Talk:Germanic peoples

conflation of franks with visigoths?

I made a change (838551115) which was reverted (838551115) and which I have again reverted and this is my attempt to prevent it from being reverted again. apologies if I am not doing the bureaucracy part of this correctly, I typically just make drive-by corrections

the previous version of the line in question was "Against Germanic tradition, each of the four sons of Clovis attempted to secure power in different cities but their inability to prove themselves on the battlefield and intrigue against one another led the Visigoths back to electing their leadership." which seems to confuse two different subjects with each other. the source (bauer 178-179, https://books.google.com/books?id=1u2oP2RihIgC&q=amalaric#v=snippet&q=amalaric&f=false) briefly discusses the frankish succession and resulting civil war among clovis's four sons, then _by way of example_ tells of amalaric, who became king of the _visigoths_, some two decades later, before being killed for incompetence and replaced by an elected warleader. somehow these two different events, tribes, and individuals were merged into the one sentence, which I have removed

I had not looked at this remark before, as it is difficult to follow, but while we're reviewing the article length, it appears to be correct, but part of a bigger problem. Not only is the text mixing things up, but it adds wording quite different from the source being used to claim that all this is about "Germanic tradition". What the source says is that the Franks had no tradition of overall kings at this time, Clovis having been a one off who had fought hard for his position. Our anonymous poster is correct that the text also gives no causal link to what the Visigoths were doing. I suppose the question is whether to delete or adjust the text. At first sight a case could be made for deleting a lot more than just this sentence which goes way beyond the topic of this article anyway. It is a good example of how duplication around Wikipedia makes it hard to keep the quality at a reasonable level and I think many/most parts of this article could be described this way.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:00, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Article length

This article has become very long. WP:SIZESPLIT states that articles sized at more than 100kB or at more than 100,000 characters in length "almost certainly should be divided". This article is currently at 194,360kB in size and 111,533 characters in length.[1]

As a remedy, i suggest that the culture section be split into a new article. The culture of the pagan and tribal early Germanic peoples is certainly a distinct and notable subject. If this section is split, we will have room for expanding our coverage on additional aspects of early Germanic culture, such as Germanic literature and art, by using various scholarly sources.

If there is support for splitting the culture section into a new article, is suggest that such an article be titled Early Germanic culture, per WP:COMMONNAME.[2] In such a case, we must of course maintain a summary style description of the culture of Germanic peoples here. Krakkos (talk) 10:31, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

References

• • The other obvious approach, which is much more usual on WP, is to split out the history, which must be the bulk of the article. This would also leave room for expansion. I'm not sure removing the culture would entirely solve the lengt5h problem, perhaps someone could give figures for history/culture/the rest? Johnbod (talk) 14:09, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

• This is a good suggestion, John. The history section appears to be even longer than the culture section. If one of them is split out into a separate article, the remaining section will probably be given undue weight in comparison to the one that was split. It might be a good idea to split both the history and culture section out into separate articles, while covering those topics in summary style here. Krakkos (talk) 19:04, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

• Honestly I think a lot of the article should be reduced or removed. Most of it is covered in other articles. This article should focus upon the common threads which united the Germanic peoples, but is not focused. I continue to be concerned that articles and categories about "Germanic" subjects are being inflated with hot air. You would think people interested in these subjects would want good articles.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:26, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

• The article is well written and based upon excellent scholarship. However it repeats itself on occasion, and some sections are longer than perhaps they should have been. Pay in mind that even if half of the content of this article is removed, its size would still generally require a split. The best way to get this article down to a proper size seems to be a split of both the history section and the culture section. This will also enable to to shorten the lead, which is too long in my opinion. Krakkos (talk) 11:05, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

• I disagree about the article as a whole. It is poorly written, repetitive, and goes off subject too often into areas best covered by other articles. Also, some parts read like a 19th century praise of Germanic virtue, not scholarship in any sense of the word relevant to Wikipedia editing. Concerning the lead, I have already shortened it a bit, and it should indeed be shorter if we can manage doing that without making the article worse. I think however that this should be seen as a task connected to reducing the sections in the body, so that anything which needs to be moved out of the lead can find a new home, and will not simply be lost. One of the challenges is that editors should be using more recent mainstream scholarship instead of for example old encyclopedias.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:55, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

