For anyone wondering why there is a sudden influx of IP's here, commenting on a discussion they clearly don't have the faintest idea about, this is happening because the clickbait-trolling-for-halfwits conspiracy-monger website 4Chan has a thread on it.

For the benefit of any 4Chan readers who can actually understand a sentence with more than six words in it, Wikipedia isn't proposing to delete coverage of mass killings by communists, or anyone else. The issue being discussed, is whether one specific article, which duplicates coverage of material elsewhere on Wikipedia while arguably giving undue prominence to particular writers, is the best way to do it. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:00, 24 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Permanent archive: https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/349253315/ Warning: this is a pol thread: expect racism, antisemitism etc. Hemiauchenia (talk) 05:45, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that it's /pol/ more than the media coverage and Twitter, especially considering the low number of participants in that thread... — Mhawk10 (talk) 05:54, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, it's gone way beyond 4chan now, but I thought the thread was worth linking for posterity. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:49, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• @Hemiauchenia: @AndyTheGrump: I don't know that this really warrants linking from the top bar as "high-traffic". The thread you've linked here got a sum total of six replies, all within less than an hour, and seems to have immediately dropped off the board afterwards. This would have been a virtually invisible thread, even at 2011 posting rates. jp×g 10:25, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• I'm not entirely sure that the thread Hemiauchenia linked was the same one that I saw, but in any case, it soon became apparent that the AfD had been linked to on multiple right-wing forums etc, all putting the same spin on it. The sudden influx of IP's and new/dormant accounts both here and in the AfD itself indicates that. The 4Chan one was merely the first I found, and may not even have been the origin of it all. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:08, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• FYI, this AFD is mentioned in a Notthebee article and linked to from /r/conservative on reddit. (In the latter, to their credit, the person who submitted the thread is actively discouraging reddit users from interfering in our AFD process.) --B (talk) 11:27, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• @Paul Siebert: from badgering everybody who disagrees with him.
• to start considering a snow keep, understanding that the !vote is now about 47-15 in favor of keep.
• Rather than casting aspersions on all keep !voters, identify those you believe have been canvassed. I believe 2 or 3 have been identified so far.

And just a matter of interest - have there been articles that have been nominated for deletion more than 6 times? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 22:30, 24 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure about deletion but Kiev went through over a dozen requested moves (the last one was open by a banned user exactly on the day the moratorium after the previous attempt was ended) before it was moved to Kyiv. The move was strongly lobbied by the Ukrainian government.--Ymblanter (talk) 22:34, 24 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There's no way this will be snow closed. Remember, it's not a numerical vote. The strength of the arguments is what matters. clpo13_(talk) 22:37, 24 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Smallbones, I am answering to your ping. Do I understand you correct that you propose to violate our policy, which specifically prohibit votes during AdFs? Paul Siebert (talk) 23:18, 24 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

And, if you canvass someone why, in contrast to you, will propose something reasonable in support for "keep", I will be the first person who will object to any accusations of canvassing. Paul Siebert (talk) 23:20, 24 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A Snow Keep would be a disgusting close to this, considering we have editors admitting to being canvassed. Not to mention the majority of those Keep votes lack any substance beyond the vague assertion that "wikipedia" is trying to obscure history and the editors simply don't like the article. BSMRD (talk) 23:21, 24 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ah yes, the 'snow close because we are winning' argument. Always good for a laugh... AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:43, 24 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Smallbone's failure to understand policy never ceases to amaze, first it was WP:OUTING, now it's WP:NOTVOTE. Many of the keep votes are not substantiative and should be ignored by the closer. I'd argue that a multi-admin close is warranted here, similar to the Race and Intelligence one. Hemiauchenia (talk) 01:25, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Someone, somewhere - probably not in this AfD discussion - needs to point out that !voting 'Strong keep' for a weak argument doesn't make the argument any stronger... AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:30, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You should have listened to Paul. He pleaded with you not to proceed with this AfD as he was working through a DR process. But you didn't listen, the DR was interrupted and forced Paul (who appeared relatively neutral for the last 12 years in never !voting in previous AfDs) to compromise his position and join the ranks of the deletionists. --Nug (talk) 01:28, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Who is 'you', and under what authority could they have stopped this AfD? AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:34, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You were the first to !vote, you could have persuaded the nominator to withdrawn. You were aware from the article talk page that a DR was ongoing. --Nug (talk) 01:38, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I could have suggested it, if I thought it was appropriate, though I'm rather flattered by your assessment of my powers of persuasion. So far, I've seen no convincing argument as to why the AfD should have been stopped at that point though. Or, come to that, why it should be stopped now. It is a trainwreck, certainly, and with hindsight I was over-optimistic in thinking that it could be otherwise. It will run its course though, as nothing in policy (actual existing policy, not stuff invented for the purpose) suggests that the community can be prevented from demonstrating its inadequacies in public, as a spectator sport. Wikipedia may not be a democracy, but it does at least make token gestures towards actually letting people !vote occasionally, even if they are going to do something foolish. AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:50, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I can explain that to you. All of that reminds a procedure of a search of a global energy minimum at a rough landscape in a multidimentional phase space. If you do numeric simulations (emulate a random walk), you inevitably face an Ergodicity problem, in other words, it is hard to tell if all parts of the phase space has already been visited. An empirical criterion is simple: is you repeatedly visit the same set of minima, the phase space can be deemed well explored. Sometimes, the best way is to run several processes with different initial conditions. If these processes converge to some common state, the phase space may be considered well explored.

I apply the same principle to literature search: if you repeatedly search for sources on some topic using different sets of keywords, and you are repeatedly getting similar sources, then the "space of sources" can be considered well explored. I use the same approach to identify sources for my RL work, and that is a serious things, because if you overlooked some key sources, that may lead, e.g. to rejection of your patent application.

And that is a reason why I an sure I know majority of important sources about this topic.

What relation does it have to this AfD? If every new !vote is more and more a repetition of old (frivolous) arguments (each of which had already been analyzed and debunked by me; see my !vote), that reinforces my confidence in a strength of my arguments. Every new "keep, it is notable" adds more credibility to my position. I've just realized that could be a good starting point for some essay :)

I would even say more: each new user who cites Valentino or Rummel de facto supports my assertion that I haven't missed any significant source, and, therefore, my analysis was correct.

Those users who come up with an article published in an obscure journal with unknown IF by a scholar who is coincidentally an editor of that journal, and who is being cited mostly by the articles in that journal. All of that is an excellent demonstration that I was right, and the article's supporters cannot find satisfactory sources that support their POV.

The only remaining question is if admins will analyze arguments or will count !votes. In the latter case, the article will be kept, but that is a very bad sign for Wikipedia. Paul Siebert (talk) 02:32, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Since they did a literature search, it should be noted that Siebert's research criteria and neutral search (e.g. Google Scholar) was positively reviewed in "Debating reliable sources: writing the history of the Vietnam War on Wikipedia" in the academic peer-reviewed Journal of Documentation, which is published by Emerald Group Publishing. Davide King (talk) 05:09, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It was cygnis that initiated the AfD. It was their responsibility alone. Hemiauchenia (talk) 01:39, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Nug, if you want (if you explicitly ask me about that), I will tell you why my position has changed. Paul Siebert (talk) 01:43, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's almost funny how rote the !votes are at this point. "Strong Keep" "Smells like WP:IJUSTDONTLIKEIT." "It's important!" "It's notable!". BSMRD (talk) 01:35, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• @Smallbones: This is actually an interesting question. Per title search, there have been 27 seventh nominations, 8 tenth nominations... the highest number that yields anything is 17 (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gay Nigger Association of America (17th nomination)). Per the record book, however, that article had 41 separate deletion discussions (when you include DRVs). jp×g 10:32, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks @JPxG: It's good that we can add facts to this discussion. New question! Is this the largest AfD discussion of all time. It isn't on your "oracle" list because it wasn't logged properly, but the size (this project page only is about 385,000), If I read your oracle page correctly, the largest previous AfDs are less than 250,000. Is this correct? I'll also note that more than half of the edits, and of the text are from the same 2 pro-deletion editors (from here) Is there any way to check whether they are the largest "contributors" to an AfD of all time?

