book of Communism is extremely controversial, it's easy to find some.

• The Black Book of Communism, published in France in 1997 to intense controversy that was repeated when German and Italian editions appeared soon thereafter...[3]
• In his controversial preface, Courtois wrote that between 85 and 100 million people perished as a result of Communist rule..., and The Black Book has met with considerable criticism in the West, not all of which is relevant to the present discussion. [4]
• Indeed, in a 2000 review of The Passing of an Illusion and The Black Book of Communism, the Soviet historian J Arch. Getty pointed out that over half of the 100 million deaths attributed to communism were “excess deaths” resulting from famine. Getty writes: “The overwhelming weight of opinion among scholars working in the new archives (including Courtois’s co-editor Werth) is that the terrible famine of the 1930s was the result of Stalinist bungling and rigidity rather than some genocidal plan. Are deaths from a famine cause by the stupidity and incompetence of a regime ... to be equated with the deliberate gassing of Jews?” [5]; this source also mentions the fact that Courtois introduction in particular, especially the numbers involved, were denounced by two of the book's contributors. Almost immediately after the book’s publication, however, two of the prominent historians contributing to the volume, Jean-Louis Margolin and Nicolas Werth, attacked Stéphane Courtois in an article published in Le Monde, stating that they disagreed with his vitriolic introduction and its overt political agenda. Margolin and Werth disavowed the book, claiming that Courtois was obsessed with reaching a figure of one hundred million, and that this led to sloppy and biased scholarship. They further claimed that Courtois wrote the book’s introduction in secret, refusing to circulate it to the other contributors. (It goes on like this; those are just additional coverage of the most well-known parts.)
• Notwithstanding the contribution offered by presenting this chronicle of crimes, there is something deeply troubling about the genre of this book. It is a work that employs academic historians, independent researchers, and journalists to write a polemic that poses as history.[6]
• Nonetheless, the sheer number of deaths and atrocities found in Stéphane Courtois et al.’s controversial Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression (1997 in French; 1999 in English), the first book to survey the magnitude of Communist violence from Russia in 1917 to Afghanistan in 1989, can be numbing.[7]
• The basic prerequisite of these controversies is, as pointed out by historian Stéphane Courtois in his introduction to the controversial Black Book of Communism from 1997...[8]

It's an extremely controversial book (one of the most controversial books on Communism written in recent memory); and while there's still a lot we can draw from the rest of it, its introduction, in particular, is a polemic rather than a reputable piece of scholarship. It obviously doesn't belong in the lead, and when we do mention it elsewhere we need to discuss some of the intense controversy surrounding it. --Aquillion (talk) 07:13, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Thank you Aquillion for your collection of quotes. They are a good complement to the references collected in the BB reviews section. The only comment I can make to that is as follows: you seem to have collected opinia that are critical, which means the proponents of Courtois may argue you "cherry-picked a bunch of quotes which are not representative". Of course , I would disagree with this statement, because my neutral search demonstrated what an absolutely neutral reader would find if they typed [this in jstor.

--Paul Siebert (talk) 14:37, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Not all of those sources are critical. Some obviously are, but some are generally-supportive of the book or comparatively neutral. The description of it as controversial seems pretty universal (even sources that overtly praise Courtois or which unambiguously side with him generally portray his take as revisionist and as challenging existing scholarship, which they portray as unduly sympathetic to Communism or as discounting its crimes relative to the heavy emphasis placed on the crimes of Nazism.) I think that the fact that many of the takes in this article are unambiguously revisionist in character is something that needs to be covered in the article - there are a lot of scholars across the spectrum who contrast and compare revisionist takes like Courtois with the older scholarship they're challenging, which is an important dispute that our article only touches on tangentially. --Aquillion (talk) 02:28, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Oh no, it is usually the guys like Arch Getty (those who criticize "Black Book" and minimize the communist repressions) are described as historical revisionists in academic RS by 3rd party historians [9],[10],[11],[12], [13], [14], [15]. My very best wishes (talk) 03:09, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Aquillion, you didn't understand my point. What I wanted to demonstrate is as follows. The main objection to your list of sources could be: "You cherry-picked a bunch of sources, but the book is generally well accepted". Anticipating this criticism, I made a neutral source, took all reviews on the Black Book, and summarized it. In other words, I was acting as a totally neutral reader with ZERO previous knowledge. And the result of this search demonstrate that if I were totally neutral and without any prejudice, and I decided to make an impression of the BB, the first impression would be: the book is an interesting and useful reading, but the introduction and especially the figures are highly controversial, and should be treated with great caution. That was the goal of my summary.

You probably have noticed that I didn't include David-Fox and other sources to this list, because I obtained them using a non-neutral search procedure.

Unfortunately, these my efforts are almost useless, because they can convince only those who are prone to logical arguments. Unfortunately, a small part of wikipedians does not belong to this category...---Paul Siebert (talk) 03:16, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

My very best wishes, a bunch of quotes where Getty is called revisionist is not an argument: many serious historians are revisionists, and Courtois or Malia are revisionists too. This word per se has no negative connotations.

The sources provided by me are by no means fringe or revisionist. Revisionist historians advocating non-mainstream ideas are rarely being invited to write book reviews. Is David-Fox revisionist? Is Kuromiya revisionist? You cherry-picked one person and build all arguments on that. This approach does not work with smart people.--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:23, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

No, there was a whole school of "revisionist historians" led by Arch Getty, as described and explicitly named in multiple academic RS on the subject (e.g. see above). There is nothing like that about Courtois. My very best wishes (talk) 03:32, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

There is not such a group, and Getty is not its leader. In general, most authors I cite are not revisionists, moreover, the attempts made by Courtois is called "revisionism" by them, and, accordingly, Courtois is considered a "revisionist" historian. That has no negative connotations, however. For example Suny (a source cited above) writes:

"Long before its current political deployment, the term “revisionist history” had its own controversial pedigree. Most infamously, it applies to those discredited cranks who deny the validity of the Holocaust. Revisionism therefore is equated with the most egregious practices of historical falsifiers. Conservatives have criticized revisionists who questioned the sanitized narratives of American history that neglected the horrors of slavery and racism, the treatment of Indians, or the darker sides of the Vietnam War. In my own field of Soviet history, revisionists have been labeled “apologists for Communism” for attempting to rethink the Bolshevik victory in the revolution of 1917 or the violent social history of the Stalin era. And Israeli revisionist historians have been attacked for interrogating the foundational myths of how their state was established or how the indigenous Palestinians became refugees.

As many professional historians pointed out to the President, rather than falsifying or white-washing the past, revisionism is simply what good historians do. Neither the same as distortion or spin, revisionism is about bringing new evidence to bear to reinterpret existing stories about the past. Revisionists question unquestioned assumptions. The result of the last forty years of rewriting American history has been a history that now includes women and minorities, blemishes as well as beauty marks. A shift in the angle of vision and the opening of Soviet archives has led historians of the USSR to a deeper appreciation of how ordinary Russians lived under Stalinism, how even radical authoritarian political projects can have massive social support. Most historians do not believe that there is a final, fixed, definitive history, but only provisional approximations that are inevitably influenced by the views of the writer and the context in which he or she writes. While complete objectivity may be elusive, the historian’s task is to establish (and revise) an historical record as accurately and neutrally, as possible, which means including the anomalous or inconvenient facts that belie any preconceived hypothesis. Honest scholars often live with post-modernist doubts about the possibility of finding the “truth,” but their commitment to the mustering of evidence and careful argument gives us some assurance that what they find can be considered reliable."

In other words, reconsidering of the role of women in history is "revisionism". Reconsidering the old racial vision of history is "revisionism". Reconsidering old views on communism (what Courtois does) is "revisionism". Your misunderstanding of these simple things is absolutely blatant.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:45, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

References

East Germany

I like how this section is written, and I propose to rewrite other section in the same style. However, in connection to that, I am wondering if all of that is consistent with "Terminology" section: the text does not follows the terminology proposed at the beginning of the articile, and even directly ignores it, because none of the events described in this section fit Valentino's definition. For example, Berlin wall shooting does not fit for sure. It can be considered as democide, but it is not an widely used term.

Second, Valentino never did his own research, he just compiled the results of several other authors. For example, he uses Rummel, who also didn't do his own study, his estimates are just a compilation of all figures published by all authors. In my opinion, it is necessary to explain.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:26, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

Hi and thanks for the credits. I did not have the terminology in mind when I put this section up, but other more knowledgeable editors are of course welcome to improve things. I focussed on a balanced context and a critical eye on the figures and their meaning. I think that this approach is very important overall.

Yes, I had my own doubts of introducing the Berlin Wall paragraph, mainly due to the relatively low rate of intentional killings - which might surprise some readers -, but I included it because it is a well-known case in the public and I think it is important to at least mention and discuss it in the context of "Mass killings under Communist regimes" regarding East Germany in particular. I think it is an important paragraph even though it does not constitute a mass killing. The intentional killings in the "silence camps" might also fall out of the range of "mass killings", but is necessary to discuss. As discussed elsewhere on this TalkPage, many sections already includes a lot more than just "mass killings". In this light, I don't think the Berlin Wall case stands out, really. Perhaps the Berlin Wall paragraph could be kept if it is stated that it does not constitute a mass killing? I can't say if this would have chaotic implications for the rest of the article, I just wanted to present a sober, focussed, relatively short, consistent and balanced presentation on East Germany specifically, something that could inspire a general improvement of the whole article, which is much needed.

Regarding Valentino, I just kept what was in the section before I added stuff. Other people can judge whether to include his figures or not. RhinoMind (talk) 19:06, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, this section about East Germany has been rewritten since the last time I read it. I think now it is far more neutral than before. When you are neutral on this topic, you end with a section that says that "mass killings" never happened in East Germany, the opposite intended in the article POV-pushed title. Valentino says up to 100,000 people were killed in East Germany. Where is the list of names? These academics who inflate the number of victims never compiles list of names.

In Spain we suffered a fascist dictatorship, with over 100,000 killings, and Spain is full of mass graves and we have databases of victim names.[16] emijrp (talk) 17:58, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Valentino is so called "genocide scholar", which means he is not studying each particular country, he is trying to understand global mechanisms of mass killings in attempt to find correlation and predict onset of similar events in future. He does not do his own research of the number of victims, he just compiles results of others. As a rule, these compilations are not accurate, because they are made by a person who does not know much about each concrete country. In my opinion, Valentino should be removed from each county section, only his general estimate should be mentioned.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:18, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

@Emijrp: Please. Before I wrote the section, there was nothing more than a short sentence, simply stating Valentinos numbers without any explanation whatsoever. Also, there was a "Main article" tag to an article that did not discuss the subject at all. So please: Next time you comment on something, do your homework and don't make things up. You end up accusing me of something that isn't true and you hurt people with your carelessness.

Also, read the section and the causes of deaths. Nearly all of them were non-intentional. There is a clear line between intentional killings and indirect deaths. Actually, in the case of mass killings, this difference is of the essence. Read up on this, please. RhinoMind (talk) 13:39, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

@RhinoMind: I think you misunderstood my comment, or I didn't explain myself correctly (English isn't my native language). Yeah, I remember when "East Germany" section accused this country to kill up to 100,000 people. Now, at least, it is described that the numbers are grossly exaggerated, and that most deaths weren't intentional. It is a good step. It is paradoxical that an article about "mass killings" includes a country like East Germany under a section named "States where mass killings have occurred > Others" to explain that there weren't any intentional mass killings at all. East Germany, in my opinion, should be removed from this article (as many others countries), but at the same time it is good to have it on it, because it debunks the communism black legend. emijrp (talk) 15:21, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

@RhinoMind: and @Emijrp:, the problem is that several sources claim that "unitentional deaths" still belong to a category of "mass killings", and the article is written mostly based on these sources. That makes this article globally non-neutral.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:26, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Placing content to appropriate subsections

• [17] - I simply think than numbers of victims for individual countries should be included in sections for the corresponding countries. That is what I did - as explained in my edit summary. Paul immediately reverted it [18]. OK, then maybe we can make the different subsections in the same section? That is what I did [19]. That looks like a simple improvement. My very best wishes (talk) 20:18, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

1. Your first edit would be ok if the "Estimate" section contained a serious discussion of the major controversy around the BB. Do you agree?

2. Your second edit is also ok, if "Estimates" and "Discussion of estimates" are combined, because this separation is strongly discouraged by NPOV. If you agree, I can do that.--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:56, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

More concretely, the "General estimates" section be organised as follows:

1. Who makes an estimate (some authors, who believe communist regimes shared significant common features (Malia's "generic Communism"; that is important, because only a fraction of authors share this view).

2. How these estimates are done (the figures of direct killings are combined with man made famine deaths and with general excess mortality data).

3. Who disagrees with that and why ((i) methodological issues: criticism of the generic communism concept; discussion of a relationship of this question and ideological issues; (ii) a question of indirect deaths (especially, famine death); (iii) discussion of a computational procedure (mostly Rummel), and explanation why his "low estimates vs high estimates" approach leads to inflated figures.

4. It should be also explained that country experts provide more accurate data for each country (a source for this statement is Harff), and these estimates for major communist states are presented in the second subsection.

