Wikipedia talk:Genocide: Difference between revisions

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Just to be sure, the 1000-word limit doesn’t apply to the brainstorming stage, correct? After all, the point is to send ideas back and forth; it’s not yet a formal discussion. –[[User:Aquillion|Aquillion]] ([[User talk:Aquillion|talk]]) 22:58, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

Just to be sure, the 1000-word limit doesn’t apply to the brainstorming stage, correct? After all, the point is to send ideas back and forth; it’s not yet a formal discussion. –[[User:Aquillion|Aquillion]] ([[User talk:Aquillion|talk]]) 22:58, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

:I think it makes sense not to restrict to the 1000-word limit. After all, we’re in the unusual situation where the “page” itself, rather than just the talk page, includes signed comments. Moreover, the discussions seem quite focussed. The fact that we’re ”not” going to make any decisions here for any specific atrocity-event articles very likely helps: we’re only hoping to summarise what the actual practice is (or has been so far) on these articles, so that readers of the guide can know what to likely expect if they present argument X, Y, or Z in the context of a specific atrocity-event article. Of course, if someone starts walls-of-texting, then someone else may fold those with “show/hide” semi-hidden wrappers. [[User:Boud|Boud]] ([[User talk:Boud|talk]]) 15:34, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

:I think it makes sense not to restrict to the 1000-word limit. After all, we’re in the unusual situation where the “page” itself, rather than just the talk page, includes signed comments. Moreover, the discussions seem quite focussed. The fact that we’re ”not” going to make any decisions here for any specific atrocity-event articles very likely helps: we’re only hoping to summarise what the actual practice is (or has been so far) on these articles, so that readers of the guide can know what to likely expect if they present argument X, Y, or Z in the context of a specific atrocity-event article. Of course, if someone starts walls-of-texting, then someone else may fold those with “show/hide” semi-hidden wrappers. [[User:Boud|Boud]] ([[User talk:Boud|talk]]) 15:34, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

== Requested move at [[Talk:Southern Kaduna genocide]] ==

[[File:Information.svg|30px|left]] There is a requested move discussion at [[Talk:Southern Kaduna genocide#Requested move 27 November 2025]] that may be of interest to members of this page. [[User:Katzrockso|Katzrockso]] ([[User talk:Katzrockso|talk]]) 19:50, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

Consider it turned over by me (if needed); that’s why I didn’t start in my user space. This is basically all of my thinking from the discussions linked, to try and make sense. Hopefully it is helpful. — Very Polite Person (talk/contribs) 17:01, 4 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think there are some cases that are archetypical genocides, i.e. Holocaust. But is there some literature that does similar comparison based on control cases? (i know of this [1]) what comparison are we looking for. User:Bluethricecreamman (Talk·Contribs) 16:58, 4 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Probably fairly soon someone should do a radical edit on Wikipedia:Genocide and shift most of the content here (or at least add a {{diff}} here for convenient reference), since we don’t really want signed discussion on the WP: space page. I’ll start a separate section here for a quick thought on how WP:GENOCIDE might be doable. Boud (talk) 18:05, 4 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I guess I’m unconvinced about the current 5-question strategy for generating a viable WP:GENOCIDE page. I think that the page would best be descriptive, not prescriptive. And here the problem is the huge range in Wikipedia editing quality and source availability and reliability.

The range of editing attention to genocide-related pages in en.Wikipedia varies hugely depending on media and academic attention and Wikipedia:Systemic bias, leading to a huge variation in the Wikipedia editing quality and the types of sources available.

For the two (main? only?) genocides of the early 2020s, the Gaza genocide had a huge amount of attention, while the Tigray genocide from November 2020 to November 2022, also now as a standalone article at Tigrai Genocide, with an extermination with intent of approximately the same percentage of a population (around 4-10%, depending on the method and source), had very little attention, greatly exacerbated by the tight human and internet blockade of Tigray preventing reports from leaking out and local, federal and international journalists from investigating. I haven’t checked whether there’s an academic consensus to describe the Tigray genocide as a genocide (I’m using the term here as a non-expert), and I don’t see currently active debates among Wikipedians about this in terms of titles or lead text (either for or against the qualification as a genocide). There was this RfC whose result was against the term genocide for the Amhara case, distinct from the Tigray genocide, although also in Ethiopia.

A one-size-fits-all guideline is unlikely to help people who are actually doing the editing. There is generally a time progression of information from online social networks, to human rights organisations, to mainstream news media, to national human rights institutions (such as EHRC), to academic sources, and finally through to independent investigations and possibly prosecutions in courts, although academic non-peer-reviewed sources can be involved at the early stages, benefiting from the social/political scientists’ access to knowledge through multiple channels and being able to judge the credibility of the knowledge based on their in-depth background knowledge. Appropriate attribution to sources, starting with subsections of pages before WP:SPLITs to individual pages, and changes from attributed POVs or “allegations” or “accusations” through to Wikivoice generally evolves depending on the degree of reliability that involved editors attribute to the sources, and having sufficient numbers of editors with different personal POVs and life experiences.