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 13:04, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The query I build that table from is here, which lists the thousand pages with titles beginning with Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/. As for which participants are the most participatory, the XTools page for the main discussion is here. It looks like the top contributors by added text are a split between deletes (Paul Siebert, Davide King) and keeps (Mhawk10, Nug). jp×g 00:44, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This all seems like drama mongering to me, not 'facts' to be added to the 'discussion'. ~ cygnis insignis 13:28, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

For what it's worth, none of us (me, you and Smallbones) have added more than a few kilobytes, and the largest text additions have come from both sides of the discussion, so I don't think this information particularly boosts the argument to keep or delete. Moreover, I think it certainly warrants mentioning that a 400kb deletion discussion is unprecedented over nearly two decades of them (note the talk of assembling a panel of administrators to close the discussion -- that's something you don't see every day, and raises some questions about whether our processes are adequate to handle discussions of this magnitude). jp×g 00:44, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Alas, I am sure the procedure is not adequate. Instead of calm and thoughtful analysis of facts and evidences, different people drop a !vote and disappear. I think it was a mistake to comment on posts of many voters, because they just vote and disappear. In that situation, no reasonable dialogue is possible.

No matter how skillful and knowledgeable our admins are, they cannot distinguish true facts from false claims.

Thus, to check if the argument "the article is well sourced" is valid, one has to thoroughly analyze each source. I checked just few subsections, and I found that most sources do not support article's claims at all, and others were taken out of context. Thus, some source, which was published in 1980s, is supposed to tell about the views of a scholar who published his first book in 1990s. How can closing admins know that? Paul Siebert (talk) 01:06, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Quick note - the !vote totals are now about 90 keep tp 30 delete. Folks who assert that this overwhelming result is due to canvassing should be ready to prove this accusation. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 13:40, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Which 'folks' are they? I've not seen anyone actually say that.AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:02, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Regardless of whether or not its due to canvassing (personally I don't think so, at least not in any organized sense, though extremely negative social media coverage has definitely brought some eyes here that wouldn't be here otherwise, and I believe contributed to a poor understanding of what was being asked and why.), a majority of this "overwhelming result" consists of "it's notable", which isn't really whats at contention and besides AfD is not just "is it notable? y/n", and some variation of "wikipedia/communistic editors simply don't like that the crimes of communists are collected" which is definitely not the case. BSMRD (talk) 14:12, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• It's pretty overwhelming. Yes, there is canvassing and yes there are media mentions of this AFD. But that doesn't change the fact that there is clearly no consensus to delete the article. If this is deleted, then it is a clear case of an admin supervote. --B (talk) 13:53, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Complaining that the result is rigged before people finish voting seems to be all the rage these days... AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:02, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I would say, I am impressed that so many people came here to support the article, and they brought so little arguments in its support. Paul Siebert (talk) 01:08, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

As Metropolitan90 has just pointed out at Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion, it appears that this AfD has not been properly logged, [1]. It doesn't appear anywhere on the list at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2021 November 22, where it should have done, and consequently hasn't been brought to the attention of the broader community in the manner normally seen as appropriate. I suspect this may have been accidental, given the complexities of the AfD process and the ease with which it can be screwed up (I've done it myself at least once). As for the best way to deal with this, I'm not sure, since almost anything I can think of may result in it becoming even more of a trainwreck. AndyTheGrump (talk) 10:27, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry about that, I was just trying to work out how to fix what I messed up. Fwiw, notifications for the discussion were broadly advertised at projects and boards. Is there a reason for me not to add it to the log a couple of days after? Relisting to keep discussions open is a thing, would that reset the process? ~ cygnis insignis 10:38, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'd caution against editing the log now, without getting consensus first, and ensuring that what is supposed to be an automated notification system doesn't get messed up further. Same may possibly go for relisting too. AndyTheGrump (talk) 10:49, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, and apologies again to all for fouling that up. ~ cygnis insignis 11:07, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

For the benefit of anyone else watching this page, My advice to Cygnis insignis against unilaterally manually adding this AfD to the Nov 22 log wasn't a suggestion that the issue should be ignored entirely, and I was hoping that there would be some sort of response here as to what should be done. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:06, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, it just caused me to hesitate from attempting a repair. I will try to get action on this, not logging was due to my neglect, just wondering where to ask for further advice. @Levivich: any idea who to ask? ~ cygnis insignis 16:24, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Cygnis insignis: AN maybe? Levivich 16:31, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It should go at least seven days logged, so maybe log it under today's date? Or maybe just restart the whole thing given the canvassing? Levivich 16:08, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I've logged it today. It's snowing, so I don't see the necessity for this to go an additional seven days, but it is indeed logged now. — Mhawk10 (talk) 16:26, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I am sure a snow close will immediately go for a deletion review. I would recommend an admin panel instead (as it actually was recommended at AN).--Ymblanter (talk) 16:36, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

An unlogged AfD canvassed off wiki with dozens of non-EC editors voting is not a good candidate for a snow close. This is definitely a matter best left to admins. Levivich 16:43, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm informed that @Metropolitan90 and Mhawk10: have resolved this. ~ cygnis insignis 17:06, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Obviously there’s been some serious off wiki canvassing here. I’m a “Strong Keep” vote but I’ve had it happen to me on the opposite end in previous AfDs and I know extremely frustrating it is. I do think that the strength of the Keep votes and their number from the long established users is sufficient to keep it here. However, I hate when this happens and yes, I very strongly believe this really hurts Wikipedia (even in cases where I happen to agree with those who show up canvassed). It turns our decision making process into a Reddit/Facebook/twitter competition for “likes” and “thumbs up” which is detrimental to our model. Part of the reason why Wikipedia is generally pretty good while most of the content on those sites is shit (yes, there’s good stuff there too) is because we’ve avoided this whole popularity contest who-can-organize-a-bigger-brigade-of-likes approach.

I honestly believe that ALL AfDs should be semi’d or should have the 500/30 protection applied to them. This problem is going to only keep getting worse in the future. Volunteer Marek 19:37, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Marek, frankly speaking, I cannot understand all that hysterical reaction on canvassing. I see absolutely no problem if the article's supporter will canvass some real life experts who present serious arguments in the article's support. So far, a situation is as follows: dozens and dozens of users who are superficially familiar with the subject come to the page and drop a standard "Keep" supplemented with some trivial rationale that has already been addressed and found unsatisfactory. Even worse, some users say, for example, that the article should be kept, because it contains important facts described ... in other Wikopedia articles. In other words, they vote "keep" and supplement it with a reason for deletion.

