This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Nanjing Massacre article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.
Nanjing Massacre was a Warfare good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
This article is within the scope of WikiProject China, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of China related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ChinaWikipedia:WikiProject ChinaTemplate:WikiProject ChinaChina-related
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Crime and Criminal Biography, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Crime and Criminal Biography on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Crime and Criminal BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject Crime and Criminal BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Crime and Criminal BiographyCrime-related
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Death, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Death on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.DeathWikipedia:WikiProject DeathTemplate:WikiProject DeathDeath
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Disaster management, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Disaster management on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Disaster managementWikipedia:WikiProject Disaster managementTemplate:WikiProject Disaster managementDisaster management
This article is within the scope of WikiProject East Asia, a project which is currently considered to be defunct.East AsiaWikipedia:WikiProject East AsiaTemplate:WikiProject East AsiaEast Asia
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Japan, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Japan-related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project, participate in relevant discussions, and see lists of open tasks. Current time in Japan: 03:57, April 15, 2025 (JST, Reiwa 7) (Refresh)JapanWikipedia:WikiProject JapanTemplate:WikiProject JapanJapan-related
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Law, an attempt at providing a comprehensive, standardised, pan-jurisdictional and up-to-date resource for the legal field and the subjects encompassed by it.LawWikipedia:WikiProject LawTemplate:WikiProject Lawlaw
This article is within the scope of the WikiProject Law Enforcement. Please Join, Create, and Assess.Law EnforcementWikipedia:WikiProject Law EnforcementTemplate:WikiProject Law EnforcementLaw enforcement
This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.Military historyWikipedia:WikiProject Military historyTemplate:WikiProject Military historymilitary history
This article has been checked against the following criteria for B-class status:
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Sociology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of sociology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SociologyWikipedia:WikiProject SociologyTemplate:WikiProject Sociologysociology
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Human rights, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Human rights on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Human rightsWikipedia:WikiProject Human rightsTemplate:WikiProject Human rightsHuman rights
This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.
I request for where it says "After the war, Matsui and several other commanders at Nanking were found guilty of war crimes and executed" to be changed to "After the war, Matsui and several other commanders at Nanjing were found guilty of war crimes and executed", since most people know the city by the name of "Nanjing" and the name "Nanking” is a Western name. 2A0A:EF40:1266:8501:E983:5DA5:37C7:2D85 (talk) 21:25, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@KönigGorillaReiter this massive POV push to soften Japanese atrocities is rather alarming. Furthermore the line about atrocities you said wasn't supported by the source is discussed at length by the source. I don't know how you could come to the conclusion it was unsupported. Simonm223 (talk) 15:54, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, trying to soften Japanese atrocities was not my intention. Editing the article and sifting through that content was upsetting due to the atrocious actions taken against the POWs and civilian populace. The pictures in particular made my stomach churn.
To be clear, I was trying to clean up the article. Most of my edits did not change the content of the article itself or were grammar fixes. I am not trying to push any narrative. I did clarify some facts that could be taken that way. For example, how officially the Japanese army's main target was Chinese soldiers in hiding and males of military age, and that the killing of civilians was secondary in purpose to that. It in no way diminishes the fact that civilians were killed, but it emphasizes the fact that the targeted group was those males and they suffered the most. I hope it didn't appear that I was trying to minimize the civilian killings, as that was not my intention.
As for the sentence that you mentioned which I had deleted, I was in the middle of replacing it with a more specific, fact supported one. The page on the book that the sentence cited only mentions one village that was burned down, while the sentence described a general policy of burning down any village in the army's path. I was in the process of writing a new sentence which listed every village that was burned with the proper citations, rather than a generalized statement based on one example.
As for the number of edits, I can see how that might raise some red flags in most people's minds. However, if you look at my edit history, you will see that I typically focus on one article at a time and do dozens of edits over a 24 hour span. I last did this to the article called "Mughal Artillery" two days ago, which is not a controversial topic and has no possible false narratives.
