Hello, AmateurEditor, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:
I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! — Kralizec! (talk) 02:49, 30 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Why on earth would they bother, when the stuff was available in Italy? In any case, the only quarry was exhausted by the Late Antique period. Johnbod (talk) 20:40, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I just want accuracy. The sentence was, "...the leading family workshop of marble craftsmen who created works by taking marble from ancient Roman ruins, and arranging the fragments in geometrical decorations." It's doubtful that they exclusively used Roman ruins to create their work, as was stated in the sentence. No doubt they used some, perhaps a lot, but this is hardly the dark ages we are talking about. As an aside, I think having the sentence as it was in the intro to the Cosmatesque article is misleading, as it would lead the casual reader to believe that all examples of the style itself were created from spoila. (Oddly, the proper place for the info, the Cosmati article, doesn't touch on it at all.) AmateurEditor (talk) 02:41, 8 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I was being inarticulate. I meant, "I cannot follow your argument linking Engels' obvious calls for cultural genocide to a physical liquidation policy." I'm happy to continue to disagree over this without further debate, as I think the paras in the article represent the debate in the sources adequately. Fifelfoo (talk) 03:25, 28 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Speaking of how politely and civilly we manage to disagree, your edit to the WP:RS/N item for Globalmuseumoncommunism within Mass killings under Communist regimes was an excellent addition, and I'm rather proud of how neutrally we both put our statements asking for third editors. Well done us in how we disagree! Fifelfoo (talk) 02:36, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
An editor has nominated one or more articles which you have created or worked on, for deletion. The nominated article is Mass killings under Communist regimes. We appreciate your contributions, but the nominator doesn't believe that the article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion and has explained why in his/her nomination (see also Wikipedia:Notability and "What Wikipedia is not").
You may also edit the article during the discussion to improve it but should not remove the articles for deletion template from the top of the article; such removal will not end the deletion debate.
Please note: This is an automatic notification by a bot. I have nothing to do with this article or the deletion nomination, and can't do anything about it. --Erwin85Bot (talk) 01:34, 9 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Just want you to know I have removed the G10 tag as it is not appropriate. It would be better to prepare your case off line, so as not to fan the flames. May I suggest that you take this down on your own and work constructively to resolve your differences? Perhaps cool off and stay away form this other person?
I will move this preparation offline, as it is clearly more public than I intended. I created the page to organize examples of disruptive editing by another editor in preparation for making a case I might need to present later, should the behavior continue. I didn't think anyone else would see it, as it isn't linked to from anywhere, other than my contributions page, which,I suppose, is where The Four Deuces found it. I will continue to work constructively to resolve differences with other editors. AmateurEditor (talk) 01:18, 18 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
An editor has nominated one or more articles which you have created or worked on, for deletion. The nominated article is Mass killings under Communist regimes. We appreciate your contributions, but the nominator doesn't believe that the article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion and has explained why in his/her nomination (see also Wikipedia:Notability and "What Wikipedia is not").
You may also edit the article during the discussion to improve it but should not remove the articles for deletion template from the top of the article; such removal will not end the deletion debate.
Please note: This is an automatic notification by a bot. I have nothing to do with this article or the deletion nomination, and can't do anything about it. --Erwin85Bot (talk) 01:14, 15 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Seeing as it is a relevant piece of information, I feel it should stay. To my knowledge, the infobox has no 'unofficial colors' option, so it has to fit in the 'official color' header; that is why 'unofficial' is next to the word' red'. TN0500:45, 9 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
hi AmateurEditor, I found you on communist mass killing. tfd has accused me of sockpuppet, which was investigated and dropped. he follows me from article to article threating a 3rr each time i make a few edits, the last time he actually succeed and got me banned for 12hr. now he has started a community ban of me here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Request_for_community_ban_of_Darkstar1st
having been an editor for longer than most, created at least one high traffic article, and a few hundred edits most of which have remained, i find myself in need of a helping hand. after reading your experience with tfd, i was hoping you might contribute what you could about tfd. he has successfully silenced me not by responding to my sources, but attacking me with soapbox, npov, etc. should you not want to get involved, i understand and will not revert your deletion of my words here Darkstar1st (talk) 21:09, 23 June 2010 (UTC) Darkstar1st (talk) 21:16, 23 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Knowing how TFD can be, I sympathize, but I am not familiar with the issues here and I don't have much time right now for Wikipedia. Sorry. AmateurEditor (talk) 22:58, 24 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
An editor has proposed renaming this article. His original choice was "Albanian genocide law". However I oppose any change of name because no reliable sources provide a short form for the law and there is another law on "Genocide" under the Albanian criminal code,[1] while this law has been repealed. Please comment at the article's talk page. TFD (talk) 00:14, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I notice that you are interspersing arguments in the discussion page which will go unnoticed. Could you please present views at the bottom of the page. Before you do that though could you please determine what degree of acceptance those views have, since they seem to be Cold War ideas from the 1950s and the world has moved on. TFD (talk)
Well, I definitely don't want my post to go unnoticed. I thought about posting at the bottom of the page, but decided that might make things more confusing for others trying to read the threads and follow the back and forth of the arguments. Fortunately, you and Paul Siebert seem to have noticed. I'll let Igny and Fifelfoo know on their talk pages in case they've overlooked it. I would appreciate a response from you, as well, if you don't mind (particularly about explaining that one sentence).
About the degree of acceptance: I assume you mean the degree of acceptance of discussing the Communist mass killings collectively. That doesn't seem to be at all controversial from the brief research I have done. If there is contention on that issue, I am sure there would be some mention of it in book reviews or academic publications responding to the sources used in the article. If you could find that case made there it would greatly bolster your argument.
I don't agree that the article exemplifies old and outdated ideas from the 1950s. Sources used such as Valentino, Karlsson, the Black Book, and many others are fairly recent publications. AmateurEditor (talk) 23:01, 11 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I don't edit Mass Killings Under Communist Regimes any more, though I occasionally contribute to the talk page. The last time I tried, the most active editors of that article got together and almost succeeded in getting me banned from editing Wikipedia. I don't need that kind of grief over an article that is hopelessly flawed no matter how it is reworked. No real encyclopedia has a article with a title anything like that. The subjects in the article should be covered under the various countries involved, not lumped together in a specious attempt to use Wikipedia for anti-Communist propaganda. Rick Norwood (talk) 14:15, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Rick, any editor willing to politely and frankly discuss their disagreements is fine by me. I remember your position about the article topic from at least one of the AfD's, and I don't want to re-argue the issue here, but I hope we can agree that the AfD's were the proper place to settle that matter. It seems to me that the POV tag is being used inappropriately as a stand-in for some editors to express their dislike of the topic, rather than fix any biased language within the article. AmateurEditor (talk) 22:07, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your extended contribution on my talk page. I was deeply moved by it, and have replied at depth there. I feel like I am in a position where my stance can very easily be swayed; and have noted the issues outstanding in my mind, quoting you in particular where your arguments where highly suasive. I would appreciate a further reply if you have time, it doesn't appear that I need you to cite any sources or look up new material, but rather consider the encyclopaedic problem of taxonomy, notability and "what is a thing" to be written about. Fifelfoo (talk) 00:46, 1 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Уникальным является и толковое решение конструкции шатра башни. Примерно такое же устройство использовали лишь сто лет спустя, в 1826 году, при возведении Майнцского собора в Германии. А третий - при постройке Исаакиевского собора в Петербурге.
It should be translated this way:
The smart construction of the tented roof of the tower was also unique. The similar scheme was used only 100 years later, in 1826, during the construction of the Mainz Cathedral in Germany. For the third time it was used during the construction of St. Isaac's Cathedral in Saint Petersburg.
Thanks for the translation, Greyhood (I can't read Russian, so I relied on Google Translate to check the source). I don't doubt the roof is metal. I wouldn't have questioned the citations if I hadn't seen this page showing the tower in section. It shows the roof as a pyramidal form of flat sections having no interior curve, which means it is not a dome. The tower does have shallow cloister vaults over lower levels, but they are not mentioned as being made of iron and photos do not show that they are (the iron retaining rods protruding from the walls were commonly used to resist the outward force of arched masonry). AmateurEditor (talk) 20:27, 7 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Well, the scheme on the picture you refer is too small and simplified. It just doesn't show any internal details of the tented roof, just as it doesn't show many details of the lower levels, such as staircases or protruding rebars. The cited source however states there was a unique structure, not just a metal tented roof. GreyHoodTalk20:43, 7 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Here's how I look at it: First, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. As you say, at best the source provided merely implies an iron dome. I don't think this is enough to act as a reliable citation. Most likely it is not talking about domes in the first place because it uses the word "шатра" rather than "купол" (correct me if I'm wrong about those being the appropriate words) and the section of the article is discussing lightning rods. Also, there is good reason to doubt that the tower has a dome in the roof at all based upon that section drawing (which shows no dome in the roof, while it does show the lower vaults) I agree that drawings can be inaccurate, but I can't find a photo. Can we agree that, if it is true, a better source for this can be found and should be used? AmateurEditor (talk) 21:08, 7 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Don't think it is an extraordinary claim. The source talks about the construction scheme and says it was similar. Looking at St. Isaacs image we see an external dome on an inner carcass also in the form of a dome (double dome in St. Isaacs's case). It must be the same in the tower of Nevyansk, with the difference been external tented roof (instead of external dome) over inner dome. As for the tented roof, one should understand that large and heavy tented roofs should have a significant support from below. When a tented roof is stone, it functions similar to an ordinary dome where heavy lower parts support upper parts. But a heavy metal roof should have an additional supporting structure. That's why I'm sure the drawing of the tower in section can't be accurate. GreyHoodTalk22:21, 7 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that we could do better with more sources. I'll try to find them tomorrow, but for now I think the present source is enough. GreyHoodTalk22:21, 7 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Ok. But, if we can't find a more reliable source which says the tower has a cast iron dome, then shouldn't we assume it doesn't and the current source is just poorly worded? AmateurEditor (talk) 00:38, 8 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That's interesting, but I don't see that that website is a reliable source either: it is not easy for me to tell without reading Russian, but the website, while informative, does not appear to be academic or particularly rigorous (that page, for example, is part of a series called "Diary of a Writer/Walking in St. Petersburg"). Please correct me if I am wrong.
I have been looking for reliable sources online in English which support this and I have not found any. The Macmillan Encyclopedia of Architects, for example, states that the Halle au Blé (1808-1815) was "the first cast iron dome in history" and makes no mention of the tower of Nevyansk. The book "Firsts: Origins of Everyday Things That Changed the World" by Wilson Casey discussed the tower of Nevyansk as a first only regarding lightning rods. "Siberia: A Cultural History" discusses the tower but only its leaning nature; no mention of lightning rods or domes.
As far as websites (avoiding blogs and mirrors of wikipedia), russiandiscovery.com has a page on Nevyansk. It does not mention the tower having the first iron dome. Ekaterinburg.com also has a page on Nevyansk and it also does not mention the tower having the first iron dome.
I think it is suspicious that both of the sources for this information have repeated the same error that Mainz and St. Isaacs have the 2nd and 3rd iron domes. It suggests that one got it from the other or that they both got it from the same source. As a reader of Russian, perhaps you would be able to look for how the tower is described on official websites for the tower or the city or region, which would likely have this kind of information to attract tourists. I think these would be more reliable websites. Of course, a book or academic article would be even better. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:14, 9 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Hm, there rises a problem of how we name things. Halle au Blé is a light iron and glass structure (the inside view), while the other domes we discussed so far are much heavier, with additional internal support.
Perhaps we could solve our problem if we reclassify Leaning Tower of Nevyansk as the first case of internal cast iron supporting structure for a vaulted roof. Can't find the right term right now. GreyHoodTalk13:02, 10 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
According to Google Translate, several of the sources at the search results page you have provided say that Mainz Cathedral and St. Isaac's are the second and third examples behind the tower of Nevyansk of the use of reinforced concrete.[2][3][4]AmateurEditor (talk) 21:38, 10 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry for the late answer, didn't noticed your talkback template in time. As for the reinforced concrete connection between three buildings - this must be a mistake that repeats from source to source. Too much confusion there anyway.
First these sources discuss the use of rebars in the tower (which are the component of reinforced concrete in modern times) while also the same sources say that in the Tower of Nevyansk some rebars are made of two different types of metal which together work along the lines of the same principle as reinforced concrete (one metal provides strength and the other provides tension). And yes, the sources say about the "principle of reinforced concrete" (both in connection to rebar carcass and in connection to rebars' two-metal compsition), not about the real "reinforced concrete", because in fact there seems to be no any true concrete, only rebars throughout the entire tower, forming a carcass. Nor there seems to be any reinforced concrete in Mainz Cathedral or St. Isaacs Cathedral (and no rebars there, perhaps except of the domes). Also, the sources starts discussing all those rebars in connection to the lower parts of the tower or in connection to the the entire tower, and then suddenly jump to the Mainz Cathedral and St. Isaacs Cathedral, which makes no sense.
That's why I believe the original source, making parallel between the tented roof/domes of the tower and two cathedrals is more credible, especially given the fact that having a cast iron dome is a distinctive feature of both Mainz Cathedral and St. Isaacs Cathedral. GreyHoodTalk07:09, 12 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
About the use of the word "concrete", is that the word used in the original Russian? If not, you are aware that it is the result of machine translation and may not be the precise meaning from those pages. But it is irrelevant to the larger point that those sources discuss the tower as first and followed by Mainz and St. Isaac's only in reference to the rebar, not to any dome, which agrees with most of the other sources, including the most reliable ones.
The best evidence that the tower has an iron dome is an ambiguously worded sentence in a non-specialist news website which is both contradicted in more reliable sources and is very similar to a much more credible claim found in other sources focusing on the use of iron rebar. A tented roof is not a dome (and it can be clearly seen from photographs that the tower does not even have a tented roof; it has a common eight-sided pyramidal roof). Surely there would be a picture of the iron dome itself somewhere online if it was so significant. Surely there would be mention of it in a more reliable source if it was so significant. I have looked for such a source in English without finding any mention in sources where one would expect to find it, if it were true. I asked you to search for a more reliable Russian source and the sources you found described a very different first for the tower. The claim that the tower contains the first iron dome has failed verification. If you still do not agree, then I suppose we will have to take this to the reliable sources noticeboard. AmateurEditor (talk) 20:43, 12 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
In Russian there is a single word "железобетон" which means "reinforced concrete". And no, the sources which jump from the principle of reinforced concrete to the cathedrals look very similar and are likely to repeat the same mistake.
This source describes the top of the tower as "шарообразный купол" (spheric dome) and this source says "шатрообразный купол" (tent-like dome). This source also uses the term "купол" (dome) and speaks about its original construction, and other sources do.
No matter how the roof looks from outside, look at the St. Isaac's image again - there is internal cast iron dome.
Do we agree that a tented roof is not a dome and that a carcass or framework is also not a dome (although some domes may, of course, be supported by them)? I don't know why certain websites use the word dome in describing this tower, but three possibilities come to mind: 1) they are referring to the spherical orb over the weather vane and have used that word by mistake 2) they have confused the leaning tower with the bell tower of the nearby church that clearly is capped by a dome 3) they have used Wikipedia as a source of information and have been mislead. Possibility number three can explain a lot. Clearly from the last link you offered, the comparison to Mainz and St. Isaac's, which you used to conclude that your original source must be referring to a dome, relates instead to the "principle of concrete construction" (that is, the principle of using two materials with different properties together as a composite, such as two different kinds of metal in a single beam and not necessarily involving concrete per se). But even very reliable sources (which these websites do not appear to be) can contain errors. In finding sources which contradict each other, then we should not engage in original research by interpreting them as we would like. We must evaluate which sources are the most reliable and favor those sources. In this case, sources with architectural expertise or official websites for the tower or region supersede random news websites, and they do not support the claim that the Leaning Tower of Nevyansk has the world's first iron dome. AmateurEditor (talk) 16:32, 13 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, tented roof is not a dome, though it shares some features...You know, I think we may just use the word "cupola", which is more broader than dome (though it supposes a smaller structure or a structure at the top of tower rather than the main space of cathedral). You see, the problem might be in the fact that in Russian language the word "купол" may be used both in the sense of dome and in the broader sense of cupola (with the latter word Russian "купол" - pronounced kupal - shares its etymology).
The article on Mainz Cathedral has this sentence: The major change to the building was an iron cupola on the main eastern tower built by architect Georg Moller. And looking at the images of Mainz Cathedral, for example this one, it is seen that indeed it does have cupola and no any domes. Sorry for the confusion, I should have noticed it earlier.
I can't find any other sources relating the principle of reinforced concrete with Mainz Cathedral or St. Isaac's Cathedral, so the common unique trait between those Cathedrals and the Nevyansk Tower must be cast iron cupola with a carcass (or cast iron dome in the case of St. Isaac's, which would still be "купол" in Russian). So I'll change the terminology in the articles related to Nevyansk Tower. GreyHoodTalk17:42, 13 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Hey, AmateurEditor, I was just looking at your page, and I think it would be a good idea for you to add a link to your contribution history, like here. Just a thought, don't have to do it.
Howdy partner. Unfortunately I have to disagree with you on the collapses. You collapsed a oppose vote by Collect, and a contribution by another editor pointing out a contradiction in the lede. I don't think it's all tangential. I recommend that we leave evaluating the arguments made in the discussion to the closing admin. Zloyvolsheb (talk) 02:18, 3 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at this revision version, right after my change, Collect's oppose vote remains outside the collapse box. If the other editor you refer to is Hal peridol at the very end, his comment also remains outside. The only parts I think we should collapse are the parts where the dicussion vears off onto evaluating particular sources, rather than discussing the proposal itself. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:34, 3 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, you're right. I still don't think it would be ideal to collapse the discussion of sources, since these concern the estimate. However, I would be fine with you collapsing those comments if you explicitly indicate that "collapsed discussion concerns particular sources" in the hatnote. That would allow whoever goes through the discussion to understand the kind of discussion that was collapsed. Zloyvolsheb (talk) 02:48, 3 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Funny word, isn't it? You've interacted with the only editor that uses it. Rumor has it, he gets .25 cents from The Obscure Word Society each time he uses it. :~)..```Buster Seven Talk08:51, 9 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
To each his own, I guess. I am of the opinion that unnecessarily using obscure words, even when they are more precise, is discourteous. And, if we are trying to change someone's mind on an issue, it's counter-productive. AmateurEditor (talk) 22:04, 9 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Dome, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Cordoba (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.
Thank you for notifying me. Without discussing the actual information you wish to put into the article or the reliability of the source, I question why we would use it. There has been extensive writing on the topic in sources which can easily be checked for reliability and are far more accessible. TFD (talk) 05:19, 24 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You're welcome. I have no problem with using a better source when we find one, but Tourbillon presented this source and we have no good reason to exclude it. AmateurEditor (talk) 06:04, 24 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hey AmateurEditor. I'm contacting you because you're involved in the Article Feedback Tool in some way, either as a previous newsletter recipient or as an active user of the system. As you might have heard, a user recently anonymously disabled the feedback tool on 2,000 pages. We were unable to track or prevent this due to the lack of logging feature in AFT5. We're deeply sorry for this, as we know that quite a few users found the software very useful, and were using it on their articles.
We've now re-released the software, with the addition of a logging feature and restrictions on the ability to disable. Obviously, we're not going to automatically re-enable it on each article—we don't want to create a situation where it was enabled by users who have now moved on, and feedback would sit there unattended—but if you're interested in enabling it for your articles, it's pretty simple to do. Just go to the article you want to enable it on, click the "request feedback" link in the toolbox in the sidebar, and AFT5 will be enabled for that article.
It was a good deletion. Domes were not common in many parts of Europe in the Middle ages (England for example) but Italy has quite a number of examples, with the dome of Florence Cathedral already being the proposed design in the late Gothic period.
Amandajm (talk) 10:33, 6 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Dome, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Cynosure (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.
I have just been dealing with two particularly thoughtless edits on Romanesque architecture. People often have this thing where they see only their own region, or the photo that they took themselves, and want it in the article, no matter what!
Have a name which defines the overall theme of the gallery, even if it is in only your head. This means that you don't muddle images of different types.
Because of the sorting of images into clear sections of defined types, the format "Packed galleries" is useful.
Some themes are easier to work with than others. The theme Walls and buttresses in Romanesque architecture was easy, because I had an infinite range of buildings from which to chose. I just had to find the ones that worked well together.
My choices were dictated in part by considerations of the horizontal/vertical format, the scale of the building within the picture in relation to the scale of the other pics, the colouring of the pic, right down to the blueness of the sky. Those four images can sit snugly together in a "packed gallery". They don't fight with each other and they don't merge or distract.
They don't have to be quite that well matched, in order to work. The gallery Politics works because the distance and scale is the same, and the ground-levels are compatible, as in each case the subject is set back from the foreground. The Tower of London and the view of San Gimignano are very similarly coloured, so they frame the other two.
There is a similar sort of balance in the gallery Types of churches. We are looking up at two, and down at two. Scale was everything in this. I was very happy to find such a tiny church. The monastic church was a "must" because it has its monastic buildings intact, the collegiate church was harder to find from that early date. Then all I needed was a cathedral that book-ended the little Scandinavian church. I love the fact that they both have the witch's hat spire. Note that in the context of explaining architectural form, none of these images are as useful as those that follow, but in terms of demonstrating the scope of religious buildings, they are excellent.
Likewise, Pilgrimage and crusade are four quite atmospheric images. I knew what buildings I wanted, but had to find images that worked.
Tighter themes: Openings and arcades, Piers and columns, Capitals etc. I spend a lot of time searching. I then crop the images to make sure that the scale within the picture is compatible. Sometimes it works.
With the gallery East ends I gave up searching, as you can see by the result. I really ought to get back to that, as it looks ghastly.
The Facades section was really difficult, as there were several buildings that were obligatory, and I needed a wide range of locations. I have tweaked a number of those pics, straightening them, tonal adjustment etc. I am tempted to reduce the intensity of the sky in Lisbon Cathedral.
Some themes are much harder to work with. See Themes in Italian Renaissance painting: Linear perspective. There was little choice here. I had to use a Giotto, an Uccello, that particular Massaccio, one of Fra Angelico's loggias, that Leonardo, a Ghirlandaio. They are all different shapes and sizes, but needed to be arranged more-or-less chronologically.
Because I was dealing with artworks here, I had to respect the fact that each image had a composition that was determined by the artist. I couldn't crop images so that they looked well together. Each image is an entity. The additional problem is they they would normally be hung within a frame, and with their own clear wall-space.
For these reasons, "packed gallery" format doesn't work well with paintings. It crowds them together, it mixes images of different scales and formats, and they fight with each other, or merge, neither of which is desirable. So I used a format in which each image has a border, and I can size them to suit the shape of the image:
Sometimes a group of pictures just begs to be together! These are in chronological order. I normally avoid having people looking outwards at the edges, but the Doge is quite serene and Pope Julius at the other end is probably meditating on his own sins and his mortality. Because they are all of similar size and format, they go really well together. The two on the left are two of my favourite male portraits. Amandajm (talk) 11:31, 11 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I know I'm a little late, but I was reading the talk page for List of Roman Emperors today and found myself agreeing with your side of the discussion, that the information in the List of Byzantine Emperors should be included in the list as well. I'm not sure there's much I could do at this point, but I'd love to help get that proposal pushed through if you think it still can be. I Feel Tired (talk) 17:31, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, AmateurEditor. Please check your email; you've got mail! Message added 13:31, 11 July 2014 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.
