Wikipedia

Talk:Goths/Archive 9

< Talk:Goths
Latest comment: 3 years ago by Andrew Lancaster in topic Prehistory section: similar new material that also needs removal for the same reasons
Archive 5 ← Archive 7 Archive 8 Archive 9 Archive 10 Archive 11 → Archive 13

The new source Kasperski

Latest comment: 3 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

I have mentioned above that it appears to me the Kasperski article, which has recently been added, has not been read by any Wikipedian, but only cited from the abstract. It used for the current footnote 29, to support this sentence: Most scholars believe that Jordanes' account on Gothic origins is derived at least partially from Gothic tribal tradition and trustworthy in its general outline. This is important, because as noted by me above, Kasperski seems to be the only one of 4 sources given for this sentence who is actually writing about the reliability of Jordanes. The wording being quoted by us is from the abstract The story by Jordanes about the migration of Goths from Scandza is a matter of a vivid and long standing discussion between historians. Most scholars argue that it is a part of the Gothic tribal tradition.. I would like to note that I now have access to the article and find the body of the article uses very different wording. Some extracts:

Some researchers claim that the source of his inspiration was an original Gothic tribal saga. It is even believed that the story about the origin (origo) of the Goths in Scandza is one of the most important parts of the Gothic tribal tradition, [...] However, not all scholars share this belief.

The above is from the opening passage, summarizing what historians write. Kasperski does NOT take a strong side in this opening section which reviews the field's position EXCEPT that he agrees with Goffart and his followers about something:

Walter Goffart and his followers [...] have demonstrated that the message of the Getica should not be analysed in isolation from a debate that took place in Constantinople in the 550s, and that the nature of that debate is precisely what may have affected the content of Jordanes’s work.

His DISAGREEMENT with the way we are reading the abstract becomes more clear as his own thesis is laid out. It is clear he does NOT even accept Heather's argument that Jordanes might partly reflect some real Gothic tradition:

The thesis, proposed here, that Jordanes is the actual author of the motif of the Gothic migration from Scandza clearly contradicts the view that the story of that migration comes from Gothic tribal tradition [...]
This kind of deconstruction — and, as its corollary, the division of Jordanes’s narrative into a ‘real’, Gothic tradition, and ‘constructed’ threads, originating from the ancient tradition — is a flawed procedure, distorting the message conveyed by the work. My goal is to show that the story of the Gothic journey from Scandza to the shores of the Pontic Sea has its own meaning, structure and narrative logic. That narrative structure resists the kind of deconstruction just noted; it is a closed, organic whole. Thus, the story can be analysed only in its entirety

Goffart continues to be cited approvingly throughout. I would like to thank Krakkos for bringing the source, but it is clear we can NOT use it in the way we are using it. Strangely enough, I honestly can't find anything like the abstract within the article. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:48, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Kasperski clearly writes that the majority of scholars believe that Jordanes' Getica "is part of Gothic tradition". I may be that he disagrees with that majority. That should not prevent us from using him as a source on what the majority believes. Kasperki's article is primarily on Jordanes and Getica rather than the Goths themselves. I think details on Kasperki's personal views on Jordanes and the Getica primarily belong at the articles Jordanes and Getica. Numerous editors have expressed their concern about this article becoming an exegesis on the Getica, and i agree with those concerns. Krakkos (talk) 10:33, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
Abstracts are made in various ways, and relying on them like you often do, is not best practice, and some would say it is dodgy and a red flag. The authoritative and careful version of Kasperski's understanding is the version in the article which uses these words: "Some researchers claim [...] However, not all scholars share this belief.".
Secondly, I am not opposed to moving details to other articles in some cases, but in this case you are removing mainstream ideas about the unreliability of Jordanes, which is of central importance to this article. In fact, you are effectively demanding that we remove the scholarly opinion about Jordanes, but leave in Jordanes himself as our effective authority.
This is not a minor detail. We only need to look at the recent discussion between Berig and yourself to see how we all know this is making an important change to what the article is telling readers. Most obviously: this makes it appear that academics see Jordanes as reliable and you yourself find this very important because it helps you imply that academics all believe there was a straightforward migration from Scandinavia (as opposed to signs of cultural contact). As Kaliff (who is also distorted in this articles) explains, modern academics do not believe Jordanes was right in any simple way, or that there was anything which can be called a migration in any simple way. You can't get that out of our current article because it is being hidden.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:13, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Proposal for modifications to the Prehistory section

Latest comment: 3 years ago22 comments4 people in discussion

Note, this section can only be understood by comparting to what it is replying to, which is another section above [1]. Krakkos has removed parts from this thread, breaking it somewhat [2]. Despite comments by Krakkos indicating that they are not aware of replies, there are replies above. The latest are in a new sub-section.[3] --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:37, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Due to concerns that the Prehistory section may appear to take Jordanes too literally, i have made a proposal which seeks to address these concerns. The proposal can be found at User:Krakkos/sandbox/Goths. The proposed edit will look like this diff.[4]. If the proposal is considered an improvement, i ask for permission from the community to implement it in this article. Krakkos (talk) 09:56, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Not a suitable solution at all. And why (once again) do you post this response in a new section Krakkos? That is tendentious and deliberately makes it difficult for anyone to read this page. We have discussed this many times before. Can you (or any third person) move it into the section I started please, as per normal WP practice? To repeat, we must urgently remove any statement which says any majority of scholars finds Jordanes "trustworthy" for his migration stories of the Goths. There should be no question of keeping this. No scholar at all literally thinks this, and neither do you for that matter.
Your proposal keeps this wrong information: Jordanes' account of Gothic migration from Scandinavia is considered trustworthy by a considerable majority of scholars, with the time of migration set at around the 1st century BC.. That is clearly very misleading! Readers will not be able to understand the word game being played here. The fact is, that Jordanes did NOT say any such thing, and the simple way of explaining what "re-setting" means here is that we actually have to change what Jordanes said. In other words, we think he is wrong. His account is NOT accepted in a literal way by anyone, and our readers are not being informed that when archaeologists say Jordanes was consistent with what they think, they mean some isolated aspect of Jordanes looks right, but they also definitely do not agree with the narrative Jordanes gives. (The context of the side remarks you quote from in archaeological articles makes their meaning clear. Pulling them out of context changes their meaning.)
Ironically, it is very appropriate to look at the Kasperski article you brought to us concerning the cherry-picking type of approach some people have to Jordanes, as quoted above: This kind of deconstruction — and, as its corollary, the division of Jordanes’s narrative into a ‘real’, Gothic tradition, and ‘constructed’ threads, originating from the ancient tradition — is a flawed procedure, distorting the message conveyed by the work.. I agree with this peer reviewed expert. Note that no-one is proposing to remove all reference to academic cherry-picking, but our sentence is in another league.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:19, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
  • I agree with Krakkos that this is a very sensible and balanced mainstream version that should be implemented ASAP. The best I have seen so far. I agree with Andrew Lancaster that we must avoid cherry-picking, as it is really forbidden by WP:DUE. All too often we find articles littered with WP:UNDUE POV references from cherry-picked hypercritical historians, and that is not acceptable at all. Naturally, Andrew Lancaster agrees, like me and everyone else here, that there can be no compromising with Wikipedia policies, such as WP:RS/AC and WP:DUE.--Berig (talk) 12:53, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
I have now implemented the proposed modifications in the article. Thank you for highlighting the importance of WP:RS/AC. I think the article now has a good foundation for future improvement. Krakkos (talk) 13:11, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
@Berig yes I do agree with the importance of those policies. But I honestly can not see how you can possibly justify the wording I've placed in red, if we really agree on those policies? This looks like straight-up policy violation to me. In any case you must be able to explain some rationale for why my concerns mentioned above can be utterly ignored? So please do that? I think it is important that you demonstrate your understanding and respect for WP policy, even when it threatens your username's street cred. :)
@Krakkos, wow, that was quick. So how can you say that a consensus was reached when you only wait long enough for one person to agree and then edited immediately, despite obvious strong disagreement from another editor? Surely that looks like you are trying to act quickly before anyone comments. This reminds me that this thread should be reconnected, to the full explanation it was replying to. May I do so please?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:16, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
The only dissenter I have seen on this talkpage is you, Andrew Lancaster. You have very idiosyncratic interpretations of what is mainstream.--Berig (talk) 13:21, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
Yes, that is of course not surprising, when they only had 10 minutes to do so! Your approval: 12:53, 27 March 2021; final edit: 13:06, 27 March 2021‎. ...And you are the only assenter, so how is there any kind of consensus here? ...And I am the only one of us two who explained any rationale at all, let alone idiosyncratically. It is easy to constantly make accusations like you do when you never post any evidence of it, or attempt to justify anything.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:38, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
Your "strong disagreement" did not touch upon the actual proposal. Instead you complained about material that is already in the article. The only editor who commented on the the actual proposal was Berig, and he strongly supported it. Krakkos (talk) 14:11, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
Your proposal was clearly being presented as an answer to the concerns I had raised in the original section about this text. In that respect, it clearly fails to address the very clear problem I have proven to exist in the text. That's the priority for now. (To the extent that it does bring the red words into question, then it disagrees with those words in red, which introduce it. So that can't be a good solution can it?)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:27, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
At User talk:EdJohnston you stated that the sentence that was proposed here "is not being disputed by anyone, and it not likely to be."[5] You clearly did not dispute the proposal, but sought rather to stonewall it as a bargaining chip to remove other information you don't like. That is not helpful. Krakkos (talk) 23:39, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