I guess the point here is similar to what Buidhe said, that trying to use the Gaza genocide or other well-known consensus genocides as a template for Wikipedia coverage of all other genocides or possible genocides risks being too rigid compared to what genocide scholars view as genocides.

I admit that I really don’t have a good idea on how to write a descriptive WP:GENOCIDE draft, so despite my being unconvinced by the 5-question guide, what we have now is at least better than not starting a draft at all. Boud (talk) 18:59, 4 November 2025 (UTC) (clarification Boud (talk) 06:36, 5 November 2025 (UTC))[reply]

I agree that the questions are unhelpful. To me, deciding which sources are “correct” is at best a red herring and at worst a means to filter them until we get the end result that aligns with our beliefs. I’m of the opinion that we shouldn’t use loaded language in wikivoice at all unless it’s a largely uncontested WP:COMMONNAME. For example, Armenian genocide is the default name in the literature, so that’s what the article is called and that’s how we describe it when we mention it. Similarly, Boston Massacre is only called that on Wikipedia because that’s the common name at this point. There’s already precedent for this at MOS:LABEL, which is an extension of WP:NPOV#Words to watch. My POV-pusher alarm immediately goes off when someone advocates using a term like massacre or murder on an article where that isn’t the term you’d expect to find in most publications on the subject. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 21:12, 4 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I completely agree with your proposal of writing a descriptive WP:GENOCIDE, although I disagree with the idea that a non-descriptive (prescriptive?) one would be better than no draft at all, as it risks bringing us into WP:OR territory. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 23:35, 4 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I put a link to WP:PROPOSAL and a quote from it at the top. Within this section itself, I didn’t actually define for people unfamiliar with Wikipedia policy and guideline development what I meant by “descriptive, not prescriptive”. WP:PROPOSAL describes this fairly clearly. Boud (talk) 06:59, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As noted below, Persecution of Uyghurs in China is something that needs to be considered in any analysis since it’s gone through a lot throughout its history including once being titled Uyghur genocide with a variety of different wordings e.g. [2]. While most of these have stopped short of calling it a genocide in Wikipedia voice despite the title, it still needs to be considered IMO if this is to be a serious policy especially since a common question is why the article was titled Uyghur genocide for so long but it took ages for us to title the other article Gaza genocide. Note I likely won’t be participating in this discussion myself further since I’m unconvinced there’s a reason to single out this particular issue compared to the plenty of other cases where we get dispute e.g. some mentioned by Thebiguglyalien but also other stuff like terrorist, etc. Nil Einne (talk) 13:02, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Method: table + summarise

[edit]

A method to develop a descriptive guideline is:

  1. First make a table of the list of genocides (definition: This list only considers acts which are recognized in significant scholarship as genocides) in which we have columns that link to the talk page sections, AFDs, RMs and RFCs, on the question of “genocide or not genocide” in the title and in the lead and broader content. I estimate around 48 currently listed. Even just a small subsample of the 48 would help give an idea of how consensus emerged in these cases. We clearly need the ones with more intense editing debates and changes of status with time (Gaza, Uyghur), but also some of those with few editors and sources.Events that were proposed by Wikipedians as genocides but not currently accepted on list of genocides are also needed in the table, to understand why these are not (currently) accepted.
  2. Once there are a fair number of lines in the table and it looks more or less correct, the history of these editing debates and typical results can be summarised in a guideline/policy style.

This separates the question of what did we decide in earlier cases? from how can we summarise these to avoid rehashing old arguments? while acknowledging the variety of different outcomes and big range in editing attention, quality, and sources, and evolving scholarship on genocides.

I’ve started the table at Wikipedia:Genocide#Per-event prior debates table. Boud (talk) 19:18, 5 November 2025 (UTC) (clarify Boud (talk) 19:34, 5 November 2025 (UTC))[reply]