The statement that the article as a whole is "poorly written" is patently absurd. There are a few areas where editors with an apparent agenda have resorted to employing much older scholarship (that does not dominate the article however), which reads like eugenicist drivel about Germanic superiority. Krakkos makes the best suggestions here—in my view—regarding the elimination of redundancy and perhaps splitting the article by moving the "Culture" segments into another related article.--Obenritter (talk) 16:10, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

Splitting articles and making new content forks is a cancer in Wikipedia in recent years. This article surely has to have any properly sourceable Germanic culture information as a central theme. What else is it about? Problem is that we have bad sections on those subject. Moving them to a lower profile article will just protect poor material. Almost none of the article is based on sources from after WW2, and most of the article is "patently" written in ugly English, which looks like it was ugly before it was cut up and patched together by a committee. Just deal with that reality. I am not the enemy.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:49, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

First off--"poorly written" means faulty syntax, poor word logic, unduly cumbersome constructions, and grammatical errors. That's not what plagues this article. Also, the VAST majority of the sources used for this article are post WW2 (by far). While I used to think you were doing the article a service by carefully monitoring the content, you've changed that perception markedly as of late. You seem revel in making sweeping statements founded on poor logic, often for what appears to be attempts to either elicit controversy or cause arguments anymore. This statement "Almost none of the article is based on sources from after WW2," being among the most asinine I've ever seen from you. Are you dealing with an illness or personal trauma? If so, you have my sympathy but you do not have my support or concurrence about the quality of the sourcing (other than the antiquated ones we've already mentioned) in the aggregate across this article. Perhaps the best way to shorten the article is to make the changes suggested by Krakkos. --Obenritter (talk) 02:41, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

OK, I was indeed being a bit sweeping and rushed. (I wrote it late before going to bed.) I could have perhaps chosen better ways of making the point. But the article is surely not good to read, and not well focused? I find it very strange to see editors feeling satisfied about it. Concerning old sources, this is a long article and lots and lots of sources are indeed named, but as one reads through it one feels very much like one is reading information based on an old encyclopedia. I wonder if the sources were added after the words were written in some cases, if you see what I mean. My biggest fear is inflation with duplicated, and I think splitting instead of focusing will make that worse. We will just create more hot air?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:38, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Andrew--you're not wrong that the article could benefit from better organization and perhaps less granularity in some parts. It's not in terrible shape in terms of general content, but it could stand synopsis in some places and certainly the omission of dated info from old encyclopedias and the like. The unfortunate reality when dealing with the ancient Germanic tribes is that most of what has been reported comes from ancient sources like Tacitus, Cassiodorus, Jordanes, Paul the Deacon, Livy, Procopius, and the like. Scholars have since tried to fill in the proverbial gaps to the best of their ability. For my own PhD research on Roman-Germanic contact and the resultant effects on European historical consciousness, I was forced—like historians before me—to rely on these ancient accounts and the best tertiary evidence available, much of which is also medieval. It creates its own conundrums to be sure. The idea of splitting the article so as to reduce its length makes some sense, but that also risks dividing it into compartmentalized chunks where more inane and undisciplined editorial content can be added, which subsequently adds to the policing work in general. If I had more time, I would try to sift through the content and parse out what seems truly relevant against that which may be trivial and/or politicized by persons with politically-incorrect agendas. To be honest, I do not know the best way forward, but the path of least resistance is divide it as Krakkos recommended.--Obenritter (talk) 16:38, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

I think it is always worth being cautious of following a path of least resistance on Wikipedia, at least when it comes to splitting decisions. Concerning the content one of the concerns I have is not the ancient citations. I think that the best way to write neutrally requires us to know what the ancient sources were, in order to structure what we write, even though we should base what we write on secondary sources. If we work in that sequence, then we know to be careful about giving undue weight to one popularization.

