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Article milestones Date Process Result September 1, 2009 Peer review Reviewed April 1, 2018 Peer review Reviewed June 1, 2018 Peer review Reviewed

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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

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

• 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)[reply]

The WP:COATRACK assertion by DaltonCastle doesn't parse for a number of reason.

1. The removed text isn't criticism, but an outline of a controversy surrounding the subject. It covers both sides.

2. The lead is supposed to summarize the contents, and with this removal, the lead no longer covers an important aspect of this subject.

3. Perhaps most importantly, having criticism in the lead does not make something a coatrack. A coatrack article is one in which is used to cover a related subject, instead of the actual subject.

All in all, I see absolutely zero merit to your claim. If you have a better argument, I'm listening. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 01:30, 31 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@DaltonCastle and MjolnirPants: WP:COATRACK is not policy. A relevant policy might be MOS:LEAD, perhaps MOS:LEADREL (Relative emphasis) specifically. Yue🌙 07:21, 31 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm aware. I'm just perplexed by the logic here. I'm not sure how having 'criticism' in the lead makes an article a coatrack. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 14:13, 31 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• The controversy is a major part of the topic (and the article); it obviously needs to be covered in the lead in some form. Also, in terms of both this and other recent removals under the COATRACK argument, it's important to note that the RFC determined that the purpose of this article was to ...cover the academic debate on the potential correlation between mass killings and communist regimes as documented in reliable sources. That means presenting it as an active debate and giving both sides on it. I don't think the argument that these are marginal views holds any real water (there's a lot of diverse high-quality sourcing raising various arguments), but at the very least the implicit argument that criticism doesn't belong here doesn't make any sense; this article's purpose is to discuss an active academic debate. Based on this I've also restored the "comparisons to other mass killings" section - it's one of the central points in that debate, and the attempt at a lead change made me realize that removals a few months back were what started moving this article away from the definition set out in the RFC. Whether editors agree with them or not, the section cites a number of highly-cited academics who are plainly using that comparison to advance one side or the other in the debate over whether there was a correlation between mass killings and communist regimes or not, which is, again, the topic of this article. --Aquillion (talk) 18:19, 31 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am one of the users involved in the removal of the section on "comparisons to other mass killings" a few months back, so I want to clarify my opinion: I don't have strong feelings on whether this section should be kept or removed, but I do strongly believe that whatever standard we choose, must be applied consistently. At the time of the removal of the section, a few months ago, what happened was that several different users removed various comparisons with other mass killings from the section until only one single comparison remained. Then I removed the last comparison, and the section. The arguments made by the other users were saying that comparisons with other mass killings are a topic which does not belong in the article. If this is the case, then all comparisons should be removed. Or if it is not the case, then all comparisons should be kept. Either way, I do not see any basis for removing some comparisons (actually most of them) and not others.

So that is where I stand on this: We should either keep the section, or not, but whatever we choose must be applied consistently. Comparisons either belong in this article, or they don't. - Small colossal (talk) 08:37, 1 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

On the coatrack claim, I agree with MjolnirPants that I do not see any connection at all between what is described on the page WP:COATRACK and what is present in this article. - Small colossal (talk) 08:41, 1 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]