the list of genocides inclusion criteria was specifically written not to require a “majority” or “consensus” as these are often impossible to verify even when clearly true. It’s a poor database to use when deciding whether to use wiki voice. (t · c) buidhe 19:55, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I’ve added two columns. Even if Wikivoice, especially for the lead, seems to be the main theme here, there is some overlap with the title debates, and it would be odd to have a WP:GENOCIDE policy or guideline without mentioning title debates. The Amhara case was one where the RfC on Wikivoice was followed by a WP:BOLD title change although the RfC sidestepped the title debate; the bold title change was accepted as reasonable and not reverted. I expect some cases will have Wikivoice precede the title change and some vice versa.The list of genocides was only meant as one way to select, and it’s not meant to exclude events-that-may-have-been-or-may-be-genocides from the list. I’ve added Category:21st century genocide to the TODO sentence. My feeling is that the links to the talk-page discussions, AFDs, RMs, RFCs are what is most important here, and that WP:GENOCIDE won’t be limited to the question of “Is an article likely to achieve editorial consensus for stating ‘genocide’ in Wikivoice?” Helping RMs converge faster or reducing the number of RMs almost certain to fail would be useful too. Boud (talk) 21:13, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would say there are at least a couple of missing questions. One is about the usability of journalistic sources. And another is about how to distinguish where the genocidal aspect of something begins and ends, when it’s part of something larger like a war or other violent repression. Even as scholars might agree in recognizing a genocide, they might disagree about its particular shape, and its extent in time and space. Pharos (talk) 04:58, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The dates are often not agreed upon even when there is a lot of consensus that there is a genocide.
We have reliable sources saying the Armenian genocide ended in 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1923, and even one that says it still continues in some form today. (t · c) buidhe 05:51, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Also, I think we should talk about when we start labelling or moving articles to “X genocide”. Do we do it in real-time, i.e. when the event is happening and there are a lot of emotional charged or driven content out there in reliable sources, or after when there are more historical data or discourse about the event, and undoubtedly more detached. Gaza genocide isn’t the first case we have here, we have had Persecution of Uyghurs in China where it was once at Uyghur genocideUyghur genocide when there was much coverage about it in Western media. – robertsky (talk) 12:26, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The difference between these cases was the volume of scholarly sources available. A blanket rule here would prevent us from complying with NPOV when a large number of scholarly sources do exist. (t · c) buidhe 13:09, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I am not disputing the volume of scholarly sources for the Gaza genocide. What I am referring to is the probabilities of the reliable sources being emotional charged/driven and hence do we or should we look at such events from a historical lens or not. I am not looking for a blanket rule, but one should be cognizant of such undertones or possibilities for current and future events. – robertsky (talk) 05:12, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I also felt that most sources are just hyperfocusing on this event due to Israel’s involvement.–ZKang123 (talk · contribs) 05:02, 8 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Very Polite Person: I have no doubt that you’re acting in good faith, but a few notes:

  • We already have several gudielines on contentious labels. The prudent thing to do here would’ve been to start a discussion at one of those pages.
  • The questions as you’ve framed them are not how we usually establish consensus or write PAGs. Please see our guidelines on writing PAGs.
  • There’s no rush to create a new policy just because Jimbo (or Larry or whoever) said something controversial. In fact, I think that being reactive is an actively bad way to create PAGs.

voorts (talk/contributions) 14:00, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

disagree with you voorts. this section here Talk:Gaza_genocide#A_recommendation_of_WP:GENOCIDE was one of the few sections with more light than smoke.
I’d also point to this related appeal from arbcom. Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Palestine-Israel_articles_5#Community_encouraged User:Bluethricecreamman (Talk·Contribs) 14:04, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I’m not saying nobody should try to write a gudieline here (although I don’t think it will be a particularly productive discussion). I’m saying these particular questions that were proposed are odd and that there was no rush to start creating a new page when we need to think about how they interact with existing PAGs. We should be entering these sorts of discussions with an open mind, not a particular set of questions about how we weigh between sources that cabins the framing of the discussion. I’ve been saying this a lot recently, but rushing to create PAGs without an idea of where the community wants to go with an RFC / where the points of tension are is not a good way to create policy. voorts (talk/contributions) 14:11, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Ah ok. I see your point.
i posted on npovn about this page to see if others will take a look. I disclose i havent taken a deep look at the rfc questions yet or responses since yesterday, agreed some of the questions may be hard to move into policy space . User:Bluethricecreamman (Talk·Contribs) 14:17, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If you all slowed down you might actually find points of agreement with people on the “other side” and come to something that more truly resembles consensus. voorts (talk/contributions) 14:18, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that the current questions posed are not terribly useful. Answers to #1-3 are already codified at WP:SOURCETYPES in the RS policy. #4 and #5 are invitations to engage in OR. signed, Rosguill talk 14:52, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Enough people seemed interested in my idea (including Wales) that I just wanted to get it down while it was fresh in my mind, in case others wanted to pursue it to whatever ends. It seems like some folks do.
I’m just honestly watching while working on other stuff. This is not my usual lane, and like I said, I’m more than happy to defer to others. I think something like this would be helpful to some end, is all. — Very Polite Person (talk/contribs) 16:24, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is not my topic area, but as I read through questions about which sources to consider and how to weigh them, it seems like it would make sense to include a question about quorum among sources, too, especially as it relates to wikivoice.