I am open to feedback and to redoing any edits you think may be problematic. Just let me know which ones. Given my history on Wikipedia over the past six years showing that I have never in that time pushed any specific narrative, I hope this comes across as sincere. I am an American living in Indiana and do not really have any interest in downplaying Japanese war crimes. I do have a strong interest in Asian history though. I take your feedback seriously and will use this chance to improve my editing. I apologize if any edits had the appearance of trying to push a particular POV. That was certainly not the intention, and any advice on how to avoid that would be much appreciated. KönigGorillaReiter (talk) 16:36, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Frankly start by not deleting reliably sourced material. It's clear you either misread or failed to read some of the cited sources you deleted as you repeatedly said they didn't support the Japanese atrocities statement despite quite clearly doing so. However, just in general, if you are going to make an edit with a net change of +4000 bytes that significantly affects the POV such as by refocusing attention on military deaths, removing the word "murder" and other such problems, go to the article talk page first and get consensus for the changes before making them. Simonm223 (talk) 16:39, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Furthermore, when major edits are reverted, you should stop editing and come to article talk as a first course of action rather than blithely reverting the reversion. You may have a six-year history on Wikipedia but this is literally the first time you've ever posted to an article talk page and that is kind of necessary for major edits. Simonm223 (talk) 16:41, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, thanks for the advice. I had always just gone in and edited during my entire time on Wikipedia. I have never really looked at the talk pages. I only really found out they were a thing today. Over the past six years you're the first person to bring up an issue, which is probably why I've never looked at it before. I thank you for that, it helps me grow and learn more about Wikipedia. I apologize if I made you upset, truly, I don't want to ruin anybody's day. I would appreciate it however if we dropped any accusations of me trying to soften Japanese atrocities, as that is not the case here. Let's have an even headed discussion on the edits.
On the example edits you brought up, I will explain the reasoning behind it. I'm not bound to a specific POV so any real problematic ones can be edited out, no problems from me.
On the first example, I did not specifically refocus attention on military deaths. I added it as a detail alongside the civilian deaths. Both happened. For example, when I changed the sentence in the top description describing the event as "massacre of civilians" to "massacre of soldiers and civilians", it is more correct than the original sentence. Tens of thousands of Chinese POWs were killed alongside the civilian casualties. The original sentence could be interpreted as the event being solely a civilian massacre, which was not the case. As for a later edit on the same topic specifying that the primary target of the Japanese army was soldiers in hiding and military age males, that was also true, from the official standpoint. The civilian killings also took place, but the immediate target was the portion of the population which posed a threat. I do not believe this is controversial, but please let me know if you still think so and why.
As for changing the word "murder" to "killing", that is indeed just a matter of semantics and could certainly go either way. If you like the term "murdered" better than "killed", then by all means I am ok if you change it. The reason why I changed it was because the word "murder" adds an emotional touch that can cause a reader to believe that the writer of the article has a bias, causing them to take some of the facts less seriously. "Killing" is a more matter-of-fact, academic, and neutral term I often see in history papers, much more commonly used than "murder". It presents as a cold hard fact; nobody can dispute that they were killed, but saying that they were murdered opens up the facts to questioning whether it counts as murder if it's a war (personally I believe it does count when those killed are noncombatants like the civilians in Nanjing, as does when a soldier surrenders and throws down their arms, but when a soldier tries to blend into the populace, they could still possibly be considered a combatant). KönigGorillaReiter (talk) 17:29, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
On a reversion you made, I have some questions.
Quote:
Japanese aircraft frequently strafed unarmed farmers and refugees "for fun."
I deleted this sentence because the writer was present at Nanjing. How could he have known that the pilots were strafing people "for fun"? We can certainly leave the part in about the strafing, as that actually happened, but the part about "for fun" is a matter of opinion by the author of that article.
I am very familiar with Harold Timperley as an author. I changed the citation for two reasons. The first is that his name was spelled wrong, leading me to question whether whoever added it had even read his work. The second reason is that his writing was often written as propaganda. He was the head of the UK Branch of the International Information Division in London, and worked closely with the Chinese Nationalist Government to write propaganda to support their cause. His work was very important in spreading awareness of Japan's atrocities to America and other audiences, definitely did the world a favor. However, his stories were often embellished and do not make for a reliable source. I am certain that if you want to keep that sentence in that you can find a better source than his work. There are multitudes of firsthand accounts. KönigGorillaReiter (talk) 18:00, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Also, I don't know what you mean by reverting a reversion. Could you clarify on what it is and how it's bad?