No, not at all, but I understand your question, and perhaps a lengthy explanation can help Berig understand what we've learned here in the past a bit better:

  • 1. Practical aspect. As explained, I am only assessing your edit as a reply/solution proposal to the concern I raised. I have not closely assessed the new paragraph you added. You've been making a lot of changes, so I need time, and I also don't want to overload this talk page. I can see that your confusion about this might be in good faith, but it is a result of this approach you have of constantly starting new talk page sections which are supposed to be replies to other sections, but aren't. You are make proposals which you present as replies/solution but that is not what they really are. They are actually a way for you to keep making edits to the article as if you were not under restrictions. I sympathize with you on the impracticality of this consensus first regime, but your method is confusing, and I guess you intend it to be confusing. If, however, you had proposed your new paragraph as new material, then you might not have gotten such a fast answer from Berig I suppose. But at least it would have been clear that the new material is not part of the discussion with me.
  • 2. Just as an example of how the sentence can be uncontested material, but I might still suggest deleting it, is that I think it probably replicates things said in other parts of the article. Also, as mentioned in my remark to Berig, the sentence seems over-sourced (too many footnotes). Another thing which is a common problem on this article is that the selection of sources used to back sentences up seems to often be made up of a large number of sources from periphery fields like linguistics and archaeology. There seems to be a big effort sometimes to avoid citing the academics in the most relevant field who are really most well-known and most cited for some positions we are explaining, such as Wolfram, Heather, etc. As you know, my fear is that the cause of this is that the more refined explanations of such authorities is often inconvenient for the simple "Scandinavian migration" POV which Berig and others prefer, whereas "Jordanes was right" types of wordings written in asides in WP:PRIMARY and WP:TERTIARY sources are much more easier to manipulate to make them say something which is not correct. As a result we are constantly on the edge of WP:OR and WP:SYNTH even though we know there are real authoritative sources we could use instead.
  • 3. To be clear about my remark to Berig on EdJohnston's talk page, it should not be seen as an approval of the new paragraph, but rather the context makes clear that the one sentence I mentioned is not information I am trying to remove from Wikipedia, which is what Berig falsely claimed. One reason I can say the claim was ridiculous is that, as anyone who knows this topic would realize, the sentence is essentially repeating something which is mentioned elsewhere in the article as a mainstream idea. Furthermore I've confirmed I agree with that assessment of what is mainstream in many previous posts. It is essentially apparently the exact same thing which Beros called the "charismatic clan" proposal. It is one of the main mainstream opinions, but not the only one. But a Scandinavian clan with influence in Poland is NOT the same as "Jordanes was right" in any simple way. Berig in his opening statement clearly seemed to distinguish his own position from this position. It seems he believes a strong "Jordanes was right" is a real academic position, but it is not.
  • 4. I now believe that one source of confusion on this talk page, apart from the constant aspersion casting, is that Beros is only aware of this clan idea from a French archaeology article, and does not realize that it is ultimately derived from the Vienna school of historians and philologists (Wenskus, Wolfram, Pohl) and seen as doubtful, at least for the Scandinavian migration, by many others such as Heather. It is not a theory which came from archaeology, but it is one cited by archaeologists. This theory also can not be equated to saying "Jordanes was right" in any simple way, but it is probably the most extreme pro-Jordanes accuracy theory among Jordanes experts. Even though some archaeologists might use such a simple equation in our article such wording would be misleading our readers. No one thinks Jordanes is literally true. You and I have tended to use Heather's formulation of saying that he believes Jordanes really did have some Gothic traditions as sources, which might have reflected some reality such as the names of real people (e.g. Berig, Filimer) but not all the details of events. The best source for Heather on this topic is the one he still cites, and other academics also cite. I have a copy but FWIW mine is dated 1991? fn 83 on p.66 shows Heather stating that Hachmann, Goten und Skandinavien, shows that there is no archaeological or philological evidence that the Goths really came from Scandinavia. But for those who view Gothic oral history in Jordanes as a window into the authentic past, Scandinavian names at Getica 3.21-4 and the Berig story nevertheless guarantee the Goths' Scandinavian origins: e.g. Wolfram, 21ff.
  • Heather, Peter (1994). Goths and Romans 332–489. Oxford Scholarship Online. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198205357.001.0001. ISBN 9780198205357.
  • 5. The words in red still need to be removed. They are fundamentally wrong and distort what the field believes. One source (Fulk is your only source for this wording) can not be used to make an extremely strong remark about a whole field's position in ways which obviously disagree with the sources who are uncontroversially acknowledged to be the authorities. Consider WP:EXCEPTIONAL. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:30, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
"The words in red" are reliably sourced to this survey of interdisciplinary research on Gothic origins by Robert D. Fulk:

"How the Goths arrived at the Black Sea, and where they originated, are matters of debate. The usual assumption, and the one still credited by the considerable majority of scholars, has been that the account given in the sixth-century Getica of Jordanes is trustworthy at least in general outline: according to this account, the Goths migrated, perhaps about 100 BCE, from Scandinavia (Scandza) to the banks of the Vistula. Their area of settlement on the southern coast of the Baltic is called by Jordanes Gothiscandza... In accordance with the account of Jordanes, the Goths have usually been identified with the Gutones first mentioned by Pliny the Elder ca. 65 CE as living on the shore of (apparently) the Baltic Sea. On this reasoning the Goths have also commonly been associated with the island of Gotland and with the region of south-central Sweden called Götaland (named after the ON Gautar, OE Gēatas), from which areas they are assumed to have migrated originally... In more recent times the account of Jordanes, recorded so many centuries after the purported departure from Scandinavia, has been called into question, in part on archaeological grounds... [T]he presence of Goths in Scandinavia is not to be doubted... At all events, the name of the Goths is so common in place-names in Sweden—and place-names are often among the most archaic evidence—that it is difficult to believe that the Gothic presence in Scandinavia could have been a late development." – Fulk, Robert D. (2018). "Provenance of the Goths". A Comparative Grammar of the Early Germanic Languages. Studies in Germanic Linguistics. Vol. 3. John Benjamins Publishing Company. pp. 21–22. ISBN 978-90-272-6312-4.

