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"Mass murder" and "Mass killing" are different terms, the "Mass killing" article describes a scientific term proposed by some genocide scholars (Valentino et al) in an attempt to explain genocidal events and predict their onset in future. In that sence, "mass killing" is a totally different from "mass murder". Many authors, for example, Steven Wheatcroft, insist that "mass murder" should be discriminated from "mass execution", "manslaughter", etc. Moreover, genocide scholars do not use "murder" at all. In connection to that, it is totally incorrect to merge these articles.-- Paul Siebert ( talk) 23:43, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
Paul Siebert: first, thanks for your addition of lots of informative and well-referenced material.
Though some scholars may use "mass killing" to refer to events involving over 50,000 deaths, and though "murder" has a particular legal definition (which varies by jurisdiction) readers commonly understand "mass killing" and "mass murder" to be synonyms. News media commonly describe a shooting of 5-10 people as a "mass killing".
Even if the phrases were used in distinct ways, differences in terminology do not inherently justify separate articles if there would be a lot of overlapping content, since those differences could be explained in a short "terminology" section. The current content of mass killing overlaps completely with the current content of mass murder, which includes killings of people by both governments and individuals, from small mass shootings up to the largest genocides, repression campaigns, and indiscriminate wartime killings. If there was a useful distinction to be made in our coverage, we could perhaps come up with a more specific topic to separate out under a different name, but for now I think these should just be merged. -- Beland ( talk) 23:49, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
-- Paul Siebert ( talk) 00:10, 31 August 2018 (UTC)
OK, I have removed the proposed merge tags and put a hatnote on mass killing scoping it to the scholarly definition of non-combat killing of 50,000 people or more. It would be nice to add more information to the table and article generally as to whether all of these incidents were perpetrated with government support, and which type of governments were involved. I have also re-scoped mass murder to focus on criminal mass murder (applied to individuals and groups only) and made Homicide#By governments the overview for government killing in general. I guess we'll see how things develop from here. -- Beland ( talk) 20:51, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
I think all recent edits are definitely an improvement, except this one. Not only that text is relevant, this is an opinion of a renown genocide scholar about themselves. It should be expanded, probably in a separate section (and to add opine of other authors). This point is very important, because genocide scholars are not experts in figures, and, importantly, most of them do not pretend to be experts in figures for each concrete country. They just summarize existing data (including obsolete or marginally reliable) in attempts to derive global trends. That is why it is important to use country expert's works for accurate data for each separate country. -- Paul Siebert ( talk) 14:26, 6 September 2018 (UTC)
As a courtesy notice, there are discussions active on
Talk:Mass killings under communist regimes that concern this article, particularly in the
summary style relationship between the two. (not
watching, please {{
ping}}
)
czar 08:36, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
What would this article lose/exclude if its scope was limited to "by governments/states"? The current content appears limited almost exclusively to mass killings by governments/states. czar 19:41, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
byCommunist states". Both renamings should be done concurrently.-- Paul Siebert ( talk) 04:09, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
I went through a lot of tertiary source material today and found that there's a whole lot of material—this article is not hurting for sources. Given this, I'd like to recommend as a ground rule for this article: "no primary sources". There's no need to quote Rummel on Rummel if there is a secondary source who has analyzed Rummel's analysis for us, giving us a better sense of proportionality for what to include in the article. There's no need to quote directly from studies doing original analysis on patterns and process of genocide—instead we should look to paraphrase what other scholars have written about those original analyses. This saves us from some mental gymnastics of determining which (and how much) of the many opinions to include in a topic's discussion—it's easier to look to what scholars with editorial distance/independence have already determined to be the main perspectives on the topic and what they found noteworthy enough to describe. czar 09:09, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