Canvassing is dangerous only in one case: if admins will count votes, and will not analyze arguments. However, it would be an insult to expect our admins may act so non-professionally. Paul Siebert (talk) 19:48, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding that last paragraph - well………… Volunteer Marek 19:50, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, I am curious, what are your rationale? You seem to be a smart person, what flaws do you see in my post where I voted "delete"? If you see any flaw, please, let me know. If you see no serious flaws, why did you vote "keep"? Paul Siebert (talk) 20:09, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Because the purpose of the whole exercise is not to convince you (or Nug, or anybody else for this purpose) that your arguments are flawed / inappropriate / incompatible with Wikipedia policies. The purpose of the whole exercise is to establish consensus. Not specifically talking about this article, very often there are valid keep, delete, merge, and redirect arguments which are policy based bewcause policies contradict each other, and then if 80% have a strong policy based argument for keep. and 20% have a strong policy based argument for delete, we call it consensus keep. When you have canvassed users, their arguments, whereas typically not strong, just distort this consensus. And if they all !vote per A, B, and C, it is impossible to distinguish their arguments from genuinely good policy-based arguments, and suddenly instead 80-20 we have 50-50 or even 20-80. This is why canvassing is not appropriate.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:27, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I agree 100% with Ymblanter here. Whatever the merits or demerits of THIS particular discussion, this kind of phenomenon is detrimental to the encyclopedia. Volunteer Marek 20:34, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Marek, it seems you didn't understand my question. You voter "Keep", but your rationale ("Well sourced, notable etc etc etc") looks very weak in light of the arguments presented by me. That is why I was wondering if you still believe the story tole in that article is really significantly more notable than Rummel's book and Courtois/Malia introductions. Paul Siebert (talk) 01:50, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Ymblanter: Imagine an extreme situation: if I alone vote to delete some article and demonstrate (by presenting a comprehensive analysis of article's sources) that the article is a complete fake, and 100 other users vote "keep", what the admins verdict will be?

I am asking not out of an idle curiosity: one of frequent arguments is that the article is well sourced. I can demonstrate it is not. By "demonstrate" I mean a comprehensive analysis of the article's sources and a comparison of what those sources say with what the article claims, and I anticipate my analysis will show that >50% of the article's content may be used as classical example of incorrect usage of sources for the WP:SYN section. If I do that, can I expect admins will dismiss all those "keeps", which (I strongly suspect) were made based just on counting of the items in the list of references? I am serious: instead of fruitless talk page discussions and DRs, I can invest my time in a deep analysis of facts and sources used in this article and present a comprehensive analysis. Are admins interested to see it? Paul Siebert (talk) 01:46, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. Wikipedia is not a democracy and neither is consensus (Decisions on Wikipedia are primarily made by consensus, which is accepted as the best method to achieve Wikipedia's goals, i.e., the five pillars. Consensus on Wikipedia does not mean unanimity (which is ideal but not always achievable), nor is it the result of a vote. Decision making and reaching consensus involve an effort to incorporate all editors' legitimate concerns, while respecting Wikipedia's policies and guidelines). Respect for our policies and guidelines is paramount. If policies and guidelines for this article are proved to have been indeed violated, and rewrite is agreed, there should be nothing the mob can do. Davide King (talk) 04:43, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The closer has to compare the strength of the arguments and how well they were rebutted by the opposite side. The closer also has to take into account how many people support each point of view. Technically, if one side is only one user who brings a policy-based argument, and another side are many users who do not have policy-based arguments and do not rebut anything, the closer can find that policy-based arguments were more convincing. However, this will almost inevitable end up in accusations of a supervote, this is why an admin panel is preferable in highly contentious cases.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:12, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough. Paul Siebert (talk) 07:46, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• That explains why it wasn't showing up on the Oracle. I was worried that I had committed some oopsie-woozie with the software. jp×g 10:34, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Clpo13, Ymblanter, how normal is it to edit an article while an AfD is ongoing? I thought that one should not be editing an article while the AfD, especially when such edits change the lead or remove stuff like this? While one may disagree with the precise wording usage there, acting as though there is some terminology consensus, rather than attempts in doing so, and removing any criticism of Communism grouping (Michael David-Fox states that Martin Malia is able to link disparate regimes, from radical Soviet industrialists to the anti-urbanists of the Khmer Rouge, under the guise of a "generic communism" category "defined everywhere down to the common denominator of party movements founded by intellectuals." [David-Fox 2004]), and doing all this while the AfD is ongoing, is disruptive to say the least. Is it not? Davide King (talk) 14:23, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

By itself, there is nothing wrong with editing an article which is nominated to AfD; it is sometimes encouraged, for example, if a user adds sources which demonstrate notability. I have not looked at these specific edits though.--Ymblanter (talk) 14:37, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It is completely normal and appropriate to make changes during an AFD. There is no rule or guideline against doing so. Content discussion should be on the main talk page for the article, not here. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 14:39, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, thanks to both. Davide King (talk) 14:43, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Also, generally AFD's are not about the current content, they are more about the topic / topic as defined in the title. North8000 (talk) 17:21, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@North8000:, the topic is essentially a combination of Democide, Red Holocaust and The Black Book of Communism. Other core sources do not draw a significant linkage between the described events, or between the described events and Communism. Even Valentino, who de facto gave a name to the article (he authored the book where he develops the "mass killings" concept) concludes that there is no significant linkage between mass killings (in general) and regime type (in general), so it is NOT a good core source for this topic. In connection to that, this article (topic) may exist as a summary style of Democide, Red Holocaust and The Black Book of Communism, but, in that case, the topic must be different: it is supposed to discuss the views that link Communism and mass killings, nit mass killings by themselves. However, from this AfD I conclude majority of users see the topic as a narrative about mass killings. That is a totally unacceptable POV-fork. Paul Siebert (talk) 18:57, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Seconding that this is fairly normal practice. Oftentimes, an article that shows up at AfD will be edited substantially, either to remove shitty sources and badly written content, or to add new sources/content that were uncovered by people doing due diligence in researching the article WP:BEFORE casting a !vote. jp×g 10:38, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User:Davide King - See Heymann closure, which has to do with articles that were improved during the AFD enough to be kept. There is not only no rule against editing an article, but editors are allowed to try to improve the article. In this respect, AFD is different from DRN, where the moderator normally does state not to edit the article. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:17, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Is it appropriate that strident Delete !voters are undoing [2],[3] attempts by Keep !voters to trim and clean up the article to save it from deletion? --Nug (talk) 23:13, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Given that the 'attempts by Keep !voters to trim and clean up the article' were removing sourced content without consensus, yes it was. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:31, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think so. Adding sourced content that made the article look more like a POVFORK because it's WP:UNDUE and WP:COATRACK and less of a summary style, could make it more likely the article may be deleted. There is an inherent conflict of interest in a Delete !voter editing an article during an AfD discussion. --Nug (talk) 00:03, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No there isn't. Stop inventing imaginary policies to try to justify edits made with utterly dishonest edit summaries. [4] AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:09, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That edit[5] was to fix real sfn errors, unlike this one [6]. Since when did we need policy to define common sense and ethics? Clearly a conflict of interest. --Nug (talk) 00:11, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You really think I give a damn about the 'ethics' of someone who uses bogus edit summaries to remove sourced and entirely pertinent content from an article because it doesn't support their perspective? AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:16, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Of course you wouldn't give a damn, you !voted to delete as well. My perspective is that the article should be kept, and my edits support that aim. --Nug (talk) 00:21, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It is self-evident what your 'aim' is. An article which contains nothing to indicate that your own perspective on the subject matter isn't shared by other people fully qualified to comment with authority on the subject. AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:31, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You can spin it anyway you like, but a conflict of interest does exist. --Nug (talk) 00:43, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In your head. Not in Wikipedia policy. AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:20, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Nug: I recommend you read WP:COINOTBIAS. The assertion that editors who have !voted for deletion cannot edit the subject of an AfD is ridiculous and not at all supported by any wikipedia policy or guideline. BSMRD (talk) 01:22, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