If that is accepted, I support division on two sections.--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:09, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

I would stick to my first edit because it simply places the numbers of victims for individual countries to sections for the corresponding countries. If main "Estimates" section is insufficient anyone is welcome to develop it by adding more content. My very best wishes (talk) 00:44, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

That crates an apparent hierarchy of fact, which is prohibited by NPOV: Segregation of text or other content into different regions or subsections, based solely on the apparent POV of the content itself, may result in an unencyclopedic structure, such as a back-and-forth dialogue between proponents and opponents. Concretely, the sources that advance some particular POV are presented as universally, whereas others are split by sections.

An alternative solution may be to move "Estimates" to the bottom, and rename it to "Estimates of genocide scholars". The section should explain who are doing these estimates, how these estimates are made, and who agrees or disagrees with these estimates.--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:00, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Names databases

Where are the names of the 100,000,000 victims of Communism? Are there databases by country? emijrp (talk) 18:01, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict)The people who are interested in exact figures and exact names are not compiling the figures for all "Communist victims", simply because they do not believe this category exists.

The authors who compile the 100,000,000 figures are not specialists in any concrete country. They advocate the idea that communism was an absolute evil, and the more victims the better. As a rule, they combine all population losses (demography data) and claim they all were the result of "Communist mass killings".

I have no idea how did Courtois obtained his data, but I know how Rummel did that. He collects all sources for each country, and he takes all figures, obtain low estimates and high estimates. Originally, he provided two figures (low and high estimates), but later he decided just to give a median value. Since low estimates are always limited (they cannot be negative), and high estimates are not limited, a single high figure in the data set skews the median towards high values, and you need many low estimates to compensate for this disbalance.

As Dulic noticed, if we take Holocaust as an example and imagine that there is one estimate in the data set that says 15 million were killed, you will need 5-10 data points from Holocaust deniers (who say, e.g. that only 1 million was killed) to compensate for this single value and to get a (well known) 6 million.

Importantly, Rummel, as well as many other genocide scholars, do not separate old and recent estimates. That means, to them, early high estimates for the USSR have the same weight as fresh data obtained after fall of the USSR (which opened a lot of archives in post-Soviet countries). Most country experts reconsidered their estimates, but Rummel didn't.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:34, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

In Russia, Memorial (society) and some other organizations maintained such databases. Unfortunately, this organization was recently declares a "Foreign agent" by the Russian government, some activists were jailed based on fabricated charges, and most important, such databases will never be complete because the KGB and their successor organizations are engaged in mass destruction of documents in their archives on a regular basis, even today as we speak [20]. My very best wishes (talk) 18:18, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Unfortunately to you. Organisations such as Memorial are inherently biased and are engaged in a campaign against the stability of the country for the benefit of its enemies. That's why they're registered as foreign agents. SUM1 (talk) 13:37, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

No, unfortunately to the databases and to people who live in Russia. I do not live there. My very best wishes (talk) 14:57, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

SUM1, first, you are reproducing a total bullshit, because, if I understand it correct, in modern Russian law, foreign agents are those organisations that are supported from foreign sources, at least partially, and engage in political activity. That's it.

Second, currently, the list of foreign agents includes several ecological organisations, a "Dynasty" foundation (who was printing educational books or supported many important scientific or educational programs), Saratov diabetes association, and many other reputable organisations. I think it is a great honor to be in the foreign agents list, because the organisation from this list are doing a lot of good things. In contrast to an obscure and ridiculous organisation called "the Government of Russian Federation". If you can name at least one good step it took in last 10 years, please, do it.

Third, Memorial is doing a good job aimed to collect the names of those who fell in a category of "repression victims, and deportation victims". They establish names, but their activity do not add much to a general figures of "population losses". In other words, when Ellman writes that about 1.2 million were killed during the Great Purge, and Memorial discovers new names of those who were killed in 1937, it does not mean they add them to the Ellman's figure. Actually, they just clarify the names of those who are included in this Ellman's figure. However, since the main part of "population losses" or "premature deaths" are those who died as a result of malnutrition in 1921, 1933, 1942 or 1947, who died due to a lack of medical help in 1943, or who was killed during the Civil war (by the Whites or Reds), Memorial 's activity does not affect the total "communist death toll". --Paul Siebert (talk) 17:26, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

"Where are the names" for those killed in countries like China and North Korea? Really? Passingobserver (talk) 20:19, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

I think NK records are not available now. In China, collectivisation was just a continuation of a civil war, so I am not sure anybody was keeping any records. Famine victims were not registered as "killed", and it is hard to understand who concretely falls in this category. I don't know about Cultural revolution, but it seems it was more a random violence, so I think records are very fragmentary.--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:09, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Famine deaths are calculated by subtracting the expected deaths from actual deaths. It may not necessarily be possible to determine in individual cases that death was due to famine. Furthermore, China did not register deaths during the famine periods, except in a small number of cities. TFD (talk) 15:44, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

Actually, the procedure is different and more complex. As a rule, actual death records are not always available, so the actual procedure takes into account previous census data (if available), birth rate, standard mortality rate, migration, census data after the event, and several other factors. A figures obtained in this way are called "population losses" and "premature death" (or "excess deaths"). The same procedure applied to modern democratic Russia (in 1990s) gives ca 6 million premature deaths (Rosefielde, Maksudov), however, noone calls it "democtratic mass killings". Meanwhile, S. Maksudov, a mathematician and demograph from Harvard university (thanks to Woogie, I decided to read his works) notes (the source is in Russian, so I had to use google to translate):

"It is surprising, however, that huge loss of millions of people during the Yeltsin period was practically non-seen by us. No monuments, no prayer, no articles in newspapers or Interned are devoted to them. The killers retire quietly, and sometimes with honor, and then peacefully pass away. And that occurs concurrently with a violent discussion of the crimes of Stalin, the events majority of participants know only from books." ([21]).

Btw, TFD, can you please do me a favor and voice your opinion in open RfC (if you haven't done that yet). We need to close them and move forward. --Paul Siebert (talk) 16:03, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

Excess deaths vs mass killing vs mass murder

Below is a quote from one article authored by Steven Rosefielde (Steven Rosefielde (2001) Premature Deaths: Russia's Radical Economic Transition in Soviet Perspective, Europe-Asia Studies, 53:8, 1159-1176, DOI:10.1080/09668130120093174 [22]):

"Lenin’s version of ‘command communism’ and the civil war caused a population deficit in 1918–23 of 19.7 million, including 939 755 Red Army casualties and millions of famine victims. The number of White Army deaths and terror killings is not known. After a lapse of 8 years during which the economy recovered to the prewar level, and the population resumed its upward momentum, Stalin decided to give command communism another try under more favourable conditions, having laid the ground by developing the institutional foundations of central planning and ministerial administration. Although the nation was at peace, he opted once again for economic radicalism, arguing that gradualism would allow his opponents to subvert his reforms, promote counter-revolution and leave the Soviet Union vulnerable to German attack. The peasantry was forcibly collectivised, starved by political decree, and exiled in vast numbers. Millions were subsequently terrorised, consigned to Gulag, and an unknown number prematurely killed. To the extent that these actions were economically motivated they were all ultimately in vain . Although mis-industrialisation did provide the weapons needed to repel Hitler and contest American superpower after World War II, the command system which emerged out of the ‘great leap forward’ could not provide competitive living standards, and proved impervious to fundamental reform. Economic radicalism detached from the rule of law succeeded in wrecking lives and killing millions, but its promises of material prosperity and social justice went unfulŽled.

El’tsin ’s dissolution of the Soviet Union and administrative command planning is the latest episode in this benighted tradition. The summary data in Table 5 show that it is the least disastrous. The contemporary population deficit (excess deaths plus the birth deficit ) is less than a third of that of Lenin’s ‘command communism’ and Stalin’s forced industrialisation and terror, a result not signicantl y affected by the inclusion of a million additional excess deaths in 1939, or by normalising the Ž figures for differences in population."

Note, this author (the author of Red Holocaust) emphasizes the commonality between the events in 1930s and 1990s. That implies that, whereas there were some mass killings and mass murder in 1930 (for example, Great Purge), it would be incorrect to describe all population losses as mass killing victims, because you must agree that there were no "democratic mass killing" in Russia in 1990s. In other words, excess death caused by indirect action of governments are not considered mass killings generally. What is the reason to make an exception for communist regimes, and why more weight should be given to the sources that say this?--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:40, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

Where the "excess deaths" (unborn children) are counted on the page? 100 million number from "Black Book", for example, does not include excess deaths. My very best wishes (talk) 02:59, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

Wait, in this article, Rosefielde compares apples with apples: all population losses during Stalin's rule and all population losses during Yeltsyn's rule. And he points out that these deaths at least partially were the result of government's policy. Stalinism's death do include murder, execution, famine, and deaths due to overall deterioration of life conditions (i.e. directly and indirectly resulted from government's action). Yeltsyn's actions, obviously were only indirect, and Rosefielde does not call them "mass killing", "democratic Holocaust" etc. (which is correct, by the way). However, Rosefielde calls this mortality "latest epoisode", and draws parallelism with Stalin.

In connection to that, if mass mortality as a result of indirect actions of a democratic government is not considered "mass killing", why the same categories of death conidered "mass killing" when they occur in a communist state? Note, Rosefielde does not combine all population losses under Stalin in a category "mass killing victims", he uses the same terminology as for Yeltsin period.

Unborn children are not "excess deaths", but "population losses" (which include emigration too). The birth deficit was observed both in 30s and in 90s, so that is irrelevant.--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:21, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

What do you suggest to change on the page? My very best wishes (talk) 04:10, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

I'd prefer do that after we come to agreement about the article's subject.--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:39, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

Please read Hurricane Maria#Likely undercounting of fatalities, this is how the job should be done. No POV-BS, only a presentation of the reliable sources.--Woogie10w (talk) 16:29, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Undiscussed page move

Regarding this diff editors may wish to discuss, particularly in light of the FAQ at the top of this talk page. The editor is not going to self-revert, and has not engaged with the article prior to sticking their oar in. I have drawn the editor's direction to this discussion. Fifelfoo (talk) 17:23, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

As far as I understand from his post here, the main point this user is trying to make is that we need to minimize an ideological component in this article. It seems that is a quite valid point. I am not sure if the C->c transition is an improvement, but his another proposal, "regimes"->"states" deserves a serious discussion.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:43, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I'll repeat what I said in user talk, in response to Fifelfoo's "The capitalisation is controversial and your move reflects neither the current editorial consensus on sources, nor past discussions.": MOS:ISMCAPS, WP:NCCAPS, and WP:CONSISTENCY policy would disagree (thus so would WP:CONLEVEL policy). If you're sure all those policies and guidelines would be overruled somehow to continue over-capitalizing – against the very guideline intended prevent exactly this kind of over-capitalization – feel free to list it at WP:RM/TR for reversion, and I'll just open a regular RM about it. PS: I agree "the capitalisation is controversial"; it would have to be, given that we have multiple guidelines saying to not do that with words like "communism", so removing the capitalisation is the correct course of action. Tiny WP:LOCALCONSENSUS cliques do not get to make up their own "rules" in FAQs to hold other editors at bay; see also WP:OWN and WP:EDITING policies (and WP:VESTED, a broader community interpretation of their applicability).

To elaborate: I can self-revert, but I'm disinclined to do so, when the end result is almost certainly going to be "Mass killings under communist regimes governments" [or some other neutral word]. Next, "the current editorial consensus on sources" is something we care about for, say, whether a mass killing took place and how many lives it ended. WP's has its own style manual, naming conventions guidelines, and title policy, and does not ape the styles in material written under other publishers' style guides (otherwise we would never have developed any of those pages at all). Previous discussion among the same clique here isn't a site-wide WP:RM discussion. If you'd like to have one of those, let's get on with it. :-)
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:49, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

I suggest you to self-revert, just to avoid a quite possible escalation of passions around this article (which is high even without that). Meanwhile, I suggest to seriously discuss the "Mass killings under Communist regimes" -> "Mass killings in communist states" transition. I like this idea.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:54, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Nah. Per WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY and WP:Common sense, it's more practical to just have the RM discussion now, rather than do another round-robin move (or an RM/TR) to a bad title and then just have the RM anyway. That'd be like garnishing a rotten steak before you throw it in the trash. PS: "in communist states" is ambiguous; the Nazis mass-killed millions of communist Russians, in Russia, during WWII, but that's out of scope.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:10, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Fair enough.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:22, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Concur with SMcCandlish & Paul Siebert about doing the discussion first. Fifelfoo (talk) 18:28, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Regularizing the references system

Is there any objection to me regularizing the references system used in the article, per WP:CITEVAR? I want to convert to having all the references - including the notes/excerpts - written out at the bottom of the markup version, rather than distributed throughout the text, so the markup is easier to follow when editing the article. There will just be short references in-text linking to the full citation, like the example shown here under "List-defined references with explanatory footnotes using a separate reference group." AmateurEditor (talk) 21:53, 30 June 2018 (UTC)

I'm all for it. That's one of the benefits to having this page unprotected - that long overdue structural updates can take place. schetm (talk) 13:30, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

In favour. I am deletionist for this article, but within apparent consensus I want to have deleted the best article possible (as indicated by reviews I've made.) Fifelfoo (talk) 13:33, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Definitely in favor. Vanamonde (talk) 14:03, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Requested move 21 June 2018

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no consensus, page remain as it is. As regards the upper/lower case (c), please open a new RM. Regards, Mahveotm (talk) 13:22, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

---

Mass killings under communist regimes → Mass killings under communist governments – 1) "Regimes" is a loaded, emotive term, and thus a problem under WP:NPOV and MOS:WTW. 2) Use lower-case "communist" per MOS:ISMCAPS, WP:NCCAPS, WP:CONSISTENCY. There's a cluster of editors who've weirdly added a "FAQ" to this article's talk page, demanding capital-C "Communism", and they'll likely urge to move back to that spelling. This is a WP:CONLEVEL problem. People don't get to make up their own magically special e-rulebooks to exempt articles from policies and guidelines. The entire reason MOS:ISMCAPS exists is to prevent precisely that kind of ideological abuse of capital letters. We are not using capitalised "Communis[m|t]" in other article titles (except where a proper name appears, e.g. a book title or the name of a specific party organisation).

