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RfC

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
This is an easy close both in terms of the strength of argument by the editors who participated and of strength of arguments as regards Wikipedia policy: there is a clear and strong preference for secondary sources and modern scholarship. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 21:14, 7 May 2021 (UTC)


Should the prehistory and early history sections of this article be less focused on controversial origin stories like Jordanes' Getica, and more focused on archaeological, linguistic and contemporaneous historical evidence?--Berig (talk) 17:20, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

We should notify normal editors of this article and talk page? (I see you've done a round of notifications to people you often work with, but...) Obvious ones include Mnemosientje, Srnec, Carlstak, GPinkerton--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:30, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Conditional yes [ADDED: but open to other approaches]. I think I agree, but it depends a bit on how we would define this fairly broad wording in practice. Is there any chance it will lead to disagreements about what the RFC meant? Seems a good discussion to have though. Thanks. I do think we need to mention Jordanes of course. He is the original Scandinavian origins story, even though his version is obviously dubious. My opinions are explained in several recent discussions.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:32, 31 March 2021 (UTC) It is discussed more above but maybe it helps to say I am worried about people using this to turn our summaries of archaeologists' findings into "archaeologists have have proven Jordanes right" (about a simple transfer of a whole people, as opposed to a complex range of interaction options). It should of course be possible to avoid that issue, but...--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:54, 31 March 2021 (UTC) I also agree with Srnec that reducing discussion of Jordanes is not really hitting the nail on the head yet. If we simply treat Jordanes as correct, and for example start to treat the Gutones as the identical to the Goths, an idea which would arguably not exist without Jordanes (according to the experts), then this proposal could make the article worse. (Influence from Vistula direction is not the same as a mass migration.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:14, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
Wolfram: "the question is not whether Scandinavia was the "original homeland of the Goths"; at best it is whether certain Gothic clans came from the north across the Baltic Sea to the Continent." (Wolfram, History of the Goths, 1990 p.37) (Note that for the Poland to Ukraine migration proposal, Peter Heather is not in agreement with a large part of the field, with his confidence in real significant movement of people, as described by Jordanes.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:42, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes. One line in a lengthy text has generated massive commentary, and to orientate the prehistory section in terms of this origin myth leads to endless complications in doing justice to the controversies it has generated. Scandza warrants mention of course, something along the lines:'Jordanes writes that the ultimate origin of the Goths lay in the island of Scandza from which they are then said to have emigrated in 1490 BCE.'Nishidani (talk) 18:11, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
Right, but did that any one line create so much debate because of something intrinsic to it, some true belief of the editor who just could not get it, or just because drama is being created artificially, using whatever anchor points are available? The history of the discussions recently and further back would indicate it is the latter. But I agree with the idea of attempting to remove anchors. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:13, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
Don't think we should worry about that, per the general scholium's advice about hypotheses non fingo. Nishidani (talk) 08:28, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
Maybe my way of framing my concern was wrong. The concern is that trying to reduce discussion of Jordanes might not be hitting the nail on the head. It might clear the mess a bit, but will this article then be filled with more synth derived from archaeology articles (which in turn all actually refer to Jordanes)? That has been equally or more controversial and the article could be worse. (Because worse balanced.) See also the "vote" of Srnec below. Is Jordanes the real problem? I think the problem is more generally that Goths are Goths, but these complex issues concern debatable "pre Goths" and there is a long-running attempt to treat them as simply Goths. (Which some academics do, like Heather, but there is clearly no consensus, and we know that.) I think there are still gaps in our working consensus. I have made a new RFC below.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:38, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
Well, for the moment, I'm going to concentrate on reworking Jordanes's biography. Once we have a fairly basic outline of his life and works there, some of the material that burdens unduly this page can perhaps, consensually, be shifted there to put some flesh on the skeleton. Nishidani (talk) 12:29, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes – The amount of explanatory footnotes and focus on essentially discrediting a controversial primary source account from antiquity is excessive. General readers benefit less from extensive scholarly disputes about source credibility than they do from matter-of-fact, academically substantiated evidence from secondary sources about what we know from archaeological records, linguistic evidence, and the available history of the people. We should certainly trim down the overly abundant and lengthy explanatory citations. Some of these are way outside the scope of an Encyclopedia and are more befitting of specialized scholarly journals. It's not that there's anything wrong with much of it, but it does not benefit the typical reader. One of the points of disagreement I have had with a certain editor over the years has been this very fact and that individual's insistence on exhaustively including scholarly debates that are of little interest to the VAST majority of Wikipedia's readers. We must distinguish between Wikipedia and the Oxford Journal of Ancient History (sorry if this feels flippant). Otherwise, readers will find the article less useful. --Obenritter (talk) 18:24, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
Probably me? But no problem. I'd say in any case your point is very logical here, and on this article it is easy to see we are slipping off the tight-rope to one side, and we need to move back the other way. Furthermore, I've learned here (with some credit to Krakkos) that we can spin off smaller articles which are MUCH less controversial for all parties. Honestly, my vision for Germanic peoples was similar (more to spin-offs, shorter article) but in the first round of changes that was difficult for all of us to imagine. It is hard to agree on moving OUT some favourite bit. In the long-run that is probably the way there also. The experience on this article has made me believe more in that strategy. We just need to avoid POV forks. I hope the well is not too poisoned by talk of Goffart agendas! :) --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:13, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Sections are fine as is: In my view, the History sections are fine; the fact that some aspects are disputed is not ideal, but that's life. Peter K Burian (talk) 19:19, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes, let's stick to mainstream scholarship on this topic. :bloodofox: (talk) 19:35, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes, I think focusing more on what archaeologists, linguists, and historians have to say about the Goths origins and less on the text of Jordanes is in order.--Ermenrich (talk) 20:22, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
  • No. I'm being a bit deliberately contrarian here, but the whole problem is an obsessive focus on origins. And it's genuinely impossible to overstate the centrality of Jordanes to this issue. There's nothing less controversial about the archaeology, because its ethnic interpretation hinges on written evidence. If we want to write an article that is all matter-of-fact, we have to drop the Goths' origins. They spring into being fully formed north of the Black Sea and that's that. Everything before that has a question mark after it. And it just so happens that no other question marks in Late Antiquity are as contentious as the ones concerning Gothic origins. Nobody debates the origins of the Franks like this.
    I have just read (and edited) the "Prehistory" and "Early history" sections. The latter contains little Jordanes and is mostly an analysis of possible early mentions in Strabo, Pliny, Tacitus and Ptolemy. The former is indeed centred on Jordanes and is not a pleasure to read (not least because of the copious footnotes). I just don't see how adding more about the Wielbark culture will improve matters. I would suggest splitting off material to Origin stories of the Goths and renaming that article Origins of the Goths, reducing the load on this article and allowing for fuller development of various theories. Before I edited it out, there was mention of the Gutasaga. That sort of thing strengthens nobody's case without elaboration. Moving stuff to a separate article, would allow for some elaboration of all sides. Srnec (talk) 00:38, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
For the record, I am not opposed to this direction of moving forward. The choice between this philosophy and the one proposed by Berig depends, for me, on the practical details. Berig's proposal sounds simpler, but Srnec has had more recent editing and source-checking experience on this article and I suspect in practice Berig's proposal might need 2 or 3 more RFCs to convert into a clear agreement on real actions.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:14, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
I should mention that I don't agree that the article about this debate should be move to Origin stories of the Goths, which has nice clean boundaries and a good size. I am coming to believe that we need an article to cover the enormous literature on the Ethnogeneses (plural) of the Goths. This would be a place to clearly separate out the archeaological discussions, refer to the Jordanes discussions and perhaps most importantly finally give a home for the Traditionskern theories from other approaches, and not let them be presented in misleading ways as simple mass migrations. Post World 2 literature about the Goths tends to see them as a series of peoples, re-founded over and over, sharing some common threads, but not physically the same population. This article is failing to explain that.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:51, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes. Obenritter has verbalized thoughts I've had about the article, but expressed it better than I could. I agree that the amount of explanatory footnotes is excessive. I personally find them of great interest, but I think they are distracting and of little interest to the general reader. A greater focus on the archaeological, linguistic and contemporaneous historical evidence will benefit general readers far more than copious notes on the nuances of abstruse (to them) scholarly disputes. Although Srnec takes the "nay" side, he does make some good points. Carlstak (talk) 02:32, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes, but also relocate some material. I agree with the gist of Obenritter's comment, but Srnec also makes some good points, especially about renaming Origin stories of the Goths to r Origins of the Goths (especially since the original is ambiguous and implies only origin myths that the Goth had about themselves), then moving much of this material to that page, and leaving behind here only a WP:SUMMARY. This would also obviate the need for a bunch of distracting footnotes, since they would really belong (probably better as regular prose, not footnotes) in the origins article.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:41, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes. Our most reliable sources for Gothic prehistory and early history are reviews of the archaeological, linguistic and contemporaneous historical evidence by modern scholars. The reliability of Jordanes and Getica is heavily disputed, and details on that dispute are better discussed in other articles. The aim of this article should be to present an overview of the Goths for a general readership based on reliable secondary and tertiary sources. When modern scholars think Jordanes is relevant to archaeological, linguistic or contemporaneous historical evidence on the Goths we can briefly mention it, but that's all. The explanatory footnotes makes the article less readable, but also provides information which is useful, for example for discussions like this RFC. Reaching consensus on this talk page about various disagreements will hopefelly enable us to reduce the explanatory footnotes. Krakkos (talk) 10:13, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
    Two concerns about this. 1. I disagree on a detail which I suspect might be important to you: the words "and early history" in the first sentence. Historians (and philologists) are the most important sources for the historical Goths. As soon as we hit that period, which is the first period everyone agrees that we are talking about "the" Goths, archaeology, linguistics, etc. take a supporting role. 2. I am not against citing archaeologists for their archaeology (in this article and in spin-offs), but in the past WP has reported very little of that. What this article has seen much more of, are citations from comments in archaeological articles about non-archaeological evidence (especially Jordanes) which have effectively been used as a way of getting the stories of Jordanes into the article through a back door, without the proper use of sources which are authorities on Jordanes. If this RFC just leads to more of that then I think I am probably not the only one who would be forced to change my vote to a strong no.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:43, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
    Well said; I was thinking something vaguely like this but hadn't worked out how to articulate it. This kind of "back-door WP:UNDUE" problem comes up a lot in all topics that run up against the antiquity wall (King Arthur, early history of Ireland, origin of the Vikings, historicity of the Jesus and the Bible, etc., etc.).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:09, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
    That's a useful clarification! Thanks.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:47, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes. Scholarly evaluation of the entirety of the evidence should be summarized to set Jordanes' account (and the divergent evaluations of it) in context. Yngvadottir (talk) 22:03, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
'entirety of the evidence'? Put so laconically, that seems to me unworkable, because the problem is the fierce abundance of contradictory interpretations of virtually every datum. Take one example from our text that caught my eye over a week ago on first reading this.