You wouldn't happen to be a Dome worshiper, would you? It'd be hard to believe otherwise after looking at your contribution history. Praise Helix! 173.66.213.143 (talk) 22:45, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Just saw your reply now. Why have you been constantly editing that one article multiple times a week for several years? I'm curious. Also, Helix is better than Dome. Praise Helix. flarn2006 [utc] time: 04:37, 16 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
In all seriousness, I like it. It's one of the few topics with an interesting history spanning all of recorded history. I wanted to learn more but no one else was doing it. And in general I think it is much better to make a big difference in a narrow area of Wikipedia than to make a lot of relatively minor edits over a wide range of articles.AmateurEditor (talk) 06:20, 16 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I am sorry that my edits were "too bold". It's certainly not the first time.
I'm generally comfortable with your rollback. I did tweak a couple words of your edit for additional clarity, but I don't think it's anything that will ruffle feathers.
I would appreciate it, though, if you would fix something in the section breaks. You rolled out my "era breaks", but the changes you added included a slight error themselves, and I'm hoping you can take care of it in a way that makes you comfortable: If my era breaks were broken the first time, doubtless they would be the second time as well.
You have section headers "before the 18th century" and "after the 18th century", but there's a paragraph that takes place IN the 18th century: currently the top one in the "after" section. Renaming either section would work, or adding a new section header.
Thank you for not immediately reverting my revert. And thank you for reaching out to me here. I had mixed feelings about your edit and it certainly wasn't all bad. Also, I think your boldness is a good thing, actually. I agree with you about the 18th century section-header problem, but I was hoping that the "after" could be read as "after the beginning of" (which is why my edit summary hedged on the change being an improvement). I concede your point here. And I think the section is long enough that it would be better to break it up into separate sections for the 18th, 19th, and 20th century.
I reverted your edit for a few reasons: one, it broke the citation/sentence formatting (citation 12 at that time at the end of the first/beginning of the second sentence of the section "The 18th and 19th centuries"); two, it changed an already referenced sentence that I thought made an important point and replaced the citation in a way that did not seem to hold up when I tried to verify it in the sourced provided (in the first sentence of "The 18th and 19th centuries", redeveloped is a different idea than formalized and I didn't see that new point made in Blezard); three, it split up a small paragraph (what had been the "Cements before the 18th century" section) into separate sections consisting of just a couple sentences each, which I thought was unjustified for the length; fourth, because of the section changes, the diff was difficult for me to follow and I was unsure what other problems there might have been that I didn't notice (this is more of a Wikipedia problem).
I don't generally like to revert people acting in good faith, as I know is the case here, because it can feel dismissive. But, because of that fourth reason, I didn't want to just change the specific problems that I had noticed. Judging by your userpage, you seem to be exactly the kind of person who should be editing the Cement page, and I hope you continue. I think your separating out the bitumen and gypsum non-lime "cements" is a good edit (the sentence you added explaining the difference in definition is supported in the source). AmateurEditor (talk) 18:38, 3 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I split the "Cements after the 18th century" section into separate sections for the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. I'm not a huge fan of repeating the word "cement" in each section heading, but here we are. I had to split up a couple referenced sentences to get these divisions to work, but I checked the sources provided to make sure I was doing it correctly. There are some unsourced sentences in what is now the "Cements in the 19th century" section that are redundant/repetitive and should be fixed, but I didn't touch them. AmateurEditor (talk) 20:28, 3 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
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Hello, AmateurEditor. I think you were right to revert my edit adding an image of the Hagia Sophia on the grounds that the image is distorted and already in the gallery (I hadn't spotted that). Unfortunately, it's the only image I found with a wide enough view to allow a moderately comprehensive annotation of the major interior features (no idea how to show the Omphalion on it ). Annotated images seem better than text for describing and naming spatial and architectural features; have you any suggestions for a good way to use this strength without giving a distorted view of the building? HLHJ (talk) 09:04, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I think annotations are a great way to show off the features, especially small features that don't have photos of their own or those that particularly benefit from being seen in their wider spacial context. But, as you say, there's little hope of getting everything in one photo without a lot of distortion (until VR comes along!). I remember it took me a while before I had a good mental model of the whole interior. Maybe the best way to go about such annotations would be a small gallery like the one in Hagia Sophia's "Second church" section with annotated views of large parts of the interior from multiple angles. That would depend, of course, on what photos are available. The one you added showing the western half of the nave vaulting is pretty nice. I guess it would be ideal if someone took a set of photos with such annotations in mind. You don't happen to be in Istanbul, are you...? (P.S. are you sure that your addition of "Cupola" to the caption of the exterior shot of the dome, semi-dome and apse is correct? I know from working on the Dome article that the term "cupola" has been used in a variety of ways in English over the years, but I think "cupola dome" usually refers to a dome with a domed lantern over an oculus.) AmateurEditor (talk) 23:33, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm. You may be right on the cupola. Diagrams on Wikipedia probably influenced me, and some of them were translated from the German, where "Kuppel" means a topping dome and "Laterne" a windowed topping structure for admitting light. This matches the English usage I've heard that calls the latter "lanterns" or "lantern towers". The OED is of the opinion that a cupola is any high-up dome, with or without windows. One of its quotes insists that a cupola has to be the highest part of a building; another says a building may have many cupolas; a third applies both "dome" and "cupola" to part of St. Paul's Cathedral, while a fourth applies "cupola" to the top part of a lantern, and a fifth insists that the outside is a dome and the inside is a cupola! It seems English usage is ill-defined. If someone picks a consistent terminology on good authority and edits accordingly, I'd be happy to have it changed.
Alas, I am not in Istanbul. I may be able to catch a friend going there at some point. Don't know if one could annotate a film. Would you object to my adding links to the wider view to the annotations to the smaller views? I already had some links to close-ups from the wide view. We might also ask the Photo Workshop to un-distort the image, so that it looked like a plan view seen from below.
I actually don't think VR would be undoable. There was a pioneering CGI film called "Fiat Lux" which was set in the interior of St. Paul's. The trick being they had only an hour to shoot all the (still) photos to make the animation, which uses spectacular long panning shots, because the camera is virtual... There used to be an excellent Wikipedia page on it, I think, but that was years ago and I can't see one now. It's own page is [5]. There is also a page on the photogrammetry software; if we could get a modern open-source equivalent, with the (existing) abilty to fairly easily stitch together multiple photos, we could have three-D models of any notable building that is sufficiently photographed. I don't have much time just now, but I think this would make a great Wikiproject. HLHJ (talk) 21:13, 25 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I really like your choice of Hagia Sophia pictures for History of Roman and Byzantine domes,(annotations) and I note it's in the main Hagia Sophia article. I should have used that. Annotated it, and removed mentions of cupola from all images as possibly confusing. It would be really useful to have a good term for a topmost dome. HLHJ (talk) 21:50, 25 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I have no problem with you adding annotations or links to them. That was a pretty cool animation. Don't get me started on problems in dome-related terminology. It's a deep mess, actually. Architectural academia really needs to get it together. AmateurEditor (talk) 21:38, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, you undid my edit [[6]]. I do not know what Nigel and Helen Strudwick did in that volume, but the main and sole author is Dieter Arnold. I had a quick look at other pages for this volume, but can not even find a reference to the Strudwicks (thought they were just the translators): http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7504.html best wishes -- Udimu (talk) 07:54, 17 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Udimu. I found a physical copy to double-check before undoing your edit. According to the title page, the book was translated by Sabine H. Gardiner and Helen Strudwick and was edited by Nigel and Helen Strudwick. You are right that Dieter Arnold is the author. AmateurEditor (talk) 00:50, 18 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
many thanks for clarifying that. It just seems weird to say. 'Arnold, in Strudwick (editor), as Arnold is the sole author. What does the first page in book say? That is what normally will be used for references. best wishes -- Udimu (talk) 06:48, 18 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Ha, for a minute there I was all excited that there was someone with the username "ProfessionalEditor". I wouldn't object to a merge, but I would want to be very sure first that the two articles are actually duplicating each other. I looks as if "Gonbad" has at least a lot of overlap, but may be a broader term than "dome" is, including cone-shaped roofs historically as well. Even if not, Gonbad may have a broader scope than History of Persian domes does, with the latter being a subtopic of the former, just as it is with Dome. I wish there were more sources to refer to in that article to settle that question, but I will try to find some. Thanks for the suggestion, MehrdadFR. AmateurEditor (talk) 23:55, 28 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
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It’s been a while since I’ve read the MOS, and I feel that the first sentence in an article about the history of domes needs a link to the article about domes, don’t you? Lockesdonkey (talk) 16:28, 24 December 2017 (UTC) Lockesdonkey (talk) 16:28, 24 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
It would be nice, but I don't think it needs to be there. There are featured articles without that kind of linking, such as Catherine de' Medici's building projects, which doesn't link to "Catherine the Great" in the first sentence but does in the second, and Michigan State Capitol, which doesn't link to "State Capitol" in the first sentence but does in the second. Buildings and architecture of Bristol gets around this by not having any bold text in the first sentence, which I don't prefer. There is already a link to the main Dome article at the top of the Series template on the right. Maybe changing that from "Dome Architecture" to "Domes" in the template would be better, or we could re-write the lead to insert a link in a different way, maybe in the second sentence? AmateurEditor (talk) 17:16, 24 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Paul Siebert: I will need to take a rain check, unfortunately. I am going on vacation tomorrow - and will be offline for a week and a half - but I expect things will not be radically different with that article when I get back and I promise I will respond then. AmateurEditor (talk) 06:54, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Some of your statements are too general. I suggest you to modify this as follows: instead of "the deaths under Leninism and Stalinism in the USSR and Maoism in China have been investigated as possible cases. In particular, the famines in the USSR in the 1930s and during the Great Leap Forward in China have been "depicted as mass killing underpinned by genocidal intent," write "some deaths under Leninism and Stalinism in the USSR and Maoism in China have been investigated as possible cases. In particular, some authors depict the famines in the USSR in the 1930s and during the Great Leap Forward in China as mass killing underpinned by genocidal intent." I think we need to say that, because otherwise an impression may be created that these views are universally accepted (which is not the case). I would prefer not to change your text, because I've already made one edit today, so I don't want some wikilawyers to accuse me of 1RR violation.--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:20, 9 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
BTW, do you know the sources that depict Chinese famine as genocidal? As far as I know, it did not affect any specific ethnic or ethno-social group, and it affected exactly the same areas that were the most severely hit by previous historical famines.--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:23, 9 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I copied over those sentences from the dumping ground page (where I had added them earlier) and the source is cited for them. Unfortunately, the googlebooks page for the book no longer offers a preview for me to re-read the source sentences, so I will jut have to trust that I characterized it properly until that changes. I would not want to rewrite it blindly and risk mischaracterizing it. However, the second reference is a short excerpt quote that indicates the genocide associated with those regimes comes from the infliction of "conditions of life calculated to bring about [the] physical destruction' of a group, in the language of Article II(c) of the Genocide Convention". AmateurEditor (talk) 20:04, 9 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Can you please give a name of the source (if you provide a diff, it would be even better)? You made too many edits during last month, it is not easy to find what exactly you are talking about.
In addition, it is always better to give a broader perspective: even if some source or few sources describe the famine as genocidal, many other sources say something different. The fact that there is little criticism of the thesis about a genocidal nature of the GCF is not an indication of any consensus: the most probably reason is that this idea is a minority view, so it is ignored by scientific community. For example, O'Grada lists (among other reasons of mass mortality) common dining rooms that were forcefully established in collective farms. These dining rooms lead to a considerable waste of food. Obviously, the factors of that kind are a demonstration of very poor management, but they are inconsistent with the idea that GCF had a genocidal nature. I think we need to think about providing more balanced view, because a very specific type of sources are overrepresented in this article. Unfortunatley, I will be busy this month. I'll let you know when I will be ready to work.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:34, 5 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I see you are editing the article, and I don't want to do any change, because the next your edit may be seen as 1RR violation by some wikilawyers. In connection to that, may I ask you either let me know when you are going to finish, or remove few words from this sentence (Estimate section):
"some critics said the figures were skewed to higher possible values, but did not provided alternative estimates"
"but did not provided alternative estimates" is editorialising, the source does not say that.
BTW, I hope in close future we will have something more interesting to edit together. It seems I found some (partial) way out of an impasse.
I see you've removed the POV template, and I agree that formally you are right. However, I am still seeing huge POV problems with this article. I am not going to renew a discussion on the talk page right now, because, as our previous experience demonstrated, that is just a waste of time. Instead, I would prefer to discuss it with you as the major contributor.
Technically, you made an excellent job. However, the more the article is impeccable from the technical point of view, there are several major flaws.
The major flaw the very structure of the article inevitably puts the viewpoint of so called "genocide scholars" as mainstream one, whereas the viewpoint of country experts is presented as opinia of individual authors. That happens because none of country experts writes about MKucR as some single subject: they prefer to write about each country separately, but they do that much more professionally. Actually, you will not find a discussion between, e.g. Rummel and Wheatcroft, or Valentino and O'Grada. Instead, country experts discuss with each other, they totally ignore the works of "genocide scholars".
If you look, for example, at the articles devoted to each individual event MKucR describes, you will find that they describe these events differently, and they provide different figures and different explanations of the events. That is a clear demonstration that MKucR is the article written from the point of view of some small group of authors, and their opinion is essentially ignored by country experts.
The more I read on this subject, the more I come to a conclusion that this article, that relies on the works of "genocide scholars" is deeply flawed. Moreover, I found a severe criticism of the theorisings of "genocide scholars", who even failed to develop a common terminology. (BTW, instead of clearly explaining that, the article meticulously lists all buzzwords invented by them, thereby creating an absolutely wrong impression that some complex and well developed terminology exists on that account). "Genocide studies" failed to propose any reasonable theory, but the article devote a huge space to a discussion of the "theories" of communist mass killings, despite the fact that most authors see not more commonality between them than with other mass killings.
I got an opportunity to read Valentino's final solution, and I found that many statements ascribed to him are actually opinia he just cites. I know which sources did he cite for his figures, and these sources are mostly obsolete. Thus, he cites a 1994 work of Whetcroft for a low estimate of the famine victims, and Conquast's "Harvest of Sorrow" for high estimates. The only advantage of his work is that he provides the figures for all communist countries, but it is not the reason to make an emphasis on them, and to list him as one of the experts, along with Conquest and Wheatcroft. By the way, even Valentino emphasizes the fact that Rummel inflates the figures, but the information about that has been essentially removed from the article. In general, a long list of authors who happened to compile (or uncritically cite) cumulative figures (without even explaining their meaning), frequently from some personal blogs, is very misleading.
I have a long list of comments on article's flaws, but I believe it would be better to resolve them by totally changing theh article's structure. Taking into account that the article is dealing with the subject that is not existing from the point of view of majority authors, an adequate structure should be as follows:
What happened in China (links to main articles). Historical background. Which events were the most deadly. Estimates of the number of victims. Effects on demography.
What happened in Cambodia. (a link to Cambodian genocide). Historical background. Description of KR genocide and of its effect on demography.
What happened in some other countries.
Attempts to propose a common theory. Explanation that no common genocide/politicide theory exists so far. Explanation that the theories presented below are just points of view of individual authors.
Attempts to estimate the total number of deaths. Explanation of why and how this explanation were made (part of authors compiled them for comparative studies, and they didn't care too much about accuracy; other authors, such as Malia and Courtois did that to convey some very concrete idea: that Communism is more deadly than Nazism). Using Rummel as an example, we need to explain how exactly did Rummel obtain his figures (compiled all data available in 1960-70, calculated low and high median values, and, in later papers, averaged them for simplicity); then explain why this method provide inflated data (Dulic). Then explain that these data are known to be inflated according to Harff and Valentino. After that, the Rummel's figures should be presented.
Conclusion.
I would prefer to discuss that with you as the main contributor. Later, when we will come to consensus (and I believe we inevitably will), we can bring out ideas to the article's talk page.--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:35, 20 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
1. About my removing the POV template: It is an abuse of the template to use it as a badge of shame, which is how it has been used too often on that page. There is nothing to stop someone adding it back if they want to restart a discussion on the talk page, but it should not be left there absent one. I agree with you that talk page discussions are unlikely to lead anywhere and I have been trying to minimize my participation there. Fortunately, now that the article is available for editing, we should not need to rely on the talk page for much except dispute resolution over particular edits.
2. I respect you and I know you are acting in good faith here, but I disagree with a lot of what you are saying. I don't agree with this topic being outside the mainstream (at least in the English-speaking part of it I am familiar with) and it is found in mainstream national newspapers in the US, such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. I don't think any of the sources used in the article now are fringe or outside of the mainstream and I think that all of them are being cited as author-specific opinions, including the "genocide scholars".
3. I think most of the trouble with "genocide studies" has to do with genocide itself being a compromised term, but I don't think that the field is outside the mainstream or, more importantly, that the topic of Mass killings under communist regimes depends on that field's status one way or another. Some sources consider themselves a part of that field and others do not, but it does not change the fact that the topic of the article exists in reliable sources, as Wikipedia defines them, and it does not change our responsibility to present the topic as we find it in those sources, including the difference preferences in terminology. The source you found about the failure of the field of genocide studies to create a consensus on terminology does not mean that all those sources are now unreliable or that the field is discredited, just that we do not yet have the convenience of using a single term (although almost all the terms use "mass killing" in their definitions, so I think we are on solid ground to use it as the most neutral one).
4. I am sure you understand that conclusions you or I draw on our own from a perceived absence of this topic in single-country sources cannot be written into the article without appropriately referencing a reliable source explicitly stating that conclusion. As for your characterization of Valentino and Rummel, etc., I would prefer to deal exclusively with specifics. I consider them both to be reliable sources although I think all sources should be presented in the article directly attributed to the author, rather than in Wikipedia's voice.
5. Since I disagree with your perspective on the topic itself, it is no surprise that I disagree with how best to present it. I actually like the current layout of the sections. It makes sense to me logically that we would begin with the broadest material and work our way down to the details on a country-by-country basis. I notice your proposal would remove the terminology section altogether, which I would not support. As much as you do not like the method of listing the terms or listing the estimates, I think that is the best option for now because it provides an open-ended structure for changes in the future as more sources are identified and avoids us imposing our preferences over those of the sources. I also think it is valuable to show how the cross-country estimates change over time, which a chronological list does well. Your proposed article structure makes some sense from a chronological perspective, but would primarily serve to de-emphasize what I think are the most relevant sections.
6. I am happy to discuss this with you here, but that will not get us out of having to get the others to buy in to whatever changes we can agree on. I think a better tactic is for you to add whatever material you think is missing from the article and put the onus on those who disagree to justify themselves when/if your edits are reverted. We do not have to get active consensus on the talk page for every edit and passive consensus in this way is easier to achieve. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:46, 21 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I took a liberty to reformat your post and to number each paragraph, because I would like to address each of them separately.
Re 1. As I said, I see no problem with removal of the template, and I am not going to restore it, because that would require renewal of the talk page discussion, which I would like to avoid so far.
Re 2. By saying that the topic is outside of mainstream discourse, I didn't mean the topic is not popular. Yes, many journalists and political writers do speak about "crimes of Communism". However, we are here not to translate common stereotypes, but to explain what real experts think: if you look, for example, at special literature about Stalinist repressions, the experts totally ignore opinion of Valentino, Rummel, Courtois etc. They discuss the Great Purge not as an example of some more general event; in contrast, they outline some very country specific roots of this phenomenon. The same can be said about China or Cambodia. In contrast this article creates an absolutely false impression that some general phenomenon, "Communist mass killings" exists, and that phenomenon is described by several general theories, and a large number of country experts are working within this paradigm. Actually, that is absolutely not the case: country experts are not aware of those theorisings, and they even don't disagree with them - they just ignore them. The reason is, probably, in some intrinsic flaws in those "theories".
Re 3. Regarding the reason for those flaws, I think you deeply misunderstand that. The reason is not in the problem with the word "genocide" (although there are some problems with it). "Genocide scholars" proposed a lot of different words (a Terminology section lists them all), but they even failed to agree on consistent terminology, that is why an umbrella term "genocide study" is used for this "science". For example, other scholars call Valentino "a genocide scholar", despite the fact that he proposed much more general term, "mass killings". A situation when different authors use different terminology for each phenomenon, and almost every author propose their own term means there is no common terminology at all (and some scholars openly say that). That is only a part of the problem, however. The core problem is that "theories" of genocide scholars fail to explain mechanism of mass killings and predict its onset. A possible reason is that they see the commonalities between non-connected events and ignore existing connections. Another problem is with math. For example, mathematical methods used by Rummel have been severely criticized, and numerous flaws in his "democratic peace" theory were found. The current state of "genocide studies" in general is so low, and their explanatory force is so weak that they by no means can be presented as widely accepted theories. Meanwhile, the MKucR article is doing exactly that. You write that "Some sources consider themselves a part of that field and others do not", however, the problem is that majority of country experts I am familiar with (Rosefielde is an exception) do not consider themselves as a part of that field. Even genocide scholars themselves do not outline "Communist mass killings" as a separate field: for example, many comparative studies that involve Cambodian genocide analyze it in a context of Rwanda, Yugoslavia or Indonesia, and do not compare it with, for example, the USSR.
Re "just that we do not yet have the convenience of using a single term" The problem is not in a lack of a single term, before speaking about some single term, we have to make sure we are dealing with some single phenomenon. In reality, majority of experts even don't see any significant commonality between the events described in this article. We have a paradoxial situation when renown experts in Soviet history discuss nuances of the Great Purge or 1932-33 famine, the difference between a situations in Volga, Kazakhstan or Ukraine, the contribution of natural factors, mismanagement of authorities, and their strategic decisions - and another group of of scholars is concerned if all of that shoulsd be called "classicide" or "politicide"? That looks especially ridiculous taking into account that the second group scholars are not experts in the field, they do no archival study, and they rely exclusively on the works of the first group scholars in their work.
Re 4. Do you know how exactly did Rummel and Valentino obtain their figures? Do you know how exactly did they come to their conclusions? This is not a rhetoric question: I need to know what you know about that to understand the roots of our disagreement and to explain properly my own point of view on that subject.
Re 5. The current layout would be perfect for any well established topic. For example, it would work fine for the Holocaust: everybody agree about that term, everybody agree about the range of the events that are included in this phenomenon, and all authors working in this area just study some concrete details of that event. However, the situation with MKucR is totally different. Some leading experts in the USSR have absolutely different opinion on the roots of the event they study. Wheatcroft, Werth, Ellman or Maksudov are much better experts in the USSR than Valentino (he is not an expert at all), and their opinion on the origin and scale of mass killing is totally different. I have absolutely no idea why the article creates an impression that these experts are just working within a paradigm that was set by a handful of superficial writers like Valentino.
