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Crimes against humanity under communist regimes was nominated for deletion. The discussion was closed on 28 August 2024 with a consensus to merge. Its contents were merged into Mass killings under communist regimes. The original page is now a redirect to this page. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected article, please see its history; for its talk page, see here.

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This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (color, defense, traveled) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus. This article was nominated for deletion. Please review the prior discussions if you are considering re-nomination: no consensus, 14:22, 22 November 2021 (UTC), see discussion. keep, 22:20, 19 July 2010 (UTC), see discussion. keep, 17:32, 22 April 2010 (UTC), see discussion. no consensus, 11:06, 15 November 2009 (UTC), see discussion. no consensus, 03:48, 2 October 2009 (UTC), see discussion. no consensus, 15:54, 10 August 2009 (UTC), see discussion. Article milestones Date Process Result September 1, 2009 Peer review Reviewed April 1, 2018 Peer review Reviewed June 1, 2018 Peer review Reviewed This article has been mentioned by multiple media organizations: Lott, Maxim (February 18, 2021). "Inside Misplaced Pages's leftist bias: socialism pages whitewashed, communist atrocities buried". Fox News. Abbott, Joel (November 24, 2021). "The Misplaced Pages page titled "Mass Killings Under Communist Regimes" is being considered for deletion 😬". Not the Bee. Kangadis, Nick (November 24, 2021). "'Mass Killings Under Communist Regimes' Misplaced Pages Page 'Being Considered for Deletion'". MRC TV. Johnson, Autumn (November 25, 2021). "Misplaced Pages Contemplates Deleting Article On Communist Mass Killings". MRC News Buster. Simpson, Craig (November 27, 2021). "Misplaced Pages may delete entry on 'mass killings' under Communism due to claims of bias". The Daily Telegraph. Nolan, Lucas (November 29, 2021). "Misplaced Pages Community Considers Deleting Entry on Mass Killings Under Communism over Claims of 'Bias'". Breitbart News. User:JPxG (November 29, 2021). "Deletion Report: What we lost, what we gained". The Signpost. Chasmar, Jessica (November 29, 2021). "Misplaced Pages page on 'Mass killings under communist regimes' considered for deletion, prompting bias accusations". Fox News. Blair, Douglas (December 12, 2021). "Misplaced Pages Threatens to Purge 'Communist Mass Killings' Page, Cites Anti-Communist Bias". The Daily Signal. Blair, Douglas (December 14, 2021). "Misplaced Pages threatens to purge 'communist mass killings' page, cites anti-communist bias". The Christian Post. Edwards, Lee and Hafera, Brenda (December 14, 2021). "Why We Should Never Forget the Crimes of Communism". The Heritage Foundation.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) This article has previously been nominated to be moved. Please review the prior discussions if you are considering re-nomination. Discussions: No consensus, 13 September 2009, from Communist genocide to Communist politicide, see discussion. Moved, 16 September 2009, from Communist genocide to Mass killings under Communist regimes, see discussion. Not moved, 16 April 2010, see discussion. No consensus to move, 13 August 2018, to Communist states and mass killing, see discussion. Not moved, 31 July 2019, see discussion. Not moved, 14 August 2019, to Mass killings under Communist regimes, see discussion. Procedural close, 31 January 2022, to Mass killings by communist regimes, see discussion.

Removal of Ghodsee and Neumayer

Regarding this removal, we cite three sources for that paragraph, not just one; while the first one is just an essay from Aeon, we also cite a paper published in the journal History of the Present by Ghodsee and The Criminalisation of Communism in the European Political Space after the Cold War by Neumayer; both of these are academically published and have been extensively cited themselves (, ) so they're reasonable to cover in a brief paragraph here. We could add some of those as secondary sources if necessary and replace the Aeon cite, but I don't see how total removal makes sense; and of course the rest of that edit summary seems to mostly just be expressing disagreement with them, which doesn't have anything to do with whether we cover their opinions or not. --Aquillion (talk) 19:19, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

IMO it's non-useful information at best. Somebody claiming that mere counting of mass killing reflects an anti-communism bias. North8000 (talk) 23:24, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

There's no question that part of the anti-Communist argument is how many people they killed. The Victims of Communism website for example says on its first page, "COMMUNISM KILLED OVER 100 MILLION." Why would they lead with this if it did not further their anti-Communist narrative?

It could be that is a very good argument against Communism. But it's still an argument, which by definition reflects a bias. TFD (talk) 23:43, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

Hrm. It is possible that some important context about the objection was removed here, or that we should go over the sources (and look for others) and elaborate on it a bit more. I think that it's an important and WP:DUE objection, but it is true that in its current form there's something important missing - it probably needs to be expanded at least a little bit to explain it further, not removed. --Aquillion (talk) 00:11, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

It needs further explanation, but it seems to be the most widely accepted explanation for counting bodies, particularly for the 100 million figure. TFD (talk) 15:49, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

Seems well sourced but not very important. So I would be fine with it's removal. PackMecEng (talk) 00:14, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

Mere selection of which aspect to cover usually reflects a type of bias. This is a universal reality, and repeating a universal reality is not information. Trying to pretend that it is noteworthy information is itself bias. For example, if a researcher counts up the number of deaths from high-school sports, we don't put in a section that a critic says that merely counting those deaths reflects an anti-sports bias. North8000 (talk) 12:47, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

PBS had a feature, "7 deaths linked to football raise concerns about sport’s risks for young players" The article came out after several publications noted the increasing number of high school sports deaths.