Getica claims to be based on an earlier lost work by Cassiodorus, which also made use of an even earlier work by the Gothic historian Ablabius.

I.e. (a) a claim (poorly put: Jordanes cites this Ablabius just three times)
(b) an assertion passed off as a fact that this Ablabius lies behind Cassiodorus's lost work.
(c) a claim that an historian called Ablabius existed
(d) a claim that he was a Gothic historian.

All of these assertions/claims are contentious. Just that one line would, on this page, engender a vagina notionum, to play on the noted phrase by Jordanes. T his is a Dantean recipe for editors: lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate.Nishidani (talk) 05:19, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

You are right. The second and third sentences of the Prehistory section need to be changed. There are basic errors there. I will start a new talk page section.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:38, 2 April 2021 (UTC) ADDED: done--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:26, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

RFC on article focus

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
There is a clear (in fact, nearly unanimous) consensus in the discussion below that the article should focus on Goths as described in modern scholarship. (non-admin closure) Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 19:23, 8 May 2021 (UTC)

Yes or no or something else? This article should primarily focus upon the Goths described by Roman historians from the third century. The earlier Vistula Gutones, for example, are relevant, but a distinct topic which should not be simply equated to "Goths".--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:03, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Possibly interested users (please add any missing): Berig Krakkos Nishidani Srnec Mnemosientje Carlstak Obenritter Peter K Burian Bloodofox Ermenrich SMcCandlish Yngvadottir Alcaios