Hello, after looking back at the reversions, I saw that most of the 4000 bytes that were added were not anything that could really be considered controversial. For example, I spent a lot of time writing about the prelude to the battle, the surrender negotiation process, and other events that took place, all with citations. It was condensed into a summary that gave a good overview of the military situation, much better than the two sentences in "siege of the city" that it was reverted back to.
-
Furthermore, there were lots of grammatical and other fixes that did not alter the content of the article which were reverted. Could you undo the mass revert and go through the edits to selectively revert anything that could be considered controversial? Otherwise I will have to re-write all those sections and re-fix all the grammar mistakes, which will take hours. If you deem it iffy, I won't dispute it, but the majority of changes I made were ones that cannot really be considered as such. KönigGorillaReiter (talk) 19:10, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I edited the following paragraph:
-
On December 11, Rabe found that Chinese soldiers were still residing in areas of the Safety Zone, meaning that it became an intended target for Japanese attacks despite the majority being innocent civilians. Rabe commented on how efforts to remove these Chinese troops failed and Japanese soldiers began to lob grenades into the refugee zone.
-
Into this:
-
On December 11, Rabe found that Chinese soldiers were still residing in areas of the Safety Zone, causing it to become a target for Japanese attacks despite the majority of it's inhabitants being innocent civilians. Rabe commented on how efforts to remove these Chinese troops failed and Japanese soldiers began to lob grenades into the refugee zone.
-
This was reverted as a disruptive edit. Could I ask what the issue is? We can leave as is, but I believe the sentence flows much more smoothly in the second version. KönigGorillaReiter (talk) 18:32, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I also see that the citation request for Rabe's safety zone saving 200,000 lives was reverted. I'd like to know where that number came from. If the estimate by consensus is 200,000 people killed, up to 750,000 people fled the city before the battle, and the original population of the city being just over a million, then the number of people that he saved seems inflated. KönigGorillaReiter (talk) 18:45, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Another reversion to discuss. I had spent a great deal of time on the section "siege of the city" adding in the situation on both sides before the battle, and adding several citations. It was strictly factual and did not have much room for controversy.
-
For example: Japanese army arrives at last line of defense between them and Nanjing walls. Japanese bomber drops thousands of letters onto the city with Matsui's surrender demands. The Japanese waited on the 10th but no surrender. Chinese general gives speech and an order of no retreat. The battle commences. Etc. I also changed the title of that section to "prelude to the battle", as "siege of the city didn't fit because there was no siege. The Japanese waited for only one day before a direct assault.
@simonm223 Can you please undo your mass revert and selectively remove anything you don't like? The majority of my edits, like grammar ones, cannot really be considered controversial and added to the quality of the article. If you disagree with any changes in wording I made I am okay if you leave those out.
-
I've stopped editing and posted several discussions on the edits like you asked. However, it's been more than two days and I haven't gotten a reply. Please discuss if you are going to revert an entire afternoon's worth of work improving the article.
-
The quality of this article falls below others on Asian history and needs updating. Some sections are only one sentence long. I fixed those and would like those fixes to remain. Please discuss.
-
You reverted all my edits while I was still editing, and only noticed it 5 minutes after the fact. I stopped editing immediately when I noticed it. However, I made 2 edits before realizing it. You claimed this as edit warring. Please do not use that as a reason to undo all of the changes, it was accidental.
-
After my edits, the intent and message of the article remained clear. It describes a Japanese atrocity in detail. There was no massive POV shift. If you have an issue with any edits, like how I changed the wording on a couple sentences to follow a more neutral academic tone, I am okay if you leave them out. Wikipedia is a joint project, so compromise is important. I take your feedback seriously. Making a unilateral decision to revert all edits because you took issue with a few does not follow community guidelines. Please compromise.