Orrin W. Robinson and Marek Olędzki (a specialist in early Gothic archaeology) make statements in a similar vein:

"Greek and Roman sources of the first and second centuries A.D. are the earliest written evidence we have for the Goths, under the names Guthones, Gothones, and Gothi. The sources agree in placing these people along the Vistula river, although whether they were on the coast or a bit inland is unclear. Also not totally clear is the connection between these people and other tribal groupings of similar names found at that time and later in parts of south central Sweden (now Västergötland and Östergötland) and on the island of Gotland. If the legend recorded by the sixth-century Gothic historian Jordanes is accurate, the Goths came to the mouth of the Vistula from across the sea, displacing a number of Germanic tribes who were there before them, including the Vandals. The weight of scholarship appears to support this story, with (mainland) Götland being seen as the likely point of origin, and the early first century B.C. as the likely time. Owing perhaps partially to population pressure, a large number of Goths subsequently left the Vistula in the mid-second century A.D. Around 170 they reached an area north of the Black Sea, where they settled between the Don and the Dniester rivers." – Robinson, Orrin W. (2005). "A Brief History of the Visigoths and Ostrogoths". Old English and its Closest Relatives: A Survey of the Earliest Germanic Languages. Taylor & Francis. pp. 36–39. ISBN 0-415-08169-6.

"Most scholars agree that contents of Jordanes' text... concerning the arrival of the Goths and Gepidae from Scandinavia to Pomerania is fully reflected in archaeological sources." – Olędzki, Marek (2004). "The Wielbark and Przeworsk Cultures at the Turn of the Early and Late Roman Periods" (PDF). In Friesinger, Herwig; Stuppner, Alois (eds.). Zentrum und Peripherie. Mitteilungen Der Prähistorischen Kommission. Vol. 57. Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. pp. 279–290. ISBN 9783700133179.

Per WP:RS/AC, it is not up to dilettante Wikipedians to determine "what the field believes". Statements on what the field believes must be cited from reliable sources. Krakkos (talk) 11:07, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
Indeed you are right. And of course this reasoning has already been replied to. It was silly that you created a new section for your reply to another section, but it is inexcusable for you to now deliberately alternate your answers now between the two sections as if you saw no replies! This is ONLY something you would want to do if you want to make this talk page dysfunctional. I am sick of asking nicely and I am going to move this response section to be a sub-section of what it was answering. I will then start a new sub-section for onward discussion.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:13, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
I have undone your resectioning[6] per WP:TPO and WP:BRD. Your resectioning made the talk page even more confusing and misrepresented what i have written. If there is anyone making this talk page "dysfunctional" it is you, with your endless talk page posts and unhelpful resectionings. Krakkos (talk) 20:10, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
Per WP:BRD and WP:TPO, i have once again undone your attempt[7] to resection and change the meaning of what i have written. This is not helpful and just creates more confusion. Please refrain from editing my posts. Krakkos (talk) 22:10, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
That is a very misleading description of my edit Krakkos. I moved a WHOLE section, which you yourself presented as a REPLY to another section which I created which was at a completely different part of the talk page. So I brought it closer to what it was replying to, and made it a sub-section which is more clearly a reply. [8] I then began my replies in a new section UNDER both the older ones. My AGF rationale aim was clear, and based on WP's core aims: I want to avoid you continuing to ask for replies twice by breaking the thread into two and jumping back and forth between them. I have never seen anyone do this like you, but it is something you've done continually during content disputes on this article and in Germanic peoples. It is very bad form.
It is therefore you who have now [9] clearly broken my WP:thread, disconnecting my newest replies from what they were responding to, and moved one of your posts away from its thread so that it seems to have never been answered. I did not break your thread, you are breaking both our threads. Furthermore, this is clearly not just incompetence, because you are still insisting on pretending that I have not replied to you, in cases where you clearly know that to be untrue. I've pointed the problems out, and you've doubled down. It can only be concluded that you are doing this to confuse other editors. I can't find an AGF scenario here.
Let's consider the context here: we are discussing basic problems I have identified in your latest major round of editing, which you did without any consensus, and therefore against the ruling of EdJohnston. In reply, instead of good faith discussion, you are deliberately ruining the threading on the talk page, as you have done in the past. My attempts to get serious sources and rationales posted in a logical way are being hidden from sight behind all these threads where you are pretending you don't know what the sources say, and asking for proof over and over.
Logical conclusion. Shouldn't we revert the article back to this version until we can confirm that you have a consensus for introducing such problematic material? One reason for proposing this step is that it would make a simple RFC, whereas normal BRD editing to tweak sentences is not available to us due to the decision of EdJohnston which is a result of your past call for intervention into this article which you are still apparently trying to "own".--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:20, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
I don't think reverting to this proposed version is helpful. That would involve the reversion of many improvements and the removal of large amounts of quality sources from Peter Heather, Lotte Hedeager, Michel Kazanski and others. I think those improvements help give editors a better understanding of the topic, and thus provides a good basis for further discussion and improvement. I think it would be better to point out the "problematic material" and propose ways for how we can make it less problematic. That would enable us to solve existing problems while also keeping useful material. Krakkos (talk) 09:57, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
If you are referring to the remark beginning,

Kasperski clearly writes that the majority of scholars believe that Jordanes' Getica "is part of Gothic tradition". I may be that he disagrees with that majority

That avoids answering Andrew's query. He said that an editor had quoted the abstract. That while this can be verified, the actual paper nowhere appears to validate that précis. It would follow use of it is dubious, unless you can find a wording in Kasperski that is close to what the abstract says. Nishidani (talk) 12:42, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
I have made an updated proposal at Talk:Goths#Another proposal for modifications to the Prehistory section which seeks to ensure that the sentence in question takes the content of Kasperski's actual paper into account. Krakkos (talk) 16:00, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
It would also fix a large number of problems. Another approach would be that you start proposing fixes to those, instead of doubling down on positions which you KNOW to be controversial and non-consensus.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:29, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Note, Krakkos has removed parts of the above thread, breaking it somewhat [10]. Despite comments by Krakkos indicating that they are not aware of replies, there are replies above. The latest are in a new sub-section.[11] --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:37, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Restarting

Latest comment: 3 years ago11 comments3 people in discussion

I see that the reciprocal diffidence is kicking. I think Ed Johnson closure of the discussion on his talk page an indication that one should avoid personalizing this, and that, editors here should avoid second-guessing motives and simply, in an orderly fashion, putting down briefly the various issues which have been touched on. There is the possibility that my stepping in here may be read as responding to some call from Andrew. This is not the case: my intervention arose from observing that his bona fides was considered suspect: that contradicts my experience of this editor.

It's a bit awkward stepping in medias res. I'm tempted to think one way forward would be to proceed Hysteron proteron. Andrew's last note raised an issue with Kasperski, stating that the phrase quoted comes from the abstract, but that Kasperi's text nowhere provides a warrant for the generalization in that abstract.

