Talk:List of anthropogenic disasters by death toll/Archive 5

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Citations

Looking throught the sporting disasters, I can find no verification of numbers in the Wiki articles for any of them. --Dweller 12:35, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Unprotected

Article unprotected as per request at WP:RFPP -- Samir धर्म 05:46, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Revisions

In this section, can I suggest editors outline which sections of the article they plan to rework. If possible, "how" would also be useful. --Dweller 10:45, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Sporting events

I'm taking this on. I'm going to:

1. ask for sources for all
2. remove request for those not needing
3. use the table format that can be seen higher up this page - initially in my sandbox
4. delete entries that are not disasters

My work in progress can be seen at the article and in user:Dweller/sandbox

Helpful suggestions on my personal talk page please to keep this section easy to read. Thanks. --Dweller 10:45, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

My work in progress can be seen at the article and in user:Dweller/sandbox

Actually Dweller, I wouldn't go to the trouble. I've had second thoughts about that particular form of presentation, it's messy and complicated, hard to get right and rather restrictive, and the end result neither looks very good nor is that easy to read in my opinion.

I'm working on a simpler, more elegant and more functional solution for the presentation of data on this page. So if I were you I wouldn't waste too much time on the formatting ATM, unless it's just for your personal edification.

Actually, I might as well show you a quick example of what I'm working towards. This one uses a fixed width text that is normally used for computer code and so on, I don't intend to use such text in the final version, but the layout is pretty much how I want it to be. Just to give you an idea of what lines I'm thinking along. I find this solution to be basically simpler, easier to read and more flexible, in that you can discuss each event at greater length instead of being confined to a wee little box in which you try to fit in one little piece of info or another. I think it looks a lot better too, quite frankly, even in the temporary fixed width text format.

BTW, note that the code to this little table is not really suitable for using as a basis for table code, because the format for fixed width tables is quite different than for normal tables. I'm just giving you this as an example of the type of layout I'm trying to work towards.

30,000,000 - 200,000,000 - African/Atlantic slave trade (16th - 19th C)

27,000,000 -  72,000,000 - Communist China (1949-1975) under 
                           Mao Zedong[1]

20,000,000 -  26,000,000 - Democides and genocides (1933 -1945) of 
                           Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler

 3,000,000 -  30,000,000 - War crimes of Imperial Japan, especially in 
                           China, 1930's-1945, under Hideki Tojo and 
                           others. See also Japanese war crimes.[2]

Gatoclass 22:57, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Siege of Tenochtitlan

Why does the Siege of Tenochtitlan appear twice? - Eric 07:49, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

The duplication occurred due to user 69.117.38.223 (talk · contribs) neglecting to remove the old entry (however the user did remove a separate overlapping entry) after adding a new one. [3] I have now performed this task. [4] —Viriditas | Talk 08:03, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Spain

Is there a reason someone took out everything Spain did? http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_wars_and_disasters_by_death_toll&diff=64106007&oldid=63942888

Battle of Tinian

The death toll should be at least 8,010 instead of 6,500

Changed. ComaDivine 08:39, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Merge?

These articles have overlapping content and should be merged. Or at least, List of disasters should be repurposed as a simple list, leaving this one to count death tolls. Rmhermen 14:49, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose The other list is chronological, with a death toll cutoff. Obviously, the best would be a spreadsheet-like page that one could flip, at the click of a button, between sort-by-death-toll and sort-by-date, but until the Wiki can do that... Urhixidur 23:16, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose per Urhixidur.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  07:46, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

USER 146.145.227.194, how can you be so biased?

The "democides of the united states" under "genocide and democide" is one of the FEW cited pieces of information on the list! Yet, you remove the cited portion, and NOT the dozens of UNCITED links! Do you see the basic lack of logic in this?

Discredited Lacet Reports

I won't change it yet, as I want some input, but hasn't the Lancet report been very thouroughly debunked? It used inferior methods of information gathering claiming that 1 in 40 Iraqis died as a result of invaion. I think we should revert from the Lancet report's claim of 655,000 dead (an absurd number), to the probably still high IraqiBodyCount.org number of about 50,000 (max).

Says UITF: "the "report" randomly surveyed Iraqis and asked about deaths to extrapolated a death rate in the country. They included "thousands of people [who] died from worsening health and environmental conditions directly related to the conflict that began in 2003," and compared it with their post invasion death rate of 5.5."

Hot Air says: "According to the CIA Factbook by way of the Mudville Gazette, the average world death rate per 1,000 people is 8.67. The pre-invasion figure for Iraq used by Lancet was 5.5. Is that plausible? Does it count officially reported deaths or do Saddam-era "disappearances" count too? There are countries with lower death rates than 5.5 so it's not absurd on its face."

Says the liberal IraqBodyCount.org: "We would hope that, before accepting such extreme notions, serious consideration is given to the possibility that the population estimates derived from the Lancet study are flawed. The most likely source of such a flaw is some bias in the sampling methodology such that violent deaths were vastly over-represented in the sample. The precise potential nature of such bias is not clear at this point..." They have an [extensive study] destroying the Lancet report.

Says Texas Rainmaker: "The lead “researcher” then was also a Democrat candidate for Congress this year, before dropping out of the race. The current lead “researcher” was a financial supporter of his campaign. There’s some whopping credibility for their “research”."

Not to mention that this report includes people killed by terrorists - terrorists who would be killing people (probably Americans) in other parts of the world were they not in Iraq. President Bush denied the report (which, granted, is not solid evidence as he'd want to deny it anyway), but unlike one former President, most avoid flat-out lieing to the American people on national television.

I plan to change it, but just wanted to hear some input first. In other words; can one person tell me that this report is not discredited crap? Post on my talk page.

Abortion?

I noticed the edits by Jackist were reverted.

To be honest, when I saw the initial edits, I was shocked, repulsed, and then finally intrigued. I'm wondering, while it does seem to be indirectly (but deliberately) propagating an anti-abortion stance, should we include it nonetheless? Or does another page on wikipedia have abortion statistics?

If the statistics are reliable, then abortion is presumably the correct page. Certainly not here. -- Necrothesp 00:54, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

How are abortion statistics a POV?

I don't use Wikipedia often, but I've seen a link to this particular article numerous in other forums that I use. The citing person always uses the link to support his claim that the US/Europe/White People are responsible for the destruction/genocide/hatred of the Native Americans. Of course, the abortion death toll is many times as staggering and ongoing yet people who sympathize with the Native Americans (who weren't consider human by those killing them) never even pops into their head. Abortion policies and supporters are normally seeking demographic changes. For instance, Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, wanted to exterminate blacks and other racial minorities through abortion. The 200 million plus abortions in the Soviet Union were a part of deliberate social and political policy.