Furthermore, we should consider an article split. This entire page is basically a huge WP:Coatrack and a WP:OR farm, a propagandistic magnet of dispute and PoV pushing. This would largely be mitigated if this were properly divided into articles about mass killings under particular governments.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:10, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

• No particular objections to such renaming, but a much better title would be Democide by communist governments. Unlike "mass killings" (mass murder?), democide is a relatively well established terminology in such context, which would help to avoid the potential coatrack problems. My very best wishes (talk) 18:18, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

  It's also WP:JARGON and people are apt to have WP:RECOGNIZABILITY arguments against it. I'm not outright opposed to it, just to "regimes" and "Communist". (And to this being a single article instead of "under the Soviet Union", etc., as separate articles, but that's a bigger fish to fry).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:01, 21 June 2018 (UTC)
  It's worse: It's not even jargon but one guy's neologism, according to Democide.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:35, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

• I like the decapitalization of "communist". I had also suggested "Noncombatant deaths" on its talk page, and it, amazingly enough, seems less controversial than "mass killings". I am a tad uncertain about "governments" as some mass deaths appear to occur without a specific "government" being specifically "communist" (that is, civilian deaths caused by communist groups opposed to the government.) If we wish to avoid hassles, I would think "attributed to communist movements" would more reasonably cover the bases. Collect (talk) 18:34, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

  Some feedback about "noncombatant deaths" and "mass killings" is in the scope discussion below.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:03, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

• I could live with Communist states and mass killings, emerging from the discussion below. It's WP:CONSISTENT with United States and state terrorism, etc., as pointed out by Passingobserver.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:00, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

  Interesting. That elegantly eliminates the C/c problem.--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:46, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

  Well, only in the title. We'd still need to clean up the article body.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:01, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

• I prefer "regimes" to governments because I don't agree that it is a loaded and emotive term (its wikipedia page dictionary citations make no mention of that), and because it is frequently used by the best academic sources we have on this topic in a non-loaded and non-emotive way. Here are excerpts of four of them. I don't much care about the capitalization of Communist. It is not a convention much observed in the sources I have seen and was implemented here as part of early consensus-building among wikipedia editors. AmateurEditor (talk) 10:57, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

  The word didn't have negative connotations when it was first imported into English from French. And it's developed several (rather divergent) specialist jargon meanings in political science academic circles. But it clearly carries negative connotations to many English speakers; this is a frequent topic of discussion on language blogs and forums: [23][24][25][26][27][28][29]. Even aside from that, the fact that it has conflicting definitions even in pol-sci is a reason not to use it, since it'll imply very different things to different more intellectual readers.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:01, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

  A strong reason to use it is that the term is used by the most reliable/academic sources we have for the topic, and we should be following their lead as much as possible, especially on a highly politically-charged topic like this one. With all the charges of original research and synthesis being thrown around, the last thing we need is to stray from our sources, which is why I am fine with de-capitalizing Communist in the title. AmateurEditor (talk) 13:41, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

  Still raises a WP:JARGON concern. We have WP:COMMONNAME, WP:RECOGNIZABLE, etc. in large part to avoid articles being moved to academic terminology that isn't familiar to (or worse, as in this case, misinterpreted in a particular PoV direction by) the average reader. "Academics use it with a particular special signification" is a reason to not use it here. Especially since they don't even give it a consistent definition, but use several widely divergent ones.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:24, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

  Your initial comment objected to using regime as a "loaded, emotive term" and said nothing about it being jargon. It's a common term used in reliable academic sources in a non-emotive, non-loaded way. Is your objection now that it is hard to understand technical/academic jargon, or that it is ideologically/politically biased? They seem to be mutually exclusive arguments to me, although I think that neither is true. Regimes is used here and in the sources I linked to in the sense of the word's normal dictionary definition ("A government, especially an authoritarian one."; "a form of government * a socialist regime"). I don't see multiple meanings or anything hard for the general reader to understand. And it only has a negative connotation if you have a negative opinion of authoritarian government, which is people imposing their own point of view on the issue. It's accurate to say these were authoritarian governments: "dictatorships of the people", in their own words. The word "Communist" has plenty of negative connotation in political circles as well. We still use it here when it is accurate to use. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:25, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

  Where is the policy that because two reasons exist both must be mentioned or a proposal is to be rejected? You don't seem to be following the reasoning. In everyday usage, "regime" is a loaded term. In jargon usage, which the average reader doesn't understand anyway, the meaning varies widely by field of source and even by its age. These are both reasons to not use it here; one reason does not mitigate the other – they stack up to "using regime is an even worse idea that it seemed at first".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:50, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

  This is what I don't understand: what are the various jargon meanings that the average reader is not going to understand? In the four academic sources I linked to, the word regimes is used in the normal dictionary sense that I quoted above (which came from the dictionaries cited at the word's wikipedia page: "A government, especially an authoritarian one."; "a form of government * a socialist regime"). I am not aware of any special jargon meaning apart from that. The "loaded, emotive" use of the term is in applying the authoritarian implication to a state that is not actually authoritarian. It is not a loaded and emotive use to apply the term to actual authoritarian states, which is what the very sober and non-emotive high-quality academic reliable sources here do. The states in question were proudly authoritarian and no one disputes that. There is no danger of misinterpretation by a reader by using "regimes" in this context. By using "regimes" we use a term commonly used in reliable sources and avoid applying our own point of view. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:54, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

• Support name change but prefer Communist states and mass killings. -- Somedifferentstuff (talk) 22:47, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose The word "Regime" is a word that is used to refer to authoritarian governments, since every Communist government was authoritarian, then the usage is correct in this case, this not a violation of NPOV. -- Pedro8790 (talk) 00:52, 2 July 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose Since by their own definition these governments were based upon a "Dictatorship of the proletariat", then per WP:SPADE "regime" is the correct term. --Nug (talk) 11:20, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

Side discussion on scope, splitting, notability, OR

WP:No original research/noticeboard has been notified of this discussion.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:47, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Both "noncombatant deaths" and "mass killings" may lead to problems if they are understood literally. For example, literally speaking, all deaths that are non-related to some combat are considered "non-combatant deaths", which means "non-combatant deaths"=="peace time mortality". That is why scholarly articles prefer "population losses" or "premature deaths"/"excess mortality". On another hand, "mass killing" is a definition found in articles of some genocide scholars who want to expand the scope of the term "genocide". I would prefer if the article will focus primarily on "excess premature deaths of non-combatants", however, you agree that that would sound terrible in the article's name. --Paul Siebert (talk) 18:49, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

The goal is a title under five hundred words. If the deaths are attributed to a specific group, that pretty much rules out deaths from car accidents, cancer and the like. We could try "Excess deaths which were specifically caused by a group which is sometimes called 'communist' but not necessarily always called 'communist' and including population loss estimates from correct authors, but excluding estimates from 'incorrect' authors " but I fear shorter is truly better. Collect (talk) 18:55, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

We also do not need to account for every imaginable scope, just the scope we're going to use. It's also permissible to have a title that describes most of the scope, and permit as marginal "not quite a government" exception into the content as the most relevant article in which to put it. But this really gets us back to splitting. This should not be a single article.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:02, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

On the other hand, the question of "what impact does Communism have on peace-time mortality" is something that a lot of sources cover; it would allow us to cover intentional killings as a subset of the larger topic of the impact it has on lifespans as a whole, which might lead to a less emotive article and would let us include things that are disputed or in a gray area (eg. deaths to famine, in cases where there is disagreement over intent) without some of the difficulties we've run into above. --Aquillion (talk) 21:57, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Aquillion, Communism had a dual effect on peace time mortality, and we have a lot to discuss. In parallel to mass deaths as a result of several famines, there was a dramatic growth of life expectancy in many communist states. It would be correct to say that has a direct relation to peace time mortality.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:02, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

I would use Repression in communist countries. It is a broad term (it includes mass killings, selective killings, prisons, deportation, etc) but at the same time it helps to define the topic, excluding stuff like famines. Also, repression exists in capitalist countries, so we could have a Repression in capitalist countries article. Countries and states are almost interchangeable. Repression has always existed in any form of state, today and in the past, the ruling class keeps the power repressing other classes. emijrp (talk) 19:05, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

In historical articles we don't create subjects and then fill them. Notability is produced by scholarly discourses. There has been an extensive debate over about 10 years as to whether this subject exists in a "scholarly discourse," or, whether there are a few non-notable sandwich claims and a whole bunch of fringe. The last time I checked the scholarly discourse, there is no "category" of systematic deadly repression in capitalist countries due to their capitalism. Scholars in the area of country specific studies of the link between systematic deadly repression and capitalism produce scholarly discourses on specific studies. Studies of capitalism as a social system emphasise other categories than deadly mass repression, such as "Imperialism," or "World Systems," or "Enlightenment Modernity," etc. So no, we shouldn't have "[X] in [Category Y] articles" unless there is an acceptable or accepted scholarly discourse advancing specifically that claim. Not just Jane thinks, or Fred claims. Academics claim all kinds of non-notable structures or processes exist all the time. Fifelfoo (talk) 19:48, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, that would be a rather excessive scope expansion, as well as very subjective ("your repression is my civil society and rule of law"). So, it would make the multi-pronged coatrack problem even worse. The proper way to do this is to have multiple, more-specific articles, in a generalized category. WP doesn't do generalized articles for things like this, because it leads to OR and PoV pushing. The proper way to address "repression" is to have an article on human rights abuses, and scope-limit it to specific widely accepted definitions, e.g. those provided by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the World Court, etc., grounded in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights; exclude random-pundit criticisms. But that isn't this article, or anything like it. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:23, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

There is a quite strange article Anti-communist mass killings which has less substance than this article has. Collect (talk) 19:50, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

I'm happy to rest on my statements regarding that article on its talk page, still unarchived, from 9 years ago, and heartily encourage it be sent back to AFD with COATRACK and Notability spelt out. Fifelfoo (talk) 20:16, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Yep. As with this one, it might be splittable to save some of the material.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:23, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Re: Fifelfoo. The subject definitely exists, another question is its notability. When you read specialized studies of each separate country, you see that Rummel or Valentino are totally ignored by Wheatcroft or Ellman (who are much more knowledgeable about the USSR); moreover Werth, whose chapter is "a rock the whole Black Books rests upon", openly disagrees with Courtois's generalisations. When you read Kiernan (one of the best experts in Cambodia), you see he does not use Valentino. The same situation is with China and most other countries. Only few authors define communism as a common factor explaining these mass killings, and many authors do not see majority of those mass mortality events as mass killings at all. However, the whole structure of this article reflects the viewpoint of >1% of authors who believes communism was a key factor, and the works of other 99% of authors who do not share this view is used to create a visibility of a support of this concept by the whole scientific community.

How can we fix that? If this article stays (and I doubt it can be deleted, because there are some formal arguments in its support), it should be totally rewritten. The "Terminology" section must be removed as totally misleading. All general theorising should be made much shorter, moved to the bottom, and it should be presented as theoretical attempts of some authors to find commonalities between all events the article is telling about.

Each chapter must provide some historical background (for example, a reader should be informed that the roots of the outburst of violence in the USSR are traced back to inconclusive land reform in late XIX century and brutality of WWI), describe the course of events (when did killings started, which factors triggered the violence, how it developed, when and why stopped), and how these events affected the country.

That may be a solution of the problem.