https://9gag.com/gag/angBo7b —usernamekiran • sign the guestbook • (talk) 21:03, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The AfD received 17,000 views yesterday, we're truly in uncharted territory. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:11, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a record for most viewed/voted on AfDs? This definitely has to be up there. BSMRD (talk) 22:49, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There was never that kind of interest in previous AfD for the article. But things have changed since, we now have main stream media printing articles like this "100 years of communism and 100 million dead" and "Don't celebrate Karl Marx. His Communism has a death count in the millions.", so it isn't surprising there is a heightened awareness now. Have you seen the spike in the article page views, it's gone through the roof. Streisand effect in action. --Nug (talk) 01:57, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There was never this kind of interest in previous AfDs of the article because they happened over ten years ago, and Wikipedia back then didn't get as much attention as it does today. Levivich 06:32, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia back then didn't get as much attention as it does today This isn't really true, see the Wikipedia Seigenthaler biography incident or the Essjay controversy, which recieved more attention than this kerfuffle has. Hemiauchenia (talk) 00:36, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I cannot rule out an possibility that James Bovard was inspired by the MKuCR article. Paul Siebert (talk) 19:17, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Is it really appropriate to speculate on the motivations of a living person for writing a USA Today opinion piece, when no evidence exists to support that speculation? I also can't rule out that Moses had six toes on his left foot. Why is this any more meaningful? — Mhawk10 (talk) 19:24, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, that is simple. This article is visited very frequently, and its content is reproduced by many Wikipedia mirrors and even sold by Amazon. Therefore, it is highly likely that various journalists may use that information as a source, so it makes sense to check is we are not dealing with one more citogenesis example. Paul Siebert (talk) 00:00, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The same cannot be said about Moses: do you have any specific reason to think he might have six fingers? Paul Siebert (talk) 00:01, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

When I click that link, I get a video of a dog humping a guy's head and a photo claiming to depict rats playing Doom. Is it functioning correctly, or am I misunderstanding how to use the site? jp×g 10:36, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I dont know what the reason is, but this AfD seems to have been displayed/advertised/canvased on different platforms (like 9gag). I just hope tiktok-ers dont come here, as according to 9gag consensus, they are narcissists retards. I think this AfD would be in top 5 AfDs along with Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Priya Prakash Varrier. @JPxG: I just clicked the link from a different device (without logging in), it worked fine for me. But right below that wikipedia's screenshot, there were other posts. So you have to stay at the top of the page I think. There were also two comments regarding editing wikipedia: One insulted the 9gag OP for not participating in the AfD, and other said something along the lines "anybody can edit wikipedia, why are you discussing here". —usernamekiran • sign the guestbook • (talk) 19:29, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

As of typing this comment, the AfD has been watchlisted by 63 editors, has been edited 876 times by 161 unique editors (logged in + IPs), and had +35k visitors and counting — just today. I think this is the most visited ongoing AfD ever. —usernamekiran • sign the guestbook • (talk) 19:50, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Does that include the talk page IP spam? BSMRD (talk) 19:58, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No. The "page", and talkpage are different entities. —usernamekiran • sign the guestbook • (talk) 22:05, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Some user reverted my edit during this AfD. Is it really appropriate? I am not going to re-add it, because @Goldsztajn:'s proposal made it redundant. However, I am not sure such actions are really allowed. Paul Siebert (talk) 21:44, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Here's an answer from a non-admin (and from someone who like you !voted 'delete', though that isn't really relevant). Please don't try to summarise other peoples' arguments. It is grossly inappropriate, since you don't have the slightest authority to do so. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:59, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

First, I made clear that my summary does not pretend to be comprehensive, and I explicitly invited people from another camp to write a joint summary. I de facto created a template of a summary. By no means that is inappropriate. Therefore, I am not satisfied with your answer, and I am still waiting for comments from some admin. Paul Siebert (talk) 23:45, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Frankly, I don't give a rat's arse which 'camp' people come from, or whether they are satisfied with my answer. Other contributors to an AfD have no mandate whatsoever to 'summarise' my arguments, or anyone else's, or otherwise to attempt to moderate the discussion. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:52, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Summarising each other's arguments is a part of a consensus building process, because that helps each party if they understand each other correctly. You have no mandate to prohibit me from summarising anybody's arguments, including your own. However, I am always open to critics in a case when my summary was incorrect. Paul Siebert (talk) 00:47, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

And we can all see how effectively your 'consensus building process' has been going... AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:24, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I would say, it would be more correct to speak about relative efficiencies. Are you sure your approach is more efficient? Paul Siebert (talk) 01:53, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It is certainly less verbose. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:05, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

We await the conclusion of this Afd, my comrades ;) GoodDay (talk) 01:19, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Currently, this AfD is at 428,109 bytes. Of this, just four people (two who are on the "keep" side and two who are on the "delete" side) have been responsible for over 56% of it. When one person is leaving hundreds of comments in an AfD, it inclines me to think we may be at the point of diminishing returns for further argumentation. Would it be possible to cut down a bit on the verbosity? Pinging those four: @Paul Siebert:, @Davide King:, @Mhawk10:, @Nug:. jp×g 04:49, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Look at that, I made the top 10! In all seriousness there is very little to be gained by continuing to battle it out here. If a panel is formed for closure interested editors can bug them but until then it is likely best to leave this cluster of a discussion to settle for a bit. At least take it to the actual article so that maybe some improvement could be made. BSMRD (talk) 04:52, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

While that is clearly an issue, and we all should strive to summarize better and be less verbose (it is not my strength), when this is an an example of source to prove the article is not SYNTH or is perfectly fine, we have an issue because sources must be scrutinized, verified, and determined whether they represent a mainstream majority, significant minority, tiny minority, or fringe views. Perhaps we may discuss arguments, and hopefully there is further argumentation, here — and not repeating arguments in the AfD page. Davide King (talk) 04:57, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is the first time I've ever seen an AfD talk page in use, but if we could confine debate and source analysis and whatnot here and leave the mainspace for votes that might be a good idea. BSMRD (talk) 04:59, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@JPxG: Good point. I just asked the user who mentioned they know some new sources to discuss it here on the talk page. Paul Siebert (talk) 05:27, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@JPxG: Sorry, but this ranking is not a fair summary of the discussion. 58% of the comments volume was generated by just two users on the "delete" side - King and Siebert. The next two in the ranking generated only 26%. And this was pretty much the same situation with all other previous discussions, where these two users literally take over the debate not by power of argument but by their mere volume and practice of WP:BADGERing every single disagreement with Gish gallop and gaslighting. Which they were asked not to, which the continue to do everywhere including here. This conduct has originally led to editors disengaging from the discussion already in August-September, which led to the two users arbitrarily rewriting ~10% of the article, which has led to the DRN, which has led to the AfD. And we're now in "the most unusual AfD" as someone has said with two users literally making any decision impossible using the techniques described above.

What I would like therefore propose is that we voluntarily disengage from the discussion and the community takes over the task of weighting the arguments. By "we" I mean the four users listed above, and myself too, as I was the original initiator of the DRN. Everything that could have been said, has been said in this discussion at least a dozen times. Cloud200 (talk) 10:34, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

When we are falsely accused and strawmanned like this, what are we supposed to do? Davide King (talk) 23:19, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Someone will suggest not replying, as I've tried to do with similar personalised attacks, an advantage is denying another editor the opportunity to build on spurious claims of intellectual dishonesty. ~ cygnis insignis 00:04, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I should add a diff [7] and ping @Nug:, the user I'm referring to. ~ cygnis insignis 00:08, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Do nothing. Arasakacorp who made the original comment never bothered to reply or probably even read your polemic. Those who follow the discussion likely just skipped it, because they have seen the same arguments raised by you probably hundreds of times already. So Nug steps in and once again points out that you misrepresent the sources you quote. And everyone skips that too, because they have seen that too hundreds of times. The added information value of these back-and-forth comments is therefore literally zero. What's the point then? Cloud200 (talk) 11:52, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Please, don't edit this section for a while, I am adding more sources. Actually, I would be grateful if some admin who is going to participate in the closing let me know if they are not interested in a more comprehensive analysis. I am going to provide more data, just let me know when it is enough.