I understand that many people don't think abortion is the killing of human life, but many people do. I don't see how including the number is a POV while excluding them isn't. I'll hold off on the whole post/unpost efforts to let discussion proceed on this page. Jackist 00:25, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

The point is that by putting them here you appear to be propagating a POV. Their correct location is on the abortion page. This is a list of wars and disasters. Most would consider genocide to be a human disaster. It may not have been considered so in the time and place in which it happened, but it is now. In addition, the "genocide" of the American Indians was principally carried out through war, which is within the purview of this article. Many, obviously since it's legal in a huge number of countries, do not consider abortion to be a disaster, and it's certainly not a war. It's a question of the appropriate place to put information without inserting your POV, overtly or covertly. Only a very few would consider it POV to count genocide as a human disaster; very many, in the western world at least, would consider it highly POV to count abortion as such. -- Necrothesp 01:02, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

The "genocide" of the American Indians was primarily a result of disease, and I would highly dispute that it was a "human disaster." I guess that makes it a POV that needs to be removed? Or maybe we should follow the neutral point of view policy and include an opposing viewpoint? (And it was legal to shoot Indians from a streetcar in Dallas up until the 1970s. Does that mean that up until the 1970s killing American Indians wasn't a disaster?) Most pro-life people would argue that the fact that abortion is legal is the disaster, and many genocides were carried out by private citizens without legal penalty. And of course, abortion is still illegal in many countries so I don't see why the view of some Europeans and Americans is somehow not a POV. Many people in fact argue that abortion is genocide. See www.blackgenocide.org. This is sort of rambling, but the point that I am trying to make is that many people would see it as correct to include the information here.

Based on my understanding of Wiki policy, we're supposed to present a neutral point of view.

"The neutrality policy is used sometimes as an excuse to delete texts that are perceived as biased. Isn't this a problem?

In many cases, yes. Many of us believe that the fact that some text is biased is not enough, in itself, to delete it outright. If it contains valid information, the text should simply be edited accordingly."

I would like some ideas on how to include the information in a way that presents it in a neutral fashion. I tried that before by saying that not everyone agrees that abortion is a human death and that the reader should make up his own mind. If that's not correct, then what is? Jackist 04:00, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't think you're understanding me. This is not the correct place to present this information, however you present it. It is blatantly not the correct article. What's wrong with the article on abortion? -- Necrothesp 13:34, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I do understand you and your opinion. You're unwilling to accept that the largest intentional termination of genetically human life in history counts as genocide, and that's not an uncommon view. However, abortion has all the characteristics of genocide/abortion. It's justified by denying the humanity of the other, eliminates the "undesirables" (people with Down syndrome and other genetic diseases are being removed from the population), increases lebensraum/decreases "overpopulation," and the ruling class supporters of the program deny that it's genocide and try to hide the information from people who might think otherwise if they saw the numbers. Why not put it in an abortion article? Why did Martin Luther post his 95 Theses on the cathedral door instead of in an theological journal? I want people to actually see the information and make connections on their own. In short, I want the "facts to speak for themselves" as the Wiki policy supposedly allows. I want people to be able to make up their own minds about whether or not abortion is a disaster. I don't want that decision to be made by left-leaning editors who require anti-status quo information to be posted in the ghetto. I still haven't gotten any suggestions on how to better include it. Jackist 15:06, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

You are obviously unclear on the definition of an encyclopaedia. Encyclopaedias present fact not opinion. It is not a fact that abortion is genocide, but an opinion. Therefore it does not belong in this article. And who are you accusing of being left-leaning? Do you really believe that only left-wingers do not consider abortion to be genocide? I suggest you stop trying to pigeonhole people according to your own beliefs. -- Necrothesp 19:08, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure where you're getting that encyclopaedias present "fact" and not "opinion." The Wiki entry on ecyclopaedia doesn't even contain the word "fact." It does however mention "the opinions and worldviews of a particular generation can be observed in the encyclopedic writing of the time." I'm accusing mainstream writer and academics of being left-leaning in their presentation of information especially with regards to issues they disagree with. I am not trying to pidgeon hole anyone. I'm not the one who deletes facts they disagree with. It is a fact that abortions involve the killing of genetically human separate organisms by other humans. It is a fact that the implementation and justification of abortion policies is very similiar to the implementation and justification of genocide policies. The numbers of reported abortions that I posted are also facts. I see the concern that just posting the facts without mentioning the opinion that this is not genocide/democide could be misleading. I've asked for advice as to how to present the facts in a way where both sides feel the information is presented fairly. I still have not received any suggestions on how to do so. I may re-engage the posting war soon. Jackist 03:04, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Simple, create a whole new section for it. Change the title to "List of wars, disasters and abortions by death toll". No matter what, if a cell stops functioning, that means it died, whether or not it was human. Also, simply for clarification, change "Deaths caused by humans" to "Homicide." Last I checked, homicide was simply the act of killing a human being. This includes war, genocide, murder, suicide, infanticide, etc. Seeing as how abortion would be the newest info added to the list, I don't see why it should have priority to be placed first (which is where you placed it before). I think it follows logically that abortion statistics should be in a whole new section at #4: Non-homicidal deaths caused by humans. This would include abortion, killing of animals, ejaculation of sperm (which I mentioned before), etc. References, See Also, and External links would simply be pushed down one.--69.117.38.223 02:07, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

A slight note on the Native American democide issue. The reason the number is ~13,000,000 and NOT around 200,000,000 is because it DOESN'T include the # that died through disease and through war. Read Rummel's book on democide (also available online, for the most part) for clarification. The 13 million number is more of a figure for direct democides and total who died from deliberate massacres; it is NOT the total number of Native Americans who died merely as a (most likely indirect) result of European invasion.

Either way, however, the DEMOCIDE of the Amer-Indians is indisputably justified in being on this page. Why? It's under democide and genocide. Guess who invented the term democide? Rummel! Guess who thinks the murder of millions of Amer-Indians IS in fact democide? Rummel! In fact, if we're going to eliminate the Native American listing, that means we discredit all of Rummel.

Of course, the only issue I actually have with putting abortion on is that is it the same as killing a human? If I recall correctly, most abortions occur within the first trimester, when the "fetus" is barely distinguishable from a mass of cells. In fact, it can't even survive independently. If any living cell with human DNA in it is a living organism, regardless of its independence, then every time you ejaculate you're committing massive democide. After all, you're killing millions of sperm (genetically human life, no? same applies for skin cells), who had the possibility of becoming a full-grown human. And, you're killing off "undesirables," because the "undesirable" sperm won't survive to meet the egg. And nobody considers that to be democide. -I AM a Citation 22:27, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Although, to be fair, I wouldn't mind destroying the credibility of this article entirely and including both abortion and murder of sperm cells. It could easily be estimated. In fact, just use extremely conservative figures so nobody can make accusations of POV. Let's say the average male ejaculates once in his lifetime, w/ around 100 million sperm each time, and there were only ever 10 billion men. A "disaster" where a quintillion died... and it goes ignored for so long!--I AM a Citation 22:35, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

While it would be hilarious (or horrible, depending on your POV) to think that us males are capable of single-handedly topping any historical dictator's genocide count, I'd like to point out that a sperm cell, in addition to not being an independently viable cell, does not even contain the full genome, since both the [sperm cell] and the [ovum] only contain half of the required chromosomes and the complete DNA sequence only appears once the ovum is fertilized. There's really no way, short of thinking that "every sperm is sacred", to consider the sperm cell as anything more than half a blueprint and a machine to deliver it. So we can safely [spank the monkey daily to help prevent prostate cancer]. Muad 14:32, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

1,634,000[9] - Democides by the United States (1900-1987)

For the "1,634,000[9] - Democides by the United States (1900-1987)" entry under "Genocides and Democides" the reference http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.TAB13.1.GIF is a table listing deaths resulting from apparently *all* military activities of the USA from 1900-1987. This wikipedia article has links for both Genocide and Democide and neither definition appears to include any deaths inflicted upon uniformed enemy combatants in War. The vast majority of the deaths listed in the table are such war time related deaths.