-
Accusing me of trying to soften Japanese atrocities is extremely bold. That was certainly not the case here, and I would appreciate if you rescinded or deleted that accusation. Always assuming good faith is part of the community guidelines. Despite having an old account, I have only been seriously editing for a couple weeks. Using such rhetoric against newer writers can be extremely discouraging and can stunt the growth of the Wikipedia community. I am willing to discuss each and every edit I made, as well as leave out any that you believe to be controversial. I am a white guy from Indiana. I have no interest in softening Japanese atrocities. Please try to understand that I have no ill intentions. KönigGorillaReiter (talk) 21:03, 13 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Also, I am understanding of why you reacted the way that you did. It is important to keep vandals and historical revisionists from doing their work. Seeing a lot of edits happening all at once can throw up a red flag. There has to be flexibility though, otherwise the article never develops. People trying to genuinely expand the article should be allowed to edit. If you have an issue with any edits, let's talk about it. I don't think reverting 4000 bits of edits and not discussing it is the way to do things. I am trying to reach out and compromise here. Please discuss it with me. KönigGorillaReiter (talk) 00:53, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No I am not going to undo my revert which I still see, despite your textwalls to the contrary, as a significant and inappropriate POV shift that has the effect of softening the Japanese atrocities. I strongly recommend that you consider greater brevity in your comments here and get to the point. Perhaps go through your edits one at a time. There is no deadline on Wikipedia and you showed far too much haste with those poorly-advised edits. Simonm223 (talk) 14:57, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@simonm223 Sure, I will write up a list of each one I want to keep. I'll leave out any that you brought up as I don't want to make you any more upset. I'm not stuck on a particular POV so I'm flexible. Everyone's opinion is important. They are a lot of edits though, so it is going to be a bit of a text wall.
-
Is it the norm on Wikipedia where users mass revert others edits and then the original editor has to go through and justify each one? Seems hard to get stuff done if that's the case. KönigGorillaReiter (talk) 16:49, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah sorry, I've always done it that way and it's never been an issue, but this is the first time I've done it on a controversial page so that's why I'm not mad about any of this stuff happening. I totally get it. If I were in your shoes I probably would have reacted the same way honestly. No hard feelings. I just don't want to lose an entire afternoons worth of edits lol. KönigGorillaReiter (talk) 18:41, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @Simonm223
.
First off, thank you for teaching me more about how Wikipedia works. I really appreciate the explanations you gave me about talk pages, mass edits, etc. I'll be sure to remember those going forward. I will reply to this post with the list of edits that I'd like to keep out of the mass revert. If you could read through them and discuss any you don't like, I'd appreciate it. Looking forward to finding a compromise on how to improve this article. KönigGorillaReiter (talk) 18:48, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Simonm223 Here are the edits I’d like to keep. Sorry about the text wall. If you are going to mass revert an entire afternoon worth of edits, you should be prepared to at least look at them all too lol! I left out any that you brought up earlier to keep it shorter. I will leave those edits out for sure. You’ll see that most of the edits cannot really be considered controversial at all. I hope we can come to an understanding.
-
Edit 1: Grammar fix. Removed additional apostrophe in line 59.
-
Edit 2: Grammar fix on line 71. Unnecessary comma and misplaced particle.
-
Edit 3: Requested citation on Japanese politicians denying it happened. I personally believe that there are Japanese politicians that deny it, but we at least should cite this. I can even go and cite it.
-
Edit 4: I added content to the section “siege of the city” starting on line 125. It previously only had one sentence. That is too small for an entire section and is low quality. Previously it said: “The Japanese army continued forward, breaching Chinese lines of defense and arrived at the city gates on December 9th.” I changed it to: “Following their victory in the battle of Shanghai, the Japanese pursued the retreating Chinese army over a five-week period beginning on November 11, overcoming any Chinese resistance sent to slow their advance. On November 20 the Chinese Army and teams of conscripted laborers began to hurriedly bolster Nanjing's defenses both inside and outside the city. The Chinese army reached Nanjing before the Japanese could catch them. After breaching several lines of Chinese defenses around the city, the Japanese army arrived outside the city gates of Nanjing on December 9. Between them and the walls of the city was one final line of defense, the Fukuo line. On December 10 the Japanese army was ordered into an all-out attack, eventually culminating in a decision by Chiang Kai-Shek to abandon the city.”
-
Edit 5: Grammar fix on line 135. It said “unit” when it should have said “units”, as in plural.
-
Edit 6: Changed section titled “Siege of the City” to “Prelude to the Battle” on line 124. The Japanese waited outside of the city for only one day and the assault was over only a few days after that. That can hardly be considered a siege. The section in question also only described the run up to the battle, and did not have any siege-related content.