The article's main idea, which is set by the title and directly follows from the structure, can be summarized as follows:

Communist mass killings is some specific phenomenon inherent to Communism. The figures of the Communist death toll is a subject of a mainstream scholarly discourse. Communist mass killings had some important common causes, and Marxist ideology is one of them. That directly follows from the article's structure and title. If those ideas are removed from the article, it will become just a collection of loosely connected stories.

As a first step, I perform a comprehensive analysis of sources that discuss The Black Book of Communism, one of the article's cornerstones. The goal is to check how broadly the ideas expressed by Courtois&Malia (the ideas that are the core of this article) are accepted by a scholarly community. Specifically, they say that: (i) there is a strong connection between various crimes perpetrated by Communist regimes and some "generic Communism", (ii) there is a strong linkage between those crimes and Marxism, and (iii) the "global Communist death toll" figures demonstrates that Communism was the greatest evil of XX century; the article also implies the latter figure is a subject of a mainstream scholarly discourse. The latter idea was explicitly stated by these two authors and it is being implicitly pushed by this article via presenting a "Total estimates" figures.

I am physically unable to present a comprehensive analysis of the sources listed below. Therefore, I focus on two aspects:

1. Is the concept of "Global estimate of the number of victims of Communist mass killings" considered as a part of a neutral scholarly discourse by majority of authors?

2. Do the majority of authors accept positively the idea to link mass killings with Communism and with Marxism in particular?

Sources obtained through Google.scholar

I am going to check all sources available to me via google.scholar and jstor.org and determine if those ideas are supported by majority of scholars. I am not going to select some specific sources, so this my work can be checked by everyone. Moreover, I invite everyone to check me, for I am providing links that can be independently verified.

I am presenting the results in a real time: I post a summary of each source immediately upon having read it. I am not going to screen out the sources that do not support my POV.

If you do this, you can get sources about the Black Book in an order of relevance. I don't know the details of the google.scholar algorithm, but, since I didn't write it, I cannot be accused of cherry-picking. I am just showing the sources one can obtain if they want to figure out what scholars think about the subject.

1. Dallin

"It would be incorrect to say that the book tells us more about the authors than about the subject; but it would be equally fallacious to omit the time and place-French intellectual soul-searching in the post-Soviet years-from its etiology. The editors imply that a lot of what they describe as "crimes, terror, and repression" has somehow been kept from the general public (an assertion further conjugated in Martin Malia's foreword to the American edition). In fact, for the informed reader the outlines-and often the details - of the evidence and argument are quite familiar, though admittedly few nonspecialists will command all the known facts about the Khmer Rouge, the Sendero Luminoso, or (a rather questionable category, to begin with) Afro-communism. Whether all these cases, from Hungary to Afghanistan, have a single essence and thus deserve to be lumped together-just because they are labeled Marxist or communist-is a question the authors scarcely discuss.

The authors make no attempt to differentiate between intended crimes-a la Auschwitz or the Moscow show trials-and policy choices that had (intended or unintended) consequences that were terrible (be it the Nazi-Soviet Pact or the great Chinese famine). Nor are sufficient distinctions made among the various communist regimes (all of which, we are told, are imbued with "a sort of genetic code of Communism," 754), or among different time periods: as it stands there is no adequate explanation why terror was practiced under Vladimir Lenin and losif Stalin but repressions lifted significantly in the post-Stalin years and virtually vanished under Mikhail Gorbachev; how Leninism explains Pol Pot; why there were no purge trials in Poland; and so forth. (And the roots of Stalinism are found in tsarist practice, in the tradition symbolized by Sergei Nechaev, and in Stalin's Caucasian childhood.) At the same time, the categorical indictment of communism and its "genetic code" (where did it come from?) is contradicted by the situation-specific, contextual explanation for the use of terror under different circumstances." (Alexander Dallin. Slavic Review, Vol. 59, No. 4 (Winter, 2000), pp. 882-883) The article was cited 13 times

2. Maddock

"Since its publication in France in 1997, The Black Book of Communism has played a dual role, both chronicling the crimes of various Communist regimes and also serving as a text that reveals the shifting status of Marxism in the aftermath of the Cold War. Much of the controversy that has surrounded the book has focused on Stephane Courtois's introduction, in which he argues that communism represents a greater evil than Nazism, largely based on Marxism-Leninism's heftier death tally." (Shane J. Maddock, The Journal of American History, Vol. 88, No. 3 (Dec., 2001), p. 1156)

3. Weiner

"Although it adds little data that is new, the list is long, informative,and, for most part, indisputable. Even when the numbers of victims are questionable or obviously inlfated, the brutality of communism in power is well established. Moreover, the fact that the atrocities consistently commenced with the seizure of power lends support to the argument for intentionality, particularly in the section on the Soviet Union by Werth, the most subtle and best-documented in the book.

That said, this thick volume is seriously flawed, incoherent, and often prone to mere provocation. Although the authors argue that the logic of communism entails the above atrocities, they go out of their way to salvage Marxist ideology. Following a blurb on Marx’s and other socialists’ ambivalent view of democracy, Courtois concludes the volume with the assertion that communism owed its destructive nature more to the biological legacy of Darwinism than to the ideology of Karl Marx, both of which arose within the nineteenth-century intellectual milieu. (...)

Evaluation of academic monographs should not have to involve assessment of the authors’ political backgrounds and environments. Regrettably, in the case of the Black Book of Communism, these characteristics are not irrelevant. For American readers in particular, the editor’s claim that the dark side of communism remained elusive until the publication of this book rings hollow; it is also telling about the authors. Outside of France, scholars have long debated, and continue to debate, the sources and consequences of communist terror. (...)

The comparison with Nazism is inevitable. It is merited on the grounds of the mutual commitment to social engineering through violent means; the ensuing demographic, psychological, and ethical implications; and, not least, the fact that both systems constantly scrutinize done another. Unfortunately, the authors of the Black Book reduce the comparison to body counting, charging communists with killing nearly 100 million people and the Nazis, 25 million. At best, this approach is ahistorical and demeaning." [https://muse.jhu.edu/article/16325/pdf?casa_token=HmnGQz_dExYAAAAA:GyPQRCw0pWM1thmfAgAyMBFt-4hXmBYdq81UwqM8c_ulQqH0c0ZBzCS5QRYPbEGKMqvp3SJGaQ

4. Steigerwald

"The book's main thesis reads thus: our century's fundamental crime was not the Holocaust, but rather the existence of Communism. Through the manipulation of numbers--only twenty-five million human lives fell victim to Hitler, one hundred million to Communism worldwide--the impression is created that Communism is four times worse than fascism and that the Holocaust was not a uniquely evil crime. Courtois stated in an interview, "In my opinion, there is nothing exceptional about the Nazi genocide against the Jews"" [8]

5. Paczkowski

" ... sober work of history and not the sort of sensational volume that might win easy popularity ..."

This athor praises the book as whole. However, the author is more critical towards Courtois:

"Some critics complained that Courtois was "hunting" for the highest possible number of victims, which led him, as J. Arch Getty wrote in the Atlantic Monthly, to include "every possible death just to run up the score." To an extent, the charge is valid. Courtois and other contributors to the volume equate the people shot, hanged, or killed in prisons or the camps with those who were victims of calculated political famines (in the Chinese and Soviet cases), or who otherwise starved for lack of food or died for lack of drugs." (Andrzej Paczkowski The Wilson Quarterly Spring, 2001, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Spring, 2001), pp. 28-34)

In connection to that, it worth mentioning that the MKuCR article relies mostly on the Courtois introduction, and not upon (generally much less ctiticised) main chapters.