Re "Your proposed article structure makes some sense from a chronological perspective..." Absolutely not. I've looked at the most recent papers on Soviet Famine, and I found materials from some round table, which was organised this year. The materials were published in Contemporary European History, 27, 3 (2018). The participants were such authors as Suny, Wheatcroft, Getty, Pianciola, Graziosi, Etkind, Naimark, Penter, Cameron. Each of them presented their vision of the problem, but none of them even tried to discuss Soviet famines as a part of some global "Communist mass killing" trend. On author mentioned some fresh research that presented a comparative analysis of Soviet and Chinese collectivisation famines - that's it. More than 10 years has passed since publication of Valentino's "Final solutions", but country experts not even reject it - they just ignore it. Another author (Naimark) discusses the question if Holodomor was genocide, and he came to conclusion that it seems to be a consensus among genocide scholars that it was genocide. However, according to him, historians who specialise in Soviet history prefer not to use this term. He cites Snyder, who conceded this term is unhelpful for understanding Holodomor. I am still puzzled why are we writing the article from the point of view of general theorists, and ignore the views of real experts.
With regard to terminology, that section is unhelpful and misleading. It is unhelpful because, usually, a "Terminology" section is provided in books or articles to explain what do the terms mean, and that is needed when these terms are being widely used in the rest of the book/article. In this case, we have just a list of bad words used by various writers to describe nasty Commies' deeds. This section clarifies nothing, and even makes the article more confusing. It is misleading because most of those terms describe mass killings in general (not only MKucR). This section is good for the Mass killing article (which I encourage you to edit), and in that article this terminology is meaningful: thus, by using "democide" vs "politicide" or "genocide", authors create different data sets, and those sets may lead to different results (in a form of different correlations with different factors). In contrast, in MKucR, this section creates an absolutely wrong impression that some theories exist whereas no reasonable theory about MKucR have been proposed so far.
I would say, the only meaningful and relevant thing in this section is a discussion of the term "genocide" and, probably, "mass killings". The term "genocide" should be discussed because of the question if some of the events described in the article could be considered as genocide. That is a really important question, because "genocide" is a legal term, and the recognition of some event as genocide has serious legal consequences. Everything else is just buzzwords: Indeed, let's imagine Great Purge is considered "politicide". So what? What does it add to our understanding of this event? That, according to one author, a group of people was killed for political reason? That is just an opinion of one scholars, and it has almost zero explanatory power: if you are familiar with the subject, you probably know that everybody in the USSR could have become a target of repressions, and the repressions looked, by and large, totally random. Many devoted Stalinists were killed during the Great Purge (including most main perpetrators), whereas many people who had serious reasons to expect they would be killed hadn't been affected at all.
Re 6. I would prefer to work with you first. I need to achieve consensus with you before I'll do anything with MKucR, otherwise it will be just a waste of my time.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:17, 21 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Another way to explain my dissatisfaction with this article is as follows. Usually, when some general theorists are working in some field of knowledge, the process is as follows:
Researchers (each of which are experts in some narrow field) accumulate some amount of knowledge that needs systematization and theoretical explanation in some broader context.
Theorists, or experts in a broader field propose some general theory or define some broader concept that describes all observed phenomenae as separate manifestation of some broader phenomenon.
New researchers use this theory/concept for their research and make references to this theories in their new papers
That is what we have with, for example, the Holocaust. Different studies of mass killing of Jews in various parts of Europe is considered a part of the Holocaust, the general driving force of the Holocaust had been identified, and each author writing about each separate event, from Jedwabne to Treblinka openly writes that they are writing about different manifestation of the same phenomenon, which had some common roots.
In contrast, with MKucR, we have a totally different situation:
Country experts (e.g. Wheatcroft or Werth for Russia, Kiernan or Harff for Cambodia, O'Grada for China) write articles or book about separate countries and provide the explanation of the mechanism of the events in those countries.
"Genocide scholars" come and propose some general theories, which are either ignored by country experts or directly rejected (thus, Werth openly disagreed with Courtois)
Country experts are not using the theories of "genocide scholars" in their subsequent research, and make no references to their theories, which seem not helpful; in other words "genocide scholars" are living in some "parallel universe", which does not interact with a universe where real historians are working.
In that case, the structure of the article you are advocating makes an undue emphasis on the works of those "theorists" and demotes country experts to the rank of servants who just provide "genocide scholars" with raw data. Meanwhile, each country expert has their own view on the events they are describing, and their views may be more insightful and relevant.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:25, 21 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
2. An editor's own perception of what the "real experts" in a field think on a topic without a source stating that conclusion explicitly is not something we can base the article on. If the sources you are referring to choose to ignore this topic, then we would be right to ignore them in writing the article. We cannot include conclusions in the article about why they chose not to do something - based on an absence of evidence - without engaging in original research. It is possible that their publications have a focus too narrow to have anything substantial to say about the bigger picture. It is possible they are not interested in the bigger picture. It is possible they want to avoid political hostility in academia by avoiding the bigger picture. It really doesn't matter what you (or I) think about this. We have to characterize the reliable sources we have identified so far as accurately as we can without injecting our own ideas. The article does currently include critical views from reliable sources.
3. For all the problems in Genocide Studies, that these communist mass killings took place and that they can be characterized as a set is not in dispute, based on the many sources we have. It is not a theory (or a field), it is a topic. The topic is definitely criticized, particularly about the numbers and the moral conclusions that should be drawn. And "mass killing" (often literally those two words) is a defining part of all the terms in the terminology section, used by identified sources as a generic term (Valentino gives it a more specific definition that not all the others use but also used it more generically at least once).
4. I have tried to include excerpts at the bottom of the article with the details of what the broader estimates are based upon.
5. We can't base the article layout on sources that do not discuss the topic. Every term included in the Terminology section has been applied to communist regimes as a whole by at least one author. The "buzzwords" are a significant part of the topic in the sources, so it is appropriate to have a section on them.
6. As flattering as it is that you think I am important here, I am not. I got nowhere in reasoning with people about this article before I found reliable sources to directly support what I was saying. Looking back, that is exactly as it should have been. It's not about me or you or our opinions, it's about the reliable sources we can find - as broadly defined by Wikipedia - and their opinions (it's not even about our opinions of their opinions, such as the meaning of their silence on a topic). Every topic will have its own set of reliable sources and its own unique characteristics as a topic. If what you are saying about this topic being fringe is true (I believe it isn't) then there will be sources for you to find that say so. You don't need to read between the lines or interpret what sources don't say and you shouldn't be surprised to find yourself spinning your wheels arguing with other editors in the absence of such support. AmateurEditor (talk) 05:00, 23 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
2. I think you will agree that an author who works with primary sources and archival documents, performs a deep analysis of the events and goes into details is an expert. An author who builds their study upon the works of such experts and makes generalisation is not an expert in this field. For example, when I read Wheatcroft or Conquest, I see a lot of references to primary sources and archival data; when I read Valentino, I see only references to Wheatcroft and Conquest (and similar authors). Of course, the work of such an author can be treated seriously, but only if it is recognised by experts, which does not happen in this case. Moreover, genocide scholars themselves openly say that they are not experts in history of each particular country (for example, barbara Harff, a renown genocide scholars, says that).
3. Re "For all the problems in Genocide Studies, that these communist mass killings took place" No. Actually, a situation is different. Mass killings took place in communist states and other states. Actually, genocide studies are not focused on communist states. Most authors (genocide scholars) even do not separate the events in communist states into a separate category. Only Valentino does that, but even Valentino denies any role of ideology (interestingly, the MKucR article totally ignores this fact). Let me reiterate: all those "...cides" were invented to describe not MKucR, but mass kiklings in general, and most authors do not separate MKucR as a separate set. For example, in her article about Cambodia, Helen Fein compares Cambodian and Indonesian genocides, and discusses the mechanism of them without using a concept of "communist mass killings". It sees more racial motives in Cambodia, and her description is different from what Valentino's one. Note, Fein, is a genocide scholar. She writes:
"But the classic concepts of totalitarianism, communism, and fascism are ideal-types based on the experience of the inter-war years in Europe. Major communist states have evolved from the totalitarian archetype, and new types of states have emerged with many, but not all, characteristics of communist and fascist totalitarian states since World War II."
In other words, it is simply incorrect, according to Fein, to speak about some "Communist" of "Fascist" state in post WWII world, which blurs the very concept of "Communist mass killing". She continues:
"while totalitarian states have been more likely to commit genocide than are other states, most cases of contemporary genocide since World War II were committed by authoritarian, not totalitarian, states and are not ascribable to ideology."
The term "genocide" should not mislead you: Fein uses it as a synonym of "mass killing" (she does not bother with invention of buzzwords). Moreover, she uses the concept of "ethnoclass", which is pretty common for description of genocides in Asia: in this region, a difference between classes may be so significant that different classes see each other as different ethnic groups, a situation that occurred in Cambodia or Indonesia, or in other "communist" and "non-communist" states in Asia.
Another example is a very recent paper of a genocide scholar who studies "revolutionary mass killing". He is citing almost all major genocide scholars, and he definitely is working within this paradigm. However, for his theoretical considerations, he preferred does not use Communism as a parameter. You can find his tables here, and, as you can see, this author does not find helpful to separate the events in communist states into a separate category.
I didn't take special efforts to find this article, I just took one of the most recent works on that subject. That means even genocide scholars do not separate "communist mass killings" into a separate class. Come scholars use the words "communist" as a synonym of "revolutionary" (so young Turks and Knomeini appear in the same group as Stalin), others do not mention Communism at all. Therefore, the MKucR article is selectively using the works of genocide scholars to support one POV. I believe you agree that is a direct violation of our policy.
4. Are you talking about the footnotes p and q? p is a direct misinterpretation of the book. On the page 91, where Valentino writes about 110 million, that is not his own estimate. He just cites some source without endorsing it. What source it is? Valentino cites Rummel. Taking into account that Valentino provides his own estimate, he does not seem to endorse this figure, he just says such estimate exists. In other words, the article puts an undue emphasis on Rummel's figures and creates an absolutely false impression that Valentino claims 110 million were killed. That misleading double citing is by no means a good job.
Furthermore, this footnote creates another lie: it looks like, according to Valentino, 21 to 70 million were killed in USSR, PRC and Cambodia, and the rest in other communist states (110 million in total). However, a person who wrote that seems not to read the source. Valentino's own estimates (a table 2 in the chapter 3) can be found on my talk page, and they say that the number of victims in these three countries range from 21,250,000 to 70,500,000 (by the way, this precision shows the lack of math education), and the total number in all other countries was from 21,920,000 to 72,700,000, which means that there were almost no mass killings in other countries at all. That is just one example of a misinterpretation of the source that, by itself, is very superficial in numbers and interpretations.
The footnote q fully confirms my thesis. The sources summarized by Valentino include (i) Rummel, who is known to inflate data (that is an opinion of Valentino himself, Harff, and Dulic), and who himself base his figures not from archival data but from third party accounts, without any selection; (ii) Courtois, whose figures were taken out of thin air and were widely criticised (the opinion of really good experts, Margolin and Werth, whose contribution into the BB was regarded highly, and who publicly disagree with Courtois); (iii) Brzesinski, who is definitely not an expert: obviously, he took his data from somewhere else, (iv) some obscure compilation ("A word atlas") made by Mattew White, with a link to some private web site; (v) some 1978 source: when I try to find it, it redirects me to Rummel's web site. It is not googlabe, so it seems people just copied a wrong reference from Rummel's web site without bothering to check if it is correct. Googling gives just the refs to Wikipedia and Rummel's website In summary, the footnote q contains a list of obsolete AND obscure sources, which are presented as recent estimates. And that happens in a situation when enormous amount of sources became available since 1990, and most authors reconsidered their views on those times events. Instead, the article presents the figures that are themselves a compilation of data, which are, by themselves, compilations of outdated figures..
You may argue that no other sources provide cumulative figures. Yes, that is true. However, that is because modern authors are disinterested in providing them: the more they learn about mass killings the less reasons they see to group "communist mass killings" into a separate category.
In connection to that, I think the question whether we should present cumulative figures made from outdated estimates or present more recent and accurate figures for each country separately has an obvious answer. What Valentino is doing, is a compilation of data for three countries only (other countries add virtually nothing to the total figure). I think, it would be much more correct to provide three separate sets of fresh data that to show an old figure (actually, not a figure but a range: 20 - 70). Than would be honest and correct.
5. Re " We can't base the article layout on sources that do not discuss the topic." Yes, provided that the sources that cover the topic forms a complete set. Actually, that is not the case. Valentino relies upon Wheatcroft and Getty (among other authors), and if we remove all sources but the works of "genocide scholars", the article will fall apart. For the article to exist, it needs a lot of sources authored by country experts, including Wheatcroft and Getty. That means it would be correct to say that these sources do discuss the topic. However, if they do, then the historical interpretation found in these sources also should be reflected in the article, and a due weight should be given to them. We can not limit ourselves with what Valentino writes about that. In general, a reference list of the Valentino's book is not impressive: many sources I am familiar with are lacking, some of them (such as Volkogonov), are questionable, some (Conquest's "Great Terror") are outdated (Conquest himself conceded he was not completely right). Why do you decide that Valentino, with his superficial and outdated reference list duly covers the topic?
You also have to keep in mind that Valentino didn't create a topic "Communist mass killings". He proposed a concept of Dispossessive mass killings, i.e. the deaths due to starvation etc. Obviously, this topic does not include, for example Great Purge deaths, but it includes the deaths in non-communist states. And, last but not least, we cannot ignore the authors who study the same facts but use different names for them: if Wheatcroft of Maksudov study Great Purge, they do cover this topic even if Cambodian genocide is beyond the scope of their study. That means, their interpretations should also been presented. In fact, Wheatcroft views are directly misinterpreted here: he uses the word "repressions" not as a substitute for Valentino's "mass killings". In addition, "repressions" is not Wheatcroft's term, that is a common term all scholars who study Soviet history are using, and, according to them, "mass killings" ≠ "repressions", but is just one phase of repressions. On another hand, "mass killings" in Wheatcroft's view is a much more narrow phenomenon, and it does not include, for example, famine deaths.
6. You are missing a very important point. Majority of reliable sources do to accept a theory of "communist mass killings", and the fact that they do not dispute it is a demonstration that this theory is ignored. We can easily check this idea. Let's do a simple experiment: go to some specialised article, for example, to the Great leap article, or to Mass mortality under Stalin article, and try to edit them using Valentino/Rummel as core sources. I am pretty sure, your edits will be quickly reverted based on what a large body of reliable sources say - and that would be correct. In other words, we have a paradoxial situation when every specialized article about some concrete mass killing in some concrete country describes those events, provide figures and explanations that are totally different from what the more general article says (MKucR is supposed to be a kind of a review article, and it should be consistent with its subarticles, isn't it?). If I understand that correct that is called a POV FORK.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:33, 23 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Re " If the sources you are referring to choose to ignore this topic, then we would be right to ignore them in writing the article. "
This statement is ambivalent. Following this logic, one can write two different articles about the same subject from two different perspectives, and different types of sources will be ignored. Thus, if you decide to write the article about "Mass killing in Soviet Russia", the core sources should be Valentino, Rummel, Rosefielde and Courtois. The article will emphasise the role of totalitarianism (per Rummel), Communism (per Courtois), personality of Stalin who made a strategic decision to implement some social transformations (Valentino), etc, and it will tell that Communists killed 20 to 70 million Soviet citizens. If you decide to write the article "Repressions in Stalinist USSR and demographic effects of Stalin's rule", the authors will be Wheatcroft, Ellman, Maksudov, Werth, Getty, Conquest, and many others. The article will speak about the Great purge, which was designed mainly to eliminate personal Stalin's enemies, GULAG, collectivization, and excess mortality, a.k.a. population losses, as well as excess lives, that were a result of a dramatic improvement of life standards and health system, which lead to an almost a twofold increase of life expectancy. These articles will cover the same events, and, obviously, if we choose to ignore a certain group of authors because they ignore some topic (the first group authors do not discuss population losses, just "mass killings", the second group of authors do not consider these events as mass killings or democide, and do not invoke more global concepts like "Communism"), that means there is something wrong with the topic itself. Note, the topic was defined by us, and it is our duty to think if it is adequately formulated.
Therefore, I would say the same in somewhat different way:
"If the topic you are referring to does not allow adequate incorporation of a large number of good sources that definitely seem relevant, then it would be right to reformulate this topic."
2. I think you mistake that the two types of sources you are describing (the single-country expert dealing with primary documents for a set of events in the Soviet Union, for example, and the author/aggregator integrating the work of multiple such experts in a work about a broader scope topic not restricted to the Soviet Union alone) are dealing with the same topic in the first place. Though related, they are obviously different types of studies and while we would expect the aggregator to refer to those narrower experts (by definition), we would not necessarily expect the narrower expert to refer to the aggregator. And pointing to the narrow expert's lack of reference to the aggregator or to the wider scope topic as proof of your assertion that the wider topic is fringe is very weak because it assumes that you haven't simply missed it in your searches and that you haven't misinterpreted it. As I said before, there are other explanations for the lack of reference.
3. These various topics cannot be perfectly nested within one another. As I said before, some sources can be considered part of Genocide Studies, others are not. And of course Genocide Studies is about more than events in communist countries. Of course there are sources that compare, say, Cambodia with Rwanda or whatever. My point was the the issues with Genocide Studies as a field do not discredit this topic because the topic exists outside that field as well, as evidenced by the sources already identified in the article, and is a mainstream idea deserving of its own Wikipedia article. I am not going to address what "most" scholars do or do not do, because that is presumptuous. It is not only Valentino among genocide scholars that group communist killing. If you look in the "Further Reading" section, under "General", I have tried to list the major such sources used in the article so far. The article rightly references only those Genocide Studies sources that speak to the topic (with whatever point of view they wish to have). There is nothing wrong with that. Your "very recent paper of a genocide scholar" that you provided a link to for just his table can be read in full here, and it includes sentences grouping communist states together very casually (see page 6, for example), demonstrating that this is not a fringe concept at all. That this scholar chooses to try to study mass killings yet more broadly in terms of revolutionaries (or as Fein does with totalitarianism) doesn't mean communist mass killings is not a distinct topic found in reliable sources and deserving of a wikipedia article.
4. Yes, such as excerpts p and q. Excerpt p is not a misinterpretation of anything. It is a direct quote. The sources Valentino cites for that range are in excerpt q (also a direct quote). I wrote them both. There is no lie. Valentino made his own professional judgement about what the reliable range of estimates were at that time and it is appropriate to include his opinion there. He can choose his sources however he likes. He is the reliable source here, not you or me. How is it undue emphasis on Rummel's figures to include Valentino's opinion of the range of reasonable figures that includes Rummel's, among others? That's due weight, not undue weight. You can call the figures obsolete all you want: the whole point of including the year of publication in the list of estimates is to provide that appropriate context for readers. Readers can see for themselves how reliable source estimates have varied over time and can see what those estimates are based upon in the excerpts.
5. Please look at the "Further Reading" section, "General" subsection. It is not just Valentino. And Valentino labeled his chapter "Communist Mass Killings: The Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia"; that is how he defined the topic for that chapter. We are not ignoring " authors who study the same facts but use different names for them". That is the whole point of having a Terminology section and of having the country-specific sections with event-specific subsections. Scholars who study the Great Purge, for example, do have a place to be included. If the most recent estimates for a particular country or event are not reflected in the broader estimates list, then we will have to be patient for newer sources to present themselves and then include those new estimates when they are available. We should not cobble together our own "updated" overall estimate from our own preferred country/event specific experts.
6. Again, if this is not a mainstream topic, then there will be reliable sources saying so that you should be able to find. If you can prove it without engaging in original research, it can be included in the article. Based on the sources listed in the "Further Reading" section, this topic is not a theory, it is not ignored, and it is not fringe. The only "POV" of the article is that mass killings occurred under communist regimes, and that is solidly neutral and supported by multiple reliable academic secondary sources.
7. It has literally taken me hours to respond to your very long posts. Can you please try to condense things as much as possible going forward? Maybe just focus on the one or two fundamental points of interest? I would appreciate it. AmateurEditor (talk) 06:09, 24 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
No problem. Below (in the next subsection) is my analysis of one concrete problem. That is a good example of what I said above: an attempt to stick with a flawed concept forces people to use outdated or questionable sources, despite the fact that many good sources are available. Below my comments on your answers. I signed each of them separately. Feel free to post your replies after each of them. Take your time answer to those comments that you find convenient.
Re 4. It is not a direct quote, the direct quote is "Estimates .... range as high as 110 million." (page 91) Obviously, these estimates are not Valentiono's estimates. His own estimates are in the table 2, and you can see them on my talk page. In a footnote to this table, Valentino says these figures are his own estimates based on various sources, and these figures are much lower. That means that other figures do not belong to him, and he does not support them, just cite them to describe the current state of knowledge. If one wants to use Valentino as a source, they are supposed to clearly separate the data Valentino cites from Valentino's own data. Obviously, I by no means accuse you of lying, however, that is a misinterpretation, probably, unintentional. With regard to "q", it is a direct quote from Valentino, but is contains a reference to a source that is impossible to find. The name of this scholar is not googlable, the article does not exist, and that is an indication that either Valentino or Rummel (actually both) made a very non-professional mistake.
By the way, I think in a situation when a source B cites the data from the source A, it is not correct to present them as two independent sources. That misleads a reader, who may conclude these two sources present the results of two independent studies.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:57, 24 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
When I said it was a direct quote, I was speaking of the excerpt, but after looking into this, I agree with you about the need to change the way Valentino is cited there. I was the one who inadvertently mis-characterized it in the article and I now have access to the pages needed to correct it. Thanks for catching this. About the not googlable source, lets not leap to conclusions. It dates from 1978. Just because it isn't online doesn't mean it is impossible to find or doesn't exist. I'm sure it exists on paper somewhere, but I don't think it is significant enough to go looking for. AmateurEditor (talk) 05:40, 25 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Re 5. "Further Reading". Actually, majority of those sources are chapters, or even subchapters from more general books. That is a very bad habit to cherry pick chapters out of context.
Yes, sometimes, authors prefer to group some communist states together, and I agree that there is some logic behind that. I would say, it would be interesting to read a comparative analysis of Pol Pot's and Stalin's regimes, because I expect to see more differences than commonalities. However, to cherry-pick one chapter and claim it sets a certain well defined topic would be totally incorrect. For example, Valentino's chapter is not about MKucR, but about "Communist mass killings". According to Valentino, that does not mean just mass killings that happened to be committed by communists. Valentino proposes a very concrete theory, a theory of "dispossessive mass killings" (which has not been widely accepted yet), and, according to him, dispossessive mass killings are those killings that are not considered as intentional killings by many other authors. Interestingly, mass killings in Afghanistan are not included in the chapter 4, they belong to a different type, "counter-guerilla mass killings".