This entry needs to be either removed or moved to a different category. I recognize that the USA is an evil diabolical genocidal regime bent on murdering millions of innocent people but any account of its genocidal/democidal atrocities cannot reasonably include the deaths of uniformed military personnel as the majority of it's total.

I'm tempted to simply delete the entry straight away but I think the total from the table may be useful as an entry in some new category if someone can devise one appropriate for such a figure.

Zebulin 17:31, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

ok I went back to the reference and traced back to the rest of the website. http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE5.HTM#FIG has tables supposably broken down by "democide" for a huge number of countries and regimes. It's still not clear where the actual total used in our article came from. The methods don't seem to quite match wikipedia definition of democide but if we decide to keep the democide by united states entry in the list I suppose these others could all be added in as well for comparison by the same method.

Zebulin 17:57, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

uh.. the "wikipedia definition of democide" is based on R.J. Rummel's definition. Maybe you should check Rummel's website to see if he defines the American democides as democide.

Oh wait, that IS rummel's website... I see no reason to NOT cite the American democides when it is cited by Rummel, who made the term in the first place. (and also... because of the fact we also have other references to Rummel in the article already...) Reverting.--69.117.38.223 21:59, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Reverting what? i didn't edit anything!

Anyway should we add the rest of the democides from that site to the list? it sounds like that would be closest to consensus.

Zebulin 04:19, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the whole 'Democides' section is very, very hard to quantify. We're double- (and triple-) counting a lot of deaths in this section. For example, the democides of Nazi Germany would include many democides of the United States (in World War II); same with the democides of Imperial Japan and the United States. We need to reform this section, or remove it. Chip Unicorn 04:47, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

User 139.168.7.30

Mao may not have commited genocide, but he did in fact commit democide. What's democide? Well even if you don't know what it is, it should still be listed because the category is "Genocide and Democide." Well I guess we should look for a definition of the term. Who made the term anyway? Oh yeah, political scientist R.J. Rummel. Should we check if he defines the millions of deaths under Mao's regime as democide? Well in fact the inventor of the term defines 73 million of those deaths as democide. It's actually rather generous to Mao to leave the low bound of 27 million there.

Of course, if you actually gave half a damn about citations, you would have already clicked the citation and seen the obvious.

Reverting, for obvious reasons. Personal opinion does not overrule citation (especially such an authoritative one). --I AM a Citation 03:44, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

References

It seems sufficient to me to defer references to the articles on the subject (unless there is no article). There would need to be a systematic attempt to verify that each article actually does contain this information, that it agrees with the list, and that the info is referenced. -- Beland 02:02, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

China?

Seriously? A high estimate of ONE BILLION DEATHS between '49 and '75? According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Milestones there were only three billion people in the world in the sixties... I find it hard to believe that China killed roughly one third of the world's population, while still managing to have ~1.4 billion people today... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.154.18.16 (talk) 04:51, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Afghanistan civil war

considering the war in the 1960's as being the same war today seems a bit biased to me.

I actually thinkthe Afghan Civil war should be split up. It makes it seem as if it was all one singular war which is completely incorrect. On top of this the Afghan Soviet War (1979-1989) took a million lives in itself. And then we've got the US war for its own interests like the Soviets from (2001-present day), which has taken a large amount of lives as well.

Be more specific as to what these wars were and split them up accordingly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.192.246.138 (talk) 13:08, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

High Tolls of Ancient Wars and Battles

Why do the tables uncritically present such high death tolls for things like the Battle of Platea and Gaugamela? Or indeed, the Mongol invasions or ancient Chinese rebellions? It seems to me that such speculative totals of distant events from eras without reliable census information should be taken with a grain of salt. Wilhelm Ritter 22:40, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

• Despite the tumbleweeds, Wilhelm Ritter, I very much agree with you. Jdcooper 02:14, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Actually, Confucian scholars kept very good census records. Still the numbers of dead for all those medieval Chinese rebellions seem incredibly high for preindustrial warfare. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.3.223.23 (talk) 23:34, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps we could split modern and ancient wars? Distressingly the ancient wars depend almost entirely on one source, namely the pre-modern deathtoll website, many of whose sources are themselves extremely old and not necessarily accuarate. Not to mention the arguement for the figures is often pretty poor, but alas Wikipedia does not allow such discrimination. Wilhelm Ritter (talk) 20:57, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Sortable table

It might be nice to make these tables dynamically sortable, as I've done for List of United States disasters by death toll. See Help:Sorting for documentation. -- Beland 02:01, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

• That's amazing, I had no idea we could do that on wikipedia. However, if we did that, would it still be a list by death toll? Or just a list? Jdcooper 02:16, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Because of a discussion on violence. I am interested in compounding the data on purposeful deaths in a single table and adding estimates of country population and world population estimates to give some idea of the impact. Does that seem feasible? LLorton 02:01, 06 September, 2007 (UTC)

Deaths or Casualties

This list is definitely wrong. In many cases, the number listed is the number of casualties. Death toll is doesn't involve casualties, or it will be called casualty tolls... For example, 2 million deaths for Brusilov Offensive! If you check the attack, the number of casualties is about 1.5 million. This chart does not make much sense. Battle of Chancellorsville had maybe 3000 deaths, not 12,000 and Battle of Gettysburg had 8000 deaths not 15,000... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.109.255.61 (talk) 03:24, 28 February 2007 (UTC).

busted dam and huge flood in china in the 70s

I heard there was an enormous flood in the 70s, some dam blew, and it cascaded and blew an entire network of dams not sure the name/exact place/exact date but it was on some disaster show on discovery yet I cannot find it in this list ? where is it ?

216.113.96.172 07:49, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes it was the Banqiao Dam Failure. On August 1975 the 62 dams in Zhumadian Prefecture of China's Henan Province failed catastrophically from excessive rainfall (189.5 mm/hour) produced from Super Typhoon Nina and a cold front. The dams were unable to obtain the water whilst the sluice gates were blocked from sendiments. The dams's failure initially drowned 26,000 and another 145,000 died from diseases and famine that followed.

Under Ship Disasters I see no mention of SS Ceramic which was sunk by a German submarine in 1942 leaving 655 dead.
I also think the West Gate Bridge collapse (1970, Melbourne, Australia) should be included in the Industrial Accidents section since the accident happened during construction of the bridge. It is currently listed under "Other Accidents" at the bottom of the page.
--203.173.59.141 14:55, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Splitting

This article should be split into each of its constituent parts. I was pretty much amazed to find, when I eventually found this article, that so much information has been packed into one article. Here are some principle reasons I believe this would be a good idea:

1. Article titles would be simplified, more relevant to all the information provided, and therefore easier to find. The current title doesn't really cover it, and I can't think what would.
2. The subjects are wholly divergent, and deserve their own articles. List of murderers by death toll should not be in the same article as List of sporting disasters by death toll because they are not remotely the same topic (apart from death), fall into totally different spheres of interest and are likely to be edited by totally different types of people accordingly.
3. On a related point, splitting the article would allow efforts to be concentrated according to interest. Specialists in each area of disaster would be more inclined to help out, if the finished section was not accompanied by several other sections which still needed work. This would also mean that if two editors happened to be having a massive dispute over, say, war or genocide figures, they could protect their article without disrupting the efforts editors in other areas.
4. More detail and length could be put into each section without making the whole article a long ugly mess.