I think that deserves an answer, which I have yet to see. I haven't the paper in question.Nishidani (talk) 09:29, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Hi Nishidani, actually I have limited my notes on concerns to a small number for now. There is more to be said about the Kasperski problem. I'll start with these remarks:
  • Another example of the exact same problem (an abstract being cited, for wording quite different to the more spelled-out discussion in the text) is Kaliff 2008. Very similar situation. We cite (current fn 30) from abstract "The archaeological record indicates that Jordanes' history concerning the origin of the Goths was based on an oral tradition with a real background.". The conclusion of the article does not mention Jordanes at all, and gives a different impression of what the author intends. Here is the opening of the article, and the opening of the conclusion:
The old theories of a migration from Scandinavia to areas in present-day Poland during the 1st century AD, often referred to as “the Gothic problem”, is the main background for this paper. In modern research, the theory of a massive migration has generally been abandoned.
In my opinion, the similarities between some of the Scandinavian and Wielbark contexts are likely to be the result of a complex process of interaction, evolving for centuries. Contacts have been established through trade and exchange, between groups and individuals. Limited migration is likely to have taken place in the shape of dynastic marriages, trading colonies, travelling artisans as well as young men hiring out as mercenaries. When the Wielbark Culture evolved out of earlier cultures in the Pomeranian area, this process could have been the result of both endemic development as well as impact from outside impulses.
I put it to you that no reader of our article is going to understand this article to have said such things. We are citing it for this sentence: Most scholars believe that Jordanes' account on Gothic origins is derived at least partially from Gothic tribal tradition and trustworthy in its general outline. I'd say this is completely opposed to the real opinions of the author.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:20, 29 March 2021 (UTC)] [...continued below...]
Yes, that sentence struck me as problematical from the outset. It's bad with classical/ancient authors to give a general ticket of approval like this (from Herodotus and the Tanakh onwards). As it stands, its narrative function is clearly one of giving some street cred to the idea of a Scandinavian origin (conserved, we are made to think, like the origin of an Abrahamic figure from Ur ) recollection of which was sustained for over two thousands years before it was written down.Nishidani (talk) 14:07, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
Yes, but I think the Vienna school position (Wenskus, Wolfram, Pohl, Bierbrauer etc) is still respected, is the strong pro-Jordanes school, but they certainly don't believe you can take him literally for much. They came up with the idea of the Scandinavian migration being a few people and some cool cultural memes. Others question even that.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:53, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
I have made an updated proposal at Talk:Goths#Another proposal for modifications to the Prehistory section which seeks to make the sentence in question less problematic, and to balance it through giving increased weight to dissenting views in the following sentence. Krakkos (talk) 16:04, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
  • [...continuing...] Would you agree that if an abstract is giving a different impression than the actual article, that the article should be considered the most carefully written wording, and not the abstract? Might seem obvious, but please humour me, and place your opinion on record. :)
  • A practical problem we have faced here, and previously on Germanic peoples is that Krakkos places masses of footnotes onto single sentences, giving a strongly sourced impression to some editors, and giving the impression that it would be pointless to raise issues with any single footnote. However, all or most of the footnotes generally have problems. The normal approach on WP is to remove un-needed footnotes. A large number of footnotes being used would normally be a red flag that WP:SYNTH is going on. I propose that one simple piece of low hanging fruit on this sentence is to remove the irrelevant sources, and make it clear the source is Fulk, reducing it to one footnote. Do you agree? Whether Fulk is an RS for over-ruling all the Jordanes experts is another question! (See discussion above.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:20, 29 March 2021 (UTC)] [...continued below...]
The usual justification for several sources/footnotes is to show all editors, at a glance, by citing in each the relevant quotes, where a disputed sentence is coming from. It saves all other editors a lot of time, as long as the cited material contains quotes supporting the paraphrase. With those quotes lined up, one can either (a)validate the summary (b) challenge it as WP:SYNTH or (b) rewrite the sentence to reflect the substance of those quotes. In a conflicted article, they are to be expected, but if agreement can be found for a different formulation, some of that sourcing can be removed.Nishidani (talk) 14:02, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
OK, so here we have four sources: Fulk (a Germanic languages expert writing about Goths, which I can't check the context of), Robinson (a primer on early Germanic languages), Kaliff (abstract), Kasperski (abstract). Only Fulk uses the strong wording which we are using. Krakkos is it possible to check if Fulk cites anyone else for this quote?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:34, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
  • [...continuing...] All of this is connected to some other discussions which have gotten nowhere. I have stated that it is quite unsurprising to read sentences saying things like "Jordanes is confirmed" and then finding that in the context, the author does not mean that literally, except in an extremely limited way such as "Scandinavian influence in the archaeological Wielbark culture". But our readers can not see the context, when this article is using sentences written by people (mainly archaeologists) like Kaliff to say that "Jordanes" or migration pure and simple, has been proven correct. They clearly do NOT think this.
  • One of the "classic" problems we keep having here is the use of research papers from the technical fields like genetics and archaeology. (Consider WP:PRIMARY.) You and I have seen this before of course. Academics in these fields often include some token references to things said by historians or whatever other fields they want to present their research as impacting. But how many such references can be added up to become proof of a consensus among historians? I'd say that no amount of such references justifies this method, which is clearly WP:SYNTH, especially when editors of this article have no shortage of URLs to the real historians. Do you agree?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:17, 29 March 2021 (UTC) [Rejoiner: of course some archaeologists also write more than technical papers about archaeology. Please no-one claim I am insulting archaeologists. I am distinguishing different types of publication. Checking context is the first thing to do in source disputes. Context can completely change the meaning of a sentence.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:20, 29 March 2021 (UTC)]
I have made a reply above on the citing of Kasperski. Regarding the sentence in red, i am always open for proposals on making modifications. Could you please try to reduce the frequency and length of your talk page posts? Krakkos (talk) 10:49, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
I made a simple proposal.[12] The reason I have to write at length so often is because of this habit you have of constantly pretending to forget things. I'll respond above on Kasperski.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:03, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Another proposal for modifications to the Prehistory section

Latest comment: 3 years ago10 comments2 people in discussion

I've made another proposal for modifications to the Prehistory section. It seeks to address concerns that have been raised at multiple sections above. Due to controversy over what the "majority" of scholars believe about Gothic origins and Jordanes, i have switched the words "majority" with "many" in sentences on this question cited to Robert D. Fulk, Orrin W. Robinson and others. I have also expanded quotations from Robert Kasperski and Anders Kaliff to give a clearer pixture of their thinking, and added a quotation from Walter Goffart to get better balance. The proposal can be seen at User:Krakkos/sandbox/Goths, and the edit would look like this diff.[13] If the community considers the proposal an improvement i would like to get permission to implement the edit. Krakkos (talk) 11:27, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

I am afraid that for me, the words "trustworthy in its general outline", which you are insisting on, just can't be justified in any way. This just does not match our sources does it? "Trustworthy in a general outline" is actually very strong wording that amounts to saying Jordanes basically described what happened. You know this is wrong and that no version of this article which says this is going to be a consensus article. No scholar [ADDED: at least not one cited by scholars as an expert on this topic] believes this. It is clear that to the extent "some" scholars think Jordanes might reflect some aspects of things that really happened, all scholars agree it would have been very different from what he described. This is especially the case with the Scandinavian migration, i.e. the Berig story, which the Jordanes experts (apart from the Vienna school, perhaps) believe is largely based on typical Roman Christian tropes. I also have to say that I find it unfortunate that you have once again started a new section!
Maybe this helps. The correct way to give a balanced account about Scandinavian influence on the Gutones (migration is not a clear word for any academic position) would be to balance the latest most-cited experts (Heather, Christensen, Goffart) with (1) the archaeologists for their archaeology and not their abstracts, and, (2) concerning the Jordanes question, the scholars who defend the idea that Jordanes was influenced in some small way by real pre-history concerning Scandinavia all cite the Vienna school (Wenskus, Wolfram, Beirbrauer in work that connects to archaeology, Pohl in updated 21st century works). These are the champions for that (contested) position. The last two seem particularly relevant to me, and I'm surprised you've not used them. I would be very happy to see you or anyone else do a better job of explaining their argumentation, both here and on the other relevant articles. The fact is that this is not my favourite topic in the world, so although I've read a lot about it (and spent too much on books) I don't have every source we need. However, if I have time I can help you for example with German texts. My concern, as always, will only be that their position is not presented as a consensus (except in aspects where it perhaps really is one of course).--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:08, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
Sorry, but because I feel more optimism about the tone here I'm going to add a bit more. It would be worth a lot if it might actually be read and appreciated properly:
  • Even though academics are allowed to make asides which make sense in context such as "Jordanes was right", and then explain that mean it in a very limited way, we are not, because we are doing something in a different, encyclopedic, context.
  • When we have proof that some scholars are saying that Jordanes might have been reflecting real events in an inaccurate, distorted, almost unrecognizable way (which is the best you'll get from academics, for example the Vienna school, or even the Polish and Scandinavian archaeologists), then your task as a WP editor is different from those academics. Your task is to describe those details (the "aspects" that might be "reflected") and not to simply say something like "Jordanes was right about Scandinavian migration". (If the details are hard to explain we still have to find a way. We may not simplify.)
  • You might argue that you have done that, but just that it is lower down in the article, or moved to other articles. But that's a big problem. They are hidden and dominated by the "Jordanes was right" type comments, which really should not be in Wikipedia at all, because no academic believes this. Funnily enough, I think you also don't believe Jordanes was literally right. You just want to find a way to make sure the Scandinavia migration is given a fair representation and that's fine. See my advice above about ways to do that.
I hope this helps clarify the WP policy on these things.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:00, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
I have now modified the proposal further in order to address your concerns. See User:Krakkos/sandbox/Goths. The proposed edit will be like this diff.[14] Krakkos (talk) 15:56, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
Thank you! May I ask what purpose the word "generally" has though? A lesser issue is that I am not a fan of these very long footnotes, although I obviously I understand the good faith intentions. Similarly, I am not a fan of footnotes in the middle of sentences. Why not treat Goffart and Heather as two similar historians on that particular point? Because you work on those bios perhaps you know better, but I guess are allowed to be called historians (and philologists as well)?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:00, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
I have now made a second modification to the proposal in order to address your concerns. See User:Krakkos/sandbox/Goths and this diff[15] for the entire proposal, and this diff for the newest modification.[16] Since Heather (1994) is not an ideal citation for the entire sentence in question (he disagrees with Goffart's description of the Getica as a fabrication), i added a more appropriate citation from Christensen instead. I understand your concern about long footnotes, but it is a great way to help the community understand what the sources say. I believe that is particularly important in editing disputes. Once the article reaches a more agreeable state we could perhaps trim the length of the footnotes. Peter Heather and Walter Goffart are definitely historians, but they probably have some training in classical philology too. "Generally" i understand as a shorthand for "for most scholars believe x but not everyone agrees". In the Prehistory section it is said that "Modern scholars generally locate Gothiscandza in the Wielbark culture". As it appears that few scholars disagree with that location, i would be fine with removing "generally" from that sentence altogether. The word "generally" is used in other sections of the article, but i would prefer that this proposal limits itself to focusing on the Prehistory section. That makes it easier for the rest of the community to understand what is being proposed. Are you fine with implementing the proposal now? Krakkos (talk) 18:23, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
Sorry, I mis-typed. My concern was with the word "general" in "on certain general details". What role does that word play? I guess it can be removed? It can probably be misunderstood in too directions. I am neutral about "generally locate". Apart from that, it seems to me this fixes some of the concerns recently introduced, and brings no new ones I can see. I honestly have no idea if that can be called a consensus! I agree that with the long footnotes, we can treat them as training wheels for now, as long as they do not get so complex that they make WP:V difficult. We went through a long footnote phase on Germanic peoples also. Don't forget there are of course still other new concerns.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:35, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
I have removed the word "general" (although that word is explicitly used in one of the sources). See User:Krakkos/sandbox/Goths and this diff.[17] Could you now be so kind as to grant me permission to implement this proposal, so that we can move forward with improving other parts of the article? Krakkos (talk) 20:47, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
Words can change meaning in new contexts. But as far as I am concerned this specific edit seems acceptable now. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 00:47, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
Thank you. I have now implemented the proposal. Krakkos (talk) 08:20, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Change proposal in classification section