If we start with secondary sources, then of course for this period nearly all of them contain at least something controversial, and at least some bits which derive from old simplifications. We have to try to have an idea about which is which. It is NOT actually hard to make lots of good looking footnotes, but following the path of least resistance tends to lead mainly to "just so" stories such as the one I recently adjusted about how the Germanic peoples simply replaced Iranian peoples, then Attila simply forced them to move, then Slavic peoples replaced them, and then the Germanic peoples "reclaimed" their lands. It is easy to see how this can be derived from reasonable quality secondary sources, but I hope you can also see why to me it still feels like I am reading something from an old school book.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:09, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

@Andrew Lancaster: Thanks for eliciting a chuckle. The reason you feel like you're reading "from an old school book" has primarily to do with the nature of this subject, which as I mentioned, relies on ancient writing. There is only so much one can do in terms of interpreting these ancient sources without editorializing the content into something that results in arbitrary speculation from a modern historian. Going as far back as J.B. Bury, and moving forward to the likes of Walter Pohl, Patrick Geary, Walter Goffart, Peter Heather, Thomas Burns, E.A. Thompson, Edward James, Guy Halsall, and Herwig Wolfram; they have all done what they could with the available information. To be totally honest, it's not clear to me—aside from synopsizing the content a little better or possibly splitting it as Krakkos already mentioned—as to what can be done. His most recent efforts to trim and reorganize left lots of places needing citations and incomplete information, which did not especially thrill me either, but hats off to him for trying to shorten the article and offer concision in other places. --Obenritter (talk) 16:43, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

Well no, the problems I am talking about are not coming from the limited classical sources or the best modern secondary sources. That would be great. I am saying what Wikipedia is producing in the name of various sources is often quite different. Gaps in the record are being filled in with the most old fashioned adventure stories and racial concepts which I think are coming from our own authors and much older secondary works. For example, the Eastern Germanic tribes who entered the empire are difficult to distinguish in many areas from Attila's complex of people's which they were part of, although Wikipedia is trying to describe the two is clearly distinct; and classical writers did not make the modern distinction between Slavs, Finns and "Germanic" tribes. In fact, they did not really bother about trying to define what Germanic meant and whether any tribe was Germanic. Same goes for Iranian (or "Scythian") etc. It sometimes seems like there is a 19th century style effort being made in Wikipedia to hide all that.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:41, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

As an update, and for clarity, I've obviously first discussed and now started acting upon an alternative approach to shortening the article. I think it is also clear that one of my concerns is that the removal of certain types of materials can lead to a worsening of controversies this article has faced for a long time. For this reason I have reverted the sudden deletion of User:Krakkos of exactly such a section, the section which makes remarks about how there have been modern rebirths of ideas about Germanic peoples, which are obviously the same controversial ideas that Krakkos wants Wikipedia to treat as the scholarly consensus without any hint at other views. My reversion does not of course mean that such sections can't be shortened, but I think it is common sense that we hold off of complete deletions while I am working in this way.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:42, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

And now I also notice that Krakkos has re-created a partial mirror of this article, based on an old idea which, - surprise, surprise - has been discussed and rejected before. See https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Germani&action=history . I will start the appropriate procedure, but this is definitely tendentious editing. This action should at least have been proposed here first. It is hard to assume good faith. It seems quite clear the idea is to work out of sight and bit by bit, to make Wikipedia disagree with reliable sources.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:56, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Germani is no more a mirror of Germanic peoples than Sclaveni is a mirror of Slavs, or Walhaz is a mirror of Vlachs. Those are distinct subjects which are notable in their own regard. Krakkos (talk) 13:59, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

You created a short version of this article, with material from this article. How clear can it be? You might not like that this article is about the Germani, but that is another discussion, and making that article was just the latest attempt to try to get what you want by working around in the shadows, and trying over and over again. Please stop it.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:03, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