6. Lauber [9]. This review contains no criticism, but not much author's own thought either (it is more a summary of "The Black Book"). It just compares this book to Solzhenitsyn's Archipelago. I mention this source just to show that I am not skipping the sources that does not support "my POV".

7. Torpey

"In view of The Black Book's relatively scanty scholarly contribution, it is hard to read the book in other than political terms. In this regard, The Black Book may be seen as an effort to legitimize the claims to memorialization and reparations of those who suffered under Communism. Such claims have become high stakes in an era that frequently rewards those who can demonstrate that they, too, have been victimized in the past. Courtois puts the matter succinctly: "In contrast to the Jewish Holocaust, which the international Jewish community has actively commemorated, it has been impossible for victims of Communism and their legal advocates to keep the memory of the tragedy alive, and any requests for commemoration or demands for reparations are brushed aside.... [A] single-minded focus on the Jewish genocide in an attempt to characterize the Holocaust as a unique atrocity has also prevented an assessment of other episodes of comparable magnitude in the Communist world." What are we to make of this extraordinary outburst?

In reality, the situation is exactly the opposite of what Courtois asserts. What has happened in recent years is not that the "single-minded focus on the Jewish Holocaust" has crowded out other demands for recognition and compensation, but rather that this mode of dealing with past misdeeds has become generalized to all kinds of groups--only some of which, however, are successful in making their claims. Part of the reason that the victims of Communism have been relatively less successful in gaining recognition of their suffering lies in the fact that the victims of the Nazis seem so clearly defined, whereas those of the Communists appear to have been more random and the dividing line between perpetrators and victims more fluid. The Black Book aims to sharpen the boundaries defining the groups persecuted by Communists, as both Courtois' term "class genocide" and Margolin's discussion of the "racialization" of Communist enemies suggest. Victims of "genocide" are more likely to gain recognition than a grab-bag of "class enemies"." [10].

page 2

8. Tismaneanu

"Speaking of the number of victims under communist regimes (between 85 and 100 million) and comparing this horrible figure to number of people who perished under or because of Nazism (25 million), Courtois decided to downplay a few crucial facts. In this respect, some of his critics were not wrong. First, as an expansionist global phenomenon, Communism lasted between 1917 and the time of the completion of The Black Book (think of North Korea, China, Cuba, Vietnam, where it is still alive, if not well). National Socialism lasted between 1933 and 1945. Second, we simply do not know what the price in terms of victims of Nazism would have been had Hitler won the war. The logical hypothesis is that not only Jews and Gypsies but also millions of Slavs and other "racially unfit" individuals would have been destined to death. As for the political opponents of Hitler's reign of terror, suffice it to remember such names as Dachau, Buchenwald, or Sachsenhausen. Third, in the case of communism one can identify an inner dynamic that could and did in fact contrast the original promises to the sordidly criminal practices. In other words, there was a possible search for reforms, and even for socialism with a human face, within the communist world, but such a thing would have been unthinkable under Nazism. The chasm between theory and practice, or at least between the moral - humanist Marxian (or socialist) creed, and the Leninist, Stalinist (or Maoist, or Khmer Rouge) experiments was more than an intellectual fantasy."

9. Radosh (That is especially interesting: it seems the Courtois concept is not shared event by main contributors to the Black Book)

"Despite the book's success, some of its contributors openly dissociated themselves from the introduction and conclusion written by Stephane Courtois. According to Nicolas Werth and Jean-Louis Margolin, Courtois went too far in his estimate of the numbers killed by all Communist regimes--over 100 million, he approximated. More importantly, Courtois crossed the line when he compared the Soviet Gulag with the Nazi Holocaust. Courtois argued that in addition to the sheer numbers of dead--and the death toll of those killed by Communists far exceeds those murdered by the Nazis--a similarity exists between the "class genocide" preached by Lenin and Stalin and the "race genocide" of Hitler. Eschewing the argument that one evil was lesser than the other, Courtois firmly asserted that both totalitarian regimes practiced "crimes against humanity" on a monumental scale."

actually, in general, this review contains not much criticism, but that does not refer to Courtois. See, e.g. this:

The strength and importance of The Black Book is that the compendium of horrors it presents is itself an answer to all the spurious arguments of Communist apologists. It establishes not just that Communist states committed criminal acts, but that they were essentially criminal enterprises. Not surprisingly, the worst offender among the Communist states is not the former Soviet Union, but the still-Communist People's Republic of China. In that state, peasant families sold their children to be eaten during the era of state-created famine. The Chinese Gulag--the so-called laogai, a prison system virtually unknown in the West--still holds the most political prisoners in the world, and they live under barbaric conditions. Jean-Louis Margolin tells us in The Black Book that twenty million died in that system after the Communist victory in 1949; twenty million others during the Great Leap Forward of 1959-61; and many thousands more during the Great Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. But why expose all this now--when "most favored nation" status, growing trade and investment by Western corporations, and the continuation of stable diplomatic relations are at stake? As so often in the past, Western business leaders aid and abet historical amnesia. "(R Radosh - First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public …, 2000 - go.gale.com)

10. Donelly. I don't have a full access to this source, only to the first page, but it seems to be a brief neutral summary of the BB.

11. Wynot

" The Black Book of Communism stands out as a significant work that should be required reading for all modern historians. Each essay stands alone as an important scholarly contribution. At the same time, the essays hang together well. It is interesting also that all of the writers have political roots in European left"(Jennifer Wynot. Source: Russian History, FALL 2003 / AUTOMNE 2003, Vol. 30, No. 3 (FALL 2003 / AUTOMNE 2003), pp. 362-363)

12. Reid. This publication contains a serious criticism of Courtois, this long article deserve full reading. One quote is especially interesting, because it cites the view of Nicolas Werth, the author of the best BB's chapter:

" Werth and Margolin critique the homogenizing effect of a tally of victims in Le Livre noir: 'No one ever throws in the face of a liberal the crimes committed in all the countries that claimed to be liberal,' Werth told L'Humanité. In his opinion, Courtois failed to take advantage of the opportunity to study the similarities and differences between Communist regimes in the exercise of repression, a project contrary to Courtois's belief that anything such a study could reveal could not alter the fundamental identity of all Communist regimes, and could potentially be dangerous by introducing exculpatory circumstances for Communist states and their supporters. " (Donald Reid (2005) In Search of the Communist Syndrome: Opening the Black Book of the New Anti-Communism in France, The International History Review, 27:2, 295-318, DOI:10.1080/07075332.2005.9641061}

A note. Am I the only person who noted that virtually every author in this list emphasize that the idea to come out with some "global Communist death toll" has a very specific political agenda: To show that Communism was worse than Nazism? In connection to that, it is interesting to see how the "Mass killings under communist regimes" due to its pseudo-scholarly structure that mimics a neutral academic monograph, carefully attenuates this political agenda. How can that be consistent with the core policy of Wikipedia?

That is my analysis of just of the first page (and teh beginning of the second page) of the google scholar results obtained using a totally neutral search procedure. In contrast to other users, I am not selecting sources that support or criticize this concept, I am just presenting, one by one, the sources as they appear in the list.

(I haven't done yet)

Sources obtained through Jstor

1. David-Fox

"Malia flirts in the formulations cited above with the suggestion à la Courtois that communism was the greatest evildoer of them all. To his credit, however, in the bulk of the piece he is concerned with laying out a more rigorous set of desiderata that need to be addressed in any comparison between Nazism and communism. The implicit purpose of doing so is to address criticisms that have arisen over The Black Book, and chief among these was the objection that there existed vastly different kinds of communisms around the globe that cannot be treated as a single phenomenon. Malia thus counters by coining the category of “generic Communism,” defined everywhere down to the common denominator of party movements founded by intellectuals. (Pol Pot’s study of Marxism in Paris thus comes across as historically more important than the gulf between radical Soviet industrialism and the Khmer Rouge’s murderous anti-urbanism.) For an argument so concerned with justifying The Black Book, however, Malia’s latest essay is notable for the significant objections he passes by. Notably, he does not mention the literature addressing the statistical-demographic, methodological, or moral dilemmas of coming to an overall communist victim count, especially in terms of the key issue of how to include victims of disease and hunger."