  • Yes, I am the one proposing that this is the focus. I think it is obvious, but in practice we have not all been working this way. The academic disputes about Gutones, Gauts, Wielbark etc are not about Goths as such, and involve several disciplines. They always include mentions of Jordanes, Ptolemy etc. They are too complex to handle in this article as a short aside near the start, without causing major problems, as we have seen. Reducing discussion of Jordanes is an idea which seems to have some consensus. If we reduce this key part of the origins discussion we should also reduce the other parts which are typically discussed together with it. A major complication in the literature is that academics often treat Gutones as predecessors of the Goths, in the sense of having a name and traditions which were passed on, even when they do not literally believe in a large migration. This important point has been very difficult to get worded properly here without taking over the article. Possibly we need a new Ethnogenesis/ Traditionskern/ Origins of the Goths article? I am not a fan of using the Origin Stories article for archaeology, etc.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:26, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
  • This article should focus upon the Goths as described by modern scholars. Modern scholarship on the Goths mostly focus on material from the 3rd century onwards, but material from earlier periods is usually included as well. In his The Goths (1998), which is often considered the standard work on the Goths in English, Peter Heather devotes about 15% of the book to these earlier periods. This is about the same amount of attention which this article Wikipedia article gives these periods.
The names Gutones and Goths are identical in the Gothic language. Practically all linguists and archaeologists treat the Gutones as Goths. Heather treats the Gutones as Goths. Herwig Wolfram (author of the standard work on the Goths in German) says that "whenever the Gutones are mentioned... these terms refer to the Goths". The entry for Gutones in the Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde is a redirect to Goths. There are certain historians, such as Arne Søby Christensen, who doubt a connection between Gutones and Goths, but even he concedes that it is "normally assumed that [the Gutones] are identical with the Goths". This article should focus on what is normally assumed by scholars, while taking note of minority viewpoints. It already does that. Our article Gutones is a POV fork based on a minority viewpoint and a more or less a verbatim copy paste of material from Goths and name of the Goths, and should probably again be a redirect to this article.
I don't think we should entirely remove this article's coverage of material prior to the 3rd century. It may however be an idea to reduce the complexity of that coverage, particularly through reducing discussion of Jordanes' Getica. That question is already being discussed in an RFC posted above less than a day ago. I must say that creating mulitple RFC's on practically the same issue within such a short period of time is not helpful for consensus building. Krakkos (talk) 09:38, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
To be clear though, no one is arguing that the Gutones, or even Jordanes, are not important topics which should be mentioned in this article, so we agree that far. But I strongly disagree with your insistence on simply equating Gutones to Goths. Many academics strongly disagree, and most write only of a Traditionskern connection which we are not doing justice to here. Even the academics who believe in a simple migration like Heather, spell the connection between the two peoples out, and why he disagrees with others, rather than just assuming they are identical in all his word usage. (You constantly push for a simple equation here on WP, as in your recent change to the Classification section, but that is clearly OR, and can never be the consensus stable version.) I also strongly disagree that this RFC is the same topic as the above one, which already seems decided. This RFC is clearly looking at how this can be done in practice, and takes into account some concerns of people who posted. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:34, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Focus on Goths as described in modern scholarship, per Krakkos. The treatment in current reliable sources should guide the treatment on Wikipedia. This is basically exactly the same situation as Celts, which is certainly not limited to the Keltoi as described by the ancient Greeks, who were thought of as a group of tribes, but rather is a modern ethno-linguistic topic of considerable breadth and also some controversies. We're pretty good at coverings those when we see the forest not just the individual trees.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:05, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
We should be careful not to make this more complex than it is. I don't see any significant similarity with the Celts situation, because there is and was one clear set of peoples called Goths, and academics have not expanded that much to other peoples in any simple or uncontroversial way. For example, I don't think anyone calls East-Germanic speakers collectively "the Goths", parallel with what happens with Celts. The Gutones are either argued to be the same people in an earlier phase, or else seen as an earlier related proto-Gothic people whose name and culture probably influenced that of the historical Goths. So it is nothing like the name extension we see with Celts. (As Nishidani pointed out, Procopius talks about a larger category of Gothic peoples which included Vandals and Gepids, but I don't think we need a separate article for that as it has not much influenced modern academic usage?) The principle you state sounds fine in theory, but I'm not sure how you would think this wording is different from the wording at the top of the RFC?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:26, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Focus on Goths as described in modern scholarship, per Krakkos and SMcCandlish. The treatment from current reliable secondary sources should guide the discussion of the Goths on Wikipedia. Scholarly observations should not be necessarily constrained to Roman opinion from the the Third century. The article should concentrate on what is known about them and not the lengthy classification arguments about ethnic assimilation and/or academic identification disputes. Those are mentionable to be sure, but should not be exhaustively expounded. All the effort on what the Goths "might have been" and intellectual conjecture taken from varied primary source interpretations do not aid the general reader. Reminder – we are building an Encyclopedia and not writing for a scholarly journal. Yes, we want academic integrity and appropriate sourcing, but the granularity of the discourse has to remain within the framework of a general reading audience.--Obenritter (talk) 13:13, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
I am concerned for the RFC that this wording is being used instead of a simpler wording. I fear that it is unclear, and I am also worried because I think I see a likely way that it could be used badly. Consider the similar wording used in this discussion: [2]. Obenritter, SMcCandlish, I agree with what I think both of you intend, but can you help me check for sure? I clearly agree with removing detailed discussion of uncertain conjectures to a new or existing article or articles, shortening such discussion here about the core Goths topics, but I would not agree with converting uncertain academic positions into certainties on this article based on the wording used in thee RFC answers. Do you both agree? The obvious case which is presumably in mind is Gutones = Goths. One editor wants these to be equated in a simple way in Wikipedia "voice", and has been long been using a similar wording to this. It is possible to find individual scholars who argue the case of course, and it is a reasonable case, but it is still argued to be an "intellectual conjecture" by many respectable academics, and even the academics who argue for it distinguish the two peoples they are arguing can be connected. (They lived in different periods, for one thing, and no classical source equated them.) So, I hope no one will be removing mention of uncertainty because of this RFC wording, being reinterpreted as justifying that. Do you understand my concern?
Smaller point, also to get as much clarity as possible: I agree with Obenritter about this: I think no one here argues that we have to only use the opinions of Roman authors. In order to interpret the written sources of that period we cite modern historians and other experts from fields contributing to those discussions. Do you agree? The materials which everyone seems to agree to be making a mess of this article concern the so-called prehistoric Goths, and the scholarly conjectures and debates about those. My aim in this RFC was to make sure we all agree on this. Hope that makes sense.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:46, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
Andrew -- you are right that we should not be confirming any monolithic ethnonym or naming convention from antiquity as definitive. We should point out that some scholars equate Gutones with the Goths and others contest this. However, no exhaustive and lengthy explanatory footnotes are needed. We can simply cite a work and page number for a couple scholars in one case where they support this idea and a couple page-number RSs that represent the converse. That means trimming out a lot of the scholarly debate and allowing those so inclined to research the information further for themselves. What we are trying to prevent here are diversions "into the weeds" which have been incorporated throughout this article, the Germanic peoples page, and the like. We know you know your stuff and so do many of the editors in this group. What we don't want is a mish-mash of our scholarly disagreements (by way of our support for one author's opinion or another) searing through the page. Does that make sense?--Obenritter (talk) 14:15, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification! Makes perfect sense to me! I suppose we can almost say that one of our jobs as WP editors is to limit the amount of scholarly disagreements discussed per article (but never to hide them)? Seems like a good aim. If there are too many on one article, then everything including talk page discussion get more difficult. Concerning Germanic peoples I agree it is a cautionary tale for this article. It still has too many topics. However, it was worse, and it will get better. I just don't think anyone has a good proposal yet on which bits should be farmed out next. More to the point, I don't think we should really have the same dilemmas here because the core topics of the Goths are relatively clearly defined.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:26, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
Agreed Andrew. Nishidani made a great point. In places where there is deep academic contestation, we can produce offshoot articles. See: Gutones vs. Goths debate page (hypothetical for now). All of that fine work you've done on that specific topic can then be salvaged and included on a new expository WIki-page dedicated to that problem/issue.--Obenritter (talk) 14:31, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
There is in fact a Gutones article, which Krakkos mentioned above. Needs more work. I think a section about Wielbark eventually needs to be added. So that is one more article where we could place some of this.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:27, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
I'm reminded of a remark on the various theories of the etymology of flamen, as a reflex of the Vedic word for 'prayer'(bráman-) or cognate with the Gothic word for 'worship (blotan), a generalization that runs:

That such cases are strictly speaking undecidable, so far from calming debate, has seemed to stimulate bickering in the scholarly literature.'Andrew Sihler New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin, Oxford University Press 1995 p.198

I think here we are basically all on the same page.Nishidani (talk) 14:33, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
I would add, regarding "converting uncertain academic positions into certainties on this article", that doing so isn't what anyone has proposed, and doing it wouldn't be permissible under WP:DUE and WP:NOR policies, anyway.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:56, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
Let's say I could predict which arguments those words were intended to be used for, based on what has happened before, and it has indeed now started. So it is very important that I asked for clarifications. Please look to the newest RFC. What this article needs is outsiders to try to help break a circle.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:51, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Comment Invited by the bot. It would take me an hour of reading to intelligently weigh in on either side but I've been involved in many similar / parallel situations and might be able to suggest a framework. "Goths" is just a word, not an inherent topic. Then you have to decide what it includes. The best guide is the common relevant meaning or closely related sets of common meanings for the term. ("Relevant" and "closely related" excludes meanings like the modern day kids who wear black.) "Common meaning" in this case (since there is no widespread common meaning with the public) would be the common meaning amongst historians and scholars. Not because they know some inherent truth, but because they are "the public" for the purposes of common meaning in this case. That would mean that anything that some significant group of scholars/historians calls "Goths" should be included in this article. If there is significant debate about use of the term for a certain group, that part can have attribution type wording like "Some historians consider xxxx to be Goths". North8000 (talk) 14:29, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
Thanks North. By my interpretation this is the kind of solution Nishidani and Obenritter and myself (and maybe everyone) is considering. OTOH, I honestly don't think we have an extreme case here of a word where it is difficult to point to uncontroversial core topics.
  • No. The article should present what modern scholars say on the topic, not what ancient historians said. North8000 articulates that what we do in cases of substantial disagreement among scholars is attribute statements. Yngvadottir (talk) 22:03, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
@Yngvadottir: thanks for your input. To help editors understand how to convert this to editing directions, can I please ask you to clarify? No one is arguing against using modern scholarship. The question is about the core topic of this article. Obviously one of the issues of specific interest to editors here is whether we can aim to shorten (and move elsewhere) the detailed discussion here of scholarly debates about the proposed ancestry of the Goths before the third century, when the peoples called Goths by scholars first appear. Of course no one is talking about totally removing discussion of the ancestors either, but indeed using wording like North8000 mentions, "Some historians consider xxxx to be Goths", where xxxx might include Gutones or the Wielbark culture. Does that match your thinking?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:20, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
@Bloodofox: thanks for your input. To help editors understand how to convert this to editing directions, can I please ask you to clarify? No one is arguing against using modern scholarship. See my similar question above to Yngvadottir. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:20, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
Andrew. There's a sufficiently large set of comments here for someone like yourself to go ahead and outline the shape of the prehistory section as you think it should run, taking in all of these suggestions, together with your own view. Why not drop in a draft, so that editors can comment, tweak etc., it, while these RfC conversations continue. An alternative work in progress, that would give us all a far clearer and more manageable picture to mull over and hone? Nishidani (talk) 07:26, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
Tasks: my understanding. I think the shortening of the Prehistory section is already preceding in a sense. See the edits by Srnec. Another thing agreed seems to be that we are over-foot-noting (e.g. comment of Obenritter). Krakkos seems to accept that, but I think he is arguing that we should leave that while things are being discussed. So that should start being done carefully, as consensus becomes clear. A bigger job, which no one seems ready to do today, is starting to improve the Wielbark culture article, and expand the Gutones article to include a section on the Wielbark culture. Those would seem to be low-hanging fruit jobs which will help editors get a vision for how to go further. It is not yet clear if we need to create a new article, and that is connected to the question of where we should have is where to discuss the "Traditionskern" (charismatic clan etc) models and how they apply to the two proposed migrations of the "proto" Goths. Perhaps it can be handled well enough in existing articles.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:49, 2 April 2021 (UTC) ADDED: Apart from the Prehistory section, clearly the Lead and Early History sections as they currently stand should also be reviewed with these two RFCs in mind. Significant parts are written from the assumption that scholars are trying to prove Jordanes correct (for example, asking where archaeologists think "Gothiscandza" was), and are not about the Goths as such, but about their probable precursors.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:43, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

RfC on proposal to simplify the Prehistory, Early history and Movement towards the Black Sea sections and merge them into a single Origins and early history section

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Read in context of the prior two RfC's on this topic, there is a clear consensus to substantially trim these sections. The specific text proposed, however, has drawn significant objections and a consensus to implement it as-is is not apparent in this discussion. There is a rough consensus to use the proposed text as a basis for further refinement. Whether the participants in this discussion believe such refinement should take place in a sandbox, in the article directly, or on this talk page is not clearly established below but can be determined through the normal editing process. (non-admin closure) Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 19:59, 8 May 2021 (UTC)

From the earlier Talk:Goths#RfC and and Talk:Goths#RFC on article focus posted above, it is obvious that there is a clear consensus among editors that the Prehistory, Early history and Movement towards the Black Sea sections are too long and complicated, too reliant and focused on Jordanes and his Getica, and that they should be give more emphasis on the analysis of archaeological, historical and linguistic evidence by modern scholars. Much of these sections are my work. I have sought to address the concerns of the community through a proposal. Can this proposal[4], in which the Prehistory, Early history and Movement towards the Black Sea sections are simplified and merged into a single Origins and early history section, be implemented at Goths? Krakkos (talk) 10:31, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

This proposal has been modified twice in order to adapt to comments from other users below. For the original 2 April propoposal see this diff.[5] For the first modification on 2 April see this diff.[6] Krakkos (talk) 10:31, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Pinging Berig, Andrew Lancaster, Nishidani, Obenritter, Peter K Burian, Bloodofox, Ermenrich, Srnec, Carlstak, Mnemosientje, SMcCandlish, Yngvadottir, Alcaios, Pfold and North8000, who have participated in similar previous related discussions. Krakkos (talk) 12:18, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