Re. SMcCandlish. Another way (I proposed that solution about a month ago) is to convert this article into a story about several theories that connect communism and mass killings. There are few authors who believe in a "generic communism" concept and who select communism as a primary factor affecting mass killings. If we clearly explain in the artcile's preamble that the article reflects a views of some authors, then describe what these authors say, and supplement this description it with a discussion of these theories (including criticism), everything should be ok, because the only problem of this article is that it presents theories of few authors as universal and mainstream view.--Paul Siebert (talk) 14:14, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

This is probably the key issue: "few authors define communism as a common factor explaining these mass killings". I.e., putting them together as "Mass killings under communist foo" is original research (at least either novel synthesis or credulous/PoV siding with off-WP claims in dubious sources; possibly also some of the other letters besides S in WP:AEIS). It's not that the events didn't happen or that we don't know who did them; rather, their exact nature is disputed even in the RS, and WP is not in a position to label and commingle them all as directly equivalent.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 

NOR says: If no reliable third-party sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article about it.. At least one source (The Blask Book) does exist, and it does cover this topic. Valentino does define "Communist mass killings" as a separate topic. That means the article is not an original research. However, the article gives a very undue weight to this topic, and it represents it as universally accepted view. That means, whereas there is no NOR violation, NPOW is violated. Taking into account that NPOV is our oldest and most important policy, that is sufficient argument for a major revision of the article.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:15, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Moreover, Valentino provides some theoretical background for his definition, because he sees "communist mass killings" as a separate mass killings type because they were used by rulers as a tool for some social transformations. According to him, not all mass killings committed by communist rulers are "communist mass killings", for example, Afghanistan is excluded.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:18, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Re "It's not that the events didn't happen or that we don't know who did them" More precisely, "different authors explain them quite differently, and overwhelming majority of them do that in a totally different way than Courtois, Valentino, Rosefielde or Rummel do."--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:20, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Please re-read WP:No original research. We do not get to just insert whatever we want into an article because the scope of the topic has appeared in a book at some point. There are a hundred ways to engage in forbidden original research on even a topic like gasoline or domestic cat. Your last point is the very reason to suspect that much of this page is OR, as is the combination of all these disparate events, in Wikipedia's voice and with all these conflicting sources, into "one thing". It isn't permissible to take a minority, barely attested, and hotly disputed viewpoint and advance it on WP as the truth. Nor is it permissible to take this WP:FRINGE view and work in material from sources that disagree with that view as if they agree with it. That's the very definition of WP:SYNTH.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:30, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

You probably misunderstand something. I personally fully agree with what you say, but, since I was a participant of almost all those 37 archived disputes, I see not only what you say, but also what others may say in response.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:46, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Well, I'm disputing the idea that "At least one source ... does cover this topic" = "That means the article is not ... original research." Even if we agree on the rest of what we're talking about.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:51, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

I reiterate: It will be impossible to delete or split this article. However, if this article will describe just what few theorists say (without undue generalisations), and then discuss what others say about these theories, everything should be fine. As soon as all general statements in this article are not presented as universally accepted mainstream views, WP:V, WP:NOR and WP:NPOV are observed.

That would be a realistic way to solve this problem.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:58, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Nah, I would bet real money that an RfC at (or at least advertised at) WP:VPPOL will conclude to split this article, and primarily per WP:NOR. It might resolve in a "split to merge", i.e. merge the country-specific material into existing articles that are already country-specific, then discard the "global communist mass-murder conspiracy" trash that's left behind. Given how the current discussion is just wandering around, and RfC is probably the next step.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:55, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Wow. This page has 37 archives of almost constant dispute. This might be a record of some kind. And check out the /FAQ page: Stuffing all these unrelated topics into one page was done on the basis of a single old discussion with a grand total of 7 participants (several of whom are in the current discussion expressing the same unresolved concerns). And the "regimes" wording has been the subject of at least 18 different conflicts. This is all a major "WTF?" red flag.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:27, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

If you check how many times the dispute returns to the starting point, you will be even more impressed.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:43, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

More like depressed.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:47, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

I don't see any reason to decapitalize "Communist" and I think it should be capitalized once again, but anyway, why should we drop the use of the word "Regimes" when it comes to Communist regimes? Why not just drop the use of that term entirely in wikipedia if that's the case? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pedro8790 (talk • contribs) 22:46, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Please actually read MOS:ISMCAPS. "I don't see any reason" doesn't apply when you've not acknowledged the already-provided reason, much less refuted it somehow. "Why should we drop 'regimes'"? See WP:NPOV and MOS:WTW, also already provided as the rationales to do so. You need to actually look at the the reasoning providing in RM nominations before responding to them knee-jerk style (see WP:IDHT), and then respond to them substantively not with WP:ILIKEIT pseudo-rationales.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:21, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

You are just asserting that your position is grounded in policy repeatedly rather than providing a rationale as to how that is the case. To me it gives the appearance that you are trying to intimidate newbies from having an opinion on editing contrary to yours because they will be drowned in legalese in response. The word "regime" is not emotive and has many uses. One of which is to describe authoritarian governments which have great continuity in leadership because they are one-party states. This applies to all of the major countries in this article. Passingobserver (talk) 16:24, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

He provided the link, and it is quite easy to see that the guidelines says that Doctrines, philosophies, theologies, theories, movements, methods, processes, systems of thought and practice, and fields of study are not capitalized, unless the name derives from a proper name: lowercase republican refers to a system of political thought; uppercase Republican refers to a specific Republican Party (each being a proper name). The reference to NPOV is also quite relevant, because "(C/c)ommunist" reflects author's viewpoint. For example, David-Fox (I already provided the reference on this talk page) writes:

"Malia’s foreword to the 1999 English edition centered around the demand that communism be “accorded its fair share of absolute evil” and the recognition that communist regimes “were criminal enterprises in their very essence.”

(note non-capital "c"s), but Malia or Courtois capitalise it.

Other experts in Stalinism use the term "communist/communism" rarely, but, as a rule, they do not capitalise it ("The political structural factor was the communist victory in the Civil War and the resulting communist dictatorship." (Michael Ellman. The Role of Leadership Perceptions and of Intent in the Soviet Famine of 1931-1934. Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 57, No. 6 (Sep., 2005), pp. 823-841 [30]). --Paul Siebert (talk) 17:22, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

It's also important to remember that WP simply doesn't care (and has no reason to) whether so-and-so author prefers a capital letter. The first rule of MOS:CAPS and WP:NCCAPS (before we even get to MOS:ISMCAPS) is that WP doesn't employ a capital letter unless reliable sources do it consistently for the case in question. For "communis[m|t]" they absolutely do not. The idea that there's a super-special difference between "communist" and "Communist" is somewhere between specialized-style fallacy and patent nonsense. To the extent anyone would ever recognize such a conceptual difference based on nothing but the capitalization, 99.9999% of our readers would not, ergo we cannot possibly depend on it. The way to establish scope is to write it out. We've actually had this same 'do not misuse capitalization for "signification" (i.e., a form of emphasis)' discussion about a thousands times, covering everything from vernacular names of species to fiction genres to job titles, and the answer is always the same: WP doesn't do it. The second rule of MOS:CAPS is do not use capitalization for emphasis. It's also a MOS:Accessibility matter: people using screen readers can't tell we've capitalized something, so we have to be smart and use clear wording to explain what is meant, not rely on virtually invisible secret insider clues to hidden numinous meanings that exude like magical pearls of signification from the ivory tower. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:53, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

I should say I did not intend to express or imply that I personally attach some great significance to the size of the letter 'C' as that is the least interesting item of debate here currently. I understand and agree with the default presumption that ideologies, etc. should not be capitalized. I do not see however that this is a dispute about neutrality. It is an issue of what is proper terminology and what sources use this terminology. I don't think you would see a rational discussion that goes as follows:

Person 1: They are Communists.

Person 2: No, that is a biased view, they are communists.

It is a question of accuracy and precision, not one view or another.

Wikipedia has an article, Communist state, which reflects a term that is widely used, and refers to the same regimes which are discussed in this entry as well. That is why I think this article would be better off renamed with that in mind as the best among alternatives being discussed. I apologize if this has been recently discussed and voted down. I freely admit I have not read 38 talk pages up to now.

Incidentally, your source uses the term "communist regimes" and I can only assume he was not being ironic. I take it you agree with me that the word "regime" is not biased or non-neutral? Passingobserver (talk) 19:38, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Passingobserver, are the members of Democratic party Democrats of democrats? I think, they are Democrats. Are the proponents of democracy Democrats or democrats? They are democrats.

Capitalising "Communist" states implies there was some more or less uniform structure they all belonged to. Meanwhile, Khmer Rouge genocide was stopped by invasion of communist Vietnam, and it was Vietnam and USSR who started propaganda war against Khmer Rouge (long before the US stopped to support them), and the initial (inflated) figures of genocide victims came from the communist propaganda.

My source use "communist regimes" as a label. Actually, any revolutionary movement lead by leftist intellectuals was considered communist by many authors, but they never exaggerated the role of ideology, and they always saw deep differences between different communist regimes. There are more works that compare Cambodia with Indonesia, or Rwanda, than with the USSR or China.

Re "Communist state", when we resolve the problem with this article, I'll take a look at the Communist state. The lead contains a definition that is not sourced, and, frankly, "Communist state" is oxymoron, because the theory of Communism says state cannot exist in a communist society.--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:13, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

The term "Communist state" has been around for a long time in political science; unfortunately I do not currently have access to databases to spit out references. "Communist" is capitalized because most essentially it refers to a one-party state where a communist party is enshrined, even though many Communist states' parties do not have "Communist" in the name. The uniform structure they belong to is the party and its apparatus. This requires no worldwide conspiracy and no assumption of completely shared ideology or goodwill among all such states. The term "communist state" without capitalization makes less sense to me on your stated basis of a stateless society since a one-party state... has a state whereas a society that has achieved little 'c' communism shouldn't. Passingobserver (talk) 03:34, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

I'd like to reiterate here that I am personally not wedded to capitalization one way or another. I think it's a somewhat frivolous distinction to be making. But you are now talking about upending another entire article that at least stands as evidence of precedence for this because it doesn't agree with the formula you established in this one. Passingobserver (talk) 03:46, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict)It seems "Communist state" is the same type jargon as "Soviet Russia". When you look at history monographs, the term "Soviet Russia" is being user frequently (the Soviet Russia/Soviet Union ratio is 1:10).

If you search for "communist state" in google scholar [31] (this search is not case-sensitive), you see that "communist" is capitalised only when some concrete communist state is discussed, or in the pre WWII books or articles, when just one communiost state existed.--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:57, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Yep. This isn't even a proper specialized-style fallacy; the specialists themselves don't write in the "Communist regimes" manner. It's just an OR idea someone's trying to impose on WP because they don't fully understand what capitalization is used for (and more often not used for) in formal, general-audience English. They're importing the "capitalize to make something seem important or to lend it a Special, Secret Signification" idea (like I did just there) from marketing, headlinese, online forum posts, and other low registers of English usage.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:57, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

• @SMcCandlish: your notion of splitting this article makes a lot more sense than many of the proposals put up here, and could resolve the long-standing fight over what framework to use for this content (BBOC "all communist governments committed killings" versus the more nuanced approaches taken by others). I would be interested in hammering out such a proposal. Would others be interested? Vanamonde (talk) 11:11, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Taking into account that each separate topic this article covers already has its own article (Black Book of Communism, Red Holocaust, Democide, Great Chinese Famine, Cambodian genocide, etc.), this proposal is tatnamount to article's deletion (which is an good option too).--Paul Siebert (talk) 14:31, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

No AfD has succeeded (out of many, and some !voters on them are still around), and there currently exists an article on Anti-communist mass killings which at AfD has attracted some "Keep" !votes. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anti-communist mass killings (2nd nomination) More to the point, there are specific sources on this topic, and none at all on that WP:OR article. Alas, my suggestion to make this article title NPOV seems not to have your support -- that is to limit it to "noncombatant deaths attributed to communist movements" and to cut the verbiage by half. Collect (talk) 14:45, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

If we apply the same deletion criteria to this article and Anti-communist mass killings, both should be deleted.

Anyway, I do not propose to delete this article, but if we will try to split it, we will immediately see that each new part duplicates some already existing article that already covers that topic. Which will automatically mean deletion (because specialised articles are much better written, more balanced and hardy benefit from addition of various POV trash from this one).--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:15, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Re: "there are specific sources on this topic". That is correct. However, that is not sufficient, because these sources do not represent majority viewpoint. To demonstrate what I mean, let's look at the WWII article. There are sources on this subject as whole, and all sources cited in this article either assume or openly say that each particular event they discuss were the part of WWII. However, if there were just few sources about the WWII in general (for example, Churchill's book and few others), but majority sources described War in Pacific or Eastern Front as separate military conflicts, without any references to the WWII concept, the article had to be either deleted or totally rewritten: we would have to convert it into a story about military conflicts in 1939-45, and then to add that some authors combine all these conflicts under the name "WWII", and briefly discuss what these authors say. By the way, that is what this article does with some minority views: some authors state that WWII started not it 1939 in Europe, but, for example, in 1937 in Asia. These sources are mentioned in the WWII article, but they are presented as a viewpoint of some authors.