Latest comment: 3 years ago15 comments2 people in discussion

I now see that some of the recent changes have introduced some serious problems which need to be fixed. On the 18th of March [18] we had this version which was already very controversial...

The Goths and other East Germanic-speaking groups, such as the Vandals and Gepids, were never considered Germani by ancient Roman authors, who consistently categorized them among the "Scythians" or other peoples who had historically inhabited the area.[11][12][13][14]
The Goths were Germanic-speaking.[15] They are classified as a Germanic people by modern scholars.[2][1][16][17][18] They are today sometimes referred to as being Germani.[19][20]

Now we have this.

The Goths are classified as a Germanic people in modern scholarship.[1][2][11][12][13] Along with the Burgundians, Vandals and others they are more specifically classified as being among the East Germanic peoples.[14][15][16]
When first generally believed to have been mentioned in classical antiquity the Goths were classified as being Germani,[17] while authors in late antiquity no longer identified them as such.[18][19][20][21] In modern scholarship the Goths are sometimes referred to as being Germani.[22][23]

Problems:

  • First sentence in the new version describes a common position but one which certainly disagrees with the position of many (probably most) historians who are the cited experts in this field. Examples: Walter Pohl, Guy Halshall. We have to at least admit the existence of this disagreement among the experts. A simple compromise would be to add in the sense of being speakers of a Germanic language to the sentence, in order to make it clear which type of definition is being used here.
  • The third sentence in the new version is quite simply wrong, and this is something I would say the experts have a consensus on. It is citing a tertiary reference work about archaeology whereas the past version, which said precisely the opposite, was making 4 citations from 3 highly cited experts in this field (Halshall, Goffart and Wolfram). It would be easy to add more, because this is NOT a controversial point. So the first sentence in the older version should be reintroduced to replace this new sentence. [ADDED: The new wording "late antiquity" appears to be OR or SYNTH by a Wikipedian. This is not coming from the sources.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:26, 27 March 2021 (UTC)]
  • The last sentence in both versions should be removed, because it is also wrong. Both citations are to a modern author, Heather, who is not, in either case, discussing ancient word use.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:04, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
The Goths are classified as a Germanic people in modern scholarship, in the sense of being speakers of a Germanic language. Along with the Burgundians, Vandals and others they are more specifically classified as being among the East Germanic peoples. The Goths and other East Germanic-speaking groups, such as the Vandals and Gepids, were however never considered Germani by ancient Roman authors, who consistently categorized them among the "Scythians" or other peoples who had historically inhabited the area.

New proposal above.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:08, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

This proposal is not an improvement. Our sources do not state that the Goths are classified as Germanic purely for linguistic reasons. That the Goths were considered Germani in early classical antiquity is reliably cited. Goffart, Halsall and Wolfram are all cited. Check the footnotes. The fact that modern scholars such as Peter Heather refer to the Goths as Germani is relevant information. Krakkos (talk) 14:10, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
No, first such authorities do say, over and over, that Goths are called Germanic based on language family, and secondly none of these sources says the Goths were called Germani in classical times. Indeed they actively state that they did NOT. But maybe I am mistaken and then no problem. Just please tell me where they say this? While you collect evidence for the second point, here is some for the first. These are just a few I could find very quickly (because as you know, we've discussed this many times):

In summary, we need to make this change or a very similar one. We can not leave this as is. Thanks for replying in the same thread!--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:15, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Krakkos can we confirm that you have found no source which says the Goths were called Germani in classical times? I know I have not waited long, but of course we have worked on this exact question before.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:44, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
That the Goths were considered Germani in parts of classical antiquity (but not in late antiquity) is reliably sourced:

"The Romans... became aware of some groups regarded as Germani, notably the Goths, migrating south-eastwards during the early centuries AD towards the Black Sea." – James, Simon; Krmnicek, Stefan, eds. (2020). The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Roman Germany. Oxford University Press. p. XV. ISBN 0199665737.

"The Wielbark culture incorporated areas that, in the first two centuries ad, were dominated by Goths, Rugi and other Germani..." – Heather, Peter (2010). Empires and Barbarians: The Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe. Oxford University Press. p. 104. ISBN 9780199892266.

Check the article for additional sources. The majority of scholars believe that Tacitus mentioned the Goths in Germania, and in that work he explicitly refers to them as Germani. Krakkos (talk) 10:49, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
The first two quotes are modern usage, not classical. You know we also have RS citations literally saying that there is no such classical case. So we know where this ends up. The third one is about the Gutones. While it is true that these may have been ancestors of the Goths it is not certain, so to equate them in a simple way is clearly OR. I understand the temptation of cheating and slipping some OR in, in order to avoid having to explain things in a slightly more complex way, but I can not let myself accept that I'm afraid. I suggested a non-OR way to explain the evidence below...--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:02, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
BTW you don't name the author in the first quote and the link does not work for me but I presume it is Heather. We have had several long discussions about Heather's terminology in his recent popular books. Germani is a term Heather often uses in his more recent English-language categorization. He also explains that he knows they were not one unified culture and did not even all speak Germanic, but his generally reasoning is that Germanic languages were "dominant" in those areas, so it a deliberately fuzzy category that combines fuzzy geographic and linguistic assumptions. I am not placing long quotes for things that have been discussed many times here or on Germanic peoples, because one of the biggest complaints about these discussions has always been that they get too big. But I will provide what is needed, when asked for, and when the intention is clearly practical and good faith.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:30, 28 March 2021 (UTC) But keeping it short, our current footnotes 18, 19, and 20 provide some examples of sources which are quite clear on this, as Krakkos surely knows.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:56, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

Can we move ahead on this please? I think my proposal is uncontroversial to be honest, and the current (new) version is clearly very wrong. I proposed (as a first step at least)...