  • Suggestion. Thanks. Can you please post a diff (or diffs) above showing so we can see the differences with the current version and/or the March 18 version? (Ideally both.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:20, 2 April 2021 (UTC) Disturbed. For the record I note this was not done. I still believe reverting to the March 18 version is the simplest option which all new changes should be compared to. Other editors may not realize, but this whole discussion was triggered by major changes after March 18 which should not have happened, and the first question has to be whether to revert those. It is silly to compare only versions which are in effect completely the proposal of the same editor. Are we playing chess? --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:58, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Overall support, though I'm not closed to revision suggestions, etc., and I still agree with earlier commentary to move some of this material to what is presently Origin stories of the Goths and renaming that Origins of the Goths (or Prehistory of the Goths or whatever), leaving behind more of a WP:SUMMARY at this article. This just is not the place to pore in depth over all the disputation about the Goth's origins; we have an article for that already.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:37, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Needs more work for me. Thanks for making this quick effort but this section is basically now an alternative version of the Gutones article, with too much detail about them, whereas what has been removed and de-emphasized should as per the RFC become more important, not less important. (Wolfram p.13: The Goths of the third century were considered a new people to whom the old Scythian name applied. No ancient ethnographer made a connection between the Goths and the Gutones. The Gutonic immigrants became Goths the very moment the Mediterranean world considered them Scythians.) One principle I think was agreed in the RFCs is that Jordanes discussion should be reduced, but his influence should not be hidden. We should not place the stories of Jordanes in modern clothing. Why mention Jordanes at all if we do not mention that he is the original source of the idea that the ancestors of the Goths took part in 2 migrations? I think we must handle him first then, letting our readers know about his influence on historians. That would be the quickest way to handle him. We can quickly summarize that Jordanes is not considered reliable, but various recent scholars argue for one or both migrations being some kind of reflection of real events (but probably not a real migration). Then we can quickly mention (1) the Gutones (but less detail), (2) the archaeological evidence of Scandinavian contacts with the Vistula, and OTOH Wielbark culture (Vistula) influence on the Chernyakhov culture, which is widely considered Gothic (3) the newer thinking that instead of a migration there were smaller scale influences. (I don't think anyone wanted less of 2 and 3, but perhaps even more. These 2 points have been de-emphasized and over-simplified in some past versions. 3 currently has no home article either.) So this comment is based on what I understand the RFC responses are saying.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:50, 2 April 2021 (UTC) List of concerns with first and second proposals (Work still needed):
  • Simple equation of Gutones with Goths is not acceptable. It is not found in scholarly sources. And we have a Gutones article. This is a case of making certainties out of uncertainties.
  • Title "Early Goths" is not acceptable. For same reason. Discussion on this talk page suggest there is near unanimity among recent editors that Origins of the Goths would be suitable for this topic. (It has been discussed as possibly needing a new article.) I would, predictably, prefer something more uncertain like "Origin hypotheses" or "Origins debates".
  • Over-simple attitude of 2 migrations of Jordanes is not acceptable, and just mentioning Jordanes less hides the source of these migration stories, which makes the situation worse, not better. We agreed not to do this in previous RFCs.
  • No mention of the modern scholarly pro-Jordanes argument. We are now including no mention at all of the very fundamental issue that scholarly proponents of Jordanes now rarely believe in real migrations, but rather culutral influences. (Heather's understanding of the second migration is obviously an exception, but does not constitute a consensus.) This seriously misleads our readers.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:08, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
  • General support but more trimming – Something more of a synopsis. Hypothetical: Origin myths and ethnic classification for the Goths remain disputed. These range from classical sources that claim the Goths migrated from Scandinavia (Jordanes' Getica)(source citation accompanied by short explanatory note), their emergence as misidentified groupings of Butones, Gutones, etc. (source citation), whether they were originally Scythians (source citation), or XXXXX. Archaeological findings and linguistic analysis also complicate the discussion as XXXXX claims that XXXX while so and so claims XXXX (source citations). What part of the point here is that we don't need excessive discussion when so much about the Goths' origins are disputed and unknown. Loads of academic conjecture do not help the general reader. It's wonderful stuff to this forum's audience (but we are the well-versed minority here). Nishidani made it pretty clear in his post that what this article needs is some trimmed down yet informative information with side-shoot articles where necessary. It seems that SMcCandlish is suggesting similar with the comment that "This just is not the place to pore in depth over all the disputation about the Goth's origin." Maybe I'm wrong, but this was my take on what the RFC concluded.--Obenritter (talk) 13:19, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
    I've invited you and the other participants in this discussion to comment on my draft [7]. It will also probably need to be pared down etc, because as a starting point I am trying to be relatively complete, concerning things which are priorities to various editors, so we can really see the decisions we are making when we do reduce it. FWIW its worth I've placed your skeleton draft in the left column and started working in the right column.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:16, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Update @Andrew Lancaster, SMcCandlish, and Obenritter: Thanks for the support and advice. I have updated the proposal through trimming coverage on contemporaneous historical records, and combined the five paragraphs on it into a single paragraph. Krakkos (talk) 14:27, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
    Again thanks Krakkos, but for me at least this still seems to be mainly about the Gutones, who have a seprate article, and is pushing the idea that Gutones = "Early Goths". (I have to say I really don't like that section title.) See my Wolfram quote above, which is an example of how everyone, including people who see Gutones as the "precursors" of Goths, see Gutones and Goths as two separable topics. I thought everyone wanted us to do something like this: Part 1. Jordanes frames the migration discussion but Jordanes is unreliable. Part 2. Other evidence relevant to the topic continues to be debated by scholars (Gutones, Archaeology, Traditionskern proposals, etc).--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:18, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
    The Thervingi, Greuthungi, Visigoths, Ostrogoths and Crimean Goths are separable topics with their own articles, but that does not mean that they shouldn't be covered in this article. The same principle applies to the "Gutones". The idea that "everyone" considers the "Gutones" and Goths to be "two separable topics" is simply untrue. If everyone believed that, the why is the entry for the "Gutones" in the Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde a redirect to its entry on Goths, while their entry on the Lemovii (a much less notable people mentioned together with the "Gutones") is a distinct article? That the "Gutones" are the same as the Goths or at least ancestral to them is supported by such an overwhelming amount of scholars that many don't even bother to discuss whether there is a distinction between them. Here are some citations from authorative works on this question:

    • "[The] Goths are met in historical sources... [in] northern Poland in the first and second centuries... Goths are first mentoned occupying territory in what is now Poland in the first century AD... The history of people labelled "Goths" thus spans 700 years, and huge tracts of Europe from northern Poland to the Atlantic ocean... [T]he Wielbark culture.... took shape in the middle of the first century AD... in Pomerania and lands either side of the lower Vistula... [T]his is the broad area where our few literary sources place a group called Goths at this time... Tacitus Germania 43-4 places them not quite on the Baltic coast; Ptolemy Geography 3.5.8 locates them east of the Vistula; Strabo Geography 7.1.3 (if Butones should be emended to Gutones) broadly agrees with Tacitus... The mutually confirmatory information of ancient sources and the archaeological record both suggest that Goths can first be identified beside the Vistula. It is here that this attempt to write their history will begin." – Heather, Peter (1998). The Goths. Blackwell Publishing. pp. XIV, 2, 21, 30. ISBN 0-631-209-32-8.