The same can be said about, for example, Mann. His book is actually about a totally different subject. He discusses USSR, PRC, and Cambodia to contrast it with what he discussed before. That is neither the focus of his work nor a major part. Interestingly, the Terminology section totally ignores Mann's opinion that "genocide" is not applicable to MKucR (page 318: "some call theit deeds genocide, although I shall not"). Selective citation?
In general, Mann is used in the article just when a term "Classicide" is defined. That is done in a misleading way to create an impression that Mann speaks about those 100+ million victims. Actually, Mann defines various degrees of violence (not "communist violence" but violence in general), and that is a very interesting and fruitful approach that is totally ignored in this article. He defines, for example, mass deaths as unintended consequences of dominant group's policies: mistakes and callous policies, and he claims Great Leap falls in this category (page 15-16). The term "classicide" along with "ethnocide" and "politicide", is introduced later (page 17), and it refers to a higher degree of violence. Obviously that means GLF does not fall into a category of "classicide", the latter in "entwined with mistakes and callousness", but not coincide with them. Meanwhile, the article creates a false impression that Mann use the term "classicide" as a substitute for Valentino's "mass killing". That is a direct misinterpretation. Thus, he openly writes (page 337) that the main cause of China deaths was a mistaken revolutionary project, which makes it different from the Soviet case. Mann's conclusion is that Maoist mistakes killed (unintentionally) more people that all deliberate killings in communist states. Interestingly, this conclusion is also is not duly explained in the article.
Re "Scholars who study the Great Purge, for example, do have a place to be included." Inclusion of those scholars to the "further reading" section in the article written from perspective of those who express different view creates an apparent hierarchy, which is a violation of our policy.
Re "If the most recent estimates for a particular country or event are not reflected in the broader estimates list, then we will have to be patient for newer sources." Why? Who said only cumulative figures are allowed? To say that "according to majority sources, Stalin's USSR, Mao's China and KR Cambodia were the states where an overwhelming majority of mass killings occurred, and, according to recent estimates, XX million were killed in the USSR, YY million in China and ZZ million in Cambodia" is perfectly in accordance with our policy. I saw not a singe reasonable counter-argument against that. Moreover, instead of wasting article's space for outdated and inaccurate figures, many of them are just reproduction of the same source, it would be better to compile a table of recent and good quality data on excess deaths (split onto different categories of violence, per Mann) for each country. I think a reader can do needed math by themselves. In addition, we can explain what deaths from this table are considered as mass killing (genocide, politicide, etc) by which author (thus, Valentino calls Great Leap famine death "mass killing", whereas Mann calls them "unintentional deaths due to strategic mistakes").
I can continue, but, to save our time, let me conclude that the article takes the worst claims from different sources to make the picture as dark as possible. It selectively cites every author to advocate a very concrete view, and creates a false impression of some consensus among "genocide scholars" (I even don't mention country experts) about the events described here, although they even cannot agree on what is the scope of their study. It ignores very important details and draws unjustified generalisations. That is very bad.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:57, 24 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
About the further reading being chapters or sub-chapters, highlighting the chapter names in the reference was deliberate on my part due to the expectation that people would not understand why the books were listed there without those chapter names. How are they cherry-picked out of context when the book title is also included there and links are provided for you to see the chapters and their contexts for yourself? About your claim that the "Communist Mass Killings" chapter is not really about mass killings under communist regimes, I honestly don't know how you can seriously say that. If you look at table 1 on page 70, you can see that he shows that "Communist" is one "motive/type" of "Dispossessive mass killing", along with "Ethnic" and "Territorial", because he argues that communist mass killings are best understood as a means to the end of dispossessing people, but he definitly discusses the topic of mass killings that were committed by communists. He also says at the bottom of the table that the examples are "Select examples only, not a complete list of all instances of mass killings within each category. Some examples combine aspects of more than one motive." You are right that he includes Afghanistan in his counter-guerrilla killings chapter, but if you look at table 5 on page 83 he lists "communist" as an additional motive.
About Mann, I agree he is not used enough in the article right now. Now that the article is editable, anyone can fix that. But how can you seriously say that an entire chapter of a book is not "a major part" of it? Of course it is. And Wikipedia's definition of notability doesn't even require as much as a chapter to be dedicated to a topic in order for it to be suitable for a standalone article. From WP:GNG: "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list." ... "Significant coverage addresses the topic directly and in detail, so that no original research is needed to extract the content. Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention, but it does not need to be the main topic of the source material."
About the further reading section creating a POV hierarchy (per WP:STRUCTURE, I assume), the divisions there are by scope, not by point-of view. Again, I don't assume to know why a particular source chooses a particular scope but just because they choose to focus on one country doesn't mean they necessarily have an opinion on the topic of the article one way or another. Adding country-specific sources that reject any comparisons between various communist countries would be mixed together with the existing sources there that do not. Please add your preferred sources.
About you combining various sources into a recent overall estimate (ignoring the pitfalls of relative contructions), the danger there in my view is that you will introduce a bias in which sources you deem appropriate to include. I think those country-specific estimates are best placed in the country-specific sections. And I think it is valuable to see how the broader estimates have changed over time, so I don't think such a combination should replace what is currently in the estimates section.
About your view that the article "takes the worst claims from different sources to make the picture as dark as possible", here is an alternate take that I think is more accurate: We each have our own biases and preferences, and it should come as no surprise that the article reflects the editors who actually contributed to it. Critics of the article have tried to delete it rather than contributing to it themselves. In addition, much of what has been added was in response to the assertions by critics that there were no sources linking these various countries and events together in the first place. Now that the article is editable, you are free to fill that void. AmateurEditor (talk) 05:40, 25 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I wrote that your reference to list in the "Further reading" section (and the way it is organised) is misleading because it understates the fact that many (if not most) books listed there discuss communits repressions in a context of other events of similar type. Mann does not write a book about "Communist mass killings", but writes a book about violence in general, and discusses communist repressions as a part of that phenomenon, not as some totally outstanding event. Incidentally, he puts them (he calls them "leftist", not "Communist") apart mostly because "leftists" violence was less prone to target certain ethnic groups. The chapter about Communism cannot be understood correctly, for example, without an introduction. Therefore, it is essential and honest to stick with a standard way to present a reference. It should be:
Mann, Michael (2005), The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing, New York: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-53854-1 (see the chapter "Communist Cleansing: Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot" for discussion of the violence in communist states).
The way you present this literature is pertinent to the presentation of chapters in collective volumes (such as the BB). It is absolutely unacceptable for monographs.
I am glad you agree about Mann. Actually, his introduction gives a very good framework for the Terminology section. I would like to discuss it with you in a separate section.
Re "relative contructions", it can be easily avoided. With regard to the rest, I am not "combining various sources into a recent overall estimate", I am just proposing to present all relevant information in the same place, as our policy requires. We have a situation when all mass killings occurred in just three countries (the scale in other states was minimal, per Valentino). Therefore, it would be absolutely correct to explain that (I mean that the three major perpetrators were USSR, PRC and Kampuchea)) and provide modern data for these three states.
In contrast to what the second opening statement of the Estimates section says, we do have much more accurate figures than those used by Rummel. Thus, Kiernan provides a very accurate data for population loss for Cambodia (and makes a reservation that not all of them were a result of killings), the demographic data for USSR are also known with much better precision that 20 years ago (when Rummel was active: he is known to persistently refuse to take into account modern data, and limited himself with English secondary sources only, and mostly with those available in 1960-70s). Fresh data are becoming available for China. All these data are much more accurate, and we have to combine them (probably, in a table, without making our own estimates) and present them in the Estimates section. I have absolutely no idea why only combined figures (for "communism as whole") should be presented in this section, especially taking into account that the very idea of combining those figures has been severely criticised.
I would say, almost all combined estimates are seriously flawed, and the Rummel's statement about unavailability of accurate figures should be presented as his own opinion about his own data. Yes, Rummel was right, because his data and the approach he was using did not allow him to obtain any accurate estimates. But the times are changing, and we do have better data now, and, if the scope of this section does not allow us to present them here, then the scope of this section must be changed.
I see absolutely no reason why the discussion of the three individual country cannot be presented here. Moreover, such a discussion is directly relevant to this section. Let me reiterate: by doing that, we do not provide our own estimates, we are bringing fresh and good quality data from very reliable and modern sources (which are much better than those Rummel and Co used).
Yes, I'll definitely edit it, however, I would like to achieve some consensus with you first. I anticipate a new round of an edit war or endless talk page discussions (I don't mean you, of course), and it would be much better if we (you and I) came to some common understanding of this subject.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:51, 25 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
About the style of the references to chapter titles in the Further reading section, I did not choose to put the chapter titles first and I don't much care whether they appear before or after the book title. The way the references are presented was determined by the template, Template:Citation, not by me. As I said before, it is to avoid having people confused about why those particular sources are listed there. I think it helps. Mann does use "communist", as his choice of chapter title indicates.
I am not opposed to the idea of a table with single-country estimates, particularly if presented in addition to the combined figures. The only potential issue I can see with that is that a comprehensive collection of single-country estimates may be too large. All estimates, not just Rummel's, should be presented as the opinion of the author. "Accurate" is a value judgement that presumes to know what is closest to the Truth. These other estimates may be more precise or more recent, but could be either more or less accurate than the existing estimates. And Rummel is clearly making a general statement, not a comment on himself alone.
About mass killings occurring in only three countries, it is important to remember that Valenino's more stringent criteria for what qualifies is not followed by everyone. AmateurEditor (talk) 13:40, 27 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
No. The example in the Template:citation is
"Bidamon, Emma Smith (March 27, 1876), "Letter to Emma S. Pilgrim", in Vogel, Dan, Early Mormon Documents, 1, Signature Books (published 1996), ISBN 1-56085-072-8"
As you can see, it is a reference to some chapter authored by Emma Bidamon in a collective volume (Vogel, Dan, Early Mormon Documents). You chose a wrong reference format, because Bidamon didn't authored the whole book, just one chapter. In your case, a correct format is found in "examples/books" (Lincoln, A.; Washington, G. & Adams, J. (2007), All the Presidents' Names, XII (2nd ed.), Home Base, New York: The Pentagon). You can add a comment after that about some particular chapter, but to cite a chapter in a book authored by some scholars would be misleading.
Mann uses the word "Communist" in his book about genocide or ethnic cleansing because he believes comminists committed no genocide, so he tried to provide a different description of what happened in communist states. That in not sufficient to define a single topic.
I would say, Valentino's criteria are pretty loose (majority of country experts do not see famines as mass killings). In addition, in this area of knowledge, almost everybody uses their own criteria. And that must be explained properly. Instead, the article creates an absolutely false impression that it is dealing with some pretty well defined topic.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:15, 27 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Mann says it should not be called "genocide" but he obviously agrees about there being a topic to discuss. This is just related to the general lack of consensus about the appropriate term for it.
About Valentino's criteria being strict, I mean that his definition threshold of 50,000 killed within 5 years will necessarily exclude some deaths that others include.
Citing a chapter by the author in a book by the author is not misleading anyone, and I notice that your proposed moving of the chapter name to the end of the reference in your comments here was not completed in your recent article edits. Do you plan on fixing that, or should I? Also, since you have started posting on the article talk page, we should probably not be having a parallel discussion here. AmateurEditor (talk) 04:17, 28 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it should be a topic, because these events were examples of mass violence that were not genocide (accirding to Mann), but had significant scale. However, that is not sufficient to claim it is a separate and well defined topic.
If we assume that inclusion of all killing events below the 50K threshold can significantly change a situation, how many separate events where less than 50k were killed should we include for the 20 million figure to change significantly? Even 100 mass killing events where 40k were killed are included, that yields extra 4 million, so we get 24 million instead of 20. In reality, the whole Harff's database contains smaller number of events, so Valentino's assumption doesn't affect the combined figure significantly. However, he includes Chinese famine (up to 30 million population losses), which Harff doesn't do, this inclusion alone doubles the figure. That is why Valentino's criteria are very loose: he includes many categories that many other authors do not.
Upon meditation, I concluded that Valentino's and Mann's book deserve reading as whole. Thus, Valentino's estimates (table 2) are presented not in the chapter 4, but in the chapter 3. He discusses Afghanistan not in the chapter 3, but later. I would say, the whole book contains information a reader should be familiar with. The same can be said about Mann. By pointing reader's attention at separate chapters, we create a wrong impression that these two authors separated the events in communist states in greater extent than they did in reality.
If you want to stop this discussion on your talk page, just let me know, and I'll stop it. However, keeping in mind that the MKucR discussion has a tendency to become too convoluted and forked, I would prefer to continue the discussion here, because I would like to speak with you. By the way, I am seeing the signs of emerging consensus between us, so it is quite probable the discussion will come to a logical end pretty soon.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:19, 28 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I think I'll try to start making changes in the article, and if you will disagree with the way I am editing, we can renew this discussion. By the way, I am going to fix Helen Fein's reference in the Further reading, because "Societ and Communist genocide and 'democide'" is not even a chapter, but a subchapter.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:54, 29 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Re 6. "Again, if this is not a mainstream topic, then there will be reliable sources saying so that you should be able to find." You turned it upside down. We cannot assume everything is mainstream unless the opposite is demonstrated. The burden of evidence rests on those who claim something is mainstream. And, yes, there are reliable sources that directly claim it is incorrect to connect so different event as Cambodia and USSR. I already presented them on the talk page. --Paul Siebert (talk) 16:12, 24 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The burden that the topic of communist mass killings is mainstream has been met by the sources included already that have been published by highly respected university presses, such as Harvard University Press, Cambridge University Press, Routledge, Columbia University Press, and Cornell University Press. The burden is on you now to say these sources are not mainstream, or are outweighed by something else, or to balance them with something else. AmateurEditor (talk) 05:40, 25 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
No. This proves that this view is at least significant minority view. To speak about mainstreamness (a.k.a. significant majority), one have to present references to commonly accepted reference texts. However, there is a significant controversy around this subject, and the sources that disagree, criticise or say otherwise are also published in very respected media.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:11, 25 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The "Dictionary of genocide" is a reference text included in the Further reading section. It includes an entry on "Communism". What are the sources for the "significant controversy around this subject" as a subject, rather than criticism of particular estimates or conclusions? AmateurEditor (talk) 13:40, 27 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Definitely, it is convenient to group communist countries together in dictionaries or similar tertiary sources. However, that doesn't set a separate category. With regard to the sources, I already cited them on this talk page. For example, David-Fox criticized Malia's "generic Communism" concept. From that, we can make two conclusions: first, the idea of "generic Communism" is pretty new, second, it reflects an opinion of just few authors.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:12, 27 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Any category has a right to exist if it serves some concrete goal. In the case of ex-Communist and ex-Maoist Courtois, who, in addition to that, as most French intellectuals, suffers from collective Vichy syndrome, this category serves a very concrete political goal (that is not my opinion, by the way). For a libertarian Rummel, it helps to promote his own concept that "any power kills, and an absolute power kills absolutely". All of that is good, but for country experts that has absolutely no value. Does it help you to understand the processes in NK, which is a neo-Conficuan estate society? No. Does it really help you to understand Cambodian genocide? No. The authors who really dig deeply see more roots in Cambodian colonial history than in Communism, moreover, the very idea of aggressive agrarian antiurbanism is deeply anti-Marxian. I would say, the fact that USSR was dominated by Communist ideology is helpful to understand why Stalin hadn't gone too far (official ideology was harnessing Stalin's cannibalic intentions), but the understanding of the roots of Great terror lies more in inconclusive land reform in early 1900s and brutality of the WWI. And so on. Thus, even Rummel lists Kuomintang among the most murderous regimes, and PRC just inherited the system of its prison camps (not took Gulag as a role model). The "Communist regimes" concept is good for constructing various ideological schemes, however, it is absolutely useless for understanding of real roots of the events we are talking about.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:13, 28 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
That's interesting in terms of explaining your own perspective on this, but we have to base what is in the article on what is in all the reliable sources we can find that directly discuss the topic. AmateurEditor (talk) 05:30, 28 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Please, keep in mind that I know that Wikipedia is not a forum. Unless I make a special reservation, all what I write is based upon what I found in good quality peer reviewed articles. --Paul Siebert (talk) 14:34, 28 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
As a rule of thumb, when a topic is well established and correctly formulated, it is not a problem to find good sources. Let's analyse the sources in the "Estimates" section.
1. Ref 30 cites Rummel's "Death by government" Rummel is known to use obsolete sources, and his figures have been criticized.
2. a footnote "n" is an introduction to the Black Book (its figures have been widely criticised)
3. a footnote "o" is an opinion of Malia, this opinion has also been criticised, and it is not clear where these figures are taken from (looks like he just repeats what Courtois says). Obviously, he never did his own study, and some sources say he was just obsessed with the idea to get a magic figure of 100 million to advocate a very concrete idea: that Communism was much more murderous than Nazism.
4. a footnote "p" cites Valentino, but it cites it wrongly: Valentino makes a reference to Rummel (without endorsing this figure), and his own summary of the secondary sources available to him give different figures: 21 to 70.
5. a footnote "q" contains (i) a reference to Rummel (again); (ii) a reference to Courtois (again); (iii) a reference to Malia (again); (iv) a reference to Brzezinski (are you really sure he was doing his own estimates? He is not a historian, he was a politician; he definitely cites someone else's figures, probably Rummel's; (v) a reference to White's "Atlas of history" (which is definitely a tertiary source, which is not good; (vi) a reference to Culbertson, which Valentino seems to copypasted from Rummel's book without checking. The reference (both in thw Wikipedia article and Valentino's book) is wrong, so that is not your fault, but Valentino's, however, it demonstrates the level of accuracy checking (in my field, that mistake is unforgivable).
6. a reference 31 is a reference to Rummel's non peer-reviewed personal blog (interestingly, Rummel seems to take into account new data only when they increase his estimates; the new archival research that reevaluate the data to lower side are igniored by him)
7. a reference 32 is to Rosefielde, arguably, the only good expert in this panopticon. Unfortunately, he is a specialist in Soviet history only, and he is known to produce higher figures than anybody else in this field.
8. a reference "r" is White (this tertiary source is used again)
9. a reference "s" is to some non-peer-reviewed blog (although it, at least, mentions the names of the authors where the dat awere taken from, but most names are odd, whereas Brzesinski's name and Rummel's name have already been mentioned above;
10. a reference "t" and 33 is to a newspaper article that doesn't disclose sources. It is just Kotkin's opinion, but it is unclear where these data were taken from.
To summarise. The whole section is pure cheating: it present not the best sources, provides obsolete, fake or unreliable data, and even worse, in a series of cross-references, it actually reproduces the same figures twice or trice to create a false impression of abundant studies in these area. If we remove cross-references and get rid of desperately obsolete sources and the sources that jus tangentially mention some figure (so we cannot talk about serious fact-checking and accuracy), the whole list shrinks to a couple of items. That is an indication of a simple fact that good source on this subject are desperately lacking. The explanation is simple: good scholars are not working within this paradigm.
Meanwhile, a lot of fresh and reliable sources (peer-reviewed articles published in top journals) exist that discuss the three major perpetrators of mass killings (Stalin's USST, Mao's China and Pol Pot's Cambodia) separately. According to Valentino, there were almost no mass killings in other countries, so I see absolutely no reason why cannot we present three different modern figures for each of the three regimes instead of presenting obsolete and questionable cumulated figures taken from obscure sources. That is a good example how an intrinsically flawed concept serves as a magnet for various garbage.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:20, 24 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Last but not least. Our neutrality policy advises us to avoid segregation of text to create an apparent hierarchy of data. That is exactly what we see in this section. Not only it uses poor and obsolete sources, it segregates criticism from the estimates. That means the policy has been violated twice here: by providing a lot of redundant sources (most of which cite the same data many times), the section gives undue weight to them, and, by creating an apparent hierarchy, the criticism of those figures is understated.
If we remove all garbage, we mush leave only Rummel (widely cited in popular media), followed by a detailed explanations of his flaws, Courtois, along with a description of all scandals associated with these figures, and Rosefielde. However, before that, the three murderer regimes should be described, and the most resent estimates should be presented. Only after that, we can explain that some authors (few authors) made attempts to combine these figures together, and add the data for few other countries. Only that approach may work.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:29, 24 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Frankly, I didn't check who wrote all of that, and, just in case if all of that was written by you, please, keep in mind that I am not blaming you in deliberate cheating. You did your best, the problem is with sources you used, not with your edits. All these sources do meet loose verifiability criteria, so, formally, there is just a minor violation of policy here. However, frankly speaking, the quality of these sources is very poor, and, importantly, really good sources have been left beyond the scope.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:37, 24 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that all the sources meet Wikipedia's criteria for reliable sources, which is much lower than you prefer. I am not entirely sure what the "minor violation of policy" is. The estimates section is a chronological list of multi-country estimates and does not create a hierarchy of data because it has the criticism sentences in the same section. I believe you were actually the one who added them there, but I might be mistaken. Nevertheless, if you want to add the criticisms of the estimates next to each estimate, I have no problem with that. I am much less comfortable with replacing them with our own estimate made by combining single-country/event sources, as I said before. I will fix the Valentino reference. AmateurEditor (talk) 05:40, 25 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The violation of the policy is that by citing the same data several times, you create an impression that these figures present the data from many independent studies. That is not the case. You cite Valentino, who cites Courtois and Rummel. Then you cite Rummel, then you cite Courtois, then you cite Malia, who just reproduces figures taken from Courtois, you cite some blog that reproduces Courtois and Rummel, and so on. That is absolutely incorrect. For example, why do we need to mention that Valentino cites Courtois figures if we provide Courtois figures below? That is misleading, because every scholar cites previously published works, and that is normal. If we will provide a whole list of sources that cite Courtois, we get a very long list. However, the same can be done with almost every source. That is not how Wikipedia is supposed to work.
I explained (see above) that providing figures for three major perpetrators is not providing our own estimates: all those figures are supposed to come from published sources, and most of those figures are in the article.
Regarding "apparent hierarchy", present days consensus exists among country experts that the population losses in Cambodia were around 1.8 - 2 million (actually, Kiernan's data are the most accurate, another guys gives slightly higher figures, but he makes obvious mistakes; interestingly, this is a rare case when almost all sources agree about this figure; it is even more interesting that high estimates, around 3+ million, come from communist sources, more concretely, from Vietnamese or Vietnamese supported post-KR Cambodia regime); in the USSR, the death toll was ca 15 million (population losses were higher, but that included war time famine, post-Civil war famine, typhus and Spanish flu epidemy, post-WWII famine, all victims of 1933 famine, WWII victims, etc). I am less familiar with figures for China, but the estimates of the victims of the Great Leap famine are in between 16.5-30 million. These are modern data, and they are in a direct contradiction with Rummel's or Courtois data. Imagine Therefore, we cannot ghettoise them into specialised section thus blurring the obvious picture and presenting Rummel and others as better experts than country experts, despite the fact that reliable sources say exactly the opposite (I added that to this section, but it was removed).--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:53, 25 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Valentino citing Courtois and Rummel is an endorsement of them being mainstream sources and is significant for that reason alone, given the views of various wikipedia editors on the talk page. I corrected Valentino's estimate to refer to his table and the "numerous sources" it was derived from. I don't have more specificity than that for him at this time. Courtois and Rummel are appropriately cited separately, unless you think one is based entirely on the other, in which case they should be cited together. Courtois and Malia are cited together, not separately. The "Dissident" blog of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation includes Rummel and Coutois and many other single-country sources and does not just reproduce Coutois' and/or Rummel's overall estimates, so its range is rightly separate from them. Again, showing how published estimates have changed over time is valuable, even if it shows some figures being carried forward. I think any table of single-country estimates should likewise display the authors and dates of publication. AmateurEditor (talk) 13:40, 27 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I was probably not accurate with the term "mainstream". It looks like our policy operates with the terms: "majority views" and "significant minority views". Mainstremness is something else. The source that has been cited by peers does not necessarily expresses majority views. Actually, all sources (except an obscure Karlsson's rewiew) have been cited by peers, so that is not an argument.