I am not necessarily saying each little category needs its own page, but there definitely needs to be splitting of some kind. I would say List of: "Wars", "Genocides and Democides", "Terrorist attacks", "serial killers" (this would include mailbombers), "Natural disasters" (with subsections), "transport disasters", "mass suicides" (not sure about this one), "fatal political demonstrations and riots" (nor this one), "human-caused disasters" by death toll as a broad guide, though obviously open to debate. Or maybe even just breaking out the wars, genocides, terrorism and murder, and leaving it as disasters? So to speak.

Thoughts? I reckon this is a fairly important thing to be done soon. Jdcooper 02:08, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

It's true the article is rather untidy, I've been meaning to get around to putting it all into neater tables but as usual I can't get the html to give me a satisfactory result. It just ignores my instructions, I think it must be overriding them in order to fit stuff onto the page or something. Really annoying. And I don't think the standard sort of Wiki table would be useful for long lists like these, they'd probably just make it more unreadable.

As for splitting the page, I'm not terribly keen on it. I might support a split between events of human agency and natural disasters, but I'd be very reluctant to go any further than that. Gatoclass 04:09, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Edit: Oops, it's a while since I checked the contents of this page, there are no strictly natural disasters are they? In which case I'm less enthusiastic still about a split. I think one of the very things which makes this page useful is that all this stuff is collected together. In my opinion, Wikipedia is a pretty awful maze already and every time a new article is created, it makes it that much harder for people to find all the material which might be relevant to their search. I know this happens to me a lot, and I find it very irritating. Gatoclass 11:08, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Yup, I clocked that there were no natural disasters after i wrote my initial proposal. Basically now I'm just proposing that the murder section get taken out, maybe the terrorism section also. The murders section doesn't really fit into the article title, and I was frankly very surprised when I found that wikipedia didn't have a proper Most prolific killers article (apart from List of serial killers by number of victims, which is an appalling article). My plan is to break the Murders section out of this article and merge it with the List of serial killers article under a more sensible title. Apart from that I agree that splitting is not worthwhile. Would you have any objections to me doing that? Jdcooper 11:25, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't think I'd like that right now. I'd need a lot more time to think about the overall format of this page, quite frankly. I mean, there are dozens of different ways one could go about splitting this sort of material, and I kinda like it more or less as it is.

However, if you want to take the murders section and duplicate it in some form in the serial killers article, I'd have no objection to that. Gatoclass 16:39, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

This article is far too long, both bytes-wise and in actual length. It is too ambitious for one article, making the result messy and hard-to-read. I'm not proposing changing the overall format of the page, but it needs to be split somehow, and duplicating information is pointless. Furthermore, the murders section does not fit the article topic, as indicated by the article name. Removing one off-topic section seems the best way to start going about sorting out the size problem. Also, as a sidenote, consider WP:OWN. Jdcooper 16:45, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Huh? WP:OWN? You've got to be kidding! You asked me for my opinion and I gave it. That has nothing to do with WP:OWN.

I've already expressed my opinion, which is that I think this page, in spite of its somewhat untidy format, gives a very good thumbnail picture of all kinds of mass mortalities that other pages simply fail to achieve. I see no reason to split the article when users can simply click on a topic in the contents and go straight to their section of interest. What is served by splitting the article when it's only going to make it harder for people to find the information they want? There is already a maze of pages of lists of disasters and massacres and so on, I really don't think Wiki needs more of them. Gatoclass 16:52, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

• I agree to an extent, why is why I reneged on my earlier opinion regarding splitting entirely into sub-articles. However, you gotta admit that the murders section sticks out like a sore thumb, and is completely off-topic for the title. I take your point about the rest of the article, and agree. I'm just after cleaning up the murders section for now, just that section, is that a no-go? It is a different topic. Jdcooper 17:22, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Part of the problem is that once you split an article into two, they effectively become their own separate entities. They end up with a unique group of editors, each with their own ideas about the format of the page and what it should contain. So over time they start to completely diverge from one another, until they don't resemble a "set" at all. I mean, just look at all the different formats people have chosen for their "lists of that" or "lists of this". There isn't any uniformity at all, so you never know what to expect when you click on this particular "list of massacres" or whatever page.

What I like about this page is that I see it as a sort of master list, a place where people can come and quickly access lists of similar stuff and compare them. And where everything is nice and uniform. Once you split the page, you lose that.

You are quite correct, of course, to point out that not all the content matches the page title. But I think the solution is to change the page title rather than the contents. If you go back through this discussion page, you will find that I was advocating that many months ago, when I was last doing some work on this page. Gatoclass 17:40, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

• • • Different lists have different needs, so to speak, I don't think lists should be uniform. Two different topics should have unique groups of editors, and should have different formats. Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopaedia, bear in mind, so we don't have the problem of having everything in one place. While I think it is good to have a master list of disasters, it is also bad to have any article too long. That is, IMHO, worse for clarity, readability and form that having different topics on different pages. By a strong mergist argument like yours you could arguably put the entire encyclopaedia on one article! Who exactly comes to this page wanting to compare the number of people killed by John Wayne Gacy to the number of people killed in World War II? Jdcooper 17:47, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Who exactly comes to this page wanting to compare the number of people killed by John Wayne Gacy to the number of people killed in World War II?

My argument would be that people who are interested in one list of mortalities will probably be interested in another.

But look, it's late here and I don't know if I want to stay up much longer. I'm getting a sense of deja vu over this conversation, because me and a bunch of other editors discussed this topic at some length about nine months ago.

There's no great hurry to make a decision right away, so might I suggest that you catch up with the debate that we had some months ago, you may find some ideas there you like, and maybe we can come up with some sort of compromise we can both agree on. I suggest you start reading from the section entitled "Unprotect Please" on this page. Personally, having just spent the last three or four hours cleaning up and contributing to this article, I don't really want to think about the issue any more right now and I'd prefer to come back to it fresh tomorrow. Gatoclass 18:03, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

• Ok, i understand the time delay issues! And i also of course, completely recognise that there is no great hurry to make this decision right away. I read that argument after my initial split proposal, and i understand where all you guys are coming from, but i still feel i am on a slightly different project than all that, i just want to take one of the most glaring off-topic sections off your hands to concentrate on disasters. But yes, per Wikipedia:Eventualism, it will all be sorted out in good time. Jdcooper 18:52, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

As I've said, I'm against the idea of splitting for now, at least until I understand what your ideas are for the page. What do you want to do exactly? Gatoclass 09:57, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

For now, all I want to do is remove the Murders section. It is not a similar category to any of the other sections. I do not believe the removal of this section will have any negative effect on the quality of this article, and will have only a positive effect on the quality of that section. That topic deserves its own article anyway. I have already started, you can see the progress i have made at User:Jdcooper/Most prolific murderers by number of victims (title provisional and content under construction). Jdcooper 02:58, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Here's what will happen if you split murderers off. On the murderers page, someone will add Hitler to the top. Then someone will add Stalin. Then someone will add 9/11. You'll delete those, but someone will put them back. Someone will add Timothy McVeigh, the Spanish Inquisition and Pol Pot. Eventually, someone will split the murderers list into three parts: criminals, terrorists and dictators. Then someone will suggest merging the list of murders with the list of death tolls. Then you'll be back where you started. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 4.152.222.165 (talk) 14:40, 5 May 2007 (UTC).