The Goths are classified as a Germanic people in modern scholarship, in the sense of being speakers of a Germanic language. Along with the Burgundians, Vandals and others they are more specifically classified as being among the East Germanic peoples. The Goths and other East Germanic-speaking groups, such as the Vandals and Gepids, were however never considered Germani by ancient Roman authors, who consistently categorized them among the "Scythians" or other peoples who had historically inhabited the area.

Is there really any doubt about any sourcing issue here? --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 01:00, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

There are sourcing issues with this proposal. That the Goths are considered Germanic only for linguistic reasons is a controversial statement which requires sources. Scholars frequently point out Germanic elements in their religion, law codes, literature, archaeology and other cultural aspects. That the Goths were never considered Germani by ancient Roman authors is also very controversial and only sourced to Halsall, who in turn cites Wolfram. Heather, Wolfram and practically all archaeologists believe that the Goths were mentioned by Tacitus (under the name Gotones, by whom they according to Wolfram were "clearly counted among the eastern tribes of the Germanic peoples". Goffart emphasizes that it was specifically in late antiquity that the Goths were never called Germani. That is more correct. I'm working on a solution for how to improve this section, but it in order to help the rest of the community understand what's going on i believe it is best to fix one section at the time. Krakkos (talk) 08:48, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
@Krakkos: you know we don't only have Halsall, so please don't force me to write longer and longer posts. The following in your post is OR:
  • Your Gutones reasoning, which I have spelled out more in the sub-section below, is clearly multi-step OR. Your use of the words "practically all" is also OR. My reading is that very few scholars would say that the Gutones are simply the same people as the Goths. It is commonly believed that the "Ukrainian" Goths known to classical history were a people whose exact cultural influences are now difficult to reconstruct. No simple migration of a whole people from Poland is considered proven by many key scholars, even if there might have been influences and the movements of small numbers of individuals. But your preferred wordings make a simple equation and demand a migration of a whole people. Consider not only Goffart, but also Halsall, Kulikowski, Curta etc. I believe this is also the position of at least some of the Vienna school. For the second migration, Heather is actually one of the stronger proponents of a real migration (differently to the Scandinavian migration). As an archaeologist, Curta's critique of historian Heather's archaeological beliefs is pretty significant.
  • Your attempt to use the comments of a minority of scholars like Liebeschuetz about the possibility of cultural ties between the northern barbarians apart from language is OR. Even he emphasized that he was starting from language as a defining factor. We had a long discussion in early 2020 where I recall you ended up breaking up your replies between different threads on two articles (at the time), Germanic peoples, and Germani (which is now a redirect but still has a talk page). Liebeschuetz is also certainly not mainstream on all of this, and he presented himself as going against the trend. We've also seen how the key link in his argumentation, the assumption that all Germanic peoples were speaking mutually intelligible "dialects" is in sharp disagreement with philologists such as Dennis Green.
  • Your re-writing of Goffart seems to be a new line of OR and completely opposed to what he argues! He does discuss classical usage such as Tacitus, quite a bit!
I want to avoid writing too much, or any seeming "gotcha" moments in content discussions like this, which might lead you to feel attacked. But we must break these types of circular discussions, which are not good for you or anyone else. So please remember I can post diffs about this exact issue which show you in discussions going back more than one year, on at least 3 articles (including this one).
Back-up Proposal: We can revert this section to the pre March 18 version. All proposals for moving ahead should be better than the March 18 version if they are to be considered worth doing. That version had input from many editors including yourself. You had no justification to change it in the way you have.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:13, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

The OR bit

Side note: Upon reflection, I suspect the "late antiquity" wording is intended to reflect a Wikipedian's judgement that the Gutones mentioned by Tacitus etc should count as Goths, and were, by implication, Germani? If so, although this is not water-tight, I don't personally deny the rough logic. Unfortunately, it would still be OR as far as I can see, and should not have been attached to the source given because it does not seem to say anything about changing classical terminology. A more policy consistent way to handle such things is to simply lay the raw information out for our readers, and not just insert our own synthesis attached to an academic source who says nothing about classical terminology changing in late antiquity. An example of how this could be done would be to add a sentence like this: The earlier Gutones, reported by first and second century authors Pliny the Elder, Tacitus and Ptolemy as living near the mouth of the Vistula, were described as Germani in that period, and as will be discussed below, they are possibly ancestors of the later Goths who lived in what is now the Ukraine. This is the more correct way to do this I think.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:26, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
This proposal is not an improvement. It reads like an essay. The Gutones are discussed in other sections. It shouldn't be necessary to duplicate discussion of the Gutones in multiple sections. The majority of scholars treat Gutones as just another name for Goths, and this proposal thus gives undue weight to a minority position. Krakkos (talk) 14:10, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
@Krakkos: I see the point here of course because the part you are commenting on here is only intended as a way to compromise on the OR. Otherwise the OR needs to be removed, obviously. We do not have a source for classical Latin terminology changing in this way concerning the Goths. They were never called Germani (except in the one obviously accidental case mentioned by Pohl, which we also cite in Germanic peoples in footnote). Of course if you can find evidence to the contrary then I'll be happy to learn something new.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:15, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Prehistory section: similar new material that also needs removal for the same reasons

Latest comment: 3 years ago23 comments5 people in discussion

We have now apparently made difficult progress on one sentence which has being telling our readers wrongly that "Jordanes' account on Gothic origins is derived at least partially from Gothic tribal tradition and trustworthy in its general outline". So I have tried to make time to review more of the large amount of new changes made without pre-discussion by Krakkos after 18th March [19], which reintroduced POV positions that were debated many times in the past and are known to be non-consensus. I found several other freshly changed parts of the same section which repeat the one problem we have already discussed:

Most scholars agree that Gothic migration from Scandinavia is reflected in the archaeological record,<ref name="Olędzki_2004_279">{{harvnb|Olędzki|2004|p=279}}. "Most scholars agree that contents of Jordanes' text... concerning the arrival of the Goths and Gepidae from Scandinavia to Pomerania is fully reflected in archaeological sources."</ref> but the evidence is not entirely clear.<ref name="Heather_OCD"/>{{sfn|Heather|1998|p=26}}<ref>{{harvnb|Oxenstierna|1948|p=73}} claimed to have found archaeological evidence of a Gothic origin in [[Östergötland]]. [[Rolf Hachmann|Hachmann]] 1970 claimed there was no archaeological evidence for a Scandinavian origin of the Goths. {{harvnb|Kokowski|1999}} and {{harvnb|Kaliff|2008|p=236}} believe there is archaeological evidence for a partial Gothic origin in Scandinavia.</ref> The general outline of Jordanes' account of Gothic migration from Scandinavia is considered trustworthy by a considerable majority of scholars, with the time of migration set at around the 1st century BC.<ref name="Fulk_2018_21"/><ref name="Robinson_2005_36"/>

This is misleading again, in the same way as previous discussed cases. The sourcing problems are the same as previously discussed, involving distorted use of sources, borderline OR or SYNTH, and problematic sources such as Fulk. One different one, Olędzki, is being wrongly used for a single "status quaestionis" sentence. This is a WP:PRIMARY source, an archeaological report, not a literature review. The sentence only cites other archaeologists. As usual in archaeological papers (see our many previous discussions, for example on Kaliff) reading the actual paper shows that there is no question that author thinks Jordanes was really accurate. For archaeologists, Scandinavian influence and interactions is all they are talking about (and indeed all they can prove), and that is not what Jordanes described.