Your statement "showing how published estimates have changed over time is valuable" is incorrect, because to present the data assembled by a certain author does not mean to show how the estimates were changing: one author has happened to assemble the data and publish this figure. It does not mean the estimates (universally accepted estimates) were changing, it shows that some concrete person produced some figure. That is more pertinent to the articles like Gulag: I assembled the table and added to this article to demonstrate showing how published estimates were changing over time, and then the modern data were presented. In contrast, in this article this approach is unacceptable because the very figure depends on definition, because the very category it describe is poorly defined. Therefore, instead of providing a chronological order (which would be correct for some universally accepted category), it is necessary to explain what does each author mean under that (and to add criticism, but we already agreed about that). I still cannot agree with inclusion of various compilations that again and again cite Courts, Rummel etc, because that gives undue weight to political journalism and understates the views of scholars. --Paul Siebert (talk) 17:58, 27 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
By "changing over time" I mean what aggregate estimate has been most recently published. Regarding "one author has happened to assemble the data and publish this figure. It does not mean the estimates (universally accepted estimates) were changing", why would we assume that there are universally accepted estimates to begin with? All we have is what has been published and we appropriately attribute those estimates/aggregates to their particular authors, including when authors choose to include a prior estimate in their own new range. It is not undue weight to include these new ranges. It is due weight to include a reliable source with its own unique aggregate estimate. You seem to be saying that all the aggregate estimates should be removed in favor of just the country-specific estimates in a table, which I cannot support and which I cannot see any policy-based rationale for. If we do have a table, the format at Gulag#History_of_Gulag_population_estimates is adequate in terms of content, but there might be a better sortable table format available. AmateurEditor (talk) 04:17, 28 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I do not claim aggregate estimates should be removed. They definitely should be discussed, because they are widely circulating in various mass-media. However, we need to put them in a proper context. Why exactly did Courtois and Malia proposed their estimates? What exactly do they mean under that? For example, Courtois claims the number of victims in the USSR was 20 million, and Wheatcroft speaks about 1-2 millions. Does it mean some additional documents were available to Courtois? No. Courtois actually includes all Civil war victims, Volga famine victims, all 1933 famine victims etc, whereas Wheatcroft thinks that a significant parts of those deaths cannot be considered "Communist victims" because two sides (Reds and Whites) were engaged in killing, many Civil war victims died as a result of typhus and Spanish flu, Volga famine was an unintended consequences of the Civil war (and Soviet government even accepted international aid), and so on. If we move all of that into a section about the USSR, we confuse a leader and present Courtois (whose "analysis" is absolutely superficial) as a "higher level expert" that Wheatcroft, despite the fact that the latter is much better expert in the USSR.
In a situation when different authors define the "victim of Communism" category quite differently, and the authors who combine all figures for all country has a tendency to define them as broadly as possible, we cannot limit ourselves only with global estimates. Thus, Rosefielde, who, like Wheatcroft, is an expert in the USSR, had a long dispute with the latter about figures. Rosefielde believes the number of victims in the USSR was much higher, and interprets this category much broader. However, Wheatcroft is considered a good expert, arguably, much better than Rosefielde. Rosefilde decided to make his own compilation of global data by adding his numbers for the USSR and the data for China etc obtained by others. As a result, his opinion is presented in the estimates section, but Wheatcroft's opinion is not. Why?
In summary, the global estimates should be presented in this section. However, it should be explained what exactly do these estimates mean, and why had they been made. If a reader will see more balanced estimates for China, USSR and Cambodia, and compared them with global Rummel's or Malia's figures (which are huge only because of Chinese and Volga famines) they will get much more adequate impression of the real situation with MKucR.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:37, 28 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
"Rosefilde decided to make his own compilation of global data by adding his numbers for the USSR and the data for China etc obtained by others. As a result, his opinion is presented in the estimates section, but Wheatcroft's opinion is not. Why?" Clearly it is either because the editors are not aware of Wheatcroft publishing a compilation of global data or because you have not yet added the country-specific table data that you want in that section. AmateurEditor (talk) 05:48, 28 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Wheatcroft, unlike many ideologically dominated writers, has no tendency to add apples and oranges, so he provides pretty reasonable figures for each separate events, but he sees no reason to combine them. That doesn't make his opinion irrelevant to this section, but the current structure of the section does not allow represent his opinion duly. That is the problem I am trying to resolve.--Paul Siebert (talk) 14:34, 28 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I follow Paul, that is why I am here. I own and have read Rosefilde's Red Holocaust. I would like to ask a question, have you read the book? and one last question, if you have not read the book, do you intend to do so?--Woogie 10w 11:52, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
No, but I am pretty sure I can imagine what does he write there. As a rule, monographs of that kind contain the same information that has already been published in peer-reviewed papers (I have an access to all Rosefielde's articles) + some speculations that he could not include in the articles because of space limitation, or because they do not pass through a peer-reviewing filter. --Paul Siebert (talk) 14:34, 28 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Upon meditation, I came to a conclusion that most neutrality issues can be fixed if we rearrange a structure a little bit. The changes should be as follows.
the "Estimates" section should be moved to the bottom and renamed as "Attempted estimates of a totall Communist death toll"
the opening statement of this section should explain that these attempts were made by several authors, who combined the data provided by various country experts, and they did that according to different criteria.
each estimate should be put in a proper context. Thus, we should explain why exactly Courtois and Malia proposed their figure
a methodology of each estimate should be explained. Thus, we need to explain what type of sources did Rummel use for this estimates (thus, for the USSR, all sources are older than 1987), and which methodology he applied to obtain his estimates. We also should explain that Courtois included all Civil war victims in a Communist deaths toll, and so on.
I think it is more important to have an objective method of determining a neutral structure that is based on reliable sources and not just what seems best to us personally, or the consensus will never be stable. The current structure tries to imitate the structure of the aggregator sources, which I think is most appropriate because they are the basis for the article in the first place. If all we had were the single-country sources there would be little justification for the article existing. The single-country/single event sources are necessarily supplemental and should not be more prominent than the main sources. A chronological order for estimates, for example, is very strictly neutral (I understand that does not speak to your point about the order of the sections, but I find it hard to care much about which section is in front of which). We should "strictly follow Wikipedia's policies", as indicated in the "D/S Alert" posted below. There is nothing stopping you from adding the sentences to explain context as long as you are accurately citing reliable sources and not basing it on your own analysis. AmateurEditor (talk) 05:39, 9 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
It seems you dramatically misunderstand that. The article structure is determined not based on some reliable source, it is determined by our policy. Moreover, no source can serve as a base for the article's structure, unless we have an unequivocal proof that this source is non-controversial and universally accepted by a scholarly community. None of the sources in this article meet this criterion. Thus, the Black Book is universally considered as a very controversial source (even its contributors disagree with each other), Valentino rejects any contribution of ideology (which means the whole section in this article directly contradicts to what he says), Rummel uses a questionable statistical apparatus and obsolete sources, etc. In that sense, your claim about "an objective method of determining a neutral structure that is based on reliable sources " is actually a desire to set some hierarchy of sources, which does not exists in reality. That means your position is a direct violation of out policy.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:21, 9 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I said the structure was based on the "aggregator sources" (plural), not on one source, which I agree would be a problem. Many sources begin with a discussion of the various terms preferred by different academics and with an overview of the estimates, then go into the details of the different countries and events. But I think our different readings of the policy WP:NPOV is the root of our disagreement and we should try to resolve that difference first. I will start a new section for that below. We should resume the article-specific discussion after reaching common ground there. AmateurEditor (talk) 04:04, 10 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
No, that is not working. An "aggregator source" is a source that just neutrally combines the data from others. In reality, all those "aggregator sources" (except one) are pushing some political idea, and they are not aggregators at all. Courtois is so bad as an aggregator, that some his coauthors even disassociated themselves from this "aggregation". Many reliable source directly say Courtois is a bad aggregator.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:23, 10 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
An "aggregator source" is just a term I made up to help us discuss this. That they are "pushing some political idea" is not a characterization I would use for all of them, but it is also not a problem if they do, per WP:BIASED and WP:YESPOV. Adding the criticism will fully address it. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:44, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding the D/S alert, although I know that formally it is just a neutral information, I fully realise that posting this alert is an unfriendly act. I believe you are a good faith editor, and I do not support the idea to post this alert on your page. I also realize that that alert is the first step to AE, and I want you let you know that I am not going to support any administrative actions against you (if such a request will be filed). Nevertheless, I strongly disagree with your vision of our policy, and I think you deeply misunderstand it. I know you did a huge job to improve the Mkucr article, and I want to minimize the changes to preserve you edits as much as possible. However, we definitely need to make some substantial changes. --Paul Siebert (talk) 17:28, 9 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, Paul. And I want you to know that I do appreciate your efforts at constructive criticism of the article's present state, even when I disagree with particular changes. AmateurEditor (talk) 04:04, 10 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I see no problems with chronological order, however, I think we must explain the full historical context these estimates were made in, and what exactly was included in each of those estimates. For example, do you know that Rummel's figures are actually the figures of GULAG mortality? (a significant part of 60+ "democide deaths" were Gulag death, and this information is considered totally incorrect by country experts, from Conquest to Wheatcroft). Second, what is the reason to provide estimates that were made in 1980s (Rummel) or 1990 Courtois) if newer data are available? The answer is: only to discuss the history of the subject. Is this history discussed? No. Is the reader provided with an adequate way to get a modern picture? No. The very structure of the article is intended to mislead a reader, and that is made under a pretext that the article is trying to represent all opinia, despite the fact that opinia of real experts are ghettoized and virtually ignored.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:41, 9 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I think you are pushing on an open door here. No one is stopping you from adding such information right now. All I have said is to be cautious avoiding original research (which applies to my edits as well). AmateurEditor (talk) 04:04, 10 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately, that is not an option. No matter what I'll add to the article, the very structure of the article sets some hierarchy that has nothing in common with a real situation. I'll give you two examples. First example. There are two scholars writing about Stalinist repressions, Rosefielde and Wheatcroft. They had a long dispute that lasted about 10 years, they both have their own vision of the events in Stalin's USSR, they both are experts in Soviet history. Each of them provided their own estimates of human life losses. However, Wheatcroft writes only about the USSR, whereas Rosefielde added his data about the USSR to the compilation of the total "Red Holocaust" death toll. As a result, Rosefielde's figures are presented in the "Estimates" section, but Wheatcroft's are not. In reality, they both are experts in Soviet history only, but the section created an apparent hierarchy.
Had the "Estimates" section been placed at the end, such a hierarchy would not be created.
Second example. The authors who are included in the "Estimates" section are those who made their estimates to push some very concrete political idea. All of them are vehement anti-Communist (with one exception, Valentino: he denied an involvement of ideology in mass killings, but the article ignores this fact. He also claims that majority of communist states committed no mass killings, and the article ignores this conclusion). Nevertheless, the article does not explain the fact that the very idea to calculate "Global Communist death toll" comes from anti-Communist authors, whereas politically neutral authors prefer to calculate a death toll of separate regime (for example, only Stalin's regime, not even Soviet), or even of a single event (for example, a Chinese famine). These calculation are ignored, or moved to a separate section. That is, again, an apparent hierarchy that emphasizes the writers with a certain political orientation.
Third example. If you read Rummel's "Lethal policies", you probably know that a lion's share of "Soviet democide" were the GULAG deaths. Rummel took absolutely astronomical figures of Gulag population (no historian, even Conquest, whose early works Rummel uses for estimates), and, assuming that the Gulag mortality was about 20% (annually), which is also considered an absolute bullshit, obtained his astronomical figures. All these figures are considered dramatically obsolete now. Nevertheless, this estimates are presented in the "Estimates" section, and modern data are moved to different section. I don't like conspiracy theories, but the only explanation of that step is, in my opinion, an attempt to conceal the fact that someone wants to conceal the fact that Rummel's data for the USSR directly contradict to modern data, which are much lower.--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:47, 10 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
You write "If all we had were the single-country sources there would be little justification for the article existing. The single-country/single event sources are necessarily supplemental and should not be more prominent than the main sources. " That is a good argument ... provided that main sources are really main, and they are accepted by the scholarly community as summary of single-country sources. The problem is that no proof of that have been provided. In contrast, there is a lot of proof of the opposite: a criticism of Malia's "generic Communism" concept, an absence of references to "main" sources in the recent works of country experts, and, last but not least, Barbara Harff's opinion that country experts are not willing to accept all generalisations made by "main" sources. I already proposed a solution for this problem: this article should tell not about mass killings themselves, but about general theories: it should discuss Rummel, Coiurtois, Malia, Rosefielde, and explain pro et contra of theories that combine all events in communist states together. That would be a neutral way to present data. If you disagree, let's rearrange this article in the way that will give a due weight to single country sources and single-country theories.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:32, 9 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
By "main" sources, I mean the ones that justify the article's existence: the aggregator sources. What do you proposed as the metric of their being "accepted by the scholarly community"? There is a heavy political component to this topic and criticism in this area is not like criticism in math or physics. Social science is less like science and more like philosophy, in which each academic is a unique viewpoint and not true or false in any objective way (of course, there can still be errors of fact). I have no doubt that you could find criticism of each source somewhere. You can probably also find criticism of that criticism. That is why I have tried to ensure that nothing I have added to the article was written in Wikipedia's voice. That is, all the statements have been attributed to the individual authors in the body of the text itself, rather than supposing an academic consensus. AmateurEditor (talk) 04:04, 10 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for this:
"By "main" sources, I mean the ones that justify the article's existence: the aggregator sources."
In other words, "the article should exist, because there are aggregator sources that write about it, and, since the topic exists, it justifies the usage of aggregator sources about it."
All of that is a circular argumentation, which is a logical fallacy. An aggregator source sets the topic if this aggregator source is good, non-controversioal, neutral and universally accepted. How many "aggregator sources" from your list meet these criteria? None. If you look at references to the BB, in scholarly publications, these references are mostly to Werths (sometimes to Margolin), the scholars who actively opposed to the attempts of Courtois to "aggregate" them.
You must understand that these "aggregator sources" do not set a topic as you see it. They only legitimate topic they set is a discussion of "several attempts" to calculate a global Communist death toll. This discussion should involve the explanation of the origin of this idea (for example, personal history of ex-Marxist Courtois, Vichy syndrome French intellectuals were suffering from, etc; or Rummel's vehement libertarian and conservative views; by the way, I was surprised to learn that Rummel is very popular among creationists and other obscurants). This can be a good topic.
However, I fully realise that will be impossible. In connection to that, I propose another option: to rearrange each section of the article in a purely descriptive way, each section should contain a historical background, a scale of excess mortality, a description of which events were considered as killings, modern estimates, etc., in other words, we must describe how a modern historical science sees all those events. In last two sections, we describe the attempts to make global estimates (with a description of what was counted, and according to what procedure, supplemented with a relevant discussion) and an attempts to provide a common explanation, with a discussion.
"The very fact that we have some aggregator sources on some subject does not make them the most authoritative sources"
Let's take Rummel as an example. He definitely is an aggregator source for figures. However, these figures as (i) obsolete; (ii) they contradict to modern data (for example, according to modern data the number of excess deaths in the USSR (including wars) was much smaller than Rummel's "democide" death toll), and (iii) these figures are interpreted by Rummel in a way that is not universally accepted. if Rummel were a good aggregator, his concept of "democide" would be used by country specialists (which is not the case). All said above means that, although Rummel's figures and theory should be included in the article and discussed, his books cannot be used as a framework for the article's structure.
Another example is Valentino (one of the best aggregator sources). Do you know that Valentino does not see ideology as a driving force of mass killings? Is that fact duly reflected in the article? Obviously, not. In contrast, a whole section discusses ideology as a primary cause, as if that is a mainstream view.
In other words, even these inadequate aggregator sources are used improperly and selectively in the article.--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:22, 10 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
You said "Thank you for this: "By "main" sources, I mean the ones that justify the article's existence: the aggregator sources." In other words, "the article should exist, because there are aggregator sources that write about it, and, since the topic exists, it justifies the usage of aggregator sources about it." All of that is a circular argumentation, which is a logical fallacy." I don't see the circle here. The aggregator sources justify the existence of the article because they prove the topic exists without synthesis between single-country sources by Wikipedia editors. They are also the sources we should be looking at for weight issues for the topic/article because they are the sources discussing the topic (that is, the aggregator sources as well as the sources that respond to/criticize them). Saying we should treat the single-country/single event sources as the basis for weight in order to show the aggregators are fringe when those sources do not address the topic one way or another is a kind of original research, and you have posted comments to the effect you believe it is a way to "circumvent" this restriction. That is the "cheating" approach. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:44, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
It seems you misunderstood me again. First, I don't think the aggregator sources from your list are fringe. That is definitely not the case. "Minority view" is more adequate term. Second, I don't want to show anything, because I fully realise I have not enough reliable sources for that. My point is that there is a large amount of sources that tell about the same events (about each event separately), these sources are good, they totally ignore these "aggregator sources", and they present the information about the same events in a totally different manner than the aggregator sources do. In the current article, these single country sources play a subordinated role, and they are even used to support the views not shared by their authors. We must fix that. Instead of that, you argue that
The topic exists because it is described in several "aggregator sources", so the article must be built upon them.
Only these "aggregator sources" are good sources, because they say about this topic as whole, not about each event in particular.
I am here because I follow Paul, an editor who wants to improve the Mkucr article. Anyone can edit Wikipedia, that is why it lacks credibility in many instances. Editors in this case have have run into a stone wall because the sources on Google do not provide an adequate analysis of the topic. For the Soviet Union I recommend that editors read Rosefielde's Red Holocaust and the articles in Soviet Studies from the 1990's. Also note well Russian language sources are acceptable on Wikipedia. As for China 2/3 of the 100 million dead, I need to have a better understanding of the topic. You guys are spinning wheels relying on Google.--Woogie 10w (talk) 16:01, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Woogie 10w, I agree with you about Paul. I like and respect him, otherwise I would not be bothering to engage with him so much. I also agree with you about why Wikipedia has a low-credibility reputation. It is not because of sources like Rummel's op-ed in WND, it is because of Wikipedia's rules that allow anyone to edit at any time using (almost) any reliable sources. That will not be changing any time soon and so arguments about protecting Wikipedia's reputation are pointless. Wikipedia's rules allow what they allow and don't allow what they don't allow. Wikipedia should never be considered trustworthy on its own. Your trust should depend on whatever source it is citing for a particular statement, however you choose to interpret that source's trustworthiness. But I have to say, Google is a tremendous resource and not everyone has the time to read entire books in order to add a few sentences to a wikipedia article. If you are able to do that, great, but I am stretching the time I have for Wikipedia as it is. AmateurEditor (talk) 17:20, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Paul, I am glad you don't think the aggregator sources are fringe. When you argue sources represent a small minority that is ignore by the "good" sources, it is not always obvious that you do not mean fringe. We already agree about adding the single-country sources to the estimates section to avoid a hierarchy of views, so I don't know why that keeps coming up. About your two-part characterization of my supposed circular argument, I can accept the first part, but the second part I would rewrite to be:
1. The topic exists because it is described in several "aggregator sources", so the article must be built upon them.
2. Single-country sources are also reliable sources for their contents, but they should not be used to determine the structure of the article because they are supplementary only. AmateurEditor (talk) 17:20, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Let me ask you some concrete question: the Black Book is a collective volume, so each chapter is written by some country expert, and the introduction should be considered an aggregator source. I read numerous reviews, and most reviews praised Werth's chapter on Soviet Russia and criticised introduction written by Courtois. In particular, they said that (i) the "generic Communism" concept is flawed, (ii) Courtois is obsessed with figures in an attempt to push some specific political views, (iii) the BB introduction would have significantly benefited if Courtois read the Werth's chapter more carefully, (iv) Nicolas Werth openly objected to many statements and ideas expressed in the introduction. (v) Courtois figures for the USSR are significantly greater than the figures that could be found in the Werth's chapter, which is, according to one reviewer "a rock the whole Black Book rests upon". In addition, most references to the BB in scholarly literature are actually the references to werth's or Margolin's chapter, not Courtois.
My question is: in that situation, will you still insist that Courtois is an adequate "aggregator source" for single-country contributors to the BB, and Werth, Margolin, and other authors are just "supplementary" to what Courtois writes?
My second question is: do you realise that the BB is a good model of the whole Mkucr article: good soirces are used as a "supplement" to a lousy concept: by citing, for example, Wheatcroft or Ellman, you add credibility to views these authors do not share. Sorry, but that is cheating.--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:25, 12 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I would consider the Black Book as a whole an aggregator source (and the contributors clearly agreed with the "lousy concept" or they would not have contributed). I agree that Courtois' intro portion and conclusion portion (and the various Forewords, such as the one by Martin Malia in the English version) are the most promising for a Wikipedia article that is supposed to be written in a summary style, but there is no problem with citing from the rest of it or from the critics of it. I am aware of the controversy, and that should be accurately reported in the article as well, per "Wikipedia aims to describe disputes, but not engage in them." About citing Wheatcroft or Ellman in a way that misrepresents their views, that obviously should not happen and I don't think it is right now. If you are saying that citing them at all in the article is wrong because they reject the concept of the article, then I would ask you to prove that (and I believe you have been the one advocating their views be given more weight, so this is a bit confusing). AmateurEditor (talk) 03:26, 12 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
AmateurEditor, do you know that Werth and Margolin wanted to withdraw their names from the book when they had read the introduction? Are you aware of a public scandal around this book?
I also cannot understand why the Black Book as whole can be an aggregator source for communist mass killing if each chapter was devoted to separate regime, and none of the authors except Courtois wrote about Communism as whole. What is the difference between a country expert Wheatcroft and a country expert Werth? That the latter agreed to write about Soviet Russia in the book about Communism as whole?