@ Davide King, might I suggest, in lieu of adding multiple, large, footnoted quotes instead formatting a single group citation similar to this/these, only quoting the immediately pertinent parts? The idea would be to provide the best (not all) evidence supporting the statement. czar 17:51, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
Articles do not need exact pages, only books need them. At least, that is how the reference system works in most peer-reviewed journals.-- Paul Siebert ( talk) 01:16, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
When citing lengthy sources, you should identify which part of a source is being cited.The idea that precise page references somehow imply cherry-picked evidence is an argument I haven't heard in a decade of editing Wikipedia. Especially for this topic, I'm not seeing a convincing reason to avoid as much precision as we can afford. czar 19:05, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
Discussion on the first paragraph of ethnic cleansing article at Talk:Ethnic cleansing#RfC. ( t · c) buidhe 18:28, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
Nug is trying to add the following sentence: "Tago and Wayman have shown that Rummel's methodology is sound and that the higher number is due to Rummel's use of a broader data set of victims compared to what Harff uses; Harff's geno-politicide data is basically a subset of Rummel's democide data. [1]" It's clear from the rest of the paragraph that is is far from generally accepted that "Rummel's methodology is sound", so it should not be presented as a fact. How exactly did they "show" this? ( t · c) buidhe 11:17, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
References
From Crimes against humanity under communist regimes – Research review, which is a tertiary source, Rummel is considered to be fringe ("they are hardly an example of a serious and empirically-based writing of history"), and is only mentioned "on the basis of the interest in him in the blogosphere." Davide King ( talk) 17:26, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
In light of this, do you mind if we discuss any issue here, while continuing the general discussion there? I have no problem doing both. Nug, I ping you again because I would like to hear your comments in light of the aforementioned link from your statements, which shows you were not satisfied by Paul Siebert's latest comments here. Buidhe is also free to address Nug's complaints in their linked comments. Can you clarify what you understand it to mean "reliability of Rummel's dataset"?
My main issue is the use of Rummel to support the current version of MKuCR, which is a different thing (Tago and Wayman do not discuss of MKuCR, even Rummel's categorization is described as "authoritarian and totalitarian government" at p. 5 vis-à-vis Valentino's disagreement), and I do not see what "reliability of Rummel's dataset" changes, other than we may rewrite MKuCR to be about authoritarian and totalitarian governments in general rather than only Communism — so whatever way you look at it, I do not see how that supports MKuCR or how they are misread. Finally, it must be kept in mind that genocide scholars are not as big and mainstream as MKuCR may look like them to be (they are a minority and are not relied by historians when discussing the events) — do Nug also dispute Genocide studies just like Mass killing? Davide King ( talk) 03:02, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
In light of their comments here, Fifelfoo could provide further input. If Nug refuse to engage with us, they must concede that their allegations are wrong, and stop using this as an argument against MKuCR's problems. Davide King ( talk) 14:35, 22 November 2021 (UTC) [Edited to add] Davide King ( talk) 14:38, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