Actually, these sentences are also not good editing because they are so repetitive and inconsistent with the rest of the section. These sentences are covered by sentences above and below, which however give different information. Remember, Jordanes reported the migration of a whole people, which he said happened about 1490 BCE. No academic believes this to be accurate. Introduction of unclear words to cover these obvious problems is clearly not going to be comprehensible to readers (for example talk of re-setting "the time of migration" or "partial migration", and are a kind of OR). These wordings only make sense in this discussion on the talk page. Proposal: Is there any argument for not simply deleting all of the above? The material above and below it seems to cover the same topic.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:07, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

  • Re this. Krakkos, my problem with tweaks after long arguments about how to modify by tweaks the existing text, is that the prehistory section itself looks as though it starts off on the wrong foot, so that minor adjustments can't resolve the issue. I think that excellent tweak is appropriate to the underdeveloped Jordanes page, or to the far more balanced (if still underworked) Origin stories of the Goths page, not to this.

Here, the major decision should be to what degree a single, highly problematical datum in Jordanes should be allowed to establish the basic outline of the pre-history section. I don't think Jordanes' point (Christensen dismisses it most recently as utterly fictitious) should have the preeminence it gets and that rather the archaeological material, and clarifications of what groups constituted a Gothic entity are owed priority. Jordanes' note deserves a sentence, not extensive discussion of what authorities think of it.Nishidani (talk) 08:53, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

I tend to agree, and FWIW you can make normal changes to the article, while Krakkos and I can not. (So feel free!) I am struggling to see any real progress after March 18. But each change we want to do theoretically requires pre-consensus, though the discussions are, erm, not easy. So we can do either slow tweaks, or large RFC-based edits such as the other option I am still very tempted to propose...
  • Potential action: RFC for a full revert to the position of March 18, which was a version that had been helped by a lot more editors.
Normally in a situation like this, the potential for compromise looks great because when we slow down and look at everything and AGF, I believe the concerns of Berig and Krakkos would be better covered by avoiding making the article so repetitively and insistently Jordanes-based, and instead making distinct clear no-tricks discussions of (1) the Vienna school's hypotheses based on the Wenskus Traditionskern methodology (which is more or less the true modern "Jordanes light" that archaeologists have in mind) and (2) the Wielbark archaeology. An obvious procedure might look like this...
  • Potential action: start by improving the Wielbark-related articles, and then proposing a summary for here, based on the consensus there?
  • Potential action: Crazy idea: Should there be an article specifically on the various Traditionskern hypotheses related to the Goths? (Obviously it would have to include discussion of the criticisms etc.)

Such procedures on other articles would of course not mean that editing here should stop in the meantime, because the article has some real misrepresentations, as discussed. A revert definitely should be considered IMHO, because we are filling this talk page but getting nowhere.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:22, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

I think the traditionskern (Stammessage/Wandersage) doesn't need another article since it would fall within Origin stories of the Goths.Nishidani (talk) 10:23, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
While I am not sure that it best solution, probably more important to file for now is the fact that this is one of the complex matters which sometimes gets in the way on this article. I notice the term is mentioned on 6 articles in English WP already. 3 are authors (Wenskus, Wolfram and Heather). German WP has 8 hits. Maybe one way to think about this is to ask what the title of an article or sub-section would be.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:47, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

@Andrew Lancaster: Reverting back to older versions will result in the removal of lots of uncontroversial improvements. I think we should give further improvements a chance before we do any wholesale reverts. We have already made good progress. I have now made an attempt at addressing additional concerns with the Prehistory section. I don't think the sentence on archaeological evidence should be entirely removed. The disputed sentence cited to Robert D. Fulk and Orrin W. Robinson has been removed. The sentence cited to Marek Olędzki has been made less bombastic. I have also added a extra note on dissenting views, and useful citations to Dennis Howard Green, Rolf Hachmann and Volker Bierbrauer. The proposal can be found at User:Krakkos/sandbox/Goths and looks like this diff.[20] Would this proposal be an improvement? Krakkos (talk) 09:37, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Which non-controversial improvements do you claim have been made since March 18th? I am not asking this rhetorically. I am open to the idea there might be some, but it is difficult to trace them.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:49, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
Many useful technical changes have been done by various editors, duplications have been fixed, and the sectioning has become more logical and efficient. Most importantly, a large amount of sources from senior authorities on the Goths have been added. This includes Peter Heather, Dennis Howard Green, Michel Kazanski, Volker Bierbrauer, Lotte Hedeager, Thorsten Andersson and many others. Additional citations from the works of Arne Søby Christensen and Walter Goffart has been added too. Removing those sources deprives the community of information which provides them with a deeper understanding of the dissenting views among scholars. I think such an understanding is essential for further improvement of the article. Krakkos (talk) 10:10, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
@Krakkos:, Adding some sources sounds nice, but it would be relatively easy to recover those? I think you are in the best position to propose an edit which would not be a full revert. It looks like the discussions is otherwise going to take weeks or even months?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:28, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

@Nishidani: Thanks for the feedback on the proposal. I agree that Jordanes' Getica and other literary evidence is of questionable value for Gothic prehistory, and that archaeological evidence should be given high priority. However, the Getica plays a very important in modern reconstructions of Gothic history. A Peter Heather says:

"Modern approaches to the history of the Goths have been decisively shaped by the survival of one particular text: the Origins and Acts of the Goths or Getica of Jordanes. Written in Constantinople in about AD 550, it is a unique document. Although its author wrote in Latin, he was of Gothic descent, and drew upon Gothic oral traditions... [T]he Getic's consolidated account has exercised enormous influence on the overall "shape" of modern reconstructions of Gothic history... Thanks to [archaeology]... it is now possible to exercise at least some kind of control of Jordanes' account of even this earliest period of Gothic history." – Heather, Peter (1998). The Goths. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 0-631-209-32-8.

The following sources are authoritative works and reference works which seek to present complete histories of the Goths:
While none of those sources consider the Getica particularly reliable, they nevertheless structure their histories of the Goths around it, supplemented with archaeological, linguistic and historical analysis. I think that Wikipedia should structure its prehistory of the Goths like our most authoritative sources do. Krakkos (talk) 10:10, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
There is something to what you say here, but...
1. Yes. I think no-one would argue that Jordanes should not be mentioned for several different reasons. For example he is cited as an influence on the idea that the Goths came from Scandinavia. But our current explanation of Gothic history is effectively based on Jordanes, and repetitively insisting that he is a reliable. Instead, I think everyone who ever comes to this article feels we should be switching more quickly from mentioning his influence, to discussing the modern scholars. Continually comparing to Jordanes means we end up saying things like "archaeologists have proved Jordanes right" even though we know that is misleading.
2. Interesting point you raise about the structuring of some sources, but I would point out that of course when we look for Jordanes experts, we of course find sources which are structured this way. But this particular WP article is about Goths broadly. We can handle such Jordanes discussions on WP also in more specialized articles? I suppose we already are.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:28, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
Thanks Krakkos. I'm not doubting the utility of Getica at all, and I think that this page should not spend time discussing scholarly assessments of it as a reliable source on Goths. From what I see, so far, there is a general acceptance of Jordanes' value for recent Gothic history, whereas the Scandza material has only generated a motherlode of controversy. That detail should go to Jordanes or Origin stories of the Goths. Shifting it there means nothing is lost of the important work you have done on this. Christensen as you know, recently wrote,

‘The basic contention of this book is that nothing in the first third of Jordanes’ Getic a has anything whasoever to do with a history of the Goths. This was the part in which Jordanes described the emigration of the Goths from Scandza in the year 1490BC, outlining their history until they became divided into two groups after the Hunnic assaults in the mid-370s – the part of his narrative that was allegedly based on a Gothic tradition, a Gothic Stammessage or Wandersage. We found no evidence to support the truth of this allegation. Arne S. Christensen p.318