This article is about Germanic peoples, which is not necessarily the same as Germani. Krakkos (talk) 14:07, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

As you know very well, that is the current way this article has been written, and that is based on what the best sources say. (It ALSO includes discussion of "Germanic speaking peoples" to some extent, which is also looked at in other articles.) So your attempt to create a new article was really just the latest attempt to change this one. We all know you wish it were otherwise, but after years of trying you can not find modern specialized sources which agree with you. Languages are not irrelevant to defining peoples, but they are not sufficient to define peoples either. In any case, you need to bring sources and make your proposals convincing. Please stop trying to avoid that.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:12, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Obviously this whole "article length" topic was just another attempt to use Wikipedia to define language-based ancient/continuous nations. Also see the new confusingly written RfC. I am going to try to get to the point (again) in a new section.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:16, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

I think it is very "unhealthy" to make-size splits and to hold an RfC about the article topic at the same time. This creates unnecessary content forking and an imbalance between the core material (e.g. information about "Germani" is relegated to a split article) and circumstantial material (e.g. the concept of speakers of contemporary Germanic languages as "modern Germanic peoples" is pushed into the lead) which remain in this article. For the duration of the RfC, I recommend to leave the article as is, and stop moving out material to secondary articles. Some of the latest edits leave a bad aftertaste and reek of tactics, honi soit qui mal y pense... Hopefully, the community will decide with in-depth competence about the shape of this article. –Austronesier (talk) 14:38, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Does modern "Germanic" heathenism need to be mentioned in the lead

We have this:

Historical Germanic paganism, the indigenous religion of the Germanic peoples, ended with Christianization in the 11th century.<sfn|Germanic religion and mythology, Encyclopædia Britannica Online> Elements of Germanic paganism survived into post-Christianization folklore, and today new religious movements exist which see themselves as modern revivals of Germanic Heathenry.

I propose it is not suitable for the lead of this article? It is not about classical Germanic peoples.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:35, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

I oppose removal, since it starts with the historical Germanic paganism up to the whole or partial usage/claim today. Simply we should not regard every aspect of the article based on the debate above, there are undeniable (claims) of connection.(KIENGIR (talk) 09:02, 26 December 2019 (UTC))

It is not about denying all possible connections, but a question of whether it should be in the lead. We can not put everything which is connected indirectly to the subject in the lead? This article has too much repetition. The same things are sometimes being explained in the lead, and then in more than one section. Detailed discussions should be in the main body sections, or other articles. Surely we need to be allowed to clean that up?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:33, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

Well since there is spicy debate related, we are likely to wait also for other inputs...(KIENGIR (talk) 11:01, 27 December 2019 (UTC))

SUPPORT the deletion of modern heathanism--far too ancillary for the lead.--Obenritter (talk) 17:57, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

Support deletion: The introduction is a summary of the content of the following main sections. None of these sections covers the constructed faith "Heathenry", and definitely should not. As a fringe phenomenon of little notability, it would not deserve mention here even if (if – I do not endorse it) this article were to be extended to include the purported "modern Germanic peoples" (I only mention this since KIENGIR alludes to the dispute of Sept 2019). –Austronesier (talk) 13:01, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

A first batch of new proposals for consideration

I will sign each proposal so that discussion can be started on any of them.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:21, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

• Ethonym section. I believe this should be shortened into a more typical "Nomenclature" section, explaining the term Germani and related terms such as Teutons, and everything else to be moved or removed. Discussion about the first Roman authors should go with other such discussion. I am not sure we need a special discussion in this article about the term *Walhaz. Remember this article is not the main article for Germanic as a language group.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:21, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

I agree that this section is overly long and duplicated in later sections. It should be shortened. Perhaps parts of it could be transferred to Germania. Krakkos (talk) 15:59, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

There are many ways to do it, but important is to look at the whole flow of the article first.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:05, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

• Classification section. In reality this important section spells out the fragmentary classical record of categorizations. It is perhaps better moved downwards. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:21, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