The greatest problem with the BB, and with the "communist mass killing" topic as whole, is that superficial and politically motivated writings of such authors as Courtois are easy to read and understand. Courtois wrote a brief and primitive introduction, assembled some figures (part of them were taken aut of thin air) - and thousands of illiterated amateurs (I am sorry, keeping into account your nick name that may look like a personal attack, but it is not:-)) cite it. Meanwhile, I am not sure anybody bothered to read the Werth's chapter on Russia. Actually, the Mkucr article is doing the same.--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:38, 12 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I am not aware of anyone actually withdrawing their names from the book but I do know that it touched a nerve in France when it was published and the contributors came under very intense and politicized pressure due to the state of French politics. I don't assume that all the critics were accurate or acting in good faith (I find the criticism of "generic communism" to be ridiculous, personally) but I can believe that at least some were. The book is still cited by other sources, such as Valentino, which means it is not to be ignored here. Again, "Wikipedia aims to describe disputes, but not engage in them.". Having individual sections of a book about communism in general (whose contributors knew it was about communism in general) being dedicated to individual countries is to be expected. The other aggregator sources also give country-specific details in their writings and so does our article. And even if you were using "amateur" as an personal attack, I would try to ignore that. I chose the username because "amateur" has two meanings, unpaid and inept, both of which applied to me when I first created the account but I hoped that the second would apply less and less as time went on (the first still applies and always will, of course). I also liked that it was in the spirit of the website and otherwise nondescript. AmateurEditor (talk) 04:22, 12 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't write about actual withdrawal, I wrote they publicly disassociated themselves from conclusions made in the introduction, and they were contemplating withdrawal. Anyway, it is a well documented fact that Margolin and Werth strongly objected to what Courtois wrote in his introduction.
Re "I don't assume that all the critics were accurate or acting in good faith " then I have a right to assume Courtois was not accurate and not acting in a good faith. Do you realize if we will resort to this type arguments our discussion will turn to an absolutely wrong direction? Please, keep in mind that when I say "reviews" I means only reviews in hight profile scholarly journals, so by casting a doubt on reviewer's good faith you undermine credibility of your own arguments.
Re "Having individual sections of a book about communism in general (whose contributors knew it was about communism in general) being dedicated to individual countries is to be expected." A very weak argument. Other authors who write separate articles in scientific journals are also aware of the fact that the USSR was a communist state. It's a very weak argument.
re amateur. I am sure you approach to editing very seriously, and you are definitely not an amateur.
re "The other aggregator sources also give country-specific details" Incorrect. A single aggregator source, for example, Rummel, is a single book authored by one (or few) authors who write the whole book from the same point of view. In contrast, the BB is a collective volume (and, according to many reviewers, a very inhomogeneous volume), whose contributors are writing from different perspective. It is literally a collection of separate chapters written in a different style, and the authors of different chapters focus on their own subjects, and they disagree with the editor on many aspects. If this is an aggregator source, then any journal issue devoted to some topic can be considered an aggregator source: indeed, it has an editorial article, several separate articles on different aspects of some subject. But nobody call it an aggregator source. By no means the BB is an aggregator source. Only the introduction is an aggregator, and, as many reviews say, a bad aggregator.
Re "The book is still cited by other sources," As I already explained, it is cited primarily because of Werth's chapter (which is a serious research). That means it is cited not as an aggregator source, but because one its part is a good study of Soviet Russia.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:29, 12 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Re "Wikipedia aims to describe disputes, but not engage in them" If you build the article's structure based on some sources that are "aggregators" according to your opinion, you have already engaged in a dispute and took one side. To avoid that, you must prove all aggregator sources you are using express majority views, are not obsolete and non-controversial. If these conditions are not met, these sources are not real aggregator sources, and they should be discussed in a special section devoted to attempts to aggregate some data.--Paul Siebert (talk) 07:19, 12 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
"I didn't write about actual withdrawal" I know you didn't, but their actions speak louder than their words. That someone threatened to withdraw and didn't means a lot less than them actually withdrawing. It indicates to me that their concerns didn't rise to a significant enough level for them to actually withdraw.
"... then I have a right to assume Courtois was not accurate and not acting in a good faith." You certainly do. And just like my personal thoughts above, it should have no bearing on how we write the article. We must describe such disputes in the article without taking sides. I am not proposing to cast doubt on any reviewer's good faith in the article itself, I am just explaining to you why I see things differently than you do.
"Other authors who write separate articles in scientific journals are also aware of the fact that the USSR was a communist state. It's a very weak argument." I agree that the single-country source authors are aware of the fact that the USSR was a communist state. My point was that the contributors to the Black Book agreed to contribute to a project about communism in general, even if their piece of the project was about just one country. Their participation in the project is a clear endorsement of the idea that communist states can be thought about as a group. That is very different than the single-country journal article that makes no mention of other communist countries because, as much as I would like us to, we cannot assume what they think on the topic of communist countries as a whole unless they indicate that in some way. But it's not like Courtois just collected a bunch of single-country sources and bound them together for publication without their individual authors' knowledge. The Black Book was a group project.
"It is literally a collection of separate chapters written in a different style, and the authors of different chapters focus on their own subjects, and they disagree with the editor on many aspects." We avoid this being a problem in the article by attributing their individual conclusions to the individual authors. The topic of the book as a whole is about communism as a whole, that is why I say it is an "aggregator" source. "Source" can refer to a work, or to an author, or to a publisher.
"... it is cited primarily because of Werth's chapter". Valentino, for example, cites the book for its overall estimate.
"To avoid that, you must prove all aggregator sources you are using express majority views, are not obsolete and non-controversial." What policy are you referring to here, if any? WP:YESPOV does not indicate that. I assume "obsolete" is a reference to Rummel, who Valentino also cites for his estimate, indicating that he is not actually obsolete. If by "non-controversial" you are referring to the Black Book, Valentino also references that one for its estimate. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:03, 13 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Re: "their actions speak louder than their words" Their words are their actions: they say they disagree. Withdrawal of the name is just an extreme manifestation of disagreement. However, when some person says: "I disagree, and I almost ready to withdraw my name" that means a very significant degree of disagreement.
Re: "You certainly do" I am certainly not, unless I have a serious and concrete reason for that. That reason must be strictly rational, and it should be clearly articulated. The same is applicable to you: you cannot write "I don't assume that all the critics were accurate or acting in good faith". If you want me to consider you a serious person, the only statements of that type that you can make should be "I don't assume that the critic X was accurate or acting in good faith, BECAUSE..." and then you explain concrete reason s why this concrete reviewer X was not accurate in this particular case.
Re: "the contributors to the Black Book agreed to contribute to a project about communism in general" Again, I refuse to believe you are speaking seriously. Of course, all countries with communist regimes had some significant common features. That means, a collective volume that combines separate chapters about these countries definitely can be written. However, this volume could have included, for example, a discussion of the differences between different communist states, and such a volume would be a really interesting reading. It is really interesting to compare how different can be the countries with nominally communist regimes (Cambodia vs USSR, or North Korea vs Cuba). For those who are familiar with the subject, there are much more differences between different "Communist" countries than commonalities, and that is per se a very interesting topic. Do you know, for example, that Cambodian genocide was stopped by Vietnamese intervention (whereas the US continued to support Khmer Rouge in UNO), and the Soviet propaganda was the most vehement critic of the atrocities of that regime (the figures of 3+ million victims come mostly from communist sources)? So called "Communist world" is very non-uniform, each country had its own specifics, own historical background, and only narrow-minded obscurants like Rummel do not see a difference.
Therefore, it is quite likely that Werth agreed to contribute to this collective volume because he didn't expect his opinion will be twisted in the introduction, and because he wanted to tell a story about specific features of Russia.
Re "What policy are you referring to here, if any?" The policy says that undue weight should not be given to sources. Therefore, if you want to build a structure from the perspective of, e.g. Rummel, you must prove Rummel is still considered an top expert in this field. If you want to build the article in a Courtois style, you must prove is is a better expert than Werth (I have no sources that confirm that, and I saw many sources that directly say the opposite). We can build the article in a "Courtois style" (a.k.a. "generic Communism" style), or we can write it in a "Werth's style" (i.e. as a loosely connected collection of sections about each particular country, which provide a detailed country specific analysis of those events and avoid unneeded generalizations and ideologically biased statements. Obviously, overwhelming majority of sources fit the second model.
(It seems Safari has some odd autocorrection, usually, I use Firefox, so if you will find some odd word in this my post, don't be surprised: it is an autocorrection :-))--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:35, 13 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I try to ignore typos as much as possible and focus on what I think people mean. I make typos all the time. What I think this all boils down to is that I am free to have opinions and you are free to have your opinions and we can still work together within the bounds of Wikipedia policies. I don't really care if the "Estimates" section is renamed "Attempted estimates of a total Communist death toll". It doesn't change the content at all. But I also agree (which argues against the renaming, ironically), that the prohibition on creating a hierarchy of views means we should be including the single-country source estimates in same section with the group estimates. I think a table of single-country estimates may be a good way to do that. It could be built on the dumping ground page before being added to the article. Do you have any other specific proposals for changes to be made that you want to argue here, or do you want to make your case on the article talk page for everyone else? AmateurEditor (talk) 03:15, 14 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I do not mean typos, I mean that Safari automatically replaces words that I am typing, and sometimes its choice is weird :-).
Yes, we can combine all single country sources into the same section with global estimates. However, if the title will be "Estimates" (which implies "Estimates (of mass killing scale)"), that already creates an apparent hierarchy. The problem is that majority of sources do not consider civil war or famine as "mass killing/democide/genocide" etc. For example, the data of ADK for the USSR deal with "population losses", and they do not speak about "mass killing" or "democide". Therefore, if we combine all data under a category of "Estimates" (which implied that all these estimates are the estimates of the scale of mass killing) we implicitly assume Courtois, Rummes and Co are mainstream sources, whereas other sources express minority views (although the situation is quite opposite).
This apparent hierarchy will not be created when we do the following. First, we explain the events that happened in different states, and the scale of population losses connected to those events. We also explain which of those events are universally considered as mass killing/genocide, and which were just a result of mismanagement, or criminal neglect, of strategic blunders etc. Second, after that, we can explain that some authors tried to combine all population losses under a category of "mass killings", and describe, which categories of deaths were included in that figure.
By the way, the same approach will work with terminology and "mass killing theories". Since only few authors proposed common explanation for all those events, it would be correct to provide country-specific explanations first, and then describe the ideas of some authors who were trying to propose more general theories. Taking into account that even genocide scholars themselves concede their theories have little explanatory and predictive power, it would be correct to describe them as "attempted generalizations".--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:09, 14 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Let me try to explain this again. Two different schemes are possible for articles of that type. The first scheme is:
"The article is about a general phenomenon X that is described by a theory Y. Below is the list of separate instances of this phenomenon."
The second scene is:
"The article is about phenomenae belonging to the family X. Different phenomenonnae from this family are described as (a description of them, and well as explanations, is provided in separate sections). In addition, some authors attempted to present a common theory to describe all these phenomenae."
Both approaches are acceptable by our policy, however, the first approach would be against NPOV if all generalizations are not universally accepted.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:05, 14 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
You are using the word "hierarchy" in a different way than it is used at WP:STRUCTURE page, and I think we should stick to the policy meaning. And remember, we are currently treating all authors as "significant minority" views. And you are also using the word "mainstream" in opposition to "minority", which is mistaken here because all the significant minority views should be considered mainstream. You want to impose a structure on the article because supplemental sources do not address the topic in an aggregate way, which you are interpreting to mean rejection of the concept. I have disagreed with this on its own merits (we should not expect the single-country sources to have anything to say about the global perspective), but even if I hadn't it is still a form of OR to make any determination like that without a source to that effect. Per WP:RS/AC, "Stated simply, any statement in Wikipedia that academic consensus exists on a topic must be sourced rather than being based on the opinion or assessment of editors." You are trying to impose what you see as consensus at the level of structure because you cannot find any source that states it explicitly. I have provided you with a quote from Mann which indicates consensus in the opposite direction (" "All accounts of 20th-century mass murder include the Communist regimes. Some call their deeds genocide, though I shall not."), so I don't see any compelling reason why the article's structure should be changed. About the two different schemes, you keep using the word "theory", but that does not apply here. Aggregating the communist regimes together is not a theory, it's a topic. It's pure description. The only theories involved are the explanations for why. Even the terms are not theories. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:13, 15 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I think I use the term "apparent hierarchy" absolutely correctly: thus, if we describe "population losses" in the USSR, and say that some authors describe them (as whole) as "mass killings", or "democide", or "Communist death toll", whereas other authors describe only the Great Purge as mass killing, that would be neutral. However, if we write that "mass killings occurred in the USSR, and their scale was claimed to be as high as 20 million, whereas some authors describe them as "population losses"", then we create an apparent hierarchy (the sources saying that all unnatural deaths were "mass killings" are presented as the sources expressing majority views, and other sources are minority views).
Yes, under "mainstream" I mean "majority views"
"...because supplemental sources do not address the topic in an aggregate way, which you are interpreting to mean rejection of the concept" When some author uses the works of other authors, these works are not necessarily "supplemental". We can speak seriously about general theories when they became universally accepted. Currenly, there are several attempts of general theorizing, and most of them contradict each other: Valentino totally rejects the role of ideology, whereas Malia blames "generic Communism" in mass killings. Rummel claims that communist states were killing machines who were routinely killing peoples in a massive scale, whereas Waiman&Tago argue that communist regimes committed mass killings very rarely, and the high overall deaths toll is because there were few mass killing events of a very large scale, and during other parts of their history there were no mass killings. Actually, no consistent theory of mass killings under communist regime exists currently, whereas the article's structure makes an impression it is.
The Mann's quote is a proof of the totally obvious fact that some communist regimes committed mass killings during XX century. So what? That fact is obvious and universally accepted. No-one can argue about that. Does Mann say all these killings had some significantly common nature? Does Mann say all non-natural deaths (including Russinam civil war deaths, typhus deaths, Volga famine death, Great famine deaths, Gulag mortality deaths, etc) are included in this category, or he means, for example, the Great Purge, Chinese Cultural revolution and Cambodian genocide only? Your interpretation of Mann is too liberal, and his quote does not support your views, and cannot be a compelling reason to preserve the article's structure.--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:28, 15 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
You did not address my criticism of your use of the word "theory" (there are no theories in the article). Leaving that aside for now, none of the sources currently used in the article are presented as a majority view, so we should drop the majority/minority dichotomy from our discussion entirely. Every source included in the article has in-line attribution, meaning the statements are attributed to the author personally, rather than being stated as a fact in Wikipedia's voice. Your argument that the article does not give enough weight to the many single-country sources that do not use a cross-country/communism frame is unacceptable to me because it requires that we make an assumption about them, which is a form of original research. The assumption it requires is this: because the source ignores the topic, it rejects the topic. If you have sources that explicitly reject the topic, or state that the topic is a minority view, then you have a good case. But you have yet to do that. And because of that, there is no point in discussing the hierarchy of views issue either (however you define hierarchy) because the so-called majority view hasn't been made explicit in any source yet. Until that happens, we are right to ignore it. I think the we should make a description for each aggregate source on the dumping ground page with exactly what it is saying so that we have a common set of facts to generalize from, since you see more contradictions between them than I do. About the Mann quote, the key point there was how he frames the topic. He used "Communist regimes". He did not say, "All accounts of 20th-century mass murder include the USSR, China, and Cambodia." That indicates the framing of the topic is "universally accepted", as you say, and we are right to structure the article as we have. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:53, 16 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
If you think I hadn't addressed the "theory" issue, let me do it here. The article has a "Proposed causes" section that describes attempted theoretical explanations of Mkuck as some single phenomenon. The very structure of this section implies that the generic theories presented there are mainstream views, and these mainstream views are "Ideology" and "Political system", whereas "Other causes" represent minority views. That is a chemically pure apparent hierarchy, and, taking into account that all country experts (who are the only real experts, by the way) have been ghettoized into the "other causes" section, this section is a blatant violation of NPOV.
Re "we should drop the majority/minority dichotomy from our discussion entirely" We will do that when the structure of the article will be brought into accordance with NPOV. The above paragraph shows one more example of the blatant NPOV violation, because, since the very structure of the article implies that Courtois or Rummel express majority views, whereas Werths or Wheatcroft are "supplementary".
Re: "is unacceptable to me because it requires that we make an assumption about them" What assumption? We need just describe, neutrally and proportionally, what they write, and do that not under auspices of Rummel, Valentino, or Courtois.
Let's come to an agreement about one thing: is this article about (i) mass killings in communist states as they are described by majority sources, or this article is about (ii) mass killings as described in the sources that describe them as some general and single phenomenon? For me, both "i" and "ii" are acceptable. The only thing I strongly object to is when "i" and "ii" are being mixed in arbitrary proportions. If you choose "I", it is ok with me, if you chose "ii", it is also ok: I know how to write both versions of this article in accordance with V, NPOV and NOR. However, what we currently have is the version "ii" where some fragments of "i" are added, and, as a result we have a totally distorted and false description of what majority sources say.
Re " there is no point in discussing the hierarchy of views issue either (however you define hierarchy) because the so-called majority view hasn't been made explicit in any source yet. " It is up to us to decide what is majority and what is minority view. No single source can say us which views are majority or minority. However, if you believe there is no point to discuss hierarchy, I suggest to move this discussion to NPOVN.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:03, 16 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Re: "theory", Yes, the "Proposed causes" section contains theories, but that is not how you were using the term earlier. You were using "theory" to describe the aggregate topic, to which I responded "Aggregating the communist regimes together is not a theory, it's a topic. It's pure description. The only theories involved are the explanations for why." In my next comment, I did say "You did not address my criticism of your use of the word "theory" (there are no theories in the article)." This was a misstatement on my part because I do agree that the proposed causes are essentially theories. However, I still maintain that the topic itself (with an aggregate frame of "communist regimes") is not a theory and it confuses the issue to use that term for the discussion.
Re: "mainstream", yes I believe all the views in the article (including those in the Proposed causes" section) are mainstream, as evidenced by the nature of the university presses that have published many of them (Harvard University Press, Cornell University Press, Cambridge University Press, Columbia University Press). Note that I am not using "mainstream" to mean "majority", I am using it to mean non-fringe.
Re: "majority/minority", I do not agree that it is up to us to decide what is the majority and what is the minority view here. The NPOV policy page says that a majority view can be substantiated via "commonly accepted reference texts". It certainly is not up to Wikipedia editors' personal opinions. Until we find unambiguous sourcing for what the majority view is (and I think the Mann quote may potentially be that, but there is some ambiguity there), we should treat all the sources as "significant minority" views, which I believe we are doing currently. I am using "significant minority" and "majority" here in reference to their usage on the NPOV policy page, which gives this quote from Jimbo:
"*If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts;
"*If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents;
"*If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small minority, it does not belong on Wikipedia, regardless of whether it is true or you can prove it, except perhaps in some ancillary article."
As I said before, all the sources in this article are being treated as "significant minority" views in accordance with the NPOV policy because of the apparent lack of consensus on this topic, based on the sources so far identified (based on the Mann quote, it is arguable that the aggregate frame is the majority one, but since it is not conclusive, I am fine with treating aggregate and non-aggregate views with the same weight). If new sources are found which indicate what is the majority view and what is not, then the article should be changed to reflect that. Until that happens, it shouldn't (and I do not find at all convincing the conclusion you have drawn from the lack of discussion in single-country sources - the "assumption" I said you were making about the meaning of the lack of mention of the aggregate topic - and even the lack of mention you have not yet actually demonstrated to be the case, I have just taken your word for it for the sake of argument).
Re: "hierarchy", that term is used in the NPOV policy to mean separating the sides of a debate into separate sections, one of which will necessarily have to come first and so be given the appearance of primacy or of being the mainstream opinion to which the later section is reacting. I don't think that is the case with the Proposed causes section, but I am open to rearranging the subsections there into one section if you feel strongly about it. Also in response to your concern about a hierarchy being created for estimates by having the single-country/event estimates in the single-country/event sections, rather than the aggregate estimates section, I agree that it is inconsistent with the NPOV policy and a chart of single-country estimates should be added to the estimates section.
Re: "Let's come to an agreement about one thing: is this article about (i) mass killings in communist states as they are described by majority sources, or this article is about (ii) mass killings as described in the sources that describe them as some general and single phenomenon?", I have always been of the opinion that the article was about (ii), but that we needed to include all the views on the topic found in reliable sources (as Wikipedia defines "reliable sources"), so we should also be including the critics and, for example, the single-country/event sources that have different numbers or details. What I have described sounds a lot like the "version "ii" where some fragments of "i" are added", but I think it is what is required of us based on the sources gathered thus far. Of course, I also do not accept your characterization of (ii) not being "majority sources", but I assume you are either referring to the simple numerical majority of the single-country/event sources as compared to the aggregate sources or otherwise reiterating your opinion about single-country/event sources expressing a different view than the aggregate sources.
Re: NPOV Noticeboard, I think we're well beyond the noticeboards' level of sophistication. The RS noticeboard post you made regarding the Rummel op-ed attracted immediate and superficial comments by editors who seemed unfamiliar with even the past consensus for the website in question, let alone the finer points of the RS policy page. The value of the noticeboards is for ignorant editors to get advice or for ignorant editors to give advice. The actual policy pages are available for anyone to read, and I have done so already. Of course you are free to post there without my involvement, but I think it would be much more useful (and save time in the long run) to create the single-country/single-event estimates table on the dumping ground page for inclusion in the article, and to also collect there any statements you feel demonstrate the majority view of the topic. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:49, 19 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Re theory. No. That is exactly how I was using this term. The "Estimate" section says, e.g., that ~100 million were killed, according to Courtois, and the "Proposed causes" says that, e.g., the Black Book (actually, Courtois) say that ideology was the common cause (implying that that was a common cause for all these 100 million victims). If that is not a theoretical explanation, than what is a theory?
Re. Well, if you think all views presented in this article are treated as significant minority views, why the structure of this article creates an impression that some of them (Rummel, Courtois, etc) express commonly accepted views, whereas country experts are trying to challenge them? That is an Impression that I got after I read the article, and I am sure ordinary reader's impression is the same.
Re. If agree that the article is about a topic (ii), then we don't need to include detailed description of Mkucr. The topic is the views of several scholars and the historical context these views formed. We need to explain how did Rummel come to his conclusion. We need to explain all controversy around Courtois and Malia (and we should explain we are not talking not about the BB as whole). We need to explain what exactly does Valentini mean under "mass killing" (that is no what we commonly see as mass killing), and why he believes ideology plays no role. We should describe a long dispute between Rosefielde and Wheatcroft (the former is a specialist in Soviet history, so this part is a core of his "Red Holocaust"). In other words, the structure of the article should be totally different. It should be split on topics by author. For example, a "Communist democide" section should explain what does "democide" mean, who proposed this term and why, how did Rummel calculate the "democide death toll" what are the drawbacks of this concept, etc. The section "Mass killing" should describe Valentino's views, his estimates (his own estimates), his concept of "dispossessive mass killings", his views of the mechanism of mass killings in a context of communism. And so on. By doing that, we are not misleading a reader, because we do not create an impression of apparent universal acceptance of the Mkucr concept (which is by no means the case). We do not need a description of, for example, Cambodian genocide, the link to the main article would be sufficient. If the article is organized in this way, I would fully support it.