That is why list articles have introductions and specifications. If the list is specified as murders by individuals then that won't happen. Dictators are not murderers in the sense that the subject discusses, and terrorist attacks are intuitively different categories of events. Add to that the fact that the Most prolific murderers article will be sourced, unlike any information on this article, and it becomes quite easy to see why my proposed article would stand up on its own. Jdcooper 07:11, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't know if this is the right place to say this, but the List of Serial Killers by Number of Victims doesn't have a discussion page to itself, so...does anyone know who writes it? I suggest making another column of at least approximate dates, at least a decade or even a century so readers have a clue. Some of the dates are listed in the miscellany section, but not all. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.187.21.69 (talk) 23:30, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Sorting Order

Currently the list is sorting by the lowest estimate. The lowest and highest figure is very likely to be flawed or inaccurate. Therefore, how about that we sort it out by the median figure? This would probably be more accurate. Oidia 01:15, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

• Mean or mode would be more useful, IMHO. Jdcooper 01:45, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Or how about if there's an in-between number that the experts agree is the most likely actual death toll? bd2412 T 03:57, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

No. Picking "in between" or "median" numbers would constitute original research. We have no mandate to decide for ourselves on what the "most likely" number might be, based on such calculations. What we have are a range of numbers given by professionals, and one such estimate by a professional in the field is as good as another under Wiki policies. Gatoclass 06:52, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Battle of Kursk (1943)

Battle of Kursk (1943) is cited twice, with different numbers. i guess the higher number includes the wounded as well Ozkaplan 11:03, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I need help - with the table

I've just spent A LOT of time putting the 'Wars' section into a table. However the table is appearing at the very bottom of the article. Can someone PLEASE help me put the table back into the 'Wars' section, i don't know how to. And PLEASE DO NOT delete the table. It took me A LONG LONG time to do it. Oidia 04:27, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Wait, i found out the problem and i fixed it. apologies for any confusion i caused. Oidia 04:38, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

That ain't half bad. I've tried several times to put some of these lists into tables and had a struggle getting the code to do what it's supposed to do and been unsatisfied with the results, but I think your table looks about as good as any I managed to come up with.

yeah i copied and paste the codes for a table from another article and inserted the information in myself. Oidia 08:00, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Might I suggest though, that you put the low/high estimates in separate columns? Then, if you define it as a wiki sort table, users will be able to sort entries by either lowest or highest estimate according to their preference. Putting it into a sort table will also enable the other columns to be sorted alphabetically. Gatoclass 07:29, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

sure highest and lowest estimate. And if we wanna put everything in the article into a table, then we really to have separate articles for each catagory or the page will be too long. Oidia 07:40, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Well done! :)

Separating categories into different articles is a contentious issue though as you can see from previous discussion, and shouldn't be done without prior consultation on this page. Thanks, Gatoclass 09:34, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

I've added almost all of the location from all wars into the table. Oidia 05:02, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

High and low estimates

Its fine, in theory, to state high and low estimates. However, some "historians" estimate that no-one was killed in the holocaust. This indeed is an estimate, and one we are powerless to ignore, as it has been pointed out on this page that ignoring such an estimate would count as original research, and that one such estimate by a professional in the field is as good as another under Wiki policies. So how is the holocaust different to any other event where moronic faux-historians write nonsense figures as fact? We do not have to pander to every estimate, is my point. We can "pick". Jdcooper 14:43, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

On the contrary, we are fully empowered to ignore such estimates by "moronic faux historians." As it states in WP:A and WP:RS, under the section Exceptional claims require exceptional sources:

Certain red flags should prompt editors to examine the sources for a given claim:

...claims not supported or claims that are contradicted by the prevailing view in the relevant academic community. Be particularly careful when proponents of such claims say there is a conspiracy to silence them.

Exceptional claims should be supported by the best sources, and preferably multiple reliable sources, especially regarding scientific or medical topics, historical events, politically charged issues, and biographies of living people.

- Quite obviously, the "prevailing view" in the relevant academic community is that holocaust denial is reprehensible, and it's absurd to try and suggest we are obliged to represent such views here. Gatoclass 15:21, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

I fully agree, but what I am asking is how we can represent the full range of views regarding any other event about which similar such historians write. It is equally absurd to suggest we are obliged to represent every estimate for the number of people slaughtered by Stalin's regime, or any other similar regime. Using a bit of initiative and thought we should be able to get the large range of figures that we currently cite for some events down to a much smaller one. Jdcooper 15:25, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but what I'm saying is that "using a bit of initiative and thought" to eliminate the estimates from one or another reliable source constitutes original research. Believe me, I would love to throw out R J Rummel's shonky estimate of 50 million Soviet deaths under Stalin, but he is a Professor Emeritus of political science so there is no basis for denying him his place. Gatoclass 15:46, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

You are incorrect in your assertion there. Holocaust deniers aren't the only ones with crazy claims which greatly offend people and have earnt the ire of most historians. Claims such as 50 or 60 million for Stalin are just cold war propaganda and now that the subject has been more thoroughly researched with the opening of Soviet archives there are more conclusive figures. The range is far lower. If you were really to include a claim like 60 million for Stalin then perhaps you should include claims from Stalinist historians as well who might claim as few as 100,000.

Same deal for the Japanese denial of their crimes in Asia. There is documentation of well over 10 million deaths as a result and just because Japanese historians who are respected in other areas claim as low as 3 doesn't mean that this should be considered as anything more then propaganda and the equivalent of holocaust denial. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Senor Freebie (talk • contribs) 05:40, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Looking at the Hitler estimates and then the reference I have to say it seems a hugely flawed piece of work.
First it makes a massive new claim that Hitler killed (starved) 10,000,000 Slav's (formerly killed by Stalin?)- which doesn't seem to be part of the common literature. Far to many historians uncritically take information from old Eastern block Europe totally forgetting the nature of the old Soviet regime.
Second by its methods it will obviously count some people TWO or more times. It also seems to underestimate the number of Germans killed quite greatly and overestimate the numbers for other states. One very broad statistic I remember from many years ago was that at least a third of the entire German population died during the war, some 10 to 12 million or more.
One of the real problems with anything to do with Mr Hitler are the high levels of propaganda often used, and where such exists truth can be very difficult to find. At the beginning of the reference article is a wonderful quote from "Hitler" and "Himler" that looks like a perfect example. The real de-propagandised truth was that the actual final solution was born out of a distorted humanism that wanted to "humanely exterminate" the 'corrupt' and 'diseased' elements of society to 'purify' the population. Thats why the Nazi's got the epithet of 'butchers', because thats exactly how they had killed their victims, like animals in a slaughterhouse.
Sorry to go on about Hitler but it gets my goat, the fascists came to power by propaganda, doing the same back to make them look even blacker than they were just seems ugly to me. - Lucien86 (talk) 16:44, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

---

Arson

I have moved the arson attacks and other fires listed in the "Murders" section to Other accidents. Some of the fires were not even meant to kill anyone, they were disasters; events like this lack the agency people usually mean when they refer to murders. Furthermore, there is nothing tangible to distinguish these attacks from the ones excluded from the murder section and placed in "Terrorist attacks" (I suppose they could go there, some of them, but they were all done for different reasons). They do not belong in the Murder section anyway, thats why I moved them. Hope everyone is happy with that. Jdcooper 14:54, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

References

Just a thought, if its not already impossible, would someone be able to alter the table so there's another column for references? Proper provision of references would cheer up this article infinitely more than a table would. Jdcooper 14:59, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

References (where necessary) can probably be put in the already existing low/high columns. The problem with creating an extra column exclusively for refs is that it leaves less room for the other columns, and I know from experience that space is very much at a premium when it comes to these tables. Gatoclass 16:34, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