I agree that this section should be transferred downwards. This is the case in similar articles such as Slavs and Balts. As with the ethnonym section, parts of the material here is repeated in the history section. This issue should be fixed. Krakkos (talk) 15:59, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

• I think it is better to work chronologically after the nomenclature section, and move next to the History section. I think much of the information we have under Ethonym and Classification is reduplicated in sections here, and should be integrated instead that everything is only mentioned once.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:21, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

I agree that part information from the ethnonym and classification sections could be integrated into the history section. Krakkos (talk) 15:59, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

• The first sub-section of the history section is actually about Denmark, southern Scandinavia, Indo Europeans and so on. Also, when it says the Germanic peoples, it is clearly talking about the Germanic speaking peoples, and ignoring other Germanic peoples. I think we can not expect readers to follow why we suddenly change subject like this.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:21, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

One of the principle subjects around which Germanic peoples has revolved been "language"; a point which you've argued on numerous occasions. So are you now saying the traditional Russian people who have some ties to the Viking Rus and the subsequent Slavic people derived therefrom should also be included? You claim to want to reduce this article's size, I would argue that such an approach would do the opposite.--Obenritter (talk) 17:57, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

I can't see how you could draw that conclusion from what I am saying. The Rus are much later. In the classical period this eastern area's ethnography is poorly defined and there is not much we can report from the classical sources and archaeology. Certainly in earlier sections of the article the main point to make, which all our sources make, is that the boundary between Germani and Scythians, and whether there are other types of people between them who are neither, is a bit unclear. Some of the classical sources do however mention tribes who might be Finns, Estonians, and Balto-Slavic. In Poland some of the Germanic material culture groups may have been multilingual. Consider the Buri, Lugii and Vandals.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:14, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

That the Germanic peoples originated from an Indo-European population of Denmark and southern Scandinavia is firmly established in the sources provided by Obenritter. This content should remain. Krakkos (talk) 15:59, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

No, what our sources say is that Germanic languages came from there, and of course some large chunk of population. But of course we do not want to avoid discussion of the connections between these two distinct subjects. Nevertheless we have to make the differences clear too. The origins of the Germanic languages are a prehistory "background" topic for this article, so they should not appear right at the beginning in a way which simply equates this to the article topic.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:14, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

• Early Iron Age. A lot of this information simply reduplicates what we have below in the chronological sections. I suppose theoretically it is supposed to give a archaealogical and linguistic view as opposed to the classical view but in reality both perspectives need each other and so it is full of duplicated discussion of the classical sources. It would be easier to mention modern discussions in each chronological section, together with the classical sources?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:21, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

This section deals with some of the Germanic peoples from an archaeological perspective, as historians are not the only ones with a vested interest.--Obenritter (talk) 17:57, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

Information on the archaeological history of Germanic peoples is relevant to this article. Such content should not be removed. Krakkos (talk) 15:59, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Of course any such material should not be removed, but we are duplicating material by having this separate discussion. I suggest combining discussion of all sorts of evidence together, with the article divided up more chronologically. In any case the article needs a simpler structure in order to help both readers and future editors.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:22, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

I still find the sudden changeover to discussion of Scandinavian archaeology and Germanic language origins to not fit in the article properly. It leaves out discussion of most of Germania and many Germani, and it does not fit in the flow of this article. I think most of it could better be in articles about Proto Germanic origins and archaeology.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:18, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

• Earliest contacts section. I see no evidence that Pytheas mentioned Germani or Germania?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:21, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

Cunliffe, Burns, and other mention Pytheas in this regard. What evidence are you looking for specifically? Some of the careless editing by Krakkos managed to eliminate the citations associated with the original content. Also, what are you trying to accomplish here? Such reckless and ill-informed commentary from you is why I am not gong to help refashion a page that was otherwise in reasonable shape until this recent crapola. Your original policing efforts to keep the modern construal of "Germanic" off the page was commendable. This current effort is simply destructive as your last comment illustrates since you fail to understand context evidently. Using such logic, we would ignore the writings of Cassiodorus and Jordanes, who likewise mentioned the Germanic Goths without referencing the Germani or Germania. --Obenritter (talk) 17:57, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