Tago & Wayman 2010 shows that there is a disagreement among scholars, and the solution is certainly not to give too much weight to Rummel by following his categorization, which are criticized by other scholars by Valentino, who is not the only one. When scholars disagree, the solution is not following categorization by a relevant but undue (in light of disagreement and criticism) scholar like Rummel. That we must give WEIGHT and priority to Rummel by having a MKuCR (full Communist-devoted article despite scholars either disagreeing or rejecting ideology and regime type links) is absurd, false balance, does not follow, and is quite frankly beyond me. I cannot possibly be the only to think this — I am well open to the idea of being proven wrong but I just do not see any sufficient rationale that would justify this. Davide King ( talk) 16:28, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
Buidhe, Paul Siebert, were those edits by Nug acceptable and/or an improvement from their previous wording attempt? I think they certainly were an improvement, as they did remove "Rummel's methodology is sound" wording, and their chosen wording seems to reflect more what Siebert said, namely that "Rummel's numbers are different because he uses different category of data (no lower limit and no intentionality). By no means these data are 'broader': they both use a worldwide statistics, but Rummel's inclusion threshold is different", hence "Harff's dataset of politicide-geoncide being essentially a subset of Rummel's dataset, where he includes other types of killings in addition to politicide-geoncide." I would remove essentially though. Davide King ( talk) 10:49, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
Not sure why there is such an emphasis on the datasets in this article, but here is a list from Anderton, Charles H. (2016). "Datasets and Trends of Genocides, Mass Killings, and Other Civilian Atrocities". Economic Aspects of Genocides, Other Mass Atrocities, and Their Preventions. ISBN 9780199378296. fiveby( zero) 16:09, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
Political Instability Task Force Geno-Politicide Dataset | genocide/politicide | Marshall, M. G.; T. R. Gurr; B. Harff (2014). PITF—State Failure Problem Set: Internal Wars and Failures of Governance, 1955–2013. Societal-Systems Research. |
Ulfelder and Valentino Mass Killings | mass killing | Ulfelder, Jay; Valentino, Benjamin (February 1, 2008). "Assessing Risks of State-Sponsored Mass Killing". |
Easterly, Gatti, and Kurlat Data Mass Killings | mass killing | Easterly, W.; Gatti, R.; Kurlat S. (2006). "Development, Democracy, and Mass Killing". Journal of Economic Growth. 11 (2): 129–56. JSTOR 40216091. |
Rummel | democide | Rummel, R. J (1998). Statistics of Genocide: Genocide and Mass Murder since 1900. Transactions. |
Uppsala Conflict Data Program One-Sided Violence Dataset | mass atrocity and one-sided lower-level atrocity | UCDP Publications |
Political Terror Scale | high-level terror | Wood, R. M.; Gibney M. (2010). "The Political Terror Scale (PTS): A Re-Introduction and a Comparison to CIRI". Human Rights Quarterly. 32 (2): 367–400. |
Cingranelli-Richards Human Rights Dataset | one-sided lower level atrocity | unpublished? |
Minorities at Risk | forced resettlement, systematic killings, ethnic cleansing | unpublished? |
This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
It is requested that an image or photograph be
included in this article to
improve its quality. Please replace this template with a more specific
media request template where possible.
The Free Image Search Tool or Openverse Creative Commons Search may be able to locate suitable images on Flickr and other web sites. |
"Mass murder" and "Mass killing" are different terms, the "Mass killing" article describes a scientific term proposed by some genocide scholars (Valentino et al) in an attempt to explain genocidal events and predict their onset in future. In that sence, "mass killing" is a totally different from "mass murder". Many authors, for example, Steven Wheatcroft, insist that "mass murder" should be discriminated from "mass execution", "manslaughter", etc. Moreover, genocide scholars do not use "murder" at all. In connection to that, it is totally incorrect to merge these articles.-- Paul Siebert ( talk) 23:43, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
Paul Siebert: first, thanks for your addition of lots of informative and well-referenced material.
Though some scholars may use "mass killing" to refer to events involving over 50,000 deaths, and though "murder" has a particular legal definition (which varies by jurisdiction) readers commonly understand "mass killing" and "mass murder" to be synonyms. News media commonly describe a shooting of 5-10 people as a "mass killing".