My impression is that, for scholarly decisions about genocide (as with most applications of a term like that), people most often reach for a pen when they come to a positive conclusion (and that people who are undecided don’t rush to write “I am not sure”). So, at what point do we determine scholarly consensus on the issue? In the sciences, we can cite a bunch of reviews and high-profile position statements that summarize many studies, but in the humanities and social sciences, while that happens sometimes, it’s not always straightforward (slight variations in definition, extended qualifying language, more need for interpretation, etc.).

There are related guidelines out there, like MOS:LABEL, where there’s a high bar for moving from “described as” to “is”, but even there I’m not sure we’ve ever articulated a clear statement about quorum. It just kind of winds up being straw polls asking “are there enough sources yet?” Maybe that’s all we can realistically hope for, and I don’t have a good alternative — only suggesting having a question about “quorum among sources for wikivoice” somewhere. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 15:49, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’m not sure it really moves this past the “are we there yet” straw poll discussion, but one thing to consider is that there’s a big difference between a paper arguing for a novel/polemic categorization of something as a genocide (e.g. [3]) and a paper that presents a genocide as a given (e.g. [4]). signed, Rosguill talk 15:58, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Another issue that’s generated debate in the past is what if a handful of genocide scholars have examined a particular case and declared “it’s a genocide”, yet the historians and other Rs discussing the same event don’t even mention the possibility. It’s hard to figure out what the policy compliant response would be. (t · c) buidhe 15:59, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There is a guideline for that: Academic consensus. A claim that there is academic consensus over X must be backed by sources that say that explicitly (“there is academic consensus on X” or similar wording), it’s not enough enough to round 10, 20, or even 100 sources that individually say “X” and decide ourselves that there is consensus. Cambalachero (talk) 03:12, 10 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

To help, translation of a French book, fr :Bernard_Bruneteau (2019) Génocides, usages et mésusages d’un concept (Genocides: Uses and Misuses of a Concept) with a classification :

[Genocide] can also be grouped based on the interaction between three elements: memory (carried by the victim group and/or its descendants), history (developed through scientific research), and law (established by the international community).

  1. The case of canonized (“consacrés“) genocides […] with an alignment of the memory of the victim group (which strongly influences the public sphere through literary accounts, memorial sites, school narratives, etc.), the scientific history of the event (which is widely accepted and occupies a central place in genocide studies), and the law (the event is the very origin of the law or is defined as such by an international criminal tribunal). […] [= Holocaust, Rwanda, Srebrenica, Khmer Rouge]
  2. The case of genocides awaiting full recognition and, as such, sometimes contested or relativized: here, the law is still lagging behind memory and history. In the case of Armenia (1915-1916), Ukraine (1932-1933), and for a long time Cambodia (1975-1979), we have a very active memory disseminated internationally by the diaspora, often long-standing […] and institutionalized in specific memorials in Yerevan, Kyiv, and Phnom Penh; we also have a massive historical consensus on the genocidal nature of the event: […] [Nevertheless ] legal delay thus facilitates the challenge to the genocidal classification of the Armenian and Ukrainian events by certain historians beholden to Turkey or pro-Russian (or ex-communist) figures.
  3. The case of contested or ignored genocides: here, law and history take a back seat to a social memory that is often activist and seeks to raise global awareness of the reality of past injustices. Three examples of blatant human rights violations during the second half of the 20th century can be cited: Tibet (since the Chinese occupation of 1950), Kurdistan (with Iraqi policy in the 1980s), and East Timor (during the Indonesian takeover in 1975). […]

His system seems coherent to me, and for example in the case of Gaza, we would be at the second level, a case awaiting full recognition due to the lack of a court verdict. Fabius Lector (talk) 16:09, 9 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Just to be sure, the 1000-word limit doesn’t apply to the brainstorming stage, correct? After all, the point is to send ideas back and forth; it’s not yet a formal discussion. —Aquillion (talk) 22:58, 13 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think it makes sense not to restrict to the 1000-word limit. After all, we’re in the unusual situation where the “page” itself, rather than just the talk page, includes signed comments. Moreover, the discussions seem quite focussed. The fact that we’re not going to make any decisions here for any specific atrocity-event articles very likely helps: we’re only hoping to summarise what the actual practice is (or has been so far) on these articles, so that readers of the guide can know what to likely expect if they present argument X, Y, or Z in the context of a specific atrocity-event article. Of course, if someone starts walls-of-texting, then someone else may fold those with “show/hide” semi-hidden wrappers. Boud (talk) 15:34, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Southern Kaduna genocide#Requested move 27 November 2025 that may be of interest to members of this page. Katzrockso (talk) 19:50, 27 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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