(Michael David-Fox. On the Primacy of Ideology: Soviet Revisionists and Holocaust Deniers (In Response to Martin Malia) Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, Volume 5, Number 1, Winter 2004 (New Series), pp. 81-105) The article was cited 31 times.

(There are several other reviews, I'll show the quotes from all of them)

--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:50, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

 Comment: You need to show that these 31 cites are using the conclusion highlighted in green. --Nug (talk) 07:28, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

As a person who presents a non-published course taught by a non-expert as a justification of the article's existence, you demands too much.

In addition, I don't need to proof opposite. It would be quite sufficient if most of those sources contains no criticism of David-Fox. You can do that by yourself. Paul Siebert (talk) 07:45, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

But how can we assess if Michael David-Fox's view on Malia is main stream or minority/fringe? Maybe a proportion of the 31 cites are disagreeing with Michael David-Fox's assessment of Malia? --Nug (talk) 08:26, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That is a good question. If all your arguments were of similar type, we could have reached a consensus many years ago.

I have some idea on how to check if some view is mainstream, but I would prefer to hear your opinion on that account first. Paul Siebert (talk) 18:19, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly as Siebert said. We have Karlsson 2008 (tertiary source and MKuCR's core source) that tell us Courtois and Rummel are either controversial, minority, and/or not mainstream. Nug, if you want to respond to this, can we move it here (as I suggested here)? E.g. why my reading of Karlsson 2008 is wrong about Courtois and Rummel, etc. Davide King (talk) 23:55, 27 November 2021 (UTC) Davide King (talk) 00:00, 28 November 2021 (UTC) [Edited to add][reply]

"Am I the only person who noted that virtually every author in this list emphasize that the idea to come out with some "global Communist death toll" has a very specific political agenda: To show that Communism was worse than Nazism" - yes, you are the only person clearly obsessed with the idea that the only purpose of "Black book" is making this comparison. It's not. Your bias is clearly demonstrated by 1) choosing a single source ("Black book") and building a strawman as if the whole article was based exclusively on this single source, 2) cherry-picking quotes from these articles you intend to counter the strawman you built. Weiner for example, clearly states, before discussing what he perceives as "flaws" in Courtois arguments, that "the list is long, informative, and, for most part, indisputable. Even when the numbers of victims are questionable or obviously inflated, the brutality of communism in power is well established. Moreover, the fact that the atrocities consistently commenced with the seizure of power lends support to the argument for intentionality, particularly in the section on the Soviet Union by Werth, the most subtle and best-documented in the book." In similar way you misrepresent reviews by Lauber and Paczkowski. Cloud200 (talk) 10:21, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That accusation, singular obsession, is easily falsified by the article here, the Black Book has been compared to The Protocols. ~ cygnis insignis 11:08, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Cloud200: I give you one more chance to stop. Instead of bringing apologies for your previous personal attack, you made a new one. In that situation, I am going to go to AE and request admins to remove you from this dispute. However, I am giving you one more chance: please, switch to a more productive mode, discuss only my edits, don't refer to me personally, and present only logical arguments without any explicit or implicit references to someone ostensible POV-pushing. Paul Siebert (talk) 18:16, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

WRT "strawman", no. It is not. The article is not based on the Black Book as the only source, however, it implements the Balck Book's concept. Without the Black Book and a couple of other sources, the concept of this article must be totally different, and it will become a collection of loosely connected topics. Therefore, this article can exist only if its core sources (the BB is among them) express mainstream views. Here I am trying to present a comprehensive analysis of other sources to check if that is the case. Your posts just distract me from that. Paul Siebert (talk) 19:05, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

But you know you can run your own instance of Mediawiki where you will be not distracted by anyone disagreeing with your POV and where you will be not made to arrogantly patronize others? Cloud200 (talk) 12:23, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

We have Vladimir Tismăneanu, who cannot be dismissed as pro-Communist, saying: "In other words, there was a possible search for reforms, and even for socialism with a human face, within the communist world, but such a thing would have been unthinkable under Nazism. The chasm between theory and practice, or at least between the moral — humanist Marxian (or socialist) creed, and the Leninist, Stalinist (or Maoist, or Khmer Rouge) experiments was more than an intellectual fantasy." Why can you not make such distinction is beyond me, and take the view of Marx–Lenin–Stalin as the universal view rather than one of the many, and in my view a minority one at that, e.g. "'Today he stands for things, which is he not responsible for': EU president Juncker defends Karl Marx's legacy" — he cannot be dismissed as a leftist either, apart from Fidesz. Davide King (talk) 00:09, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I can myself accept existence of such opinions even though I can point out flaws in their argument. At the same time you apparently cannot accept existence of any other opinions than those you believe which is precisely why we are now fourth month into a large scale Wikipedia dispute on a single article. Cloud200 (talk) 12:01, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Cloud200: I added some general notes to the top of the list to clarify some of concern raised by you. I think it fully addresses your criticism. Paul Siebert (talk) 01:28, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

From the top of this section: "I would be grateful if some admin who is going to participate in the closing let me know if they are not interested in a more comprehensive analysis". As far as I'm aware, there is no requirement that persons closing an AfD discussion even read an AfD talk page. Asking for 'analysis' from specific participants in the discussion is way outside their remit, and would seem to imply that the closers were expected to reach a decision through a supervote, rather than doing what they are supposed to, which is to determine what the consensus was amongst (policy-compliant) participants, based solely on what the participants write in the AfD itself. AndyTheGrump (talk) 09:55, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I would say though, this is a bit of an edge case. It would be fair to expect a closer to at least glance at the talk page since it's actually being used unlike 99% of AfDs. BSMRD (talk) 15:29, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not serious, but I was wondering, just hypothetically, what would happen if we relisted the AfD "to have an in-depth discussion, and clear consensus." Maybe we will set a whole set of records for AfD that would be unbreakable. I mean, if we extend it by one week more, it will be discussed/advertised off wiki, and it will have even more than current traffic, and maybe even more participation by new/old editors. —usernamekiran • sign the guestbook • (talk) 20:14, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