Re "I also do not accept your characterization of (ii) not being "majority sources"" Incorrect statement. According to our policy, "majority" or "minority" refers not to a source, but to a viewpoint. The statement: "If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts" implies that the source can be either a "commonly accepted text" or not. That means, you probably implied that the sources that we will discuss in (ii) are commonly accepted. Well, if these sources are "commonly accepted", I expect you to prove that. For example, provide an evidence that Rummel's view on Communist mass killing are commonly accepted. However, I can tell you in advance that you will not be capable of doing that. The reason is quite simple: Rummel's theory is based primarily on correlations and figures. His figures are obsolete, and they directly contradict to modern data (which is not a surprise, taking into account that they are just an inaccurate summary of Cold War era data), which means his conclusions are also questionable. Recent articles on Rummel's approach (in general) suggest his views are now considered obsolete. With regard to other authors, I presented quite convincing evidences that the view of Courtois is not commonly accepted (the list of sources can be found in the Mkucr talk page archive). The view of Valentino is also not commonly accepted: a review on his book describes it as one of many attempts to explain mass killing (by the way, the reviewer even identified some logical inconsistencies in Valentino's rationale). Rosefielde's views have been challenged by Wheatcroft and other authors. And so on, and so forth. I agree that each source from this list is authored by some prominent adherent, which means they express at least significant minority views. However, these sources even contradict to each other: for example, Valentino directly contradicts to what Rummel or Courtois say. This is a sufficient ground to say they all are "minority view"
Re hierarchy. The "Proposed causes" section definitely creates a hierarchy: there are separate sections for different common causes, whereas numerous country-specific explanations are moved to the bottom, despite the fact that an overwhelming majority of sources discuss separate causes not only for different countries, but even for different events in the same country, and these events are not necessarily connected. That is definitely a hierarchy, and the actual hierarchy is totally opposite.
Re: Theory. Yes I agree that the explanations are theories. The estimates and the terms, however, are not theories and the aggregation of killing by communist regimes together is not a theory. But I agree those assertions and descriptors are related to the explanation theories.
Re: structure creates impression of majority views: Again, we've covered this ground already and I agree that the single-country/event source estimates should be included in the same estimates section as the aggregate source estimates so that there is no sense of hierarchy. I suspect that the various estimates will not be so different, but we will see.
Re "we don't need to include detailed description of Mkucr. The topic is the views of several scholars and the historical context these views formed." All we need to explain are the facts we can find in reliable sources that relate to the topic. There is no problem with including sections summarizing the various country events (the aggregator sources do this as well). But I want absolutely every sentence in the article to be sourced so that there can be no OR objections to anything from anyone. Can you agree to that?
Re: "In other words, the structure of the article should be totally different. It should be split on topics by author. " That would create exactly what we have been trying to eliminate: a hierarchy of different sections with different views on the same thing. We can certainly go into more detail about each term/estimate, but the various views should be within the same section. The sources themselves do not make these hard delineations between the terms, as proven by their own references.
Re "commonly accepted": I am not saying that these are "majority sources", I was quoting you. We should treat all the sources as "significant minority" views (including the single country/event sources) until we have some commonly accepted reference text to demonstrate otherwise.
Re "The "Proposed causes" section definitely creates a hierarchy". I am not sure this is actually a problem because the subsections ("Ideology", "Political system", Other causes") are not mutually exclusive explanations and are divided for convenience, rather than as different conflicting viewpoints. However, I am sure you can be accommodated if you have a reasonable change to propose. AmateurEditor (talk) 07:03, 20 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Glad to see we a gradually arriving to consensus.
Regrading "That would create exactly what we have been trying to eliminate: a hierarchy..." It seems you don't understand my point. No hierarchy is created in that case, because the subject of the article is not the events, but the claims made by Rummel, Courtois, Malia, Valentino and some other authors who are trying to describe different events in different communist states as parts of a single phenomenon. Actually, we don't need to tell about the Great Purge, Russian Civil war, Great Leap forward famine or Cambodian genocide, because all these events have their own articles. What we do need to tell about are the theories of several authors who claim Communism (as a single phenomenon) killed XXX million people, and that the mechanism of those killings, which took place in different countries, shared some essential common features. We will explain who proposed these theories, what each of those theories is telling about (Courtois make one claim, Valentino says something different), which methodology were used by each author, what was the reaction of other scholars on these theories. In that case, no hierarchy is created, because these theories are the objects of our study: one chapter tells about Rummel, another chapter is about Courtois, etc. However, I agree that may require a very significant modification of the article, so I suggest to think about that later.
Re "But I want absolutely every sentence in the article to be sourced..." Sure. Each claim I make is supported by some reliable source.
Re "the subsections ("Ideology", "Political system", Other causes") are not mutually exclusive explanations..." It IS a problem, because "Proposed causes" should be built in a totally different way, for example: (i) "Proposed causes for Cambodian genocide", (ii) "Proposed causes for Great Leap famine", (iii) "Proposed causes for Great Purge" ... (xx) "Proposed common causes:" (a) ideology, (b) political system, (c) ... Only in that case we can avoid any apparent hierarchy, because there are a lot of sources who discuss proposed causes of separate mass mortality events in separate countries, and the cause is different in each case.--Paul Siebert (talk) 07:40, 20 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
It seems that there are just two sticking points remaining:
The first is that you want to redefine the topic from "Mass killings under communist regimes" to something like "Theories of mass killings under communist regimes". Do you have any RS to justify a change from the topic found in the currently identified sources (the mass killing topic) to this meta-topic? That is, you would need a tertiary source for the mass killing topic (which I thought we agreed we did not yet have) to serve as the secondary source upon which to base the new topic of theories of mass killing. Absent that, the topic should stay the same. It should include both comparisons and contrasts, but they are all to be treated as "significant minority" views (the aggregator sources also include contrasts, by the way, which is why the single country/event sections of the article are necessary even without the single country/event sources).
The second is the meaning of "hierarchy". Here is what WP:STRUCTURE says: "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.[1] It may also create an apparent hierarchy of fact where details in the main passage appear "true" and "undisputed", whereas other, segregated material is deemed "controversial", and therefore more likely to be false. Try to achieve a more neutral text by folding debates into the narrative, rather than isolating them into sections that ignore or fight against each other." I thought you were saying that the "Proposed causes" section creates a hierarchy because it has different sub-sections devoted to different common explanations (ideology, political system, other) but now you seem to be saying that there should be different subsections for each communist regime as well as the existing separate common causes section/subsection. Either this is a hierarchy or it is not, but your proposal is the same as the existing setup in that respect. AmateurEditor (talk) 17:05, 20 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Do I have sources? Of course, I do. There are just few texts that say about "Communist mass killing" (Democide etc) as some single phenomenon, whereas overwhelming majority of sources discuss these events separately. And we don't need any tertiary sources to make such a conclusion. I mean, we DO need a tertiary source to write in the article some general statement like "majority of authors focus on single country events and do not see commonalities" (otherwise it would be an original research). However, as soon as we are not going to make such a statement explicitly, it would be absolutely in agreement with our NOR policy to organise the article in such the way I described previously; that means no tertiary source of that kind is needed in that case.
The current section creates an apparent hierarchy because it implies that "Proposed causes" mean "Proposed causes for Mkucr as a general phenomenon". Indeed, the "Ideology" section implies that a single ideology was a common cause for all mass killing. The "political system" section implies the same. "Other causes" implies that some single country experts are trying to propose more specific explanations, but that are just minority views. In contrast, the structure proposed by me describes the causes for Russia, for China, for Cambodia, etc, and then it describe attempts to provide more general explanation of these events. I see no hierarchy here, because Russia-specific section does not create a false impression that it represents majority views, whereas China-specific section represents minority views. With regard to country-specific vs general causes, there is no hierarchy either: the hierarchy is created when we present a general theory first. The reason is simple: when some topic is explained by some universally accepted theory, the description of this theory goes first, and more specific cases/exceptions are discussed later. In contrast, when no commonly accepted theory exists, or there are even several competing theories (as in our case), then the correct way to present the material is to describe specific cases and then to discuss all attempted generalisations at the very end of the section. Therefore, since the structure of the section corresponds to the first type, it creates a false impression that the general explanation presented there represents majority views. In reality, we have several competing and, sometimes, mutually exclusive general views (thus, Valentino claims ideology plays no role, and that is a general, not country-specific view). Therefore, the "Ideology" subsection should be renamed to "Discussion of the role of ideology" (because that section should discuss pro et contra: there are some authors that argue that ideology played no role, some authors even argue ideology prevented some mass killings) and be moved to the bottom. Not only that creates no false hierarchy, it is the only rational way to organise information from the whole body of existing sources: we describe what were the causes of mass killings in different countries according to country experts, and then we discuss the attempts to make generalisations, and we present the information in such a way that a reader gets a correct impression that these attempts are (i) not commonly accepted (ii) they are more competing with each other than complementing each other; (iii) sometimes they are mutually inconsistent. --Paul Siebert (talk) 20:16, 20 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I really think we need to lay out the sources you have identified on the dumping ground page before deciding the most effective way to organize them. The current sections are based on the sources used so far. I am not interested in defining the structure prior to having the material in hand that we will be structuring, since the article is supposed to be based on the sources, rather than the other way around. I also want to bring this extremely long discussion to an end and move toward actual edits and article talk page consensus, if needed. AmateurEditor (talk) 21:04, 20 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
"It seems you dramatically misunderstand that. The article structure is determined not based on some reliable source, it is determined by our policy. Moreover, no source can serve as a base for the article's structure, unless we have an unequivocal proof that this source is non-controversial and universally accepted by a scholarly community. None of the sources in this article meet this criterion. Thus, the Black Book is universally considered as a very controversial source (even its contributors disagree with each other), Valentino rejects any contribution of ideology (which means the whole section in this article directly contradicts to what he says), Rummel uses a questionable statistical apparatus and obsolete sources, etc. In that sense, your claim about "an objective method of determining a neutral structure that is based on reliable sources " is actually a desire to set some hierarchy of sources, which does not exists in reality. That means your position is a direct violation of out policy."
Here is my understanding of WP:STRUCTURE and WP:WEIGHT at WP:NPOV (please tell me where I am wrong by quoting the policy sentences that contradict me):
The structure policy does not tell us what we must do and just tells us what we should not do. In particular, it says to not create separate sections in the article devoted to a particular POV, such as having a section saying that the famines were deliberate and a separate section saying that the famines were natural or accidental. Instead, we should have a single section that discusses the disagreements with regards to the famines and incorporates all views in a single narrative. The "hierarchy of fact" is created by having one POV section come before another POV section discussing the same thing, it is not created by having a single section with all POVs incorporated together. The current absence of certain POV statements (that is, the criticisms) is a result of no one bothering to add them yet, rather than something being wrong with the structure of the article. In the absence of direct guidance for the order of the sections, we should try to imitate the structure of our sources (plural) for this topic, by which I mean the aggregator sources on which the article's existence rests. That is why I want to have the terminology section first, then the estimates, then the rest.
The due and undue weight policy says that all "significant" viewpoints should be represented in proportion to their prominence in the body of reliable sources. "Significant" is a reference to the WP:GNG policy, which says it means "more than a trivial mention, but it does not need to be the main topic of the source material." This is an extremely inclusive policy. And since we have been erring on the side of caution in our article already by assuming that each source is a minority view that required attribution to the author directly (so that correct proportion is considered to be equality among all sources), I think this policy is being met at present. That is, all the sources are being treated as "significant minorities" (rather than a "small minority" such as flat earth advocates), including the critics. That means there is no "majority viewpoint" for us to distinguish from the "minority viewpoints" (in the language of the policy), although we still need to keep in mind the issues of undue weight stemming from "depth of detail, quantity of text, prominence of placement, juxtaposition of statements and imagery". Such issues are endlessly debatable in all but the most obvious imbalances (such as round earth versus flat earth) and reasonable people can certainly disagree in our case, so we should try to be generally accommodating of other editors' opinions if for no other reason than to avoid endless debate. AmateurEditor (talk) 04:04, 10 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
To demonstrate your misunderstanding, let me select just one thesis:
"Instead, we should have a single section that discusses the disagreements with regards to the famines and incorporates all views in a single narrative."
Actually, a situation is totally different. There is no any significant disagreement with regards to the famines. In reality, there is a disagreement about Holodomor, which was a part of Soviet famine of 1933: some authors believe it was a genocide, others think it was a strategic blunder. Overwhelming majority of other famines are considered as a man-made disaster (in the same way as Bengal famine, which is not considered an example of "capitalist/imperialist mass killing", despite the fact that it was a result of Churchill's criminal neglect, and it was not a FAD famine, but an entitlement famine (according to Sen's classification)). That means, to write about some "debates" means to give an undue weight to a handful of freaks who call it "mass killing". Neutrality policy requires us to neutrally describe these events and then to add that some authors (X, Y, Z, concrete names) believe these famines were mass killings.
Why is it important? The structure proposed by you implies that there are two groups of authors: the group A believe all famines were "Communist mass killings", the group B disagrees with that, and these is a dispute between there two groups. In reality, the situation is different: besides A and B, there is a group C. The authors from this group totally ignore this dispute as marginal: they are real experts, and they study famine not in terms of "was it mass killing of democide" or " was it a FAD famine or entitlement famine?" They are real experts, they use much more neutral and professional language, their views are very important and directly relevant to the subject, but it is impossible to include them into this section because they do not participate in these debates. That is a demonstration of how an amateurish and superficial approach does not allows us to create a good content and discredits Wikipedia.
In general, the article should be a description of "population losses" in communist states, followed by a description of theories of few theorists who call some or all those population losses "mass killing", "democide" etc.
By having said that, I need to explain that the events that are universally considered as mass killings (Great Purge, Khmer Rouge genocide and few others) should be described as such. However, a Russian Civil war is not considered as mass killings by majority of authors, so it should be described neutrally, and only after that, at the end of the article, we should add that Courtois combines all civil was victims (from both sides) into a "Communist death toll", and this approach has been criticised by authors X, Y, and Z.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:38, 10 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Yes and no. It seems your understanding of this policy is correct, but your application of this policy to this particular case is wrong. Going back to my above example, it would be absolutely correct to have a separate section for debates about famine, had these debates been a significant part of a scholarly discourse. Moreover, there is one example when a whole article is devoted to such debates, Holodomor genocide question. Yes, separate conferences are devoted to that issue. However, Volga famine, or Great Chinese famine, or other events of that kind are not a subject of such debates. Therefore, you mistake was not in understanding our policy, but in the application of it to the events you are writing about. We cannot write: "Mkucr included famine victims, although this question is a subject of debates." We must write what majority of mainstream sources say: there were population losses due to man-made famine in several communist states, USSR, PRC, Cambodia; majority of famine were a mixed result of strategic blunders and natural factors; there are debates about Holodomor (if it was genocide or not); in addition to that, Valentino calls famines "deprivational mass killings", Rosefielde describes it as a part of "Red Holocaust", Couirtois includes them in a total "Communist deaths toll".
In other words, in a situation when only few author make general claims, whereas majority prefers to use more neutral language, a correct way to apply our policy would be: 1. Describe what happened in neutral words. 2. Describe opinia of few authors who use more passionate language and 3. Put the claims of those authors in a proper context.
Are you saying there are no disputes about responsibility for the Great Chinese Famine deaths? I seem to remember you in particular arguing that the Great Chinese Famine was part of the normal pattern of Chinese history. I don't believe your characterization of what is mainstream and what is not. Maybe what we should do is create a breakdown of each of the sources (order of sub-topics, sources used to contribute to their estimates, etc) on the dumping ground page so that we have a common set of facts to refer to. That might also help us in creating a table of estimates. AmateurEditor (talk) 22:15, 10 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I was referring to the articles by Comrac O'Grada, a renown expert in famines. He writes that China was desperately poor (more poor that most African countries), and devastating famine was a routine event in in China, and that the Great Chinese famine was even not the most devastating in relative figures (earlier famines killed less number of people, but the size of China population was smaller). I didn't say that famine was "normal", I meant famine was not something outstanding.
O'Grada thinks the Great Chinese famine was man-made (some other authors argue it was partially a natural disaster), and that the provinces that were most affected by that famine were exactly the same provinces that suffered from previous famines. What is more important, the articles about that famine discuss a degree of responsibility of the Communist leadership, but an overwhelming majority of these articles even do not mention any debates of the question if that famine was a mass killing/genocide/democide or not. From the point of view of these authors, the "mass killing/genocide/democide" question is not existing. If you want, just compare this (about 1,140 results) and that (6 results). Isn't it impressive? in the second list, the last reference is especially good: the book's title is Atheism kills. I am not blaming you in anything, but do you realise what kind of views are you (unknowingly) advocating?
We can continue. Look at this (13 results) (I am typing in a real time, I don't know what will the gscholar show when I type, and I am going to show it to you even if the results will be different from what I expect). However, this search gave just 16 hits.
Anyway, if you neutrally search for sources, for example, using this search. It shows all what was written by reasonably good sources on that subject in last 13 years. Read these articles, especially Chen's, Xiao's, O'Grada's (Dikotter is somewhat questionable, I read reviews on his book, and there seem to be some issues with it).
When you read these sources you will see there is no dispute about responsibility of Chinese government for the Great Chinese famine deaths: all authors agree the Communist government was responsible. However, there is no dispute over intentionality either: most authors see it as a dramatic strategic blunder. Noone calls it "mass killing/democide"--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:22, 10 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Your point about the famine sources not mentioning the genocide/democide/mass killing debate is the same point you were making before about the single-country sources not mentioning the wider topic and it still has the same problems: sources not about the wider topic in particular should not be expected to address the wider topic and that they do not does not necessarily mean anything. That you do not see them using "mass killing" or "democide" or whatever term in google searches is disappointing, but nothing new. Google searches have been troublesome for this article in particular because of the lack of a consensus term for the topic (in dramatic contrast to the Holocaust, for example). Believe me, I have been frustrated in this regard, since I like to use Google Scholar and Google Books searches. And I fully accept that Mkucr is not a hugely popular topic in academia (genocide studies is also not very widespread and most of the academic sources are a part of that), but it does exist there as well as in the wider/popular discourse. We should be trying to reflect the weight of sub-topics like famines in the body of reliable sources about the topic itself, meaning the aggregator sources and those that respond to them/criticize them. The current famines section of the article does show sourced statements for disputes over more than just the Holodomor. And as to "Noone calls it "mass killing/democide"", Rummel did not include the Great Chinese Famine deaths in his democide total until reading Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China and Mao: the Unknown Story. Then he decided he should have included them, but you decided to remove his revised estimate that included those deaths from the article. I think you should not have done that, by the way. About me inadvertently advocating views like that "Atheism kills" book, the book is not used in the article, but the article does have the view that attributes the horrific results of Communism and Nazism in the twentieth century to atheism in the "Other causes" section, which I also think should stay. Maybe we should try to agree on our readings of the reliable sources policy as well, since that seems to be a sticking point between us. However, I really do not want to endless conversation. Lets agree to disagree on our own personal views, stick to a strict and literal interpretation of Wikipedia's policies, and try to work within those limitations to improve the article, preferably in a way that can be done incrementally. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:41, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
1. Re "sources about a wider topic" What do you mean? Does it mean that each famine taken separately is not "democide", but all famine taken together are "democide"? How can it be possible? Can a general theorist whose major methodology is to find correlations be a better expert that a historian who studies some particular event is all details? Do you know that "correlation does not mean causation"? What are you saying actually means that the wider topic is not considered as the topic by experts in each particular country. That raises a question if this topic exists at all.
2. Re "that you do not see them using "mass killing" or "democide" or whatever term in google searches is disappointing" It can be "disappointing" only to those who are writing Wikipedia keeping in mind some POV. If you are neutral, the only thing that is disappointing is the lack of good sources on some subject. In our case, we have a lot of sources, and if they say not what you or I expect, that can neither disappoint nor encourage any neutral editor.
3. Re "Google searches have been troublesome for this article in particular because of the lack of a consensus term for the topic" Not "google", but "google scholar". The lack of consensus is an indication that there is a problem with the topic, and I cannot understand why you cannot understand that. Everything is fine with google scholar search: it gives a lot of hits, but these hits are different from what you expect. There is a problem with your expectations, not with google scholar: as soon as you understand that, the gscholar search will immediately stop being disappointing.
4. Re "but the article does have the view that attributes the horrific results of Communism and Nazism in the twentieth century to atheism in the "Other causes" section, which I also think should stay." Actually, Nazi were, by and large, Christians. I also agree that the story about comparison of Nazist and Communist mass killing should stay, I would even expand it. However, we have to tell a full story: who, why and with what purpose are trying to draw this analogy, and what does scholarly community think about that. In general, this story should become one of focal points of the article, which, in my opinion, should be primarily about few theories of "Communist mass killings".
5. That your post is an indication of some fundamental problem with your approach. For example, when I want to make an impression about the some topic, I make a neutral google scholar search and select several well cited sources from the top of the list (of course, if they are relevant to the topic). That allows me to understand what scholarly community think on the subject. If I see that the sources I found allow me to write some reasonable text, I start writing, and I am trying to do my best to describe what the sources say.
In contrast to me, you are trying to write about the topic that is essentially non-existing in scholarly literature. As a result, you have to pick separate chapters from monographs that are devoted to a different subject, to use questionable or outdated sources, and to leave tons and tons of good sources beyond the scope (or cherry-pick them). The problem is not in your bad faith (I am sure you are a good faith editor), the problem is that you are writing the article based on an intrinsically flawed concept. As a result, "the material resist to your efforts": you cannot find good and universal terminology, a google scholar search gives discouraging results, ets. As a rule, when I encounter such a problem, I quit, because that means I am pushing a wrong concept.
Meanwhile, we could write a very good article based on the whole body of available sources. The only obstacle to that is your refusal to understand that your vision of the article is deeply flawed.--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:50, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I added numbers to your paragraphs for convenience in responding.
1. It means that any subject has constituent parts and the study of those constituent parts may use different terms. We would not necesarilly expect a study of a particular famine to reference other famines or other countries or any other larger scope phenomenon, such as communist mass killing. We would certainly not expect it to use "democide" when that is not even a consensus term in the wider topics of communist mass killing or mass killing in general. Re: " What are you saying actually means that the wider topic is not considered as the topic by experts in each particular country. That raises a question if this topic exists at all." What that raises is the question of why we would be using those single-country/single-event sources to determine weight or structure in the article about a topic they do not address. If a topic does not appear in a source, then that source should have no bearing on how the article about that topic is structured.
2. It is disappointing because it makes things more difficult for us. A widely-used consensus term would make this much easier for everyone. As it is, there is no consensus term and the sources we have for the topic address that issue directly, so the article must also address it, as it tries to do in the Terminology section. As an aside, I make no apology for having my own points of view. I have tried to be transparent about them on my userpage, even though that is not required. No one is objective and we all have biases and points of view. That doesn't mean we can't edit create a neutral article with other editors or even on our own. I stand by all my edits as attempts to represent the sources neutrally.
3. Yes, the lack of consensus does indicate a problem with the topic, and we should accurately reflect that problem in the article, as described by our sources who acknowledge the lack of consensus themselves.
