Here's the full motivation, hope it helps you fix your answer.
This question had a factual, referenced answer. Now it has a deleted, factual, referenced answer.
It had an answer with 3 links, of which two to wikipedia and one to an opinion blog post followed by 157 people. This cannot possibly support 10 paragraphs of text, where you present five different points in disfavor of the blog post.
A moderator wrote "I removed the references, and then deleted the answer as unreferenced."
This is the comment that was left:
Having checked the existing references -- I'm removing this as unreferenced and highly upvoted. There are only 3 references: 2 to wikipedia which repeat the claim and one to a blog with 157 followers. I will happily open a meta question if you think it's necessary, but the deletion reason seems clear in this case.
"It" refers to the answer, not the references. Why would we remove references?
To be more specific, the references were removed late last evening saying they were 'light'. They were to Wikipedia, but I was using them to back up essentially well-known figures over which there is little dispute. The comments also said they 'backed up the claim', something I don't understand since they backed up figures I used to declare the claim false. Then a few hours later, most of which was night in my time zone, and before I had a chance to look at the edits to the answer, the entire answer was deleted.
No references were removed, as you can check for yourself in the revision history. All the edits are yours except one by a user changing capitalization.
If anyone, mod or otherwise, believe the answer needs additional references, please say so in comments and I will add them.
I did ask for more references hours before deleting. Then I went to sleep. When I woke up this morning there were many flags both on the question and your answer. People were arguing in the comments and I cleaned them. This is a typical symptom of an answer appealing to common sense and the zeitgeist, together with the effect of the Hot Network Question List traffic.
I therefore double checked your references and discovered that none of them was in fact supporting your answer. Two references supported the figures for world war I and II deaths, but the claim is about other numbers as well (colonization, Iran Iraq war...).
In any case the figures you found are same figures in the claim, and they clearly do not support your opinion that the claim is "misleading".
The other reference is to a criticism on a blog post, I am not sure why you think is evidence. It's certainly not a reputable reference.
In other words, your answer reads like your reasoned opinion, and it is not referenced enough, yet highly upvoted by the incoming network users. Our policy is to delete such answers.
As an answer pointed out, it is possible to request undeletion. The answer now has references, so I formally request undeletion.
I'm happy to undelete it when it presents solid evidence, sticks to the facts and avoids speculation. I also notified all the mods when I deleted your answer so they could double and triple check my actions.