The number of deaths persuade people that there is a problem with high school sports and something should be done. That's because most people disapprove of unnecessary deaths. TFD (talk) 15:47, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

To put it another way, if you were told that the Communists killed 100 million people, would that tend to make you feel (a) positive about Communism, (b) more negative or (c) about the same? TFD (talk) 17:30, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

@The Four Deuces: All good points, but that is not the topic at hand. Putting the question in the context of your first example, if somebody said "Counting the number of high-school sports deaths represents an anti-high-school sports bias", should we put what they said into the article? North8000 (talk) 19:29, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

I noticed that the paragraph in question only ended up in its current state just four days ago. An essentially unexplained edit (one of several such edits) removed all the information that was previously there, except for the part that said that counting victims reflects an anti-communist bias. I agree that the paragraph as it stood when this discussion began was strange and not much of a criticism (of course critics of communism have an "anti-communist bias"!), but the information that used to be there until four days ago was much more substantial. I have restored it, as well as other information removed by the same editor at the same time, with a similar lack of explanation. I do not see any difference between the removed information and the rest of the article. It was well sourced, and directly addressed the topic of communist mass killings. I do agree with one removal (the last removal, where the source was a newspaper), so I have not restored that one. - Small colossal (talk) 08:36, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

Recent removals

I am starting this thread to discuss recent content removals by DaltonCastle. I disagree with them, because the removed content was well sourced and in line with the rest of the article. Much of the article consists of reporting the views of different academics on issues such as the proper names to be used for the mass killings (terminology), the numbers of people killed and how those numbers should be estimated (estimates), causes of the killings, comparisons to other mass killings, and so on. In many cases, there is no overall consensus on these topics, there are only different sources with different perspectives. So the article reports the conclusions of author A, then those of author B, then those of author C, etc. In cases where two authors directly disagree with each other, this is also noted. I think this is a good format, and actually I cannot think of any other way to organize this information. DaltonCastle has removed certain sentences and paragraphs on the grounds that they represent the views of only one author, or only two authors, or that they are "hardly a consensus". That is true, but the same could be said about every other sentence and paragraph immediately before and after the removed ones. Of course each paragraph (or part of a paragraph, or sentence) focuses on a single author, because that is the structure being used. We describe the various sources one by one, when there is no way to combine them without doing original research (for example, when they disagree with each other). The names of the authors are given every time, and the content makes it clear that it is reporting their separate conclusions. This is what I mean when I say that I do not see any difference between the removed information and the rest of the article. - Small colossal (talk) 12:08, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

The issue is not about the quality of sourcing, its that there is a WP:COATRACKING issue to insert a point of view. When the "Estimates" section starts off with "a communist-leaning academic believes the following estimates are exaggerated" (I'm obviously simplifying), there is a concern. It is a question of 1. due weight, 2. Coatracking, 3. POV-insertion/whitewashing. The near-majority of the article should not be weighted towards the handful of academics who say the numbers are overestimated. At most it is a quick mention. DaltonCastle (talk) 20:28, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

The "Estimates" section begins by quoting Klas-Göran Karlsson, who is not remotely communist-leaning as far as I can tell. He has written a book specifically about the crimes of communist states. Also, he is not saying that the estimates are exaggerated, but that they are contentious and debated. This is true, and it is a good summary of the literature. Every author who has estimated the number of people killed by communist regimes has arrived at a different number, and the differences between the numbers are in the tens of millions. It's not a question of high numbers or low numbers, it's just that they are very different from each other. For example, the three highest estimates cited in the "Estimates" section are 94 million, 110 million and 148 million. The differences between these "high" numbers are just as big as the differences between "high" and "low" numbers. So, it is not as if most academics agree on a single number, and a handful of sources say that this number is overestimated. There is no agreement on any single number, high or low. I think it is therefore good and important to cover all the estimates and the various debates about them.

I don't see any particular weight in the article towards some estimates or authors as opposed to others. Every author gets about the same space as every other author. On the contrary, it seems to me that removing some authors would privilege those that remain. We should not give the impression that there is academic agreement on an issue when there is no agreement, by citing a single author.

Finally, regarding WP:COATRACKING, I don't see that here at all. In my understanding, coatracking is when an article groups together different topics that are unrelated (or only tangentially related) to the article's topic. So, coatracking here would be if the article cited sources that don't talk about communist mass killings. But all the cited sources do in fact talk about communist mass killings. They disagree with each other on things like estimates or causes, but describing sources that disagree with each other is not coatracking. That's just standard academic debate. - Small colossal (talk) 05:53, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Any academic work is going to full of things that can be critiqued. Respectfully, your edit had a massive amount of such material, (plus a whataboutism argument made by someone.) I think that a high-quality paragraph (information, not talking points) covering variability and possible bias in estimates would be a good addition. But IMHO the edit that I just described was not that. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 19:42, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Bad sourcing and obvious bias.

This whole page needs to be cleaned up. 2601:248:5181:5C70:F407:1C36:A131:1B6D (talk) 04:43, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

You're welcome to get started. Have any suggestions? MWFwiki (talk) 03:31, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

• You will have to be more specific. As you can see from some of the older discussions above and in the archives, there have been a lot of discussions of possible bias from different directions, some of which have resulted in changes and some of which hasn't; without more details we can't even attempt to answer you. --Aquillion (talk) 14:30, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

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