4. It sounds like we might be in agreement here. (I don't want to open up a tangent discussion here at all, but I think this is an accurate explanation of the relationship between Nazism and Christianity.) But if you want the article to be "primarily about few theories of "Communist mass killings"", a more meta-topic, then you need sources that describe it that way.
5. I am trying to write about the topic according to Wikipedia policies, such as the General Notability Guideline. It says "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list. "Significant coverage" addresses the topic directly and in detail, so that no original research is needed to extract the content. Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention, but it does not need to be the main topic of the source material." This is entirely consistent with the dedicated chapters on communist killing supporting an article, as I believe you agree with. Where we seem to disagree is in the influence of sources that address just part of that topic and the meaning of them not addressing the general topic of communist killing at all. AmateurEditor (talk) 18:41, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
5. Mkucr does deserve a separate article, and I never claimed the opposite. However, that does not mean the article's structure should be built based on one or several "aggregator source". Aggregator sources are needed just to demonstrate the topic as whole does exist. It cannot and should not be considered top level courses when a decision is being made about article's structure.
I'll wait. But if you don't want to structure the article on the sources that directly address the topic, I don't know how it can be done in a way that avoids original research. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:08, 13 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Different sources address the topic differently, and many of them see more differences than commonalities (see my answer in the previous section), whereas majority of them ignore commonalities at all. Even if the article will be a collection of separate and loosely connected stories of different communist countries, supplemented by the story about attempted generalizations, such an article will have a right to exist, and it will contain less original research that it contains now. --Paul Siebert (talk) 06:05, 13 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I don't want to distract you from responding to the other points above, but I think the root of our disagreement at this point is that you think the single-country sources should be the basis of the article's structure (even though they do not provide any kind of structure) and I think that the aggregator sources should be the model for the structure, which is as it is currently, if imperfectly. Do you agree that that is the root issue here? AmateurEditor (talk) 02:26, 15 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I think you understand me incorrectly. The very fact that the Mkucr article exists means that due weight is given to general sources. The structure of the article should be.
Intro/lead (that mass killings took place in some communist states; that is in accordance with such sources as BB or Rosefielde)
Country-specific sections. Note, single-country sources define only the structure of sections about their own countries, which should be quite in accordance with our policy).
Attempted generalizations (and their discussion), including global estimates.
Not only that structure is not a violation of out policy, this is the only structure that would be in agreement with all three content policies. Indeed, do we discuss Mkucr as whole? Yes, the whole article is devoted to that subject. Do we discuss Mkucr in general? Yes we do (in a separate section). However, the remaining part of the article should be a realm of country-specific sources. If you see any contradiction with our policy here, let's ask for a third opinion on a relevant noticeboard.--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:41, 15 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Re: 1. Yes. For those scholars who study, for example, the Great Chinese famine, it is not "democide", but a strategic blunder (or something else, opinia are different). How can it be possible? Because Rummel's "theory" is not accepted by country experts: they neither accept nor reject it, they just ignore it. And that may serve as an additional evidence that the "Terminology" section is redundant and misleading.
Re: 2. It makes things difficult only for those who wants to push minority views. For me, there is absolutely not a problem to write this article (I described a correct scheme in my previous post).
Re: 3. No. Sometimes, the lack of consensus manifests itself not in an open dispute, but in two groups of authors who ignore each other. The sources who ignore the Mkucr topic, but write about, for example, the Great Chinese famine, should be duly reflected, and the scheme I propose does it very adequately.
Re; 4. Yes, I have a several sources that discuss this topic. However, I think it would be sufficient to discuss it in the last section (in the scheme that I discussed in the previous post).--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:51, 15 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I will respond to your last two posts together.
1. "Opinia are different". Yes they are, which is why you need to present these other opinions/sources before trying to get anyone to agree with how you have characterized them as a group. Lets assemble all the sources on the dumping ground page to get a common understanding of them.
2. Just because academic sources for a topic are not easy to google (or google scholar, or whatever) does not mean they are promoting a minority view. In this case, it just indicates a lack of consensus about terms for a common view that communist regimes in general killed lots of non-combatants.
3. I don't think a lack of consensus among academic sources is ever manifested by two groups of sources that ignore each other. Instead, ignoring each other means the sources do not think they are talking about the same topic. Assuming that a dispute exists because of a lack of discourse is original research.
4. Ok, so present those sources on the dumping ground page.
5/scheme. For you, Paul, and for the sake of consensus-building, I can certainly live with a structure of 1) Intro/lead, 2) Country-specific sections, 3) Attempted generalizations, rather than the current 1), 3), 2) structure, but I would rather not because it seems to have no rationale other than suppressing the generalizations. You will need to present very compelling evidence of the generalizations warranting that to convince anyone else, I think. You should do that on the dumping ground page prior to making your case to everyone else. AmateurEditor (talk) 04:40, 16 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Re #1. I would prefer to come to some strategic agreement first, otherwise that will be a waste of our time.
Re #2. Google scholar ranks sources according to citations and relevance. If you are trying to find sources on some topic, gscholar gives you the most prominent and relevant sources. That is why it is important.
By the way, if you want a reliable source to support this my statement, here it is. This is the article in a peer-reviewed journal that studies how we Wikipedians deal with sources. This article writes, among other users, about me, and the opinion of the author is that my approach is quite adequate:
"Paul Siebert constructs himself as a model information searcher (according to his user page he has a PhD so this is perhaps not so surprising). He claims no biases, uses the information technology of choice for Wikipedia editors (Google Scholar) and applies the criteria of peer-review as a means to filter potential information sources. And the sources he finds I think would be viewed by the majority of librarians or scholars as decent enough."
See, the fact that my approach towards identification of sources is recognized as adequate by a reliable source. That means you are supposed to treat my arguments more seriously: what I am saying (about me) is directly supported by a reliable source (the author, Brendan Luyt, has authored 85 publications, and he has been cited several hundred times, so he looks like a serious scholar), whereas what you say is just your own speculations, not supported by any reliable source.
My main approach can be formulated as follows. Let's assume I am an absolutely neutral Wikipedian who decided to write some article from scratch and has no preliminary knowledge of the subject but a vague information about the words "genocide", "mass killing", "Great Purge", "Stalinism", "Khmer Rouge" and others? What sources will I find about "mass killing under communist regimes" using google scholar, and how can I be sure my search procedure is not biased, and the sources I found adequately reflect what does scholarly community think on that subject? Obviously, to do that, I have to try different sets of key words, and then to compare the results of this search. I can show you what I get, but I think it would be good if you tried that by yourself. Try to play a "neutral Wikipedian" and write what sources have you obtained.
One important advantage of my approach is that it is totally transparent and objective: thus, if you find some set of sources and I think this set is incomplete or biased, I will not say: "Your sources are bad", instead, I'll say: "A set of your keywords is biased, because (and then I'll provide my rationale), so the set of sources you found is biased too". I may propose my modification of the keyword set, and if you agree, then we get the list of sources for our work. If you are not you propoe a modification of my set, and, after several iterations, we come to an agreement about a neutral set of keywords, we will get a common set of sources, and their prominence will be roughly determined by google ranking. (Sometimes, this ranking is not a good indicatior per se, because some sourcecan be highly ranked for some different reason: thus, Rummel's "Death by government" has a very large number of citations, however, in the overwhelming majority cases it is cited in a context of his general "democide" theory, not in a context of Mkucr. Therefore, the analysis of sources should consider not only "how many times it was cited?", but "by whom, and it what context?")
There are some other tricks in this procedure, but I would prefer to talk about that after you have played a "neutral Wikipedian" and described me what you found. --Paul Siebert (talk) 05:30, 16 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Re 3. If you think Wheatcroft thinks he is not talking about the same topic as Valentino, then we need to think how can these two topics be separated. Speaking seriously, a situation is different: two groups of authors write about the same topic (for example, Stalinism), but they write about it totally differently: there is no open dispute, but their descriptions of this topic are mutually inconsistent. By presenting the second group of author as "supplementary" (because they prefer to focus on some specific events) and the first group as a basic sources (because their scope is wider, although the approach is more superficial) one commits a sine of POV-pushing.
Re 4. Same as #1.
Re 5. I would say, not "suppressing the generalizations", but giving a due weight to country-specific sources. There is actually a direct contradiction between "general theories" and single-country explanations, and by giving an undue weight to superficial writers like Courtois, and by demoting real experts to the rank of "supplementary sources" you overemphasize these general theories, so it is absolutely necessary to suppress them to achieve a balance.--Paul Siebert (talk) 06:17, 16 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Take you time. And try to play a "neutral Wikipedian" game: I am always doing that before I start to work on some subject. I am not neutral, and I concede I have some strong POV. However, playing this "neutral Wikipedian" game allows me to understand what a neutral description of some subject should be. If it roughly coincides with my POV, I start working on this subject, if it is not, I quit. I never edit some article when I feel my POV strongly contradicts to what majority of reliable sources say.--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:45, 17 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
My approach to participating in this article was different. I was actively looking for an article to work on that was more active with other editors because I was still pretty new at that point and had had very little interaction with other editors in the articles I had edited until then. The dispute over the name "Communist genocide" had caused the article to be flagged by some website that ranked Wikipedia articles by edit rate (an edit war was going on at the time) and it caught my attention because I was familiar with the 100 million killed figure for Communism from various (non-academic) sources from years prior. In fact, I remember having looked for a similar Wikipedia article years earlier to get more information about it and being frustrated that I could not find one. I decided to participate to both learn about how Wikipedia worked and also to contribute to what I saw as a useful article not being deleted. Participating in the talk page discussions and deletion discussion gave me much more incentive than I ever would have had otherwise to wade through all the policy and guideline pages. On the other hand, it has also given me much more appreciation for the virtues of editing alone.
I also have a different perspective on how to determine weight in an article. I think your google scholar search technique can be a useful first step in finding sources (I certainly use it all the time to find sources), but I have no idea how google scholar comes up with its results. I don't want to say its results represent something like the "majority view" because that presumes several things: 1, that the search was of a complete (or representative) data set; 2, that the algorithm returned an accurate ranking of what it was asked to return (academic search engine optimization does exist); and 3, that the search terms used were sufficient to produce the wanted result (terminology is particularly difficult for this topic). The most important problem with using google scholar to determine weight however, is that we have policy guidance on determining majority/minority views and they depend on us sourcing such statements. From WP:WEIGHT:
"Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represents all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources.[3]" This means that, excluding fringe minority views (flat-earth equivalents), articles should be comprehensive accounts of all viewpoints, with more space being given to the majority view. As for determining the majority view, we have this guidance, also from WP:WEIGHT:
"If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts;
"If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents;
"If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small minority, it does not belong on Wikipedia, regardless of whether it is true or you can prove it, except perhaps in some ancillary article."
This means that, absent a majority view being sourced explicitly to a "commonly accepted reference text", we treat all the non-fringe views as "significant minority" views. You have been arguing that, instead, we can add up the number of sources who aggregate or do not aggregate the communist regimes and use that to determine the majority/minority distinction, even if the single-country/event sources do not assert any view on the aggregation issue at all. I am saying that the NPOV policy indicates that we need a tertiary source saying what the majority/minority distinction is (if there is one) before imposing that on the article.
Re 1 & 4. I don't think adding your sources to the dumping ground page would be a waste of your time. It would help us both understand what is being discussed in detail.
Re 2. See my comments on determining weight based on policy above. I read the article you were mentioned in (congratulations, by the way!) and it agrees that the specific sources you identified via google scholar were "decent enough", but it does not say the technique you propose is a good way to determine weight in a Wikipedia article (and even if it did, we would need to follow Wikipedia policies anyway). The article includes a statement on how Wikipedians look at sources which I think is accurate/policy-driven: "Wikipedia editors, at least for many history articles, look at sources as interchangeable “mines” of factual information, rather than as literary instruments aimed to persuade readers of the truthfulness of their claims (Luyt and Tan, 2010)." By collecting all the facts found in reliable sources, including facts about "significant minority" views or opinions, we can create a comprehensive factual article despite our own personal biases. I am not advocating for my "own speculations", I am trying to do exactly the opposite and follow the rules.
Re 3. I can't say how Wheatcroft and Valentino relate to each other without the specific sources/statements you are referring to. This should be laid out in the dumping ground page so we do not have to speak in generalities and can make some progress.
Re 5. Please show me which sources directly contradict which sources on the dumping ground page. As much as I like you, I am not going to just take your word for it and you shouldn't expect me to. AmateurEditor (talk) 05:39, 19 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I think "to learn how Wikipedia worked" cannot be a primary reason for participating in a work on some article. Your second reason (to contribute to a useful article) looks more serious. I myself see a primary reason of my participation as follows. I don't like journalism and other superficial writings. And I realized that there is a huge gap between what scientific or scholarly articles say on some subject and how popular books, journals, newspapers and films describe the same subject. I sincerely cannot understand why Wikipedia articles about nuclear physics or molecular biology are based on serious scientific papers and not popular books, but history articles rely heavily on newspaper articles, bestseller books authored by politically biased authors, etc, despite a fact that a lot of good scholarly articles is written on that account. My goal is to restore a balance, and this task is especially difficult in this case.
The first thing I start with is to understand for myself what happened in reality. And that is a totally different approach than majority of users who are working on the Mkucr use. I have a strong feeling that many of them have some strong POV, and their main goal is to find as many sources as possible to support it. In contrast, although I do have some POV, I am trying to find all relevant sources on some subject. Thus, when I decided to create an impression of what scholars think about the BB, I looked through ALL reviews on this book that I was able to find in jstor.org. It was a comprehensive and neutral search, which means any good faith user without any POV (or with a different POV) would have found the same sources had they decided to answer the same question.
This is a very important point: I didn't look specifically for a positive or negative reviews on the BB, I took ALL reviews that I was able to find using a neutral search in jstor, and that gave me a summary of what do scholars think about this book.' (Of course, there are, possibly, other reviews of this book, but if I look for such reviews using some biased procedure, the picture would be distorted: reviews published in some leftist journal of web site would be negative, conservative media would provide more positive reviews, but it is not clear in that situation how could a balance be achieved. In contrast, my search gives a representative sample of what scholars think about the BB. Importantly, any user can repeat my search and make sure I was neither cheating nor cherry-picking.)
A search of information in various databases is a part of my professional skills (I am a scientist), and I know how to do a comprehensive search. I know that in my area of research, I do a literature search quite well (otherwise there is a risk to waste my time doing a research of the subject that has already been studied and reported by others. That is a luxury I cannot afford, that is why my search is, as a rule, comprehensive.)
When you are doing a literature search, a key factor is the correct choice of keywords. As a rule, different sets of keywords should be used, and one of indicators of a good search is when after two or more different search procedures you obtain similar sets of sources. In addition, a search phrase cannot be biased, because in that case you get what you expect to see, but the set of sources will be incomplete. For example, by searching for "evil deeds of Communism" you get a lot of sources, but the works of leading historians of the USSR will not be in this list. When you search for communist mass killings, you get different results. When you look for stalinist repressions, you get a third set of sources. However, I believe you will agree all of them are writing about the same phenomenon. However, when you read the sources from each of three groups, you see that they write different things about the same topic (in our case, the USSR). What can we do in this situation?
One solution is, for example, to say: "Well, I want to write about mass killings, and I include only those sources that use the term "mass killing"". That approach is good, provided that the topic, as you defined it, is a majority view. However, for this topic to be a majority view, the core reference texts you are using should be commonly accepted (#1 from your list). Is Rummel commonly accepted? No (taking into account criticism, and taking into account that his figures for the USSR are not used by specialists: they are even not used in the Gulag article, although lion's share of "democide death toll" were camp deaths). Is Courtois commonly accepted? No. I provided convincing and exhaustive evidences it is a provocative and highly controversial text. Is Valentino commonly accepted? No. First, his concept directly contradicts to what Courtois say (he denies the role of ideology in mass killings). As the result, the main body of reference texts you use to shape the article (they set the topic, as you yourself say) are not commonly accepted, so they belong to the minority views at most. Not only they contradict to what country experts say, they even contradict to each other.
The major flaw in your approach is that you are trying to work with the topic that you defined in advance, before you have read the whole body of sources on that subject. That is a big mistake: how can you be sure you define a topic correct if you don't know all what has been written on that account?
You correctly mentioned the problem with "Communist genocide": the problem with this article started when some users took a clear case of genocide in Cambodia and decided to expand it to all mass mortality events in communist states, using far right sources. That is a pure case of biased editing when some pre-defined topic is being expanded despite the fact that the reference texts on that subject are not commonly accepted, and many other sources that deal with the same subject are ignored or used tendentiously.
I see only two ways to fix this problem. The first one I already described: since the reference texts the article is currently based upon are not commonly accepted (they represent minority views, probably significant minority), we discuss there views (and don't pretend they are telling some universal truth). The second approach is collect all information about these events (including the information from single-country sources) and to redefine the topic and article's structure to adequately reflect what all these sources say. By the way, that is in an absolute agreement with our policy, and that is not a synthesis. --Paul Siebert (talk) 07:26, 19 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
PS. Regarding your notion about Rummel and famine. Yes, you are right, Rummel does not include famine (except the 1933 Soviet famine) in the ""democide" deaths toll". However, that is not the reason to speak about "revised estimates" in the way you did. He didn't "revise" estimates, he just added the Great Leap famine figures to his ridiculously high old numbers. All scholars, including even Robert Conquest, revised their estimates after the archival revolution, but Rummel persistently refuse to do that, despite the fact that his data directly contradict even to universally accepted demographic evidences (much less people died prematurely in the USSR than were "killed" in Gulag, according to Rummel). In connection to that, it is not a surprise that Rummel published his "revised" data in some very questionable source. Do you sincerely don't understand this is a real bullshit, and our reader benefited when it was removed from the article?--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:21, 19 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
In general, the whole topic is a big cheating. If we leave a ultra-libertarian Rummel beyond the scope and focus on Courtois, Malia and similar writers, their main point is not to show a real situation in communist states, but to push the idea that Communism was greater evil than Nazism. To demonstrate this point, they are playing with numbers, and this game is deeply flawed from the methodological point of view. The first flaw is that communist states controlled much greater population for a much longer period of time. Therefore, the conclusion that Communism was more deadly that Nazism is similar to the conclusion that Ford is much more deadly car than Ferrari (there were much more fatal incidents where Ford cars were involved in).
The second flaw is that it is implicitly assumed Communists came to prosperous and peaceful countries and unleashed a manslaughter. That works for Nazi (which came to power in a relatively peaceful and civilised Europe where no mass killing would have occurred without them). However, the worst cases of mass killing occurred in the communist states which were desperately poor (Cambodia, China) or where a very high social tensions were steadily growing up (Cambodia, China, Russia). For example, in China, mass killings occurred under Chiang regime also, and a devastating famine happened in mid 1940s and earlier. In Russia, tensions between peasants and landlords were extremely strong, as Werth noted, and am massive campaign of attacks of landlords started even before Communists came to power in Russia. In Cambodia, the roots of violence come from the long colonial history of this country, and massive US bombing campaign greatly contributed to anti-Vietnamese and anti-urban moods and eventually led to the genocide. Moreover, all these regimes came to power after long and bloody civil wars (in contrast to Nazi, who came to power without any bloodletting), which means the society saw violence as a normal way to resolve all problems. A civil war in China was long and bloody, and Courtois includes all civil war deaths into the communist death toll. Meanwhile, the prison camps in China were established by nationalists, not communists; communists started to use them when they came to power, and the only change was that prisoners were not comunists, but nationalists. Killing of landlords in China had nothing in common with murdering of peaceful Jews in Europe: it was a continuation of a civil war, when landlords were actually local feudals who had a real power and local armies. Disregard of human life was something absolutely normal in pre-communist China or Cambodia, and even Russia, so communists brought nothing new. All of that is ignored by Courtois, who, as many French intellectuals, is suffering from Vichy syndrome. That is why the BB is extremely popular especially in Central Europe, especially in the countries that collaborated with Nazi during the WWII. --Paul Siebert (talk) 18:50, 19 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia's goal with its articles is to include all the non-fringe viewpoints. We do not have a "commonly accepted reference text"/tertiary source for what is the majority view, so we correctly treat all views (even the single country/event sources) as "significant minority" views. Your comprehensive search skills are useful insofar as they identify additional facts for inclusion. Working with a topic that was defined prior to identifying all sources is not a mistake, it is unavoidable (and has been the case for every Wikipedia article, although most don't have the terminology issues that this topic has). There is no reason to exclude Rummel (or his "bullshit" conclusions) as long as they meet the RS criteria, which they do. Your views on the needed context for the events can be included if they can be referenced to some RS, but we should not prejudge how the article must develop. The full picture will emerge with the gradual accumulation of sourced statements. There is no deadline and the article will never actually be finished. AmateurEditor (talk) 07:33, 20 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
One more point. I disagree with your statement that all sources we are discussing represent minority views. Actually, some topics are much less controversial than others. Thus, there is almost no controversy about Cambodiam genocide (the death toll is known very precosely, the causes have been thoroughly analysed; interestingly, even Soviet or Vietamese sources agree with that). Great Purge is also very non-controversial subject; Gulag has been studied pretty well, and most authors came to a consensus about the nature of political persecutions in teh USSR and about the number of victims, as well as about the overall population losses in the USSR. There is much more controversy over the interpretation of other events, for example, Civil war, famine, etc. Much less is known about China (both because it is still more closed society, and because the statistical system in that country was in a very bad shape). Therefore, some part of the material should be presented with a great level of confidence, whereas other part should be described as controversial. --Paul Siebert (talk) 20:43, 20 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I was saying that we should treat them all as "significant minority" views in terms of Wikipedia's policy, not that they are actually minority views. But I think we can both agree that how we characterize the facts/opinions in the article should be directly based on what sourcing we have, rather than our personal views. AmateurEditor (talk) 20:52, 20 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
My personal view is that the sources I have represent majority views of Cambodian genocide, the Great Purge and similar events. Later, I will demonstrate you (with sources) why and how had I came to this conclusion.--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:57, 20 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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AmateurEditor I did put a source in that does mention The higher estimates and the archives if you need anything from me just ask. And thanks for the Information I put it in my notes on my ComputerJack90s15 (talk) 05:50, 3 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hello @AmateurEditor: I hope you are having a great Day or night wherever you are,
I had a question what are Discretionary sanctions and why do some Articles have them and some don't ?
You can read all about them here. In short, "Discretionary sanctions is a special system that creates an acceptable and collaborative editing environment for our most contentious and strife-torn articles. Discretionary sanctions may be placed by administrators within specified topics after the Arbitration Committee has authorised their use." AmateurEditor (talk) 06:14, 5 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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Please, fix your recent post at MKUCR talk page. It contains a direct and obvious personal attack, and that may cause serious problems for you (if anybody else will see it).--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:10, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your concern, but I don't think WP:NPA prevents us from calling out disruptive behavior that we can support with evidence. Having said that, I did not need to bring up lying in order to make my point, and I hadn't presented diffs (just the link he has seen before), so I changed my comment to remove it. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:19, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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