You are absolutely right on all counts. We do have to make sure that references are provided though, in the eventual perfect article. It really is much more important than it looking pretty, IMHO. Jdcooper 03:03, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

hahaha, I agree, looking pretty is very important. By the looks of it we need LOTS of references to cite all those figures Oidia 03:11, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Don't forget though, that most of the wars cited are already linked to Wiki pages dedicated to those conflicts. While I haven't checked, at least some of them probably already contain references to the figures, and if they don't, I think the refs are arguably better added there simply because of the shortage of space here. Gatoclass 08:12, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

They are better added in both places, because of the importance of accuracy in both. The only reason there is a shortage of space here is because we are trying to cram too much information in. Jdcooper 15:34, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I wasn't referring to an alleged shortage of vertical space :) I meant horizontal space. Gatoclass 15:42, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

There is a shortage of both, and trying to cram too much into either diminishes both the quality and readability, therefore usefulness, of the article. Jdcooper 06:09, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

After discussions with Oidia the other day, I'm getting more amenable to the idea of a split. If Oidia and I are going to be expanding some of the tables as we have discussed, I think the article is going to become too long and unwieldy. Gatoclass 12:53, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

A cut off point?

I expect there to be lots of objections to this. Since the article is very long, and I really would like to put all the lists into tables. Should there be a cut off point where "if below this number of deaths, it will not be added in the article"? Oidia 09:07, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't think there should be a hard and fast rule. Depends on the section. Mass suicides looks reasonable with full existing list since it is short. Most of the double-digit aviation accidents on the other hand don't belong IMO. --GregU 07:50, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

In this vein, I trimmed (deleted) 11 of the less-notable double-digit aviation disasters from the bottom of the list. They are all well below the 100 worst in this category (the 100th worst has 119 fatalities according to one source). If you do want to extend the list, there are probably more in the 120–150 range that could be added yet, in preference to re-adding these. --GregU 15:50, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Geno/Democide figures from www.hawaii.edu

That partcular site has pro-human rights and anti-geno/democide on their agenda, so the neutrality and accuracy of their death toll figure and highly questionable. Oidia 10:47, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

That site is RJ Rummel's personal website, and he is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science (and the guy who actually coined the word "Democide") - so I'm afraid he qualifies as a reliable source on Wiki. Gatoclass 11:10, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

OK Oidia 03:14, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

So I have removed the 'disputed' tag Wilmot1 11:29, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

On closer inspection it appears to a specific dispute about the Arab Slave Trade, so have left it for now but may move itWilmot1 11:32, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Arab slave trade

I'm not sure what you are playing at here, but you have reversed Rummel's figures for the African and Atlantic slave trades. Did you do that deliberately, or was it just an honest mistake? If the latter, I ask you to check the source for yourself and correct it. I am not going to revert any more of your edits today as I don't want to breach WP:3RR.

As for Stalin, not all researchers agree that the 6-8 million who died in the Holodomor (famine) were deliberately killed, which means the minimum figure for Stalin for genocide/democide is 4 million, not 10. Check the Stalin page under "Number of Victims".

Regards, Gatoclass 15:20, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

R.J. Rummel calculate that the Communist regime, 1917-1987, murdered about 62,000,000 people, around 55,000,000 of them citizens. Stalin murdered about 43,000,000 of them.

According to Rummel, in the 16th to 19th centuries alone the death toll among African slaves being transported to the New World may have been over 1,500,000, possibly 2,000,000; millions more died in capture and in transit to the Orient or Middle East. Overall, in five centuries, Arabs, Europeans, Asians, and African slave traders, possibly murdered near 17,000,000 Africans. Arab involvement in the slave trade has lasted fourteen centuries, and in some parts of the Muslim world is still continuing to this day.

Just in the 19th Century, for which we have more accurate records, 1.2 million slaves were brought across the Sahara into the Middle East, 450,000 down the Red Sea and 442,000 from East African coastal ports. That is a total of 2 million black slaves - just in the 1800's. Millions more were calculated to have died before reaching the Muslim slave markets. According to David Livingstone: 1 living = 10 dead. According to Gustav Nachtigal: on one large Saharan caravan, 3 or 4 died for every survivor. Wylde: Each eunuch in Cairo represented 200 dead Sudanese. Emile Auguste Hourst, 19th C: each sale represented a loss of ten in the original population, including raids. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.102.140.194 (talk • contribs)

Okay, let's just try sticking to the facts.

Rummel gives his estimates for slavery here (lines 39-92). His figure for "Slaves killed/died on way to New World" (that is, the Atlantic Slave Trade), given at line 89, is 13,667,000. His figure for the Oriental (Arab) trade is 3.6 million (line 74).

You have reversed Rummels' estimates.

As for the Stalin figure, as I said you should go and read through the "number of victims" section on the Stalin page. A number of sources give a total for Stalinist repression (ie democide) at around 4 million.

Thanks, Gatoclass 09:23, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

alright who removed the higher estimate figure for Atlantic Slave Trade? That figure came from a creditable source and is cited. Oidia 04:01, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

African Holocaust is NOT creditable source. 200 million people killed during the Trans-Atlantic slave trade is NONSENSE and propagandistic LIE. Did you ever hear about Joseph Goebbles?

BBC: A database compiled in the late 1990s put the figure for the transatlantic slave trade at more than 11 million people. Estimates as high as 50 million have been floated, and for a long time an accepted figure was 15 million, although this has in recent years been revised down. Most historians now agree that at least 12 million slaves left the continent between the fifteenth and nineteenth century, but ten to twenty percent died on board ships. Thus a figure of 11 million slaves transported to the Americas is the nearest demonstrable figure historians can produce. However, Europe did not have a monopoly on slavery. Muslim traders also exported as many as 17 million slaves to the coast of the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, and North Africa.

Although slavery is illegal in every country, it still exists in many parts of the world. In A Persistent Evil: The Global Problem of Slavery, a report published by the Harvard International Review in 2002, Richard Re suggested: "Conservative estimates indicate that at least 27 million people, in places as diverse as Nigeria, Indonesia, and Brazil, live in conditions of forced bondage".

In Niger, slavery is a real and current phenomenon that is alive today. A Nigerian study has found that almost 8% of the population are slaves (ABC News, June 3, 2005, The Shackles of Slavery in Niger). It was finally criminalised in 2003, after five years of lobbying by Anti-Slavery International and Nigerien human-rights group Timidria. There are more than 800,000 black African slaves in Niger. The slave masters are mostly from the Muslim tribes — the Tuareg, Fulani, Toubou and Arabs. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.102.140.194 (talk • contribs)

89.102.140.194, would you please remember to sign your comments. You can sign just by adding four tildes to the end of your comments, like this: ~~~~

The tilde can be found on your keyboard in the top left hand corner (uppercase key). Thanks, Gatoclass 09:40, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

200 million estimated deaths for the Atlantic Slave Trade is not nonsense. Just think about it for a second, the event spanned for 3 centuries over 3 continents. The accumulated deaths over all those times would exceed the estimate given by a western source. Oidia 14:35, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Of course it's nonsense. The descendants of slaves that reached the new world even today - even including their natural growth - are still nowhere near 200 million people. We know from records of slave ships that the vast majority of slaves survived the crossing as well. There is simply no credible evidence that anywhere near that number were ever enslaved to beign with, let alone died as a result of slavery. 62.64.211.107 15:37, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Tabled results in genocides, democides section, name change

I *finally* got around to tabling the democide and genocide section. I hope you folks like it 'cos it took me all evening!

