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 know that is the traditional view, but it has to be backed up. AmateurEditor (talk) 22:22, 7 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You want receipts?! Johnbod (talk) 23:51, 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]
Gotcha. I'm glad we can agree to disagree and still arrive at a consensus. AmateurEditor (talk) 03:36, 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]
Thank you. We do disagree well, don't we. It's too bad we don't agree more... AmateurEditor (talk) 02:44, 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 a note, you have been mentioned here, and it seems that editor who raised suspicions against you has failed to inform you himself.--Staberinde (talk) 21:54, 12 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the heads up. I'll respond there. AmateurEditor (talk) 01:55, 13 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hi AmateurEditor, regarding User:AmateurEditor/thefourdeuces, could you clarify why you created the page? My understanding is that you can draft ArbCom evidence in user space, but can't create pages to disparage someone. PhilKnight (talk) 22:41, 17 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?
As Phil has already commented, I will confer with him. Dlohcierekim 22:45, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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'. TN05 00:45, 9 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The infobox allows customization. I changed "Official colors" to "Unofficial colors" in the template. AmateurEditor (talk) 01:31, 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]
understood, evidentially i am now accused of canvassing as well... Darkstar1st (talk) 23:13, 24 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
On Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity Committed in Albania during the Communist Regime for Political, Ideological and Religious Motives[edit]
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]
Thanks for restating your question at my talk page, I've replied there. Fifelfoo (talk) 03:57, 31 May 2011 (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]
Sorry for the delay, I appeared to be even busier than I thought on Sunday. I posted my version on my talk page.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:21, 14 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. GreyHoodTalk 20:43, 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. GreyHoodTalk 22:21, 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. GreyHoodTalk 22:21, 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]
By the way, I just found that Russian Wikipedia article about St. Isaac's Cathedral also states that St. Isaac's was the third dome in the world, after Nevyansk and Meinz, to use metal carcass and shell. It is supported by this link there. GreyHoodTalk 15:44, 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. GreyHoodTalk 13:02, 10 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
As for the other sources on Nevyansk Tower in connection with Mainz Cathedral and St. Isaacs Cathedral, here are some other sources of various quality to be found on request "Невьянская башня Майнцский собор Исаакиевский собор" (Nevyansk Tower Mainz Cathedral St. Isaacs Cathedral). GreyHoodTalk 13:02, 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. GreyHoodTalk 07:09, 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.
As for the further analysis of sources, sorry, I'll be able to continue it tomorrow. GreyHoodTalk 21:24, 12 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This source and others tell about "каркас шатра" ("carcass of the tent"). GreyHoodTalk 15:28, 13 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
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. GreyHoodTalk 17:42, 13 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This would be so much easier if these websites would cite their sources, wouldn't it? Reading all these different takes on the same subject reminds me of a game of telephone. AmateurEditor (talk) 18:38, 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.
-Asatav
Thanks for the suggestion, but I would rather not. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:34, 3 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
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]
Ok. I will use your proposed notation. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:49, 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 Talk 08:51, 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]
Using obscure words is #3 on his Daily To Do list.```Buster Seven Talk 02:30, 10 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Disambiguation link notification for April 8[edit]
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.
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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.
Again, we're very sorry about this issue; hopefully it'll be smooth sailing after this :). If you have any questions, just drop them at the talkpage. Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) 21:44, 1 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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]
Yeah, there were more than I expected when I was working on the medieval sections of the Dome article. AmateurEditor (talk) 02:34, 7 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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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]
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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]
I'm just writing the article I wanted to read! There's much more to it than I originally thought. It's not an obsession, really... AmateurEditor (talk) 23:21, 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]
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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]
That weirdness may just be a quirk of the citation template used. I did check the inside title page for the editors/translators. Let me know if there's a better format template out there! AmateurEditor (talk) 23:30, 18 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Your article "History of Persian domes" is truly great, however, please note there is an older one about the same subject – "Gonbad". My advice is to WP:MERGE, but I'll leave final decision to a User:ProfessionalEditor. Please consider it in next days and in meanwhile keep up with great work. Thanks! --MehrdadFR (talk) 12:04, 28 September 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]
Paul Siebert, there has been a lot written on that page since I left. Where would you like me to respond to your proposal, back where you posted it or here? AmateurEditor (talk) 04:25, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I would like you to voice your opinion at the sections:
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]
@Paul Siebert: I found a preview version of the source and updated the excerpt in the article to provide more context. AmateurEditor (talk) 15:29, 4 August 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.
In case you think I added that language, it was from this edit on June 3, 2018, but I have no problem trimming it off, since additional sourcing was not provided at the time. AmateurEditor (talk) 05:39, 25 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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]
Are you seriously saying that Communist regimes are not a separate category? I don't even know how to respond to that. AmateurEditor (talk) 04:17, 28 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]
@Woogie10w:, I have not and don't intend to. Is there something in particular you would like me to see? AmateurEditor (talk) 20:07, 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.
What do you think about that?--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:45, 8 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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
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