The same approach should be applied here: we describe the events (without generalisations), and then we briefly describe the opinia of several authors who believe there was a serious commonality between these events, and Communism was its primary cause.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:37, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

I would like to suggest the name, "Victims of Communism" (Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL). This is the most commonly used and perhaps only used term. I accept that the term itself is non-neutral and imprecise. However, this may be one of the circumstances where that can be overlooked. TFD (talk) 15:09, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

That's the least WP:NPOV suggestion to date. Why not "Terribly suffering victims of evil communism"? LOL.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:22, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish:, see Non-neutral but common names: "Conflicts often arise over whether an article title complies with Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View policy. Resolving such debates depends on whether the article title is a name derived from reliable sources or a descriptive title created by Wikipedia editors." We would be substituting a POV title written by editors with one chosen by the POV scholars who originated the topic. Jewish Bolshevism is another POV term that was used by earlier anti-Communists. The term "Victims of Communism" has attracted controversy because it implicitly implicates members of contemporary Communists with the crimes of Communist governments, but I do not see how the current title avoids doing that. In fact, many writers see the current interest in Communist crimes, long after the Cold War ended, as a reflection of current left-right rivalry in Europe. TFD (talk) 21:48, 30 June 2018 (UTC)

How about "Communist states and mass deaths"? That seems to be the Wikipedia approach for highly-charged topics (for instance, United States and state terrorism) and neither phrase is particularly controversial. Passingobserver (talk) 16:24, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

I'm very aware of that bit of policy; you're sorely misunderstanding it. It instructs us to replace a PoV title we made up (be it a fake name or a description, but one pushing a viewpoint) with a neutral description of our own devising. You somehow read it as suggesting replacing a PoV title we made up with an even more PoV description we made up. That's not what it means, at all. What it exempts is PoV names from reliable sources, though replaces those as well very often when other names from RS are available.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:12, 30 June 2018 (UTC)

I suppose "mass deaths" doesn't sufficiently emphasize the political nature of the subject, but I think that's the general direction to head... Passingobserver (talk) 16:44, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

• I could live with "Communist states and mass killings" (and have mentioned it now in the main RM section above). "Mass deaths" is far too ambiguous/broad, and would be inclusive of famine and disease; not in-scope. Still, we're going to have to deal with the over-capitalization of communis[t|m] in the prose; tweaking the title to skirt the issue doesn't make the issue go away.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:25, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Agree with Communism and Mass Deaths. Normally famines, which make up the majority of the deaths, are not described as mass killings unless they were wholly deliberate. In Ireland for example the British government stored grains produced by the Irish in case of famine. However, these grains were not released during the famine, resulting in 1 million deaths. We allow the sources to provide interpretations rather than present our own interpretations as fact. TFD (talk) 22:16, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

That's a fair point, since at least one famine (which seems to have had more to do with administrative incompetence than geno/democidal intent) was involved. But it was a Russian debacle and doesn't generalize to China, Vietnam, Cuba, etc. This just serves to highlight the OR/COATRACK problem happening at this page. "Russia's agricultural mismanagement leading to starvation is exactly the same as rounding people up and shooting them. Ergo all communist countries are the same and are mass-murderous". We don't write Wikipedia that way. It's just a chain of fallacies.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:04, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

But that's the point. It is an established fact that the famine in the Soviet Union, while to some degree due to incompetence, was also used as a tool to subjugate certain nationalities, thereby transforming deaths into something more deliberate, i.e. killings. --Nug (talk) 11:28, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

Capitalization of "Communist"

"Communist" should be capitalized again, there's no reason for decapitalizing it. Pedro8790 (talk) 18:10, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Agree. None of these regimes were communism either by their own or any other definition. They were however run by Communists, i.e., members of Communist parties. TFD (talk) 18:22, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

They were run by communist parties, for example, by the Communist party of China. As MOS say, "lowercase republican refers to a system of political thought; uppercase Republican refers to a specific Republican Party (each being a proper name)". Capital "C" is used by the authors who share (explicitly or implicitly) a "generic Communism" doctrine. The authors who see more difference between these states than commonalities do not capitalise this word.

Majority of the events the article discussed occurred when Comintern de facto stopped to exist, so there was no uniform Communist movement.--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:34, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Can you please explain why we should treat them as separate movements? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pedro8790 (talk • contribs) 22:45, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

I can't repeat the same explanations again and again. Just search this talk page, for example, for the name David-Fox and read this source. It is one out of many authors who expressed the same criticism of "generic Communism" idea.--Paul Siebert (talk) 00:01, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

The fact that one, or some authors disagree with "generic Communism" or whatever that means, doesn't mean we should treat them as separate. -- Pedro8790 (talk) 01:37, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

It seems you misunderstand it. The absence of widespread criticism of the "Generic Communism" concept may be explained by two reasons: (i) only few authors disagree with it, or (ii) this concept is essentially ignored. Actually, if you read special articles about, for example, Stalinist repressions, there almost no mention of ideology. When I tried to find if Ellman, Wheatcroft, Maksudov, Haslam or Roberts capitalise "communist", I realised they use this word very rarely. The reason is very simple: they do not consider ideological component important for explanation of the Great Purge. The same is true for other authors: the "generic Communism" concept is being essentially ignored by authors who write about Cambodia, about China. It is accepted only by few theorists who are trying to propose global theories. And these theories are ignored (not criticised) by country specialists.--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:39, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

See also my post at 15:37, 23 June 2018 (above). In addition, although this analogy is an exaggeration, it may illustrate my point: the absence of widespread criticism of the flat Earth theory does not mean it is universally accepted.--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:42, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

This is an absolutely clear-cut MOS:ISMCAPS case. This kind of over-capitalization is the exact reason that MOS:ISMCAPS was written.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:13, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Explain then how it is clear-cut that this is an MOS:ISMCAPS case. -- Pedro8790 (talk) 01:37, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

RTFM, including both the plain wording of the guideline, and the discussion above. See also WP:STONEWALL. Pretending you can't understand the point isn't going to fool anyone. No one is obligated to re-re-re-re-explain everything to you until they keel over in exhaustion.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:01, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Pedro8790, I already explained that to you. If you are not satisfied with this explanation, please, tell it to me. Repeating the same question and ignoring answers is hardly productive.--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:17, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Typically the term Communist is capitalized. See for example Sara Diamond: "I use uppercase "C" Communism to refer to actually existing governments and movements and lowercase "c" communism to refer to the varied movements and political currents organized around the ideal of a classless society." (p. 8)[32] The comparison with republicanism is inexact. While it is questionable whether the Soviet Union was communist or even that its leaders were, it is generally assumed that the United States is a republic and that the Republican Party supports republican government, at least for the U.S. TFD (talk) 14:20, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

I am not sure Sara Diamond supports capitalisation. Whereas she uses Kovel's classification to refer to some concrete government as "Communist", it is not clear if she uses capitalisation when she refers to all of them. "Communist governments" may refer to the members of Communist block, however, neither Cambodia nor China was a member of Communist block by the moment mass killings occurred there. Meanwhile, many authors emphasize the difference between e.g. Hungary and Afghanistan, USSR and Cambodia.

Re Republicans, I am not sure I understand you. The question about the state system is not relevant in this case: we have one Republican party in the USA and another Republican party in, e.g., Liberia. When we speak about each of them separately, we call each of them a "Republican party", however, should we write "Republican parties" or "republican parties" when we are talking about all or many republican parties simultaneously? My understanding is, that would be correct if some international movement or association of republican parties existed (something similar to Comintern). However, no Comintern existed in 1937 (formally, it did exist, but it was almost defunct by that moment).--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:05, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

There were also splits in the Christian church, but that does not mean we no longer capitalize Christian. Big "C" Communist is a proper noun that refers to a specific group of political parties. The value of the term is that it depends on usage rather than analysis. It may be as you say that the Workers Party of Korea is no longer communist, or perhaps never was, but there is no dispute that they are Communists. It could also be that the terminology should have changed following the end of Comintern or Cominform or the Sino-Soviet split, but it did not. I don't think we should get bogged down on republicanism. Very few people would chose republicanism if asked to define the party's ideology, or assume that it necessarily had much in common with similarly named parties. TFD (talk) 17:07, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

There is some self-contradiction is what you say. Why a specific group of political parties should be capitalised when they are communist, and no capitalising is needed when we talk about democratic parties?

Re NK. I see it differently. Those authors who see NK as a neo-Confutian autarchy and do not see much connection between jucje and Communism, do not use the epithet "C/communism" at all, and those who overemphasize the influence of Marxism, prefer to call it Communist.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:22, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

We do not have to justify why reliable sources typically capitalize Communist while not capitalizing democratic. The grammatical difference is that a proper noun "refers to a unique entity...as distinguished from a common noun, which usually refers to a class of entities." As I said, reliable sources group a specific set of governments as "Communist," while classification as a small-c communist or or small-d democratic regime is less clear. It's quite obvious that in the Black Book, Valentino's article, and other sources referring to mass killings in Communist regimes, that the authors use the accepted categorization rather than establishing criteria and creating their own lists. TFD (talk) 20:10, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

You again seem to don't understand. The sources that see different communist government as a part of some set do capitalise "Communist', the sources that do not see them as a part of some set do not capitalise this name. The question is which sources are more numerous, and it is not easy to find a simple answer, because many (if not majority of) authors who write, for example, about Stalinism, NK or KR do not use the term "Communist regime" at all, and use the word "communist" very rarely, usually as the party name. These sources do not emphasize the role of ideology in mass killings, and usually cite other reasons (e.g. racial in the case of Cambodia). In other words, by switching to Communist we give a greater weight to the sources that see ideology as a promary cause of these events and ignore the opinion of specialists who provide different explanations.--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:43, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Do you have any sources that advocates of the generic communism theory capitalize while opponents do not? Surely the concept of generic communism does not require capitalization, since generic terms are common names, not proper names, hence grammatically are not capitalized. And using lower case presumes that communism is generic. TFD (talk) 04:22, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

I doubt serious authors devote so much attention to the "Generic Communism" theory that they will waste their time for such things. I am just saying that many (if not overwhelming majority) of authors (including Valentino) do not see ideology as a significant factor affecting mass killings. Just open Kiernan's articles about Cambodia or Ellman's articles about USSR: you will not be able to answer the question what letter do they use, because they do not use the word "communist" almost at all! Of course, they use it to refer to members of local political parties, but they do not apply this epithet to the state.--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:35, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

"Capitalization"  :

1. https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/51050/does-one-capitalize-communism-and-communist Applying that definition, "a communist country" is an example of a common noun. It should not be capitalized.
2. https://www.quora.com/Should-the-Communists-be-capitalized
3. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/communist
4. https://wordsmith.org/board/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=178798

The results are dang near unanimous. Only when referring to a party which is a proper noun, is "communist" capitalized. When used as a generic word and not as a proper noun, it is not capitalized. I think this provides a definitive answer. Collect (talk) 13:04, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Actually, that may be not fully correct, because "Communism" as a doctrine (and "Communist" as something that belongs to this doctrine) is being frequently capitalised too. However, Doctrinal topics, canonical religious ideas, and procedural systems that may be traditionally capitalized within a faith or field are given in lower case in Wikipedia, which means you are right, and even if many authors write "Communiusm" when they refer to a communist doctrine, our own guidelines tell we should not capitalise it.--Paul Siebert (talk) 14:21, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

And thus MOS:DOCTCAPS. The fact that some off-site writers capitalize doctrines has never been in question; we would not have a rule against doing it on WP (because it's a weird specialized-style fallacy) if it were not actually attested in the real world. "I can find examples of 'Communist' in sources" isn't an argument against DOCTCAPS, it's the reason we have DOCTCAPS. Similarly, the fact that some people capitalize common names of species ("a Bottlenosed Dolphin") is why we have a rule against that in MOS:LIFE. We have no rule "Do not spell horse as whoursse" because no one would ever try to do that.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:30, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

IOW we should ignore what experts on communism say and follow what one editor found on Quora. TFD (talk) 22:36, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Nice try. No, we should actually look at RS usage, where "Communist" is used in reference to a specific party, and "communist" is used generically. All that's happening here is that someone saw "Communist" ever capitalized at all and leapt to the idea to capitalize it everywhere. It's a case of the first half of the Dunning–Kruger effect.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:08, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

It seems I am the one who listed Quora as one source - but the answers there were pretty clear not to capitalize the word unless used as a proper noun. I think you might have misspoken in your post above. Collect (talk) 14:01, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

It is used as a proper noun when it is used to refer to the governments of the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, etc., either individually or as a group. That's why the introduction to the Black Book of Communism, which discusses Communist governments, capitalizes the term. TFD (talk) 23:12, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

First, our content policy says Wikipedia should reproduce what reliable source say, however, it does not say we must follow their capitalisation rules. We have our own guidelines for that.

Second, Courtois capitalises "Communist" to emphasise the commonality between various nominally communist regimes. Other authors, who disagree with that (such as David-Fox), or who just ignore this viewpoint, do not capitalise it. Do you propose us to write the article using the BB as a template?--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:40, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

That certain authors disagree is irrelevant, there's always going to be dissent in academia, "Fascist" and "Nazi" are capitalized many times on Wikipedia, so why should "Communist" not be capitalized? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 177.207.62.89 (talk) 01:55, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Disagreement of reputable authors, who are renown experts in the subject is quite relevant.

In addition, we have our own manual of style. "Nazi" is not an analog of "communists", is a very specific term, it refers to a very concrete political movement founded by Hitler. A close analog of Nazi (it terms of capitalisation, or course) may be, for example, French Communists (members of the Communist party of France, or their supporters). "Fascists" is a more loose term, it may refer to Italian Fascists (capitalised), or fascists in general (proponents of an extreme totalitarian form of etatism). Many authors do not capitalise "fascists" when they use a loose definition of this term.