I have left the references to the table pretty much as they were, I did alter a couple of values on the fly as I went but I think I can back up those changes with refs.

The other change I made was to the section name. The name has been problematic for quite a while IMO, and with the appearance of new editors, a name change has become more urgent.

There were a number of problems with the old name as I saw it. For example, we just don't have sources for a lot of these entries which call the events in question a genocide or democide, which means that perfectly good entries get thrown out in edit wars. This is not to say that that I've abandoned the idea of having a genocide table. We can still have such a table, but it will only include entries which we can specifically source as genocides.

As for democides, I think quite frankly they need to have their own separate table too. We really only have one source for democide stats which is Rummel, meaning that a combined genocide/democide table ends up being skewed heavily towards Rummel's POV - a clear breach of WP:UNDUE. Much better to put his "democides" into a separate category altogether I think. Another reason is that Rummel has separate figures for genocide in any case, and if one combines the two tables his genocide figures can't be referenced at all.

Anyhow, hopefully the name change will be acceptable to the majority of editors, if not we may have to start pruning entries, regards, Gatoclass 12:50, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Update: I've now changed the section name to "Crimes against humanity" which is a broader and well recognized term much better suited to the contents of the list. As I suggested above, we can still have separate lists for genocide and democide if necessary. Gatoclass 08:23, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

PS I'm planning to do quite a bit more on this section, but I thought this was enough for one session. So if your favourite entry is not there ATM, don't worry I will be restoring it very soon :) Gatoclass 12:59, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

well done Gatoclass :) Oidia 14:30, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Oidia :)

Hmm, the sort buttons aren't quite working properly for some strange reason. If you click a button to reverse the order the numbers just seem to come up jumbled, but if you click a button on another column and then come back to the original one, they will sort the right way. Bizarre. Love to know what's causing that! Gatoclass 17:34, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Irish genocide

Why isnt the cromwellian conquest of ireland included in the genocides section. Up to %50 of the irish population died because of it ! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.42.200.62 (talk) 15:10, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Smallpox in the Americas

I've reverted some of these edits.

Specifically, the two estimates for deaths in the Americas do NOT include disease, they are estimates for deliberate killing/democide ONLY. See included ref.

  What??? So Europeans went around and shot 10-20 million people with muskets? What are you smoking??? There were barely    that many natives in the entire New World. Of course these numbers include death for disease (indeed, the vast majority of these deaths are from disease). AND BESIDES, if no citations are given, why the hell are those numbers listed anyway? Are guesses allowed now as evidence? If no credible source can be given, the field should be left blank.68.164.1.40 (talk) 03:29, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Depopulation in the Congo under Leopold estimated at 22 million max, not 8 million. See ref.

Stannard's maximum estimate for the Atlantic slave trade is 60 million, not 20 million, see included ref.

60 million for the Atlantic slave trade is utterly ludicrous. Prior to 1900, the entire population of the entire Western Hemisphere was BELOW 60 million--certainly in the United States, the slave population of the south was a minority of the population. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.164.1.40 (talk) 03:23, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Matthew White himself is not a reliable source so his personal estimates, such as the "19 million" for the Arab slave trade, don't count. We can only quote figures from the reliable sources listed at White's website, not his own personal estimates. Gatoclass 08:10, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Check the Population history of American indigenous peoples. Stannard's claim has been disputed because he does not cite any demographic data to support his number. Precise pre-Columbian population figures are impossible to obtain, and estimates are often produced by extrapolation from comparatively small bits of data. Historian David Henige argues that the scanty and unreliable nature of the evidence renders broad estimates suspect, and that "high counters" (as he calls them) have been particularly flagrant in their misuse of sources.

Robert Royal writes that "estimates of pre-Columbian population figures have become heavily politicized with scholars who are particularly critical of Europe, Western civilization and/or Christianity often favoring wildly higher figures."

Olivier Pétré-Grenouilleau stated that there were 17 million slaves taken from Africa between the 8th and 19th centuries along the Oriental and the Trans-Saharan routes. Paul Bairoch suggests a figure of 25 million African people subjected to the Arab slave trade, as against 11 million that arrived in the Americas from the transatlantic slave trade. Owen 'Alik Shahadah, author of African Holocaust, puts the figure at 10 million.

We can assume that at least 3 people died for every 2 living slaves delivered (similar to the death rate in the Atlantic trade). Some first-hand witnesses offering much higher figures. David Livingstone: 1 living = 10 dead. Gustav Nachtigal: on one large Saharan caravan, 3 or 4 died for every survivor. 89.102.140.194 10:12, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

The fact that historians dispute each other's research is neither here nor there. That happens all the time. It's not for us to go cherry picking figures based on who we personally might think has the best argument.

For further comments, see my reply to your other post below. Gatoclass 13:00, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Fairly sure that the smallpox in Americas also affected the colonisation of Australia to a lesser degree-but what isn't noted here at all is the death toll of aborigines (hunted into the 1900s!) at the hands of British/Australians.... (Sorry I am new to wiki and unsure how to create a new talk section. But smallpox affected aboriginal population-and then genocide. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.97.182.199 (talk) 08:22, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Reply to 89.102.140.194

In answer to your question what consensus?: I'm referring to the longstanding consensus on this page about some of the figures you are attempting to dispute, as witnessed by the fact that these figures were extant for many months before you came along.

"Who is David Stannard?". David Stannard is Professor of American Studies at the University of Hawaii and the author of American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World from which the estimate of 60 million dead from the Atlantic slave trade comes. Instead of reverting, you should check the link provided for the figures and then you could see for yourself.

 The site you list DOESN'T look reliable. Indeed, it looks like a webpage explicitly designed to be used as a Wikipedia 
 "source", so this person could promote their own agenda. The fact that he uses newspaper articles as sources and layman 
 history books reveals his lack of credibility. 

Regarding the figure for the Amerindians, again these are NOT figures for "smallpox". They are figures for DEMOCIDE and killing. The figure for democide of 13,778,000 comes from this table of RJ Rummel's, line 212. You only had to follow the link I provided to confirm that.

The higher figure of 15 million comes from Peter Barrett and Todd Johnson. In anticipation of your question "who are Peter Barrett and Todd Johnson", this is what Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary says about them: "Director of the new center is Dr. Todd M. Johnson, co-author with Dr. David B. Barrett of the World Christian Encyclopedia, Second Edition, published in 2001 by Oxford University Press...[Barret's] research has appeared in 70 books and 200 articles." According to White's website, Barrett in World Christian Trends cited a figure of 15 million Amerindians killed by Conquistadors. NOT dead because of smallpox. Check the figure here under the subheading "Other guesses". The estimates of the number of Amerindians who died through introduced disease is MUCH higher than these estimates - 100 million according to some sources.

Now will you please start checking and confirming the references I provide on the mainpage itself instead of just doing wholesale reversions, so that I don't have to exhaustively go through all the links for you again. If you don't like my reference figures, come to this page and we'll talk it over and see if we can come to an agreement. . Thanks. Gatoclass 23:53, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Stannard's maximum estimate for the Atlantic slave trade is highly unlikely. Do not give undue weight to fringe theories. WP:NOT

There is no evidence that 15 million Amerindians were deliberately killed by a few thousands Conquistadors armed with swords and spears. It is unfeasible. It is just myth, so called Black legend. Some 240,000 Europeans, mostly Spaniards, came to America during the 16th century. I guess maximum 50,000 of them were soldiers, the rest were settlers, merchants, craftsmen, officials, women, children etc.