Even if the phrases were used in distinct ways, differences in terminology do not inherently justify separate articles if there would be a lot of overlapping content, since those differences could be explained in a short "terminology" section. The current content of mass killing overlaps completely with the current content of mass murder, which includes killings of people by both governments and individuals, from small mass shootings up to the largest genocides, repression campaigns, and indiscriminate wartime killings. If there was a useful distinction to be made in our coverage, we could perhaps come up with a more specific topic to separate out under a different name, but for now I think these should just be merged. -- Beland ( talk) 23:49, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
-- Paul Siebert ( talk) 00:10, 31 August 2018 (UTC)
OK, I have removed the proposed merge tags and put a hatnote on mass killing scoping it to the scholarly definition of non-combat killing of 50,000 people or more. It would be nice to add more information to the table and article generally as to whether all of these incidents were perpetrated with government support, and which type of governments were involved. I have also re-scoped mass murder to focus on criminal mass murder (applied to individuals and groups only) and made Homicide#By governments the overview for government killing in general. I guess we'll see how things develop from here. -- Beland ( talk) 20:51, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
I think all recent edits are definitely an improvement, except this one. Not only that text is relevant, this is an opinion of a renown genocide scholar about themselves. It should be expanded, probably in a separate section (and to add opine of other authors). This point is very important, because genocide scholars are not experts in figures, and, importantly, most of them do not pretend to be experts in figures for each concrete country. They just summarize existing data (including obsolete or marginally reliable) in attempts to derive global trends. That is why it is important to use country expert's works for accurate data for each separate country. -- Paul Siebert ( talk) 14:26, 6 September 2018 (UTC)
As a courtesy notice, there are discussions active on
Talk:Mass killings under communist regimes that concern this article, particularly in the
summary style relationship between the two. (not
watching, please {{
ping}}
)
czar 08:36, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
What would this article lose/exclude if its scope was limited to "by governments/states"? The current content appears limited almost exclusively to mass killings by governments/states. czar 19:41, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
byCommunist states". Both renamings should be done concurrently.-- Paul Siebert ( talk) 04:09, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
I went through a lot of tertiary source material today and found that there's a whole lot of material—this article is not hurting for sources. Given this, I'd like to recommend as a ground rule for this article: "no primary sources". There's no need to quote Rummel on Rummel if there is a secondary source who has analyzed Rummel's analysis for us, giving us a better sense of proportionality for what to include in the article. There's no need to quote directly from studies doing original analysis on patterns and process of genocide—instead we should look to paraphrase what other scholars have written about those original analyses. This saves us from some mental gymnastics of determining which (and how much) of the many opinions to include in a topic's discussion—it's easier to look to what scholars with editorial distance/independence have already determined to be the main perspectives on the topic and what they found noteworthy enough to describe. czar 09:09, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
@ Davide King, might I suggest, in lieu of adding multiple, large, footnoted quotes instead formatting a single group citation similar to this/these, only quoting the immediately pertinent parts? The idea would be to provide the best (not all) evidence supporting the statement. czar 17:51, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
Articles do not need exact pages, only books need them. At least, that is how the reference system works in most peer-reviewed journals.-- Paul Siebert ( talk) 01:16, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
When citing lengthy sources, you should identify which part of a source is being cited.The idea that precise page references somehow imply cherry-picked evidence is an argument I haven't heard in a decade of editing Wikipedia. Especially for this topic, I'm not seeing a convincing reason to avoid as much precision as we can afford. czar 19:05, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
Discussion on the first paragraph of ethnic cleansing article at Talk:Ethnic cleansing#RfC. ( t · c) buidhe 18:28, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
Nug is trying to add the following sentence: "Tago and Wayman have shown that Rummel's methodology is sound and that the higher number is due to Rummel's use of a broader data set of victims compared to what Harff uses; Harff's geno-politicide data is basically a subset of Rummel's democide data. [1]" It's clear from the rest of the paragraph that is is far from generally accepted that "Rummel's methodology is sound", so it should not be presented as a fact. How exactly did they "show" this? ( t · c) buidhe 11:17, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
References
From Crimes against humanity under communist regimes – Research review, which is a tertiary source, Rummel is considered to be fringe ("they are hardly an example of a serious and empirically-based writing of history"), and is only mentioned "on the basis of the interest in him in the blogosphere." Davide King ( talk) 17:26, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
In light of this, do you mind if we discuss any issue here, while continuing the general discussion there? I have no problem doing both. Nug, I ping you again because I would like to hear your comments in light of the aforementioned link from your statements, which shows you were not satisfied by Paul Siebert's latest comments here. Buidhe is also free to address Nug's complaints in their linked comments. Can you clarify what you understand it to mean "reliability of Rummel's dataset"?