--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:13, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Nor should they. It's the same kind of error we're dealing with here. "Fascism" in the loose modern sense has little to do with the specific Italian Fascism movement (or the broader one that led to it, starting in the late 19th c. in various European countries). Tryng to equate them is (surpise!) OR.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:12, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, you have the concept the wrong way around. Using lower case emphasizes the commonality between various regimes, specifically that they all follow communist ideology. The use of upper case only implies that people use the term to describe them, and avoids the POV error of assuming there is a generic communism. Note too that generic terms are never capitalized. TFD (talk) 23:36, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Interesting, my understanding is absolutely opposite. Either you are wrong or I just don't feel these nuances. Let's see what other users say.--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:26, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

In her book, Diamond further writes, "Anti-Communism was opposition to Communist bloc states and real live Communists. Anticommunism was, and remains, what Kovel calls the "reigning ideology of the West."[33] TFD (talk) 20:39, 30 June 2018 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Is lowercase sigmabot III broken?

This has got to be one of the longest talk pages on Wikipedia, and there's been no archiving since June 20. As the page gets longer, it becomes more and more difficult to navigate as old discussions clog up the page. Is there a way to manually archive the page, or is there a way to make lowercase sigmabot III resume its bot-worthy task? schetm (talk) 05:33, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

• @Schetm: I just archived the vast, vast majority of the page sort-of manually (script assisted). Lowercase sigmabot III was working fine on other pages. I wonder if it refused to archive anything because of unresolved RfC discussions above. — Mr. Guye (talk) (contribs)  10:38, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

RfC on figures presented by Courtois in the Black Book introduction

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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I am asking about the most neutral way to present the figures of "Communist death toll" presented by Courtois in the introduction to the Black Book of Communism (aka BB).

• In the introduction to the Black Book of Communism, the editor of this volume, Courtois, provides the figures of communist death toll. These figures, as well as the very idea to combine loosely connected events under a single category, has been severely criticized. The examples of criticism are provided here, and many critics blame Courtois in manipulation with figures and their deliberate inflation. In addition, the idea to connect the deaths with some "generic Communism" concept (defined down to the common denominator of party movements founded by intellectuals) has been criticised by other authors, who argues that a connection between, e.g., events in Pol Pot's Cambodia and Stalin's USSR is far from evident, and Pol Pot’s study of Marxism in Paris is insufficient for connecting radical Soviet industrialism and the Khmer Rouge’s murderous anti-urbanism under the same category. Furthermore, the figures produced by Courtois are always presented to advocate the idea that Communism was greater evil than Nazism. This idea has been criticized by many authors

Many critics also note that the Courtois's introduction to the BB is the most problematic part of this collective volume, and most criticism is focused on it. Even some contributors to the BB publicly disassociated themselves from the conclusions presented in the introduction (see the link to the talk page), and from the figures in particular. In connection to that, my concrete questions are:

1. Should we always discriminate between the introduction to the BB and the BB proper every time the introduction is cited?
2. Should we always explain that the introduction is "controversial" when the BB introduction is used as a source?
3. Should we always describe the controversy around the figures presented in the introduction when the introduction is being used as the source for these figures?
4. Should we explain the objections to the "generic Communism" concept every time the combined "Communist death toll" calculated in the BB introduction is being discussed in an article?

These questions are independent, and the answers can be, for example, "Yes - No - No - Yes".

--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:41, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Discussion

• I am currently a disengaged editor due to time (though if editors wish to contest this I will immediately acceede to them.
• The introduction (and conclusion) by Courtois have been received with such specific hostility that they ought to be referred to separately to the body of the text (regardless of the level of hostility to particular chapters, or the concept of the work).
• The introduction's theoretical category is so controversial ("non-Catholocism, as is non-adherence to the Church of Rome), the last time I read it in depth, that the introduction should not be used as a source for death totals (other than where, as a subject in itself, rather than a reference to external reality, the "Black Book" is relevant). Fifelfoo (talk) 11:20, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
• Any RfC is supposed to be written in absolutely neutral language. This RfC has a stated desired outcome, with which I demur actually and procedurally. Collect (talk) 12:23, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Collect, I described a controversy around this source and asked how this controversy should be presented. Which concrete statement (or question) looks non-neutral in your opinion? Can you propose a wording that described this controversy in a more neutral way?--Paul Siebert (talk) 12:42, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps: The (BB) is viewed by some as a controversial source on total deaths under communist regimes. Ought it be removed from the lead with regard to its estimates of total deaths? or something roughly akin. Short. Terse. Easy to follow. "Thousand word essays" (this is not a word count, but a figure of speech, so do not get upset) or the like tend to get glazed looks. Collect (talk) 15:43, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

First, I do not propose to discuss removal of BB from the lead. The question is "how this information should be presented". The answers to this question might range from, e.g., "just show the figure" to "remove the figures completely" with a mid opinion "show the figures, but explain they are highly controversial" (other variants are also possible). BTW, what is your own answer to this question?

Second, your version tells just a part of the story. The users should be informed about the essence of criticism: (i) that figures were artificially inflated, (ii) that this inflation served to convey some concrete idea,, (iii) that this idea seems highly questionable. I believe an uninvolved user should be informed about that. It is also necessary to note that the BB gets positive reviews due to contribution of the authors other than Courtois (and those authors disagree with his interpretation of their data), and most reviews say this collective volume is non-homogeneous: which means some parts are more credible than others.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:55, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Nope. The RfC should not present various arguments - that is for the "Discussion" on the RfC. And any work by multiple authors is ipso facto not "homogeneous" for that very reason. It is intrinsic that different authors do not create a homogeneous anything. Thus I think perhaps you should ask at the talk page for WP:RFC what the length and form of a good RfC is, if it is not clear. Further, arguing with other editors very rarely makes them think more highly of your position. The shorter the query is, and the less argumentative it is, the better the anticipated outcome. Any RfC which says "This source is really, really bad, and should be excised or have the 'really bad' epithet applied so readers will know how bad it is" is probably not going to get very far. I suggest you reread my RfC which was demolished by lengthy replies which were not exactly on topic. Collect (talk) 19:38, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

If you followed your own advise you gave me earlier (no mentoring), we would find consensus more quickly. I cannot ask a question without providing needed background. If my RfC looked like "This source is very, very bad", it was not my intention. My point was this source is very inhomogeneous, because it is a collective volume, not a single monograph. We are talking about the most disputable statement from the most controversial part of this volume. Many reviews say, e.g. Werth's chapter was excellent, and I myself do not find any reason to cast a doubt at this chapter (although it might me not the best source about the USSR, because more recent and more accurate studies are available). However, to claim that the whole BB, including the introduction is a good source because the Werth's chapter was highly commended is at least not completely honest, taking into account that Werth himself objected to Courtois claims.

Once again, my task was not easy: I had to ask people a very complicated question: how to deal with highly controversial statement taken from the source that is otherwise quite reliable? I had to explain that it was not me who find this statement controversial, and I had to explain why all these authors believe it is controversial.

Do you have any idea how could that task be solved?--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:53, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

1. "Should we always discriminate between" Chapter #1 of an RS (this is chapter 1, not an editorial) and the rest of the book. No because this is the same RS.
2. "Should we always" provide a qualifier "controversial" for something we have a WP page about and provide a link? No because we must avoid POV qualifiers, and the reader can follow the link.
3. "Should we always describe the controversy". No, because we should avoid POV-frks.
4. Should we explain the objections to the "generic Communism"? No because there is no such commonly used terminology as "generic Communism" and because this page is not about Communism as a concept. My very best wishes (talk) 18:32, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

The explanation of "generic Communism" can be found in the Malia or David-Fox articles. Please, read. I do not discuss a concrete wording. I discuss the general approach to presentation of the figures calculated by Courtois.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:42, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Re: "The page is not about Communism as a concept" It is an interesting topic for the next RfC. Collect, do you agree that this article makes no connection between communism and mass killing?--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:58, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Nope. This article is about reliable sources stating that non-combatants died and that their deaths were attributed by those sources to "communist regimes". It is not up to us to make a connection or deny a connection. It is up to us to deal with what major sources state, and to make no deductions otherwise on our own. Collect (talk) 19:42, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Good. That means this article does not discuss communism in general? If that is the case, then the "Proposed causes" section should be removed, as well as "terminology", because we must avoid unneeded generalisations (we are not speaking about Communism, aren't we?). Taking into account that Kiernan provides a very specific explanation for Cambodia (Khmer's nationalism etc), Werth connects Red terror with inconclusive land reform and WWI, O'Grada sees Great Chinese famine as the last one in the series of historical famines, etc. Do you agree with that?--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:00, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

You seem to misapprehend my comments. This article is not what draws a connection nor needs to give a reason for any connection. If a reliable source makes a connection either explicitly or implicitly, we write that this is what the source says. The article is not about communism itself as the topic, but it is about connections between deaths and communist regimes made by reliable sources. Where "causes" are set forth in reliable sources, then we report what the sources say, and do not draw conclusions ourselves. Is that clear? Collect (talk) 21:51, 5 June 2018 (UTC) \

You are right. Now explain me how should we represent a situation when (i) a source A says Communism killed 100 millions, and more than 20 million out of these 100 were killed in the USSR, so Communism is more criminal than Nazism, (ii) a source B says the source A lies, and the number of victims in the USSR was smaller, (iii) the source C says it is incorrect to speak about Communism as whole, because there is virtually no connection between Cambodia and USSR, Afghanistan and Hungary, (iv) a source D says it is incorrect to claim Communism was more criminal than Nazism, as the source A says, (v) and a source E describes a significant number of mass deaths in China in totally different terms than "mass killings" and without any connection to communism? Which of that belongs to this article, which of that is not relevant?--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:06, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

The actual decision is made by consensus through any RfC, so I am writing as a hypothetical issue here.

The "Xism is more Evil than Yism" is not a "fact", but an opinion, which would generally be given and attributed as an opinion no matter what else is there.

A source B which says "source A lies" is also an opinion, and such opinions are generally discouraged - we are not here to provide fodder for source fights between authors, but to provide information of factual events, and the opinions which reliable sources present, sourced and attributed as opinions.

In the topic at hand, the claim that "countries A, B and C are different" is pretty much useless - the topic of this article is about any nation with a "communist regime" and does not require such regimes to be identical at all.

In short, other than the initial estimates of deaths attributed to the sources making such estimates, pretty much all your hypothets are of no value in this article. In my opinion.

The goal is to give readers factual estimates from reliable sources as to deaths occurring which were attributed to communist regimes by WP:RS sources. All else is argumentative fluff at this point. Collect (talk) 23:41, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Collect, I see some logical inconsistencies in what you write.

1. "Xism vs Yism" is irrelevant, what is relevant is that the number X is tightly connected with the "Xism vs Yism" theory, and it is produced to support it. If you don't want to engage in cherry picking, let's tell a full story.

2. According to you, if a source X says: "Xism killed 100 million", it is a fact, but when a source Y says "X is wrong" it is opinion. It directly contradicts to the scientific community rules: if a scientist A publishes the results of, e.g., speed of light measurements, and a scientist B writes that these results are unreliable, because there was a flaw in the experimental method A used, we do not present the result obtained by A as a fact and the observation made by B as an opinion. They both are treated with equal respect, and, until B's concern has not been properly addressed, A's measurements cannot be considered as a fact.

3. Regarding estimates, how do you propose to deal with conflicting estimates? Rummel says Communism killed 140 million, including 60 million in the USSR, Snyder says 9 million were killed in the USSR, Harff says Rummel is not a specialist in each particular country, his figures are not supposed to be accurate, and they are just an average of lowest and highest estimates. Is it ok to give Rummel's figures simply because he collected (very inaccurately) poor quality data for all countries? Are you comfortable with the fact that these Rummel's data include the USSR data that are about 40 million less, according to fresh sources?--Paul Siebert (talk) 00:21, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

First of all, I noted that we were dealing with hypotheticals. Secondly, the name of the article delimits its content, and the discussion of "what is and what is not communism" is irrelevant as long as the countries have been identified by the reliable source as "communist" and the source states as fact that deaths occurred under that regime.

If George Gnarph says "I estimate that the elephant weighs 3800 pounds" the statement "George Gnarph says the elephant weighed 3800 pounds" is a fact. If Ralph Rarph says "George Gnarph lied" then that is clearly personal opinion, and can only be used and cited as opinion. Is this finally clear?

I note that the article is only about death in "regimes", and does not say "specific attributes of communism which are common to the definition of 'communism' are the cause of these deaths." Thus that hypothetical is not really germane here.

It is unclear whether the claim "Rummel says Communism killed 100 million people" is correct, or whether Rummel attributes the deaths to the regime, or to a general definition of "communism." I believe he attributed the deaths to the regime and not to the ideology of communism per se. To that extent, I fear I doubt this specific hypothetical has much validity.

And it is not up to us to assert that "Rummel acted very inaccurately" or the like, but any such statement is quite clearly an opinion, which must be ascribed to the person holding that opinion in a reliable source, and cited as such under Wikipedia policy. Again, we are dealing with hypotheticals, but some of the ones you suggest clearly run afoul of Wikipedia policy which is that we rely solely on reliable sources, and do not use our own personal knowledge to make statements about such sources.

See WP:V, the pertinent policy. Collect (talk) 00:55, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

No, the question about Rummel is not an opinion. Harff does not express an opinion about a procedure Rummel uses. She describes a procedure, and conclude the error is quite likely. She admits country specialists are more accurate in figures, whereas genocide scholars may be more accurate in estimates of global trends (not numerical). The strong side of Rummel's study is the discovery of a correlation between totalitarianism and mass killing (it is just a correlation, modern scholars found other correlations, but it is a important discovery anyway), and Rummel's conclusions are not affected significantly if Stalinn killed not 60 but 9 million. In contrast, the scholars who study some single country do not make generalisations, but they know everything about their area of interest. They know figures better that Rummel and few other genocide scholars who are doing global estimates.