    • "Goths lived close to the Baltic in northern Poland in the first two centuries CE" – Heather, Peter (2012). "Goths". In Gagarin, Michael (ed.). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome. Oxford University Press. pp. 323–324. doi:10.1093/acref/9780195170726.001.0001. ISBN 9780195170726. Retrieved April 1, 2021.

    • "Goths... a Germanic tribe whose name means 'the people', first attested immediately south of the Baltic Sea in the first two centuries." – Heather, Peter (2018). "Goths". In Nicholson, Oliver (ed.). The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity. Oxford University Press. p. 673. ISBN 9780191744457. Retrieved January 25, 2020.

    • "Goths—or Gutones, as the Roman sources called them... Hereafter, whenever the Gutones and Guti are mentioned, these terms refer to the Goths." – * Wolfram, Herwig (1988) [Originally published in German, 1980]. History of the Goths. Translated by Dunlap, Thomas J. University of California Press. pp. 12–13, 23. ISBN 978-0-520-05259-8.

    • "During the first century and a half AD, four authors mention a people also normally identified with 'the Goths'... It is normally assumed that [the Gutones] are identical with the Goths." – * Christensen, Arne Søby (2002). Cassiodorus, Jordanes and the History of the Goths. Museum Tusculanum Press. pp. 32–33. ISBN 9788772897103.

    The overwhelming majority of authorative works on the Goths consider contemporaneous historical evidence from the 1st and 2nd centuries in northern Poland to be within the scope of the history of the Goths. This should mean that such evidence is also within the scope of the Wikipedia's coverage of the history of the Goths. Krakkos (talk) 16:25, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
    I think your reply shows a problem. Apparently this draft is trying to slip the Jordanes version of the migration stories (except with the time re-setting that you keep mentioning) in through the back door. You are using an OR argument that the Lemovii are also Goths, in exactly the same way as the Visigoths are Goths, which is clearly not true. You are using snippets of words from writers who disagree with you, like Christensen. If we are going to use quotes like the ones you give for Wolfram, then we'd have to explain that in his text being a Goth is not about ancestry, which is the opposite of what you want our readers to think he means. That is exactly the kind of technical issue everyone wants us to keep short. (The idea of Wenskus and Wolfram is extremely popular among academics by my reading?) We have also discussed many times how you switch to Heather as the main authority for the second migration, but don't want to use him for the first migration (because he is a sceptic). In other words, your ultimate real source is Jordanes, and you pick anyone who agrees with Jordanes on an issue. This is not what the RFCs called for.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:47, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
    ADDED out of sequence: I should have mentioned the first Heather is (finally) not from one of his tiny tertiary entries, but a work peope really cite. It put it to everyone that the words "this attempt" are not just in the quote as a joke. This quote gives a completely different impression, if taken on its own at least, from the snippets out of dictionaries.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:36, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
    For the benefit of other editors, here are some comments by Krakkos concerning the Gutones article, during the first of the current RFCs: [8]. So Krakkos does not want that article to exist at all, which is relevant here, and certainly does not want detailed discussion of pre-Goths moved out of this article at all - which is in contrast with most editors who have commented on the RFCs. One problem for Krakkos is that the Gutones article handles the topic differently than this one. I would say it is correct and balanced, and I think others agree. Krakkos sees it the other way around and calls this article and that one "POV forks". The arguments for the position Krakkos can only control on this article are the same "cherry picking" ones being used in this discussion, and that was the reason for the "what scholars say" wording which Krakkos used in the second RFC. "What is normally assumed by [selected] scholars" should, according to Krakkos, simply be treated as a fact.
    This is just one of several circular discussions which has been going on for more than a year. We are not making small progress, because as the March 18 comparison shows, this article can slip backwards quickly after a round of difficult improvements followed by a "decent pause". This article needs to break free from its past. This will never happen if one party is always taking extreme positions such as demanding that Gutones are simply the same thing as Goths. Most of us have learned to handle splitting off complex subjects so that there are not too many in one article.
    No one is arguing that the Gutones are not likely to be predecessors of the Goths in some uncertain way, and no one wants to hide that, but we can split them out, so we should. (See the RFCs.) They are NOT normally referred to as Goths in any simple way. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:24, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
    Yeah, "likely to be predecessors of the Goths in some uncertain way" seems to be about the size of it. We're certainly not going to arrive at a situation where WP has no article at Gutones, so any shaping of this material that is angling for that can just forget it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:35, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

    PS: I agree with the overall direction, of compressing this down to a paragraph. And, yes, various groups do need to be mentioned in the course of this; the fact that they have their own articles is part of why we can afford to make this section more concise.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:45, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