My main issue is the use of Rummel to support the current version of MKuCR, which is a different thing (Tago and Wayman do not discuss of MKuCR, even Rummel's categorization is described as "authoritarian and totalitarian government" at p. 5 vis-à-vis Valentino's disagreement), and I do not see what "reliability of Rummel's dataset" changes, other than we may rewrite MKuCR to be about authoritarian and totalitarian governments in general rather than only Communism — so whatever way you look at it, I do not see how that supports MKuCR or how they are misread. Finally, it must be kept in mind that genocide scholars are not as big and mainstream as MKuCR may look like them to be (they are a minority and are not relied by historians when discussing the events) — do Nug also dispute Genocide studies just like Mass killing? Davide King ( talk) 03:02, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
In light of their comments here, Fifelfoo could provide further input. If Nug refuse to engage with us, they must concede that their allegations are wrong, and stop using this as an argument against MKuCR's problems. Davide King ( talk) 14:35, 22 November 2021 (UTC) [Edited to add] Davide King ( talk) 14:38, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
Tago & Wayman 2010 shows that there is a disagreement among scholars, and the solution is certainly not to give too much weight to Rummel by following his categorization, which are criticized by other scholars by Valentino, who is not the only one. When scholars disagree, the solution is not following categorization by a relevant but undue (in light of disagreement and criticism) scholar like Rummel. That we must give WEIGHT and priority to Rummel by having a MKuCR (full Communist-devoted article despite scholars either disagreeing or rejecting ideology and regime type links) is absurd, false balance, does not follow, and is quite frankly beyond me. I cannot possibly be the only to think this — I am well open to the idea of being proven wrong but I just do not see any sufficient rationale that would justify this. Davide King ( talk) 16:28, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
Buidhe, Paul Siebert, were those edits by Nug acceptable and/or an improvement from their previous wording attempt? I think they certainly were an improvement, as they did remove "Rummel's methodology is sound" wording, and their chosen wording seems to reflect more what Siebert said, namely that "Rummel's numbers are different because he uses different category of data (no lower limit and no intentionality). By no means these data are 'broader': they both use a worldwide statistics, but Rummel's inclusion threshold is different", hence "Harff's dataset of politicide-geoncide being essentially a subset of Rummel's dataset, where he includes other types of killings in addition to politicide-geoncide." I would remove essentially though. Davide King ( talk) 10:49, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
Not sure why there is such an emphasis on the datasets in this article, but here is a list from Anderton, Charles H. (2016). "Datasets and Trends of Genocides, Mass Killings, and Other Civilian Atrocities". Economic Aspects of Genocides, Other Mass Atrocities, and Their Preventions. ISBN 9780199378296. fiveby( zero) 16:09, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
Political Instability Task Force Geno-Politicide Dataset | genocide/politicide | Marshall, M. G.; T. R. Gurr; B. Harff (2014). PITF—State Failure Problem Set: Internal Wars and Failures of Governance, 1955–2013. Societal-Systems Research. |
Ulfelder and Valentino Mass Killings | mass killing | Ulfelder, Jay; Valentino, Benjamin (February 1, 2008). "Assessing Risks of State-Sponsored Mass Killing". |
Easterly, Gatti, and Kurlat Data Mass Killings | mass killing | Easterly, W.; Gatti, R.; Kurlat S. (2006). "Development, Democracy, and Mass Killing". Journal of Economic Growth. 11 (2): 129–56. JSTOR 40216091. |
Rummel | democide | Rummel, R. J (1998). Statistics of Genocide: Genocide and Mass Murder since 1900. Transactions. |
Uppsala Conflict Data Program One-Sided Violence Dataset | mass atrocity and one-sided lower-level atrocity | UCDP Publications |
Political Terror Scale | high-level terror | Wood, R. M.; Gibney M. (2010). "The Political Terror Scale (PTS): A Re-Introduction and a Comparison to CIRI". Human Rights Quarterly. 32 (2): 367–400. |
Cingranelli-Richards Human Rights Dataset | one-sided lower level atrocity | unpublished? |
Minorities at Risk | forced resettlement, systematic killings, ethnic cleansing | unpublished? |