We could continually relist until we get the result we want, just kidding. We usually only relist if there hasn't been enough responses for the closing admin to evaluate the consensus. I think there has been more than enough in this case. --Nug (talk) 20:50, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Cambridge historian professor Robert Tombs has argued against the deletion of this article and compared doing so to holocaust denial, thoughts? X-Editor (talk) 04:23, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I would love to share my thoughts on that article, unfortunately it is behind a paywall. BSMRD (talk) 04:27, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@BSMRD: Here is one without the paywall [11]. X-Editor (talk) 04:30, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Not a very long article, and frankly little more convincing than the "Strong Keep It's notable! Wikipedia is showing it's communistic agenda here!" that we've been getting for the past few days. Repeats the baseless notion that deletion of this article would somehow remove all information of mass killing by Communists from Wikipedia. Weird aside about Anti-communist mass killings not being flagged (something I talked about in the mainspace). Tombs actually contributes to @Paul Siebert:'s observation that many of the historians in favor of MKuCR seem to want to do so out of a desire to prove Communism as worse than Fascism/Nazism, saying "Already, this appalling history is downplayed: in Britain, schoolchildren are much more likely to study the Third Reich than the Soviet Union.". The other person they talk to, Clifford May, is director of a neocon think tank, who asserts that Communism killed more than 100 million people, a claim not even Courtois and his ilk would make. Overall 3/10, at least it's more verbose than "Strong Keep It's notable! Wikipedia is showing it's communistic agenda here!". BSMRD (talk) 04:41, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ironically, in that article Tombs supports (without realizing) the SYNTH of merging together crimes against humanity/mass killings under Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, with any excess death under other Communist regimes (his own terms for each event), all of which indeed happened and are not in dispute — what is in dispute is whether this is a neutral scholarly discourse (the fact this has been reported mostly by right-wing media and that it is based on Courtois's introduction to The Black Book of Communism, juxtaposed to other sources, prove that it is not), and the charge of Holocaust denialism is in itself a form of Holocaust obfuscation because the Communist death toll has been used by Courtois and Malia as proof that Communism was worse than Nazism, or at least equal to it. Additionally, Anti-communist mass killings makes no link with anti-communism, it is simply a list of events, which can be done for Communist mass killings and various other ideology/political systems. I do not think that is a good way to organize and discuss such events, irrespective of any ideology or political system, so if this article is deleted (I support the rewrite of the topic in a NPOV manner along those lines), I would not have any problem supporting deletion of that article on the same standards and reasoning. Davide King (talk) 04:46, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tombs is neither a scholar of Communism or a genocide scholar, and contrary to his assertion, linking ideology and killing is, in fact, contested, disputed, and debated among serious genocide scholars. We do not categorize Nazi–fascist crimes and mass killings under a single category, and I do not think that we should for the same reasons — I do not think that makes Wikipedia fascist or Holocaust denialist. Paul Siebert's World War II example is neat. Davide King (talk) 05:05, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that is an opinion of this author who may be even unaware of existence of other Wikipedia articles on the same subject. Tombs is an expert in a different field. I am not sure his personal opinion has a significant weight. Paul Siebert (talk) 05:04, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tombs said he read the article and said it was "careful and balanced". You have expressed a lot of personal opinion about Rummel, told us you read his book and thought it was junk, what field are you an expert in Paul? --Nug (talk) 05:12, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It would be interesting to know which version of the article he read, given how much edit-warring had been occurring. AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:17, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Nug: I know that the field of my RL expertise is a subject of your keen interest since 2008. I know what is Factor analysis, and I know that Rummel is praised for pioneering works where he applied that method to social sciences. I summarized my views of Rummel during the last RSN discussion, where I noted his strengths and weaknesses, and this my summary was positively accepted by other users. I never said Rummel is junk. Moreover, I noted somewhere that his data for Cambodia are, quite realistic, because the dataset he was working with was of a good quality. I said that Rummel's figure for USSR are junk, and that is true, because he used absolutely lousy Cold war era data. That must be obvious to any reasonable person who bothered to take a paper copy of his "Death by government". If you haven't done that, please do not pester me with your incessant mentions of Rummel. If you have read him, please, list the sources he used for USSR (that list is not long).

With regard to Tombs's opinion on this article, since this article expressed a viewpoint of some group of scholars, it is quite natural that the authors who share these views see the article as "balanced". I am 100% sure that Courtous or Malia would say the same.

In addition, judging by the Telegraph article's tone, the author's intention was by no means to create a balanced story. Of course, he picked the scholar who was expected to express a viewpoint of a certain kind. Paul Siebert (talk) 05:40, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Because you never do that, as can be seen by just scrolling up this debate. LOL. Cloud200 (talk) 12:03, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Cloud200: To awoid misunderstanding, please elaborate on what you meant by "that"? If "that" means I never said that about Rummel, then read this my post (19:29, 9 February 2021 (UTC)), and then bring me explicit apologies. If you meant something else, please, explain what exactly did you mean.

If your next post in Wikipedis will be about something else, my next post will be at AE page. Paul Siebert (talk) 17:02, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It seems Tomb's expertise is XIX century history. He authored no works on the topic that we are discussing.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:49, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In a process of source digging, I got a new idea how to resolve this dispute. I am seriously contemplating withdrawal of my "Delete" vote and replace it to "Temporary neutral". Instead of my previous vote, I plan to put the following text.

Draft

My work with sources (see this) lead me to an idea how this AfD can be resolved. Before I explain it, let me briefly summarize the article (its last version before David King made some cosmetic changes that faced so severe opposition). For the sake of brevity, my summary will be somewhat superficial.

The article says (or implies):

• 1. That mass killings under various communist regimes had something in common, and scholars are trying to propose special terminology for mass killings under communists (Attempts to propose a common terminology section);
• 2. That the attempts to make some estimate of the number of victims of Communism is a part of a mainstream scholarly discourse, not a politicized issue (Estimates section);
• 3. That a significant causal linkage between mass killings and Marxism and with Communist political system is a majority viewpoint (Proposed causes section);
• 4. That the question if famine under Communist regimes should be considered as "mass killings" is a part of mainstream scholarly discourse (Debate over famines section).

The above listed sections are the article's core, because the main aspect that makes this article so valuable for its supporters is emphasizing connection between mass killings and Communism as whole.

Therefore, the core issue that will define the fate of this article is: "Do majority of expert in the field see a significant linkage between Communism and its ideology and mass killings?". If the answer is "Yes" the article must be preserved. If the answer is "No" the article must be deleted and replaced with a discussion of the concept that links Communism and mass killing and a criticism thereof.

I propose to resolve this issue by making a comprehensive analysis of a representative sample of high quality scholarly sources on that topic that we will find using a neutral procedure. If our joint research will demonstrate that majority of sources explicitly support the article's claim ##1-4 (all four), I remove all my objections and vote Keep. If the sources do not explicitly support these claims, the article should be deleted. I have some concrete ideas on how perform a search. My approach was described as adequate by a peer-reviewed publication that was cited 17 times. It says that the search method that I, user Paul Siebert, am using identifies sources that "would be viewed by the majority of librarians or scholars as decent enough". However, I am open to other ideas how to figure out what majority of scholars think about this topic.

I propose to suspend this AfD, to start digging sources, jointly and on a separate page, and after a compact summary of the representative sample of sources will be ready, the panel of admins will analyze it and make a balanced and well substantiated decision. --Paul Siebert (talk) 05:13, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Your comments are welcome.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:13, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"I propose to suspend this AfD". Yeah, I can really see that happening. Has it never, at any point during this entire trainwreck of an AfD, occurred to you that your relentless attempts to control the process might be counterproductive? Stop being such an arrogant prick. AndyTheGrump (talk) 08:22, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Please remain civil. I don't agree with your assessment of Paul Siebert's intentions, but I can comprehend your frustration. However, that in no way warrants personal attacks. Regards, --Goldsztajn (talk) 11:04, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment I can appreciate the effort here to find a concord, but I disagree with the proposal. I think it is best to let this process run its course for now; let a panel of admins assess the discussion and see whether there is any consensus or none. Whatever happens there will be further steps; best to discuss those at that time. Regards, --Goldsztajn (talk) 11:35, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment I cannot see this working in any realistic way, because we will end up exactly in the same place where we were in August-September (article page), October (DRN) and where we are here in November (AfD): this is not about lack of sources, or lack of will to discuss them. Various people have been coming up with proposals and ideas, while just two users WP:BADGER each single of these proposals with kilobytes of comments and cherry-picked quotes whose sole purpose is to prevent any proposals other than theirs from being implemented. Which is precisely why I proposed[12] voluntary disengagement of the users most engaged in the dispute, to give the community a chance to get compromise that we failed to achieve for four months. And as you can see in the comment by AndyTheGrump, I'm not the only person who sees it this way. Cloud200 (talk) 12:15, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment If you would like advice I would say stop is probably the best. Any possible legitimate concerns of synth etc. are being undermined by your approach and arguments. fiveby(zero) 14:27, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]