    Needs Traditionskern rejoinder. @SMcCandlish: compressing is a reasonable aim for the material we have in this proposal, but I want to remind of various discussions above which indicate to me that some OTHER material may also need to be (re-)ADDED. One of the most important things we need to add is a reference to the very popular post-WW2 scholarly argument that to the extent Jordanes was partly right about the two migrations (which is what this section is effectively going to be about), instead of two simple migrations his story reflected cultural contact and the movements of small numbers of people who carried their culture with them, in two steps. Historians are divided about both steps, but most who argue for either step being real now argue in these terms. One or two sentences would probably be enough and should be possible. I think without such a rejoinder we keep the problem of a fuzzy uncertainty being converted to a simple certainty (i.e. two straight-out mass migrations). This is all about converting from Jordanes literalism to modern scholarly understandings.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:49, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
    Title is wrong. This is another long-running circular discussion which can be found repeated over and over on this article, with the same minority position constantly being pushed into new drafts and constantly rejected. We should not call the "pre Goths" Goths, so we should not refer to the Gothic "origins" discussions as the "Early Goths" topic.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:49, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the ping. Maybe me being a dummy on this topic can be useful. So here's my dummy view. So it seems that nobody is calling Gutones "Goths" by that name, that Gutones are to some extent precursors of Goths, and Gutones have a separate article. If so, why not put only enough here on Gutones to set the stage for the surely-Goths material, and otherwise leave the Gutones coverage to the Gutones article. North8000 (talk) 15:41, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
    Thanks for your input, North8000. This article should be largely written for "dummies" like you so your input is crucial :D On the "Gutones"-Goths question i added som citations in a comment above which may be of interest. I would really like to hear your overall impression of the proposal i have outlined. Cheers. Krakkos (talk) 16:32, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
    (edit conflict) @North8000: That makes sense to me and is how we normally work on Wikipedia.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:46, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
  • This RFC is not workable. SMcCandlish you seem to be implying that this RFC is still active but I believe it is already clear that this RFC is no longer functioning as an RFC: The proposal works with a link to a proposal, and the link has been adjusted several times. This means it is no longer possible to count "votes" because they all relate to different versions. OTOH none of the votes show an clear yes or no. Furthermore it is clear from the discussion that the drafts were not even intended to come closer to a consensus.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:01, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
    RfC's are not a vote. They are consensus discussions, and consensus can certainly emerge after examining various revision proposals. That's generally how it's done. And it takes times. RfCs typically run for an entire month, and can be extended beyond that.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:37, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
Yes it is not literally a vote. I just used that as shorthand. It reflects the fact that RFCs are not meant to be as fluid as a normal talk page discussion. There is meant to be a simple proposal, which is not normally meant to change, so that there can be a gathering of feedback which all refer to the SAME proposal. Otherwise, why have an RFC? They are intended to gather clear feedback? What I see above is very consistent feedback, and then a rewording of the proposal and doubling down on the POV-position which was written into the first draft. So where to next on this RFC? More rewriting of the proposal at the top?
Concerning RFCs generally I tend to agree with your idea that they should be few, and when they occur they should be allowed to go long. But I have never found a rule which literally demands this, and I have in contrast learned the hard way that many Wikipedians think lots of short RFCs are not problem and should be encouraged. I am trying to work with whatever everyone else demands and accepts. I am open to whatever works. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:30, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
Agree with SMcCandlish. And by the way, the proposal has only been changed once, and that change was a further trimming down of content in compliance with the suggestions of Obenritter, SMcCandlish and yourself. You said in your initial response that the proposal "needs more work".[9] For you to then dismiss the RfC as "not workable" once more work has been done is quite unfortunate. Krakkos (talk) 08:39, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
Yes ok you only made one proposal (sorry, honest mistake) and I was indeed willing to accept one adjustment, but AFTER that second proposal failed, AND after reading your defence of that and seeing that in fact your intentions had nothing to do with matching the various opinions posted in the three RFCs, where do we go now? Even if you say you're willing to change direction, it will still involve MORE changes to the proposal.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:30, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

Adding omitted participants to consider third draft below: Nishidani, Peter K Burian, Bloodofox, Ermenrich, Srnec, Mnemosientje,Yngvadottir, Alcaios, Pfold and North8000. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:10, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

  • Update @SMcCandlish, Obenritter, Carlstak, Berig, and Sea Ane: I have now modified[10] the proposal further by trimming more content as suggested by several editors above. The content is fundemantally the same as in previous proposals, while the Prehistory, Early history, Movement towards the Black Sea hav all been shortened and merged into a single Origins and early history section consisting of two paragraphs. Feel free to let me now if this addional trimming has been a further improvement. Krakkos (talk) 10:31, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Concerned. First (practical), I indent this responses, but we need to find some way to distinguish responses to this new draft from responses to the earlier drafts. Second, I am seriously opposed to the misleading information which the 2nd and 3rd sentences represent when read together. [See detailed analysis.]
Collapsed. Use link instead
The 2nd is a repetition of past sentences we have discussed, which will mislead everyone that most scholars believe that the Gutones are the biological ancestors of the Goths, with no "mixing". That is bad enough, but extremely consistent with the racial purity concern which seems a constant in most controversies connected to you on this article, and previously on Germanic peoples. The new 3rd sentence now makes this worse, doubling down and removing all doubt, asserting that the scholars who think the Gutones were not necessarily the majority of the biological ancestors of the Goths are a separate minority group. Nothing could be further from the truth. The scholars in this third sentence are very common and likely to be the majority. They include many of the writers you like to cite because they use language seeming to equate Gutones and Goths. You know this. Third, the 4th sentence is also clearly extremely misleading: "Archaeologists associate the Goths with the Wielbark culture". Actually, archaeologists associate the Goths with being one of the peoples represented in the the Sântana de Mureş-Černjachov culture. They associate the Gutones with being one of the peoples present in the Wielbark culture. Sure, it is clearly true that scholars also associate the Goths with the Gutones and sometimes even mix the names up in their narratives. But you can't jump past all that and equate things. This will mislead our readers terribly. This ignores the context which is clear in our sources, distorts them badly. I stop at the 4th sentence. Overall this section is still too clearly aiming to simply equate Gutones and Goths. There is no field consensus for this, and even those who argue most strongly for a connection do not deliberately confuse their readers, or obsess on racial purity.
Others may be interested to look at the sources and notes I am collecting concerning this drafting here, as the sources there (sometimes different sentences from the same works Krakkos cites) may give a different perspective.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:20, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Andrew, you are repeating yourself. This long response is pretty much the same as what you have posted in multiple posts above, and just makes this discussion harder to follow. Your description of the consensus among scholars is certainly incorrect. For example, here are some sources on the link between Goths and the Wielbark culture:

I strongly encourage users to check the footnotes directly instead of having the views of scholars filtered through Andrew Lancaster. Krakkos (talk) 12:02, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

We should read the works themselves, as fully as possible. You should not be playing a cherry-picking contest at all. None of these is a source for biologically equating the two peoples. (And this field is FULL of rejoinders NOT to assume ethnicity = real descent. Note also words like "dominated by".) Our sources, when you read them, go through the proper steps of mentioning the Gutones separately before taking whatever position or terminology they prefer. Just because you can find sentences which match what you want does not mean this reflects the intention of the author. None of these sources is giving a literature review. Your draft fails verification. The real source is Krakkos.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:56, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
The sources above are cited for associating people with a material culture. The only person talking about "biologically equating" anything is you. I agree that editors should seek to read works as fully as possible, but for the average reader who perhaps would like to spend their time on other things, consulting the relevant footnotes directly is a good alternative. Certainly a better alternative than having scholarly views filtered through any of us. Krakkos (talk) 13:15, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
I partly agree. But we have to do read the contexts and chose the words for our readers. Call it filtering if you want, but we can't avoid some of that. A very important example for this exact matter, is that our readers do not know that Wolfram is constantly referring to the concept of "ethnogenesis". In the book you cite he says the "Goths" had several of these, one when the "Scythian" Goths came into being on the Black Sea (p.44). (Note also the Gutones discussed under that name back around p.39. The quote you like is from the Intro, which is better than quoting from an abstract but still a bit dangerous.) I propose that people's common sense is that equating two peoples means a straightforward biological equation, ancestry. Can we agree on that? Please consider your text in that light. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:46, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
Presenting the views of scholars in their own words in context is very helpful. Filtering their views in the wrong way is not. There is a consensus that the section on Gothic origins and early history should be trimmed, and that detailed discussion on scholarly squabbles such as the ethnogenesis debate should be placed elsewhere. Discussion on "biological" questions is also better suited somewhere else. Krakkos (talk) 14:22, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
I tend to agree but if we choose NOT to mention ethnogenesis and ancestry, then we must pick neutral words which do not require us to explain them. This is why we have to know the context and understand more than we put in the article. Simplifying is complicated. Using "exact words" sounds nice, but you make people say the opposite of their intention this way! "Cherry picking" is not some theoretical problem I invented to annoy you.
I have started an analysis of your draft on my userspace to save space and allow me to show how the approach you describe is having problems in real examples: [11]--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:40, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
Update. Krakkos I have now spent a lot of time looking at the details of your draft including the citations used, as you can review at the link already given above [12]. It seemed time to stop work. I hope my effort will be appreciated and used in a positive way. I also hope this major effort focussed on a small bit of text will also be an opportunity for other editors to better understand some concerns I have about the way sourcing is done on this article. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:39, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