Have you ever read studies of genocide scholars? It is usually a pure math, Bayesian analysis, singular value decomposition, and other statistics. They are working with intrinsically noisy data to predict which regime is more likely to cause genocide in future, and they have no capabilities to provide accurate estimates, because even 100-200% error does not affect their conclusions significantly.

What is happening here is directly opposite: you are pushing Rummel's figures and ignoring the figures provided by real specialists. Wheatcroft does not use Rummel's data for USSR, because he is doing his own archival research, but Rummel uses Wheatcroft's data, and he is not doing archival research. Who should be trusted more?

If George Gnarph says: "I estimate the elephant weight is 3800 pounds" but Ralph Granph says: "George Gnarph's measurement procedure has a serious flaw that underestimates elephant's weight", I am not sure we have a "fact vs opinion" collision. By the way, if we present George Gnarph's data and ignore Ralph Granph's notion, we mislead a reader, because actual weight of Asian elephant is around 6000 lbs, and African elephant is even heavier, which means George Gnarph's notion was quite justified, whereas George Gnarph's data are wrong.

Re: "I note that the article is only about death in "regimes"". I recall I proposed to make this article purely descriptive, and that would resolve many problem. If you agree, let's discuss it in a separate section.--Paul Siebert (talk) 01:15, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

As I used the word "hypothetical" a few times, a cavil about African elephants v. Asian elephants reminds me of Monty Python and the Holy Grail and how much weight a sparrow could carry. Really, asides of that type are not very helpful at all. Collect (talk) 01:29, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

I hate to derail this further into policy / process stuff, but since this keeps happening with WP:RFCs here... the purpose of an RFC is to attract outside opinions when we've already failed to reach a consensus ourselves. Having them all devolve into the same three or four people arguing the same things over and over defeats the point (that's exactly the thing we recourse to an RFC to end.) Everyone, if you feel the need to have a huge discussion mid-RFC, please create another section for it? Usually I would pull them out into a threaded discussion subsection, but these are all lengthy reply topics to individual comments and can't be easily moved around. Any outside editor who came across this wall of convoluted discussion in a request for comment could be reasonably excused for deciding to just nope out. --Aquillion (talk) 01:46, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

The discussion on my part is and has been absolutely an attempt to get a well-defined, neutrally worded RfC. Non-neutral epics do not get outside opinions as a rule. The RfC here presented is the War and Peace style. Collect (talk) 10:48, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

I favor number 2. The specific controversy on the introduction needn't be discussed more than once or twice. GPRamirez5 (talk) 17:24, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Actually, these were four independent questions. For example, if the answers are No - Yes - No - No, then we do not discriminate between the intro and the BB as whole, and write "controversial BB" without further details. If the answers are Yes - No - Yes - No, we write "the BB introduction provides the figures that have been widely criticized because ..." Etc. Should I add these clarifications to the body of the RfC?--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:37, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

• Yes, yes, yes, yes, but my opinion is that we shouldn't be citing the introduction at all in the first place, or should cite it as little as possible and never in a position of prominence (which makes all of these questions moot.) Beyond the fact that the lead to that book is extremely controversial, as mentioned above, and beyond the fact that it's disputed by even some of the book's own contributors (rendering it a bit WP:FRINGE), the really big problem is that it's essentially an opinion piece by one person - it doesn't have the fact-checking or research that went into the rest of the book. This makes it an extremely poor thing to cite for statements of fact. We could cite it for Courtois' personal opinions, with an in-line citation making it clear that this is just Courtois' opinion, but placing it in the lead or mentioning it more than once or twice strikes me as clearly WP:UNDUE. If there's something vital in the book, it should be possible to cite it to the actual text inside rather than Courtois' more controversial, more opinionated, and less scholarly summary. And I would be opposed to relying too heavily on the black book in general - if this is such a major, noteworthy topic, it should be easy to find additional sources rather than placing such a heavy weight on just one. --Aquillion (talk) 01:39, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Forgive me for not grasping Wikipedia legalese but I came upon this page by accident and found it interesting. Is the ultimate intention of the editor who created this request to supplant references to Rummel, Courtois, etc. with e.g. Wheatcroft as mentioned? I might be getting way ahead of the argument but it seems ultimately this is a way of cutting the numbers down so to speak. Thanks for listening. Passingobserver (talk) 10:46, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

• Comment. This RfC is related mostly to the Black Book of Communism. This is not surprising because the book is probably the best and the most detailed general source about communist repressions in various countries, which is the subject of this page. One could even argue this WP page should be made as a WP:list, unless we had the "Black Book" and books by Rummel, Malia and a couple of others. In terms of our policies, the most relevant question is weather this book (and more specifically its first chapter by Courtois) should be regarded as an academic RS (the 1st chapter is basically a review and uses a lot of references to other sources). That has been already discussed on RSNB in most detail here and most recently here. What was the outcome of these RSNB discussions? This is hard to say, but the book certainly was NOT disregarded as an unreliable source. This was most neutrally summarized by user DGG (first link) "The numbers given in the BB are not outside the range of possibility, and can be included as one of several estimates--and indeed should be, to show the range of variation.". So, unless there is any new consensus, I would regard that comment as an excellent recommendation we all should follow. Yes, the numbers should be explicitly attributed to Courtois because two other co-authors had happen to disagree. But this is not an opinion, but results of research by a notable mainstream scientist who works in this area. My very best wishes (talk) 19:12, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
• Delete Article - Is there any possibility we can just delete this page? There are so many things wrong with this article, it seems pointless to have content RfC's like this. I'm guessing there won't be much appetite for deletion, given pages like this tend to attact "special interest" editors who imagine and synthesize notability for subject like this; that said, perhaps now that the Cold War is long enough over we can have enough detachment to recognize what a ridiculous SOAPBOX this entire article is? NickCT (talk) 14:52, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Nope. There have been a bunch of RfDs in the past, and you have certainly opined in the past. The goal is to define and structure the article as best we can, not to delete it. Meanwhile, I think you might wish to nominate Anti-communist mass killings which is in far worse shape. Collect (talk) 15:00, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Collect, whereas I am not a fan of that article (I even don't remember if I ever edited it), I think the subject of that article is quite clear: killings of communists by anti-communists. Anticommunism is a well defined topic, and those killings are attributed not to regimes, but to any anticommunists. I am neutral regarding that article, but I suspect it was created as a balance MKuCR. Its title is awkward and ambiguous (who are killers and who was being killed?), it looks like a list article, but it avoids any generalisations and theorising, so it does not violate our policy.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:49, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

@Collect: - When you say "a bunch" you mean two, right? Two close AfD's for keep is a bunch? Ever think there may be so many deletion discussions b/c the article should really be deleted?

Both this page and Anti-communist mass killings ought to be deleted. Clear and petty ideological warring. NickCT (talk) 17:48, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

NickCT, I think, the article can be improved, although it requires a major rewrite (I am currently discussing that with one user, hope to present this plan to wider audience after the preliminary consensus is acheived). Its deletion will not resolve the problem, and, formally speaking, it is not possible, because the topic does exist.--Paul Siebert (talk) 14:58, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

@Paul Siebert: - Deletion would solve the problem quite nicely. And I contest that the topic exists. Can you point to more than one or two publications whose main topic is "Killings under Communist regimes"? What you've done here is to take a bunch of facts from different RS's and you've strung them together to try to synthesize a subject and its notability, which really only exists in your and few other editors' heads. NickCT (talk) 17:52, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Actually, even a single source is sufficient for prevention of article's deletion, and I know at least two. However, I agree that this article is currently terrible and needs a major rewrite. If we will not achieve a consensus about that, I have one idea that may resolve the problem. However, that may require time and efforts.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:59, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

@Paul Siebert: - . A single source does not notability make. NickCT (talk) 23:20, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Re "in your and few other editors' heads" I am the one who is deeply dissatisfied with the way this article is written. My primary concern is that the article is obsesses with figures, and is disinterested in placement of these events into a historical context (most historians explain these events not is a context of communism). The problem is that the idea of "communist mass killings" is not a fringe view, but it is not a significant majority view, so majority of experts simply ignore it, and they do not dispute this theory, hence we have little criticism in scholarly sources. In contrast, many journalists and popular writers push this idea. To resolve this problem, we need a collaborative efforts of all users, however, some of them prefer an edit war.--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:35, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

I'm not arguing about whether or not the article is terribly written (it is). I'm arguing the subject is non-notable synthesis and that the article is unencylopedic. NickCT (talk) 23:20, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

The article in its present form is not encyclopedic, I agree. I cannot agree that the subject is non-notable, taking into account a storm over the Black Book. And, yes, there is a lot of synthesis in the article. I think, you will not be able to delete the article, because there will be not enough arguments for that. However, it is possible to improve it, get rid of all synthesis, and make encyclopedic.--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:13, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

@Paul Siebert: - The Black Book is a perfect example of the synthesized notability this page uses. The subject of the Black Book was "Naughty Things the Commies Have Done". The sub-topic was "Mass Killings under Communist Regimes". The Black Book gives notability to former subject, but here folks are arguing that it gives notability to the latter. It does not.

We've strung together a bunch of sources that treat "Mass Killings" as a sub-topic and used them infer notability on the issue as a stand alone topic. It's classic SYNTH. NickCT (talk) 12:45, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

If you look at the talk page you can see that it is exactly what I say. However, my conclusion is: the article should be rewritten in a totally descriptive manner, and all theorisings should be moved to the bottem and represented as a minority (and contested) views.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:05, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

• No, Yes, No, No As was mentioned, the intro is part of the book; it's not a separate document. I think a footnote linking to the article about BB is sufficient to qualify that there's some disagreement. If number 2 is yes, then number three isn't necessary. As far as complaints about general communism: you can't claim that correlation does not equal causation when the same thing happens in almost every communist regime; that'd be a hell of a coincidence. Chris Troutman (talk) 04:44, 22 June 2018 (UTC) (Summoned by bot)

Chris Troutman, when the same thing happens in almost every communist regime, you definitely can't claim that correlation does not equal causation. The problem is, however, that the things that were happening were quite different. There was no ethnosocial antiurbanist genocides in the USSR, the Soviet society was not strictly separated on social groups like in North Korea, etc. Only few authors see significant commonality between these events.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:17, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

• Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes. Add #4: Just the term "Communist death toll" is controversial in itself. Many of the killings weren't done by communists at all and almost none of them is linked to communist ideology, they happened because of civil wars, infrastructure breakdowns and ordinary power struggles. And what does it even mean? It could mean how many communists died. The very concept of diving homo sapiens into the categories of Communists and Normal People is insane. Communism is a political ideology, not a special breed of the human race. The whole concept behind this article is based on an idea that communist ideology is deadly and all the deaths are presented as a result of communist ideology. This idea and basic assumption isn't explained nor tackled anywhere, it is just tacitly assumed. Can the prejudice be more ridiculous and expressed with more bigotry? RhinoMind (talk) 10:50, 23 June 2018 (UTC)
• No, No, No, and No. Specifically, when presenting data from the most important text on the issue, there is no need to qualify it at each citation; clearly WP:NPOV is introduced by introducing fear, uncertainty and doubt about this foundational book. One single explanation somewhere in the article for any such qualification suffices. And when someone asks if the time Pol Pot spent in Paris qualifies him as a Commie, I am reminded of this Wikipedia article. XavierItzm (talk) 16:02, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

A note to those who will be closing this RfC. Taking into account that my own answers to these questions are Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, as well as the arguments presented by Fifelfoo (that the intro should not be used as a source at all), it seems the community's answer to the question #2 is Yes (5 + Fifelfoo vs 2), and the other answers are "inconclusive" (3 vs 3). If someone believes I made a mistake during calculations, please, correct me.--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:04, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Wait, so now !votes are actual votes? If 3 say that 10,000 can dance on the head of a pin, and 3 say that the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (i.e., Pol Pot) was not a communist, then that makes it so? XavierItzm (talk) 20:01, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Yes, that is correct. Not only the number of votes, but the argument's strength matter. However, if we summarize the RfC in this way, the arguments presented here in favor of "Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes" are definitely stronger. In addition, you seem to misinterpret the main point: the question is not if Pol Pot was communist, but if there is a consensus among historians on the "generic Communism" as a primary cause of mass killings in Cambodia and USSR. Most specialists is Cambodian and Soviet histories consider these two cases separate from each other, and they see more commonalities between Cambodia and, e.g. Rwanda (where the genocide was democreatic per Semelin) than between Cambodia and the USSR. Only very few authors combine these two mass killings in one category, and many others openly disagree.--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:28, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

A distinction without a difference. This article is about mass killings under communist regimes. Cambodia's was and the USSR's was. XavierItzm (talk) 03:22, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

It seems you fundamentally misunderstand our core content policy: a lot of sources (if not an overwhelming majority of them) do see a difference, which means the article about mass killings under different communist regimes must explain that difference.--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:08, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

It's all right if you are confused. What's important is that we continue to go by the most representative WP:RS. In this case, evidently, Courtois et al. XavierItzm (talk) 10:12, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Four fundamental error in such a short post! (i) "we continue to go by the most representative WP:RS" - a reference to RS in a discussion about NPOV is explicitly prohibited by our policy, which says "Avoid stating seriously contested assertions as facts." (ii) "the most representative" - according to whom? Outstanding claims require outstanding evidences, but you provided no evidences at all. In addition, even if we agree that Courtois is the most representative source, Wikipedia must present all significant majority views, not a single one. (iii) "Courtois et al" - we are not talking about the whole book, the discussion is about the introduction, "et al", including Werths, who is the main contributor to this collective volume, openly disagree with Courtois. (iv) "evidently" implies some evidences, but no evidences have been provided by you. In contrast, the evidence of the opposite (that Courtois has been severely criticised, and his conclusions are highly controversial) have been provided on this talk page. Please, read recent archives before continuing the discussion.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:28, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Were Curtois et al. not the referential point, critiques wouldn't orbit precisely about Curtois et al. Besides, funnily enough, the Wikipedia entry for Curtois reads as follows: "The Black Book of Communism, a book edited by Courtois, has been translated into numerous languages, sold million of copies, and is considered a standard work on communist repressions" [emphasis added]. Imagine that. XavierItzm (talk) 18:30, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Good point, I brought the article about Courtois in accordance with the BB article.--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:57, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

Excellent work, thank you. The point is now further reinforced: "The Black Book may be the single most influential text on the Soviet Union and other state socialist regimes and movements published since The Gulag Archipelago."