My argument is that, given the extreme contentiousness (the problem is probably unresolvable: most ancient history is merely the elaboration of hypotheses according to the strengths of philological/textual and archaeological analyses) the Scandza bit should not structure the prehistory section as it appears to have done.Nishidani (talk) 10:40, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
Other spin-off articles can also be used to reduce complications, such as Wielbark culture. Note my suggestion for an article on the Traditionskern instead of migration hypothesis of the Vienna school. I think the Goths are the most famous example of this concept and this is of course the "charismatic clan" idea, to use Berig's term. Unless we feel that concept is going quickly out of fashion, which seems not to be the case, it will eventually need an article. It is a link between Jordanes debate and archaeological debate. Nishidani, it is difficult to imagine how your idea could be controversial and in fact similar ideas have been discussed and led to more work on spin-off articles. The practical problem is that we need to get a consensus on letting this article be as uncontroversial as possible on all such points. Krakkos and I do not just have "trust issues". We literally can't make casual tweaks in order to reign back anything we feel to be an exaggeration. Third parties have played a big role in helping get that done in the version which existed until March 18, and I'm hoping you can hang around a bit and look for those?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:39, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
I think the structure of a Wikipedia article should be determined primarily by the structure of secondary and tertiary sources about the same topic. The reliability and contentiousness of primary sources is of lesser importance for article structure. Practically every major secondary and tertiary source on the Goths tells their history chronologically beginning with the Scandza story, regardless of whether they believe the story to be partially true or not. Krakkos (talk) 13:49, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

@Andrew Lancaster: In the opening of this section you requested the removal of a sentence cited to Fulk and Robinson, and changes to our sentence on archaeological evidence for Gothic prehistory so that it will be less confirmatory of Jordanes. I have tried to do as you proposed, while adding sources from Hachmann, Bierbrauer and Green as you have previously recommended. The proposal can be found at User:Krakkos/sandbox/Goths and will look like this diff.[21] Would you be okay with implementing that proposal? Krakkos (talk) 13:49, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

I think it is important to give a diff comparing to the situation on March 18. Explanation (please don't take this wrongly): The neutral option according to a careful methodology is to go back to March 18. That is just an objective description of the situation. Making dozens of little tweaks which take 2 or 3 days each (which is what we see so far, and has been typical before), in order to try to come back to the March level of neutrality is not an attractive proposal, so if you want to avoid a revert to March 18 I think you need to explain your proposals in terms of how we can avoid that.
Try to imagine that for some people, your edits after March 18 appear to be a sort of giant revert which was mainly targeted not at me, for example, but at reversing exactly those careful wordings on controversial, emotional even, issues which were the results of months and months of similar work that involved a relatively good number of experienced Wikipedians, who undoubtedly now curse both of us, and this article, for wasting hours of their precious lives. You may say that's not a fair description, but what I am saying is that it would be best anyway, if you try to present your ideas keeping in mind that the obvious easy solution is a simple revert to March 18, unless there is a good alternative. (Fixing some footnotes? Not so hard.) Please understand that according to my understanding of life, the Universe and everything, the better you present your argument (even if you think this is against me), and the better that your proposals really are, the better for Wikipedia and all of us with any interest in moving these articles foward. The person who might benefit the most is you, and that would be great. I am not your enemy. If it is still a goal of yours to bring this article to GA standard, then these types of discussions are a vital phase. (A GA article can't be one with on-going content disputes. Trying to make Goths a GA article requires compromising skills, and is quite a challenge.) Actually we've been incredibly lucky in terms of the quality of editors who drop by on this important article, but we need to be listening to them.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:01, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
The 18 March version looked like this.[22] That version includes even more discussion on Jordanes and starts off Gothic prehistory with distinct sections for both him and the Gutasaga. Apart from not having distinct sections for the Gutasaga and Jordanes, the current version (30 March) has merged the sections on goldsmithing and architecture into the Culture section. The sections on goldsmithing and architecture were written by REKKWINT and he has not cursed, but rather thanked me for the changes i made to his material. Reverting will also undo improvements Yngvadottir and Carlstak have made. In short, reverting back to the 18 March version will result in an article which is even more reliant on Jordanes and other legendary stories, and the removal of a large amount of reliable secondary sources (particularly from archaeologists) which the community can use for further improvement to the article. That would be a step in the wrong direction. With the implementation of the proposal[23] i have outlined above, we could make the Prehistory section even less reliant on Jordanes and more based on reliable secondary sources. We have made good progress and i think there is a real possibility for productive future work. The proposal was made on the basis of concerns you raised and i would like you (and other members of the community) to have a look at it in view of implementing it. Implementing the proposal would enable us to move more efficiently ahead with improving other sections of the article. When editors avoid engaging with each others proposals it becomes more difficult to improve the article than it has to be. Krakkos (talk) 20:01, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
@Krakkos: I wish you'd posted your proposal link with a comparison to March 18 as requested. This is that diff. I'll have a look, but remember that the difference between proposing a full article revert or reverts on specific sub-sections is a trivial one, and recovering things like new sources is also very simple. Such things can still be done with a fairly simple RFC. So some type of revert is still an attractive option if we can not move things ahead. Of course I am not against you proposing a "third way" with new ideas (as the history of this article and talk page surely show), but please try to avoid taking any positions which might lock discussion into circles. BTW one thing which I find negative with this direction is that in the sections of concern, the March 18 version was subject to a LOT of careful review by editors such as Carlstak, Srnec, Mnemosientje and Ermenrich which also perfected the style and clarity a lot. Nishidani has remarked that he thinks many problems come originally from sloppy wordings, and he has a point. Removing careful wordings in controversial sections seems a shame.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:44, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Nishidani here (and in most places on this talk page, from what I can see). It requires a selective and unbalanced reading of the scholarly literature to conclude that the Scandinavian origins as presented in the Getica are accurate and accepted as such by scholarly consensus, and the archaeological evidence has yielded almost as much scholarly controversy as the Getica itself. Christensen and Heather, I think, should hold a lot of weight here. They are widely cited in both historiography and philological/linguistic literature. Ghosh 2015 is also notable if you want a recent discussion which holds a good middle ground between old-school Altgermanistik and Anglophone skeptics (despite Ghosh working in Toronto iirc, he doesn't just parrot Goffart) and engages critically with a lot of scholarly literature from many different viewpoints. Anyhow - the Scandinavian-origins narrative must absolutely be presented with a lot of caution if we want to be true to the current scholarly literature on the subject. — Mnemosientje (t · c) 13:55, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Since Krakkos has mentioned my name, I'll offer some thoughts. First, let me say that I second Nishidani's statement, "I'm not hostile to any editor who, like yourself, obviously rolls up his sleeves to the armpits." Krakkos is a hard worker and very knowledgable. I'm glad that Nishidani has joined the discussion, and brought his inimitable style and scholarly rigor; it's good to see Mnemosientje participating as well. I should say that Andrew Lancaster is as indefatigable an editor as any I know; though I sometimes find his prolix style frustrating,;-) I have no doubts of his sincerity and his desire to improve the article. All these editors know far more of the subject than I, but I will contribute in any small way I can. As Nishidani mentions further down, this talk page is confusing, and it's difficult to keep track of all the threads, but as long as we keep the atmosphere collegial, I think involved editors can collaborate and thrash this out. Carlstak (talk) 23:31, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
Thanks Carlstak I accept being called prolix when it comes to articles like this. By "like this" I would define them as "articles where no one can follow anymore and someone needs to sit down and be thorough".--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:51, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
Despite all the difficulties, I'm glad someone's doing it.;-) 11:34, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
(Looking at the discussions on this talk page and some earlier similar controversies elsewhere on WP, I can't help but be reminded of Chris Wickham's 2012 remark that "no one in the rest of Late Antique studies gets as upset about anything as do the five or six schools of late antique/early medieval 'Germanic' ethnicity." Now of course this isn't purely about ethnicity, but the problems discussed have a lot to do with that broader discussion. Debates on Gothic history, and the histories of early Germanic-speakers in general, can be surprisingly political and heated.) — Mnemosientje (t · c) 11:49, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
True, but I think its clear we should try to avoid mixing in any of the debates unless we need to on this broad article at least. I am glad you mentioned it though, because one thing I feel a lot of Wikipedians misunderstand is that Goffart makes academics angry for different debates than the ones that make people angry here (or on Germanic peoples). For example there is apparently a lot of bitterness about "identity" as a topic, and also about "accomodation". Let's not go there. I think Goffart's comments about the terminology "Germanic peoples" have been taken as sensible and worth discussion, by most academics in the same field, even if they decline to change their own word usage.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:58, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Goths/Archive_9&oldid=1020783129"