So according to you, approximately 50,000 Spanish soldiers killed by hand about 15,000,000 Native Americans. According to me, it is logically nonsense. In fact, epidemics swept about 95% to 98% of the indigenous population.

  Finally some logic here. The Nazi Einsatzgruppen had a hell of a time killing masses of people and they were using machine
  guns, and had much more organization than European colonists from 1500-1900. So how would the Conquistadors kill millions
  of Amerindians with their Arquebuses? "Hey, you dozen Indians wait while we take almost a minute to reload!"

By the way, Mongols brought the plague from central Asia to the Middle East and Europe. It is estimated that between one-third and two-thirds of the of Europe's population died from the outbreak of the Black death between 1348 and 1350 (at least 20,000,000 people). So according to you, Mongols commited genocide & democide against Europeans, however, I didn´t see it in Wikipedia. 89.102.140.194 07:22, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Stannard's maximum estimate for the Atlantic slave trade is highly unlikely. Do not give undue weight to fringe theories.

And yet you are more than happy to tout Rummel's ludicrous figure of 50 million dead under Stalin, or Christian Action's crackpot estimate of 180 million dead in the Arab slave trade. Double standard much?

 The difference is that the technology available and the organizational nature of the Stalinist totalitarian system could 
 conceivably kill 50 million people (though the real number is probably 20-30 million), whereas 180 million murdered in the 
 Arab slave trade (or 60 million KILLED in the Atlantic slave trade, or 20 million Amerindians KILLED) is totally bogus if
 one considers the weaponry and organization of the pre-industrial world, AND THE NUMBERS OF PEOPLE WHO LIVED IN THE ENTIRE 
 WESTERN HEMISPHERE (if not Africa) at the time. Can anybody here find a book about the Slave Trade or Amerindian genocide
 from a more mainstream, credible, and nameworthy historian?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.164.5.80 (talk) 17:54, 15 July 2009 (UTC) 

Stannard is a Professor of American Studies and thus a highly qualified reliable source. I'm afraid it's not for you to dismiss his estimates as "fringe theories", any more than I am entitled to similarly dismiss Rummel's estimates. Whether we like these particular estimates or not, I am afraid we're stuck with them because they come from reliable sources.

  Just because a person has a PhD DOESN'T make them a reliable scholar. There are Holocaust deniers out there who have 
  PhD's from Ivy League schools.

There is no evidence that 15 million Amerindians were deliberately killed by a few thousand Conquistadors armed with swords and spears. It is unfeasible...According to me, it is logically nonsense.

Very interesting, but Wiki is not a platform for the case "according to [you]". I'm afraid your personal opinions don't matter on Wiki, any more than mine do. This is what you seem to be having trouble understanding. As stated in WP:A, The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is whether material is attributable to a reliable published source, not whether we think it is true. Wikipedia is not the place to publish your opinions, experiences, or arguments.

  Well the fact of the matter is that there a numerous differing estimates--ALL FROM RELIABLE PUBLISHED SOURCES--regarding
  genocide numbers. Why are we stuck with only the numbers a some of those sources and not others? Who chooses what sources 
  to list and why?

So just because you think 15 million killed by conquistadors is "logically nonsense" is not a justification for exclusion. The figure comes from a reliable source, and "unfeasible" or not in your personal view, it still qualifies here as a valid estimate. Just as Rummel's estimates qualify, in spite of the fact that I personally (and many others) happen to think they are rubbish.

In fact, epidemics swept about 95% to 98% of the indigenous population.

Very likely, but as I've already pointed out, estimates for the number of Amerindians who died in total as a result of European colonization run as high as 100 million or more. The 13.8 million estimate of democide by Rummel and 15 million dead at the hands of conquistadors by Barrett are only tiny subsets of this much larger figure. Rummel's figure is for democide alone and thus specifically excludes deaths by disease. Barrett's estimate of natives "killed" also appears to exclude such deaths. That's why they are in the table, whereas the estimates of 100 million plus are not. Gatoclass 11:56, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

BTW, please do not edit other people's comments on user pages, as you did with one of mine here. You can edit your own comments as much as you like but editing other people's is not acceptable. Thanks, Gatoclass 12:33, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

And yet you are more than happy to tout Rummel's ludicrous figure of 50 million dead under Stalin, or Christian Action's crackpot estimate of 180 million dead in the Arab slave trade. Double standard much?

In case of Stalin I above all defended the lower and true figure of at least 10 million victims of the Stalin terror, against your false figure of 4 million dead. In fact, you was more than happy to tout African Holocaust's dotty figure of 200 million dead and Stannard's ridiculous figure of 60 million dead in the Atlantic slave trade. Christian Action's The Scourge of Slavery was only my initial captious reaction to African Holocaust (by the way, I am not Christian). I know that all these figures (African Holocaust, Christian Action, Stannard) are absurd and unfair. In contrast to you I am serious now. 89.102.140.194 14:55, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

It's not a "false figure" of 4 million dead. That is the total given for acts of repression (ie crimes against humanity) by several scholarly sources. I quite agree that the Stalin regime overall is responsible for a minimum of about 10 million deaths, but there's a difference between deliberate crimes committed against a population, and deaths brought about by managerial incompetence. Not every scholar agrees that the famine was a deliberate act of genocide, therefore the minimum figure for crimes against humanity committed by Stalin is still 4 million. The famine figure is however included in the larger figure, so that both sides of the debate are in fact represented in this list.

As for me "touting" African Holocaust's figure of "200 million", as I recall the figure used to be 100 million, not 200. But since I haven't had a close look at this particular entry for a long time, I just took it at face value. There are many, many other entries I haven't taken a close look at either, this page is rife with unsourced entries and needs a great deal of work.

Regarding the 60 million figure for the Atlantic slave trade. I'm inclined to agree with you that it's probably too high. The problem though, is how do we justify leaving out estimates given by reliable sources? I would very much like to leave out Rummel's figure of 72 million for Mao as well, because he bases it on a single unscholarly source, but what on what grounds can his estimate be ignored, given that he is a Professor of Political Science? This is the overall problem with all such estimates and there's no easy solution. If you have one, I'd be keen to hear it, but in the meantime it isn't consistent to leave Rummel's highly dubious estimates in but take Stannard's almost equally dubious estimates out. Gatoclass 15:51, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

  We can choose to discriminate between what numbers from "reliable" sources are bogus and what are realistic by looking at 
  sources as to what the total population of the New World was at that time. When this is considered, the sixty million 
  dead for the Atlantic slave trade is complete rubbish, as are some of the crazy numbers for the number of Amerindian's 
  killed. Look, this isn't just a question of "well, if some freak put up a website with wacky numbers listed, I guess it's
  reliable", it's a question of Wikipedia's integrity. Do you want Wikipedia to be known as a site that can be trusted, or
  should it be known as a site that one can only use for very general info, because if you try to delve too deep into the 
  details all you'll find is a site that's been gutted from the inside by left & right wing extremists trying to prove their
  false agendas. My brother has a PhD in history and teaches history at a university. If he puts up his own website that 
  one billion Amerindians were killed by Europeans (not by disease, but by strangling), can this be used as a "reliable 
  source"?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.164.5.80 (talk) 17:46, 15 July 2009 (UTC)