-
Edit 7: I expanded the demand for surrender section starting on line 132. It previously only had one sentence describing how John Rabe contacted both the Japanese and the Chinese, without any context. It did not include the most important parts, such as the actual surrender demand from the Japanese general, how he delivered it, the intentions of the Chinese general, the situation and background, and others. I added all of these details and cited them too. I even added the stirring short speech that the Chinese general gave to bolster the resolve of his men, all cited.
-
Edit 8: Added a citation for how the Japanese delivered their surrender demands on line 134.
-
Edit 9: Added a citation on Chinese general’s pre-battle speech on line 136.
-
Edit 10: Added citation for interaction between Chinese and Japanese during surrender talks on line 134.
-
Edit 11: Changed wording on line 159. Previously it said that “Japanese soldiers engaged in random murder, torture, wartime rape, looting , arson, and other war crimes”. I changed it to “Japanese soldiers engaged in murder, torture, wartime rape, looting , arson, and other war crimes”. All I did was remove the word random. It still clearly states what the Japanese did and does not soften Japanese atrocities. The word random suggests that it all happened by chance or by luck, which was not the case. People were targeted, specifically young women and military age men. It was not random.
-
Edit 12: On line 145 it said that “2 small Japanese fleets arrived”. I changed it to “2 small Japanese squadrons”. A fleet is the largest grouping of military vessels. There is no such thing as a “small fleet”. The size of the groups that arrived were more akin to squadrons. A fleet sized grouping is like the one that attacked Pearl Harbor. I explained it all in the edit notes but I get the feeling you didn’t see it so I am re-explaining it.
-
Edit 13: I added citations and expanded the section “Japanese War Crimes in the Countryside” starting on line 64. Absolutely nothing controversial added. To sum it up, I wrote that the General originally planned a slow advance to Nanjing, but the troops rushed ahead past the Japanese supply lines, carrying only their guns and ammo. To stay supplied, they looted the countryside. It just explains how the looting started. If anything, it emphasizes Japanese war crimes, it doesn’t soften them.
-
Edit 14: Grammar fix line 68. It originally said “civilians were subjected to extreme violence and brutality in a foreshadowing of the upcoming Massacre.” All I did was change the capital M to a lowercase m. It doesn't soften Japanese war crimes. It still clearly states it.
-
Edit 15: I expanded my previous edit on line 64. I wrote how the looting that I previously mentioned combined with a lack of oversight for the actions of the soldiers rushing ahead snowballed into carnage. I was going to expand more on how they started by taking things here and there, then how it kept escalating until they were burning down an entire village.
-
Edit 16: I removed the part about Japanese aircraft strafing civilians “for fun” on line 68. Were there aircraft shooting at people? Without a doubt. Were the pilots doing it “for fun”? That isn’t something that we can confirm. The source it cited on the “for fun” reference is Harold Timperley (though the citation didn’t even spell his name right). I am very familiar with his work. It was instrumental in showing the West the scale of Japanese atrocities. He definitely did the world a favor. However, it is also propaganda, and does not make for a good source. He worked for the intelligence bureau with the Chinese government. He was known to embellish certain points. He was there in Nanking and we can take most of what he said as true as a first hand account. However, he was on the ground. How can he know that the Japanese pilots were shooting civilians “for fun” unless he was there in the cockpit with them? This edit does soften the atrocity (but barely, it doesn’t change the fact that civilians were getting shot), but that is not the intention. It’s just uncomfirmable information so we shouldn’t present it as fact.
-
Edit 17: Added link to the page of Tang Sheng-Chi, the Chinese general in charge of defending Nanking.
-
Edit 18: Added a citation needed on line 37 about the order to kill all captives. It’s certainly something believable as from reading about Asaka, the man in charge of the Japanese operation, I know that he is not a well mannered man. However, we should at least cite it if making a claim like that. The sentence is still in the article, it just asks for a citation.
-
Edit 19: Starting line 191, the paragraph describes how massacres were organized to kill as many people as possible and how they used machine guns first before finishing the job with bayonets in revolvers. It goes on to say that the massacres were usually on the banks of the Yangtze River to make corpse disposal easier. The part I added was that burying the dead in mass graves was common too.
-
Edit 20: I expanded on the previous edit. I wrote about how these mass graves were instrumental in later studies as evidence for gauging the enormous scale of the massacre.
