Talk:Nanjing Massacre

Edit review

@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 That was certainly not the case here, and I would appreciate if you rescinded or deleted that accusation.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)

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)

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)

@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.

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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)

It's not normal to spam out dozens of substantive edits all at once without any prior discussion, being honest. Simonm223 (talk) 17:28, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

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)

List of edits for Simonm223 to review

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)

@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.

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Edit 1: Grammar fix. Removed additional apostrophe in line 59.

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Edit 2: Grammar fix on line 71. Unnecessary comma and misplaced particle.

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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.

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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.”

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Edit 5: Grammar fix on line 135. It said “unit” when it should have said “units”, as in plural.

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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.

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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.

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Edit 8: Added a citation for how the Japanese delivered their surrender demands on line 134.

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Edit 9: Added a citation on Chinese general’s pre-battle speech on line 136.

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Edit 10: Added citation for interaction between Chinese and Japanese during surrender talks on line 134.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Edit 17: Added link to the page of Tang Sheng-Chi, the Chinese general in charge of defending Nanking.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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)

@simonm223 thoughts? Let's find a compromise here KönigGorillaReiter (talk) 19:15, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

You posted that very long list of edits yesterday and Wikipedia has no deadline. Please expect it may take some time to give such a massive list attention. Please also be aware that I am not the only page watcher here and others may want to weigh in - if they can see to reading a 12k byte post. Simonm223 (talk) 20:10, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

Ok sure, I will wait KönigGorillaReiter (talk) 20:39, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

Can you please provide diffs for these edits? It's very difficult to actually review in its current form. Simonm223 (talk) 13:58, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Hi Simon

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Thanks for taking the time to read through the list. I know it was long and probably took up some of your free time which you could have spent doing other things. Also, sorry for this text wall. I know you don’t like them haha, but I think I’m going to quit working on Wikipedia so this should be the last one :).

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Sorry, but that’s going to take a lot of extra work to do on my end, on top of already writing a list of edit summaries. I think asking an editor to post diffs for all of these on the talk page seems like a bit much. Maybe that’s the norm though, I’m still fairly new to editing and don’t know the seemingly hundreds of procedures that Wikipedia editors follow. It makes more sense for the person doing reverts to look at the edit history, which is already there to view. Preferably before doing the reverts, but it’s still there now if you want to look.

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I realized that at this rate I will have to put more effort into convincing you to let me edit this article than I would lose if an afternoon of edits got reversed. I saw the article wasn’t up to par with other pages on Asian history and wanted to develop it, but I don’t care enough about this specific topic to go through the extra work you are asking of me. It made me think- there are always going to be people who are emotionally invested in a topic that will go to a lot of effort to keep it a certain way (not saying that’s you, but people in general). It makes me wonder if Wikipedia can ever truly be neutral. I’m not sure whether these hoops I’m jumping through are the norm on Wikipedia or if it’s effort to make me give up, but I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore.

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Maybe it’s my fault because it’s the first time I’ve edited anything that could be considered controversial. I should have just steered clear of it. Before this, I was genuinely enthusiastic about adding to Wikipedia, especially the more obscure parts of Asian history that weren't fully fleshed out yet. I really love this resource and wanted to give back to the community. Reverts sometimes happened, but they were never a big deal. Now it’s too bureaucratic for me though. It also feels kind of hostile. The rhetoric people use does not seem very friendly (though that could be just my interpretation), and the atmosphere feels accusatory. I’ve now been accused of doing things that I never imagined I’d be accused of in my life haha. I told my friends about it and they couldn’t stop laughing at me!

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I think I’m just going to quit editing Wikipedia. I have things in real life that I enjoy more, and the difficulty of getting things done sometimes just isn’t worth it. I’m sorry for trying to make edits and making you go through the effort of reading them just to quit working on the article. My hope is that you will reverse your mass edit and at least keep some; removing the ones you don’t agree with; but I’m probably not going to check back in on it anytime soon, so you can do what you think is best :).

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Maybe these kinds of things are the reason why Wikipedia isn’t gaining many new editors, but who knows, that’s just one person’s thoughts. If it's truly the way Wikipedia is supposed to work, perhaps some changes to policy should be made that make newer editors want to stay instead of dropping out. One of my friends used to be an editor for years but he said he stopped working on it for the same reasons I am. Thank you for trying to explain how things work around here, and sorry I’m wasting your efforts. Maybe I’ll change my mind at some point in the future and use the knowledge, but for now I think I’m done. Perhaps one day I’ll get bored so I’ll come back in a year (or a month if I get really bored) and post the diffs after all! Don’t be surprised if that happens lol. Maybe I’ll ask someone else to look through it too at that time, anything’s possible.

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Best wishes,

Wally KönigGorillaReiter (talk) 02:37, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

I would just like to add that I read through your edits and most line up more closely with modern scholarship on the atrocity. Unfortunately quite a few editors are emotionally invested in a narrative and are all too quick to revert changes and label anyone challenging their view as a revisionist. Adachi1939 (talk) 20:34, 3 May 2025 (UTC)