Ethnic cleansing: what Wikipedia removed

The general article on the concept. “Genocide” peaked at 12 mentions in the October 2023 snapshot, up from 1 in 2005.

The word “genocide” appeared 12 times in this article’s opening at its peak, in 6 October 2023. Today the opening carries none; the body carries 9. Checked against the full current article on 2026-08-02.

Where this comes from

We saved this article’s opening paragraph at 7 moments between 2005 and 2026. Everything below is Wikipedia’s own text, quoted from those saved copies. The interactive version, with every snapshot side by side and each removal marked in place, is at ilroot.com/case/ethnic-cleansing.

The tracked words, snapshot by snapshot

word	2005	2010	2015	2020	6 October 2023	2025	2026
genocide	1	6	0	2	12	9	10
terror	0	0	0	0	1	1	1
massacre	0	0	0	1	2	0	0
disputed	0	0	0	0	0	1	1

Counts are of the opening paragraph only, the part most readers, search engines and AI training sets ever quote.

What was taken out

• The Circassian genocide example, removed.
• The origin of the term in the expulsion of the Circassians, removed.
• The relationship to the Genocide Convention was reworded.
• The account of how the term spread was reworded.

Who made the cuts

Wikipedia publishes who makes every edit. These removals were traced to the exact revision that made them:

• 2023-11-27, Buidhe, edit summary: “Restored revision 1186958081 by [[Special:Contributions/Buidhe|Buidhe]] ([[User talk:Buidhe|talk]]): Per talk: no eviden” (see the diff)
• 2024-01-17, Buidhe, edit summary: ”/* top */ ce” (see the diff)
• 2023-11-06, Buidhe, edit summary: ”/* top */ seems UNDUE in the lead, the book is not even about ethnic cleansing” (see the diff)

How it opened then, and now

2005 (revision 17875759):

For other uses, see Ethnic cleansing (disambiguation) . The term ethnic cleansing refers to various policies of forcibly removing people of another ethnic group . At one end of the spectrum , it is virtually indistinguishable from forced emigration and population transfer , while at the other it merges with deportation and genocide . At the most general level, however, ethnic cleansing can be understood as the forced expulsion of an “undesirable” population from a given territory due to religious or ethnic discrimination, political, strategic or ideological considerations, or a combination of these. Some political commentators avoid use of the term, which they see as a political euphemism wh…

2026 (revision 1367236714):

Systematic removal of a certain ethnic or religious group For other uses, see Ethnic cleansing (disambiguation) . 1893 painting by George Craig, depicting the deportation of the Acadians from Grand-Pré in 1755 Expulsions of Jews in Europe from 1100 to 1600 Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic , racial , or religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making the society ethnically homogeneous . Along with direct removal such as deportation or population transfer , it also includes indirect methods aimed at forced migration by coercing the victim group to flee and preventing its return, such as murder, rape, and property destruction. Both the definition and cha…

Related

• The drift report: what changed across all 61,944 watched articles
• The case file for this article, with every snapshot and every marked removal
• Who made the cuts: removals grouped by the account that made them
• The live article on Wikipedia

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