@Andrew Lancaster: I have undone your resectioning[13] of the RfC. It makes the RfC more convoluted. Krakkos (talk) 17:35, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

I find it very difficult to understand how anyone could argue that creating a simple sub-sectioning is a "convoluted" resectioning. This is surely very normal and simple, and the alternative will certainly be convoluted. If we have no separation how do we know what people are responding to now? It almost looks like you want to ruin the talk page sometimes I'm afraid.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:04, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Not an improvement, in my opinion. It removes all the strong statements and leaves the weak. "...subject to much discussion" "They are normally assumed..." "Some historians argue..." "Archaeologists associate..." "The Wielbark culture has been associated with..." "...subject of much interest, its reliability is disputed" "...some scholars have suggested..." "...are said to have been..." "The Vandals have been associated..." The first strong sentence we get to is "From the 2nd century AD the Wielbark culture expands southeastwards at the expense of the Przeworsk culture", which does not directly say anything about Goths. Thereafter we return to "...has been connected..." "...which has led some to suggest..." "...it is believed to have contributed..." "This process has been compared to..." "...has been a source of much discussion..." "Some scholars argue..." "While the Chernyakhov culture is believed to have included..." That accounts for every sentence in the proposed section. Some of this is aesthetic and could be corrected by re-wording, but much of it is the unavoidable byproduct of trying to present a short summary of what is in fact a highly disputed subject even among experts. I believe this would be better presented at length—and not in snippets—in an article dedicated to the subject, as I proposed above. The summary section here could then be more straightforward (and even shorter). Srnec (talk) 01:44, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
@Srnec: you've maybe put your finger on something concerning the length. I have no finished proposal to make, but drafting work here [14]. What I have been seeing is that we probably need to make it a reasonably long summary (say 500 words) or else very short indeed. I will probably develop several trial versions to test my thoughts on this. I would welcome your comments on that drafting if you have a moment Srnec. (You could use the talk page of that draft.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:56, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
Material from the 1st, 2nd and early 3rd centuries are well within the scope of this article though. In his The Goths (1998), which is probably the most relevant source for this article, Peter Heather devotes c. 40 out of 300 pages (about 13 %) to those centuries. The proposal devotes c. 400 out of 8400 words (less than 5%) to it. If we were to give as much weight to these centuries as Heather does, the proposed section should be three times longer. Pretty much all the material from this period is under dispute. If we are to provide a short and balanced account of this material, weak statements are pretty much unavoidable. The most crucial thing is that the statements in the proposal reflect reliable and relevant sources. I think they do that quite well. Krakkos (talk) 10:13, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
@Krakkos: I guess weak statements are always avoidable. In fact, if we are finding them difficult to avoid, that's a good indicator you need to tweak drafting strategy. If we find that we have to write weak statements to fit a target size for example, then the solutions available include making it even shorter (and relying even more on other articles to handle things) or making the text a little longer than originally targeted. I believe one reason that it has become difficult to keep it short is that previous versions were also in some ways incomplete explanations. For example if we should not mention simple migrations, without qualification, if we know that scholars do not really mean normal migrations. So we either have to explain it carefully (longer), or not mention migrations at all, but rely on other articles (shorter). From playing around on my drafting page I am tending to the idea that this Origins section needs to be a bit longer than expected. But I hope it can be justifiable by being a bit more informative to readers, and perhaps even resolve some long-lasting editor concerns.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:49, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
@Krakkos: The proposed change under discussion in this RFC would reduce the amount of material from the 1st, 2nd and early 3rd centuries in this article. Since this RFC is about reducing three sections to one, I find it odd that you think the proposed section should be three times longer. That's what it is now! Perhaps I should ask if you are in favour of your own proposed changes, or are you merely seeking "to address the concerns of the community"?
The problem I have with the proposal isn't the weak statements per se since, as you say, they are unavoidable in summing up the controversies. The problem is their density in the proposed section. In the article currently, hedged statements like are usually thought to have been Germanic peoples and Some scholars have equated these Guiones with the Gutones are balanced by stronger statements like This area had been intimately connected with Scandinavia since the time of the Nordic Bronze Age and Pliny writes that the 4th century BC traveler Pytheas encountered a people called the Guiones.
I do not wish to hold up improvements to the article, but I must say that I do not quite understand the concerns animating either of the open RFCs. To my mind, both proposed solutions make the identified problems worse. Clearly there is something I'm missing. Srnec (talk) 02:43, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
@Srnec: one of the concerns animating discussions about both the Lead, and the three sections (I think they all need to be discussed) is the question of whether the Gutones can simply be equated with the Goths, or do the Goths, at least the "core concept" Goths, start in the 3rd century. And because the answer so far is to look at modern scholars, drafts are showing a lot of quotes, and there has been a lot of discussion about what the sources really say. You mention two proposals, and I am not sure what you are counting. I have not yet made a proposal, and my draft page is currently more sourced than I would normally want for a real proposal, for the reason just explained.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 05:27, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
ADDED: lead drafting (incl. new version by Krakkos) [15]; closest thing I have to a draft [16].--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:58, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
@Srnec: I think the proposal is an improvement. My impression is that the community wanted to shorten coverage on 1st, 2nd and early 3rd century material and place less emphasis on Jordanes and scholarly debates. On the other hand, as stated above, 1st, 2nd and early 3rd century material is clearly within the scope of this article, and there is a limit to how much we can reduce such coverage. I think the proposal has reached that limit. With the regards to Gutones, most archaeologists and many historians, such Peter Heather, do make a simple equation between them and the Goths. Other scholars (mostly historians) do not. I think the proposal balances those views quite well. Krakkos (talk) 09:31, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
TLDR update: A promising direction of recent discussion. Some agreement between myself and Krakkos! We agree that Gutones do not "biologically" equal Goths. So then one concern of mine can be defined like this: If we pick the wrong words, our readers will understand that we are reporting a simple "biological" equation. Even Heather does not really believe that. I strongly believe the request for shortening should not lead to us misleading our readers on this.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:51, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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