-
Edit 21: Starting on line 219, the individual incidents taking place during the massacre are described. One sentence says “a six-months pregnant woman was stabbed sixteen times in the face and body, one stab killing her unborn child”. I left the sentence intact, but removed the “six-months”. After the edit it said “a pregnant woman was stabbed sixteen times in the face and body, one stab killing her unborn child”. The sentence is still the same sentence, I just removed that part because it didn’t flow well when reading, and how many months pregnant she was isn’t nearly as relevant as the part about getting stabbed sixteen times. It just improved flow and readability.
-
Edit 22: on line 31, it said that the Nanjing massacre was the mass murder of Chinese civilians by the Japanese army. I changed it to say Chinese soldiers and civilians. It’s important to remember that it was not just civilians that suffered in the massacre. A large number of people killed during the incident were soldiers who, after surrendering, were supposed to have a right to fair treatment according to the rules of war. Instead, they were all ruthlessly killed by the Japanese. It is important not to overlook this important detail, not to mention it is disrespectful to the dead Chinese soldiers if we omit that part.
-
Edit 24: Shortened a sentence starting line 33. Originally said: “Furthermore, Japanese atrocities in the Nanjing area…” and I just deleted the “furthermore”. It didn’t fit with the previous sentence and it flowed better that way.
-
Edit 25: starting line 33 it originally said that Japanese atrocities did not end in January 1938, but continued until March 1938. I kept the sentence content the same, but noted that the majority of the killings occurred within the first 5 days of that time frame, with violence continuing until March 1938. It does not change any facts, it just specifies the timeframe. The reason why it is such an infamous event is because of the sheer number of people killed in a short amount of time (those first 5 days).
-
Edit 26: starting line 56, it says that “Rabe found that Chinese soldiers were still residing in areas of the safety zone, meaning that it became an intended target for Japanese attacks despite the the majority being innocent civilians.” I rewrote it as: “Rabe found that Chinese soldiers were still residing in areas of the safety zone, causing it to become a target for Japanese attacks despite the the majority of it’s inhabitants being innocent civilians.” This improves the sentence flow and corrects the incorrect grammar in the latter half of the sentence. The content of the sentence remains intact.
-
Edit 27: starting line 41, it talks about how Rabe’s safety zone was a success and saved 200,000 people. I just added a “citation needed” on that. Aside from needing a citation to support numerical claims like that one, that number is nebulous. Nanking had a million people before the Japanese arrived. Up to 750,000 fled the city beforehand. Estimates place the killed at around 200,000 people. The numbers don’t seem to add up. The number of people fleeing and the number killed are better documented, so Rabe’s estimate of the number he saved may be off.
-
Please read through them and point out the ones you take issue with. We can discuss them. Then undo the mass revert and I’ll remove those as well as any you pointed out before that you didn’t like. You mass reverted everything despite the fact that 90% of the edits really can’t be considered controversial. It feels like you just assumed all were bad without reading them. To fit your needs here, I am compromising and going through an extraordinary amount of effort to list them all out. But really, it shouldn’t be on me to prove to you that removing a comma, for example, is a good edit. I’d appreciate if you just selectively reverted any edits you didn’t like. I would’ve just left those alone. It would have been much easier not to assume bad faith and sledgehammer the thing so that we wouldn’t have to spend time picking up the pieces. It is also my fault for making so many edits all at once in the first place, so I can’t be mad about it lol. The important thing is that we find a middle ground where we are both satisfied with the improvements. I’ll wait a bit for you to respond it since it is a hefty list. If you don’t respond after a long time, I’m going to assume you are dropping it and undo the mass revert. However, as an act of good faith, I’ll still undo any of the edits that you brought up earlier which you claimed were done done to soften Japanese atrocities, for example the one where the word murdered was changed to killed. That wasn’t the intention of that edit, but I think compromise is important and I’m going to make sure your voice is heard. Thanks for taking the time to read all of this. KönigGorillaReiter (talk) 18:57, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
level-4 vital article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
Thanks MDY seems to be the original per Diff/129316, so I think I'll take the plunge and set it formally to 
Done Remsense ‥ 论 16:38, 27 March 2025 (UTC)
Not done: Mass murder and mass rape are mentioned as primary crimes in the preceding sentences. Remsense ‥ 论 18:45, 29 March 2025 (UTC)