You are missing the point: the author compares it with Archipelago, which is, without any doubt, the most influential book about Stalin's crimes. However, Archipelago is not considered a reliable source by historians who write about, for example, statistics of Gulag population. Currently, GULAG article cites Archipelago mostly in a historical context and as the book that was among the first books that vividly described prisoners' suffering. It was, and in some aspects remains one of the most influential books on this subject, but the figure of 50 million passed through the GULAG system is considered highly inflated now. Even Robert Conquest concedes that the figure of 14 million (plus ca 4 million in colonies) is a consensus figure. And, in general, Archipelago is rarely cited as a source about Stelinist repressions.

In other words, influential does not necessarily mean reliable. The BB, and especially the introduction, caused a storm of discussions, it got a widespread support and equally widespread criticism. You can find a lot of sources cited on this talk page that support this my conclusion (look through archives). Even Suny, who considers the BB influential, sees a lot of problems in what Courtois writes: just read this article in full. That means, it is hardly the most representative and reliable source about Communism.--Paul Siebert (talk) 14:27, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

Sure, Archipelago is not to be used as a statistical source. Writing under Socialist repression and being a gulag victim himself was not quite conducive for Solzhenitsyn to access official records, it seems. An excellent point that has no bearing on Black Book, the preeminent book on the subject matter. XavierItzm (talk) 03:24, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

You again are milling the point: the figures per se are not so important. What is important is an idea that some book may be influential (Archipelago remains very influential), but not reliable.::::::::::::In addition, you, probably forgot one important thing: the rock the whole BB rests upon is the Werth's chapter. It is due to this chapter the BB is considered one of the most important sources about communism. In contrast, the introduction written by Courtois is considered the most controversial part of the book, and Werth publicly dissociated himself from what Courtois writes. However, you are prefer to cherry-pick the most weakest part of the book and to take the most controversial statement from this part and to ignore the opinion of the author of the best part.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:57, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

• My nuanced answers to the four questions:
  1. Absolutely yes, since they have different authorship (the intro was authored by Courtois, and reflects his (challenged) opinion; it is a primary source while the rest of the book was authored by many and edited by him; that work appears to be a tertiary source in parts and a secondary one in others, probably mostly secondary. They are different actual works under the same cover, and the one is controversial while the other is not. Otherwise it's a grossly misleading source falsification, trying to hide a controversial source behind the name of a well-accepted one. We need not dwell on this in encyclopedic prose; just introduce the distinction at first occurrence, and use separate citations throughout. The cite template has a |chapter= parameter, which can be used thus: {{cite book|chapter=Introduction|last1=Courtois ...|editor1-last=Kramer ...}}; for some other chapter, do {{cite book|chapter=Chapter_title_here|last1=Chapter_author_surname ...|editor-last=Kramer ...}}, or if it's just an all-authors-commingled encyclopedic work and the chapter names don't matter, {{cite book|last1=Panné ...|last2=Paczkowski ...|last3=Bartosek ...|last4=Margolin ...|last5=Werth ...|last6=Courtois ...|editor-last=Kramer ...}}. Give page numbers in all cases (and complete names, etc., of course)
  2. Not quite. Rather, we should explain this on first occurrence and include specific attribution, and balance it with other sources, per WP:UNDUE. Thereafter do not cite it without attribution and balancing, but we need not repeat the explanation. If it can't be balanced, then don't cite it, per WP:NPOV and WP:PSTS.
  3. Not quite. Same answer as for no. 2. And we should not just use the intro as the source for figure in Wikipedia's own voice. It simply not permissible to do that with a primary source. They have to be Courtois's figures, balanced with counter claims. However, it would be permissible to do something like "lowest_RS_figure_here to largest_RS_figure_here deaths" and cite two sources in a row, without attribution, since that's a balanced range of expert-offered figures.
  4. Not quite. Explain it concisely the first time. Explain it in detail on second occurrence (first in the body), thereafter either don't use it or use it with a clear identifier referring to previous explanation. I'd don't repeat the whole explanation.
  5. Special consideration: The above should only apply to the lead and main prose. If Courtois's intro figures are used in any of the geographical sections, then it all needs to be explained, concisely, all over again, since the no. 1 use of this article is going to be to load this page then use the ToC to get directly to a specific place's section. This is basically a reference article, an extended list, and comparatively few readers are literally going to read it from top to bottom.

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:12, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. Actually, I realises that my questions #2-4 were not precisely formulated: I obviously meant "explain this on first occurrence in each article". --Paul Siebert (talk) 02:01, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

No, this was not obvious at all. Besides, an RFC designed to cover multiple articles requires notices at each article. Suggest you withdraw the defective+vitiated RFC and re-start from scratch.XavierItzm (talk) 02:58, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

References

"Communist" should be capitalized again

This does not violate MOS:ISMCAPS, lowercase refers to a political thought, uppercase refers to a specific party, but the same rule can be applied to regimes, we are talking about specific regimes, not systems of political thought. -- Pedro8790 (talk) 22:29, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

The larger issue is that the post-hoc justification RFC failed. Ask the original mover to revert himself? Fifelfoo (talk) 04:18, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

I doubt he will reverse it, perhaps another person should step in and revert it, since there was no discussion to change it, I don't see why a discussion is necessary to revert it. -- Pedro8790 (talk) 06:22, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

No, it should not. See the entire huge discussion above. All our guidelines are against this, and those in favor of it have jack but a bunch of WP:ILIKEIT handwaving and already-refuted arguments.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:01, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Would you please bother to make the case for why it shouldn't be capitalized? On that discussion, the only arguments I saw was that Communism is not uniform and a bunch of legalese. No offense, but it seems to me that you just throw a bunch of legalese instead of actually making a case for decpaitalizing in order to shut down discussion and impose your edit, either make a case for changing it and for why regimes should be treated differently than parties or somebody should step in and revert it. -- Pedro8790 (talk) 17:11, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

I and others already have. See discussion above. Cf. also WP:JUSTREAD.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:19, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

The rules of capitalization are not that hard to understand. Capitalize proper nouns: Communist Party. Do not capitalize common nouns: the Slobovian party has communist beliefs. As for the title of this article, do the creators want to limit it to mass killings under parties named Communist Party, or extend it to mass killings by the Slobovian party which has communist beliefs? Rick Norwood (talk) 20:39, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Correct. But this article has several editors who seem to post at length even when the guidelines and policies are clear. The clear history of the article makes quite clear that it is the self-ascribed beliefs which count, whether or not it is officially the "Communist Party of Slobovia" at issue. Collect (talk) 20:49, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Communism is a proper noun when it refers to the distinct and finite set of parties and governments that developed out of Marxism-Leninism following the Russian Revolution, initially joined in the Communist International. Many reliable sources capitalize the word in order to distinguish it from the broader ideology, many of whose adherents opposed Communist parties. It avoids issues such as were they really communists (or state capitalists or whatever) and the fact that none of the regimes were communist by any definition. A communist system would not actually have a government or political parties. And of course Communist includes some parties that went by different names, such as Socialist Unity in the former GDR and the Workers Party in North Korea. TFD (talk) 22:56, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

No, it is not. The entire reason we have an whole section called MOS:ISMCAPS is to make sure that editors understand that this is not a proper-noun usage. I believe you (like many others) are confusing the concept of proper noun (a.k.a. proper name (linguistics) with the concept of proper name (philosophy) which has nothing whatsoever to do with capitalization.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:29, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Not just me, but half the scholars writing about Communism, including Stéphane Courtois, the editor of the Black Book of Communism and the New York Times. As Alan M. Wald explains, "In order to tackle complex and often misunderstood political-literary relationships, I have adopted methods of capitalization in this book that may deviate from editorial norms practiced at certain journals and publishing houses. In particular, I capitalize "Communist" and "Communism" when referring to official parties of the Third International, but not when pertaining to other adherents of Bolshevism or revolutionary Marxism (which encompasses small-"c" communists such as Trotskyists, Bukharinists, council communists, and so forth)."[34] TFD (talk) 10:56, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

A RFC advertised at other pages failed to endorse a drive by bold act. Whether this is a walled garden or not; that bold change ought to be undone. If this is a walled garden, then that issue of improper localised consensus should be raised for itself—not over the issue of a bold edit that failed to achieve consensus.

As far as the content issue, can I suggest reviewing the RFC's arguments before further posts? Fifelfoo (talk) 04:08, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

The only arguments I saw there was that Communism is somehow not a uniform movement, and a bunch of legalese, one of example of regimes being referred with uppercase is on the Spanish Civil War article, notice how the Spanish government is referred to as the "Republican government", with uppercase, this completely goes against SMcCandlish's claim that uppercase "Communist" violates MOS:ISMCAPS. -- Pedro8790 (talk) 17:12, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

In the case of Spain, the term "Republican" is used because of the proper name of that government (Spanish Republic / República Española) - it is therefore a proper noun. Proper nouns get capitalized. Collect (talk) 21:05, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

Yep. Pedro8790, you either simply do not understand, or you are pretending not to in an attempt to WP:WIN; either way it is a WP:NOTGETTINGIT matter. This has all been explained in great detail already. No one else at any other similar page is having any similar inability to understand the difference.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:29, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

I agree "Rebublican" should be capitalesed when it refers to some concrete party, and the same works for any concrete communist party, which means that "communist" should be decapitalised when this word describes all parties that consider themselves communist or are described as communist by somebody else. I think Rick Norwood, Collect, SMcCandlish and other users who support this idea are right. However, I think we have to respect the results of this RfC, which, as far as I understand did not support decapitalisation. If nobody else will not do that in close future, I will have to do that, although that contradicts to my own point of view.--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:11, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

The closer didn't say that, and did not move the article. Given that the lower-case side is unmistakably backed by MOS:CAPS and WP:NCCAPS, and by mixed usage in reliable sources (WP uses a capital letter only when RS do so with overwhelming consistency with regard to the exact same usage in question), while the capitalizers have nothing but WP:ILIKEIT and a bunch of confused handwaving, this was clearly intentional. The closer's suggestion means that if you want to re-capitalize it, you need to open another RM. And we all know how that one would end. Given that we know this, and that upper-casing it again would simply be reverted back to lower-case by yet another RM, the demand to go back to upper-case now would amount to WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY failure.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:29, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Taking into account that the discussion was orbiting mostly around C vs c, "the result of the move request was: no consensus, page remain as it is" should be understood as the title returns to its original state before you renamed it. However, "As regards the upper/lower case (c), please open a new RM" slightly puzzles me, because that was exactly what this RM was about.--Paul Siebert (talk) 01:54, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

@Fifelfoo, the original RM was about moving "Mass killings under communist regimes" → "Mass killings under communist governments", there was no consensus for that. The Upper/lower case (c) discussion was tangential to that, for which the RM closer correctly said a new RM should be opened. --Nug (talk) 22:15, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Good, if others will not object to this your interpretation, there is no need in re-capitalisation. --Paul Siebert (talk) 23:56, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

References transition is completed

The references have now been converted over to a consistent system that moves most of the reference text from the body of the article to the bottom of the article in edit view. I think most people will be able to follow the pattern when adding new references, but please be aware of two things:

1) that the nested references within the "Excerpts and notes" section use "{{harvnb", rather than "{{sfn" or "{{efn", because of a bug that produces errors otherwise;

2) that in-line citations use the last name(s) and publication year only, so for authors with multiple works published in the same year, add a letter after the year in both the full reference and the in-line citation to make it unique to that publication.

I kept my own editing of the existing references to a minimum during the conversion, so there is still work to be done in completing some of the parameters for many of the references, or in correcting things I converted incorrectly. For reference, the full list of Template:Citation parameters can be found here, along with descriptions for each of them. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:09, 31 July 2018 (UTC)