The Goths are however discussed by other classical sources. It is true that I am saying we should separate Germanic languages and classical Germanic ethnicity in our minds, and in our writing. I think we all know that our specialist sources have concerns about Cassiodorus and Jordanes, but that does not mean that they all totally reject the equation of the later Goths with the older Gotones. Furthermore, in this case the Germanic language of the later Goths is sometimes cited as one of the reasons for not totally rejecting this. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:22, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

The works of Pytheas are lost. His works are however cited by other classical scholars, such as Pliny the Elder, who in his Natural History includes the descriptions by Pytheas of certain peoples of Germania (Gutones and Teutones).[3] The northern travels of Pytheas are generally mentioned in scholarly works about Germanic peoples, such as those by Malcolm Todd[4] and Francis Owen.[5] If Pytheas is mentioned in the best sources on Germanic peoples, he should also be mentioned in Wikipedia's article on Germanic peoples. Krakkos (talk) 15:59, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Yes, but I think it is difficult to get this out of our current article? It could even be read as saying that Pytheas is known to have mentioned the "Germani" by that name? We should be careful to avoid implying too much.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:22, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Coming back to the Pytheas remarks. Currently we say "he was also possibly the first to distinguish the Germanoi people of northern and central Europe as distinct from the Keltoi people further west". Why would this possibility be important to mention? The sources we use are not really all that strong? To me the whole section seems not to fit. It basically repeats something several times, which could fit in one sentence: he is the earliest known European author on the topic and he influenced later writers. Why don't we shorten to something like that?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:18, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

User:Krakkos, User:Obenritter, concerning Pytheas, do you agree this remark can be shortened and that it should avoid implying that Pytheas specifically described Germani?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:07, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Genetic definition?

"The Germanic peoples (Latin: Germani[a]), were a collection of ethnic groups of continental Northern European origin, identified by Roman-era authors as distinct from neighbouring Celtic peoples. "

This doesn't sound right. It should say either "The ancient Germanic peoples" or " The Germanic peoples, are". The wording makes it sound like the germanic peoples no longer exists.

--176.11.24.191 (talk) 21:31, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

This has been discussed many times, but to go over it again: The Germanic peoples mentioned in classical times indeed no longer exist. People confuse the idea of "Speakers of Germanic languages" which is a completely modern concept defined in a completely new way, and covered in other articles, with those classical peoples. We have found non-specialist sources which make this confusion (or charitably we might call it a shorthand), but specialist sources, and their definitions make the distinction quite clear. The two topics are certainly connected but also certainly not the same.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:04, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

@Andrew Lancaster This article does a really poor job creating a distinction between the ancient Germanic peoples and modern Germanic peoples. Germanic people are to this day referred to say a group with a shared and common ancestry, beyond functioning as a term for a linguistic group. Norwegians are for example referred to as a north-Germanic ethnic group. --84.213.153.62 (talk) 19:57, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Yes, that is my concern. I would say the article is inconsistent about whether there is a distinction. But the case of North Germanic certainly does not help us. North Germanic is a term which only comes from modern linguistics. If anyone speaks of a North Germanic group of peoples they are clearly extending modern linguistic terminology, but this is less confusing than the case of "Germanic" without the "North", where we have to be more careful. There was no classical "Northern Germani".--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:29, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

@Andrew Lancaster: "This has been discussed many times, but to go over it again: The Germanic peoples mentioned in classical times indeed no longer exist."

I have explained this to you, SEVERAL TIMES, now, that this is FACTUALLY FALSE. You are wrong. Provably wrong.

I will again present you with the information disproving your baseless assertions, which are are unable to be substantiated, and are quantifiable, as they do not represent the evidence, proof, and or facts, sourced through genetic testing.

This is, again, contradicted by my previously provided citations, containing scientific papers.[6][7][8]

Again, "This DNA has been processed, and, for quite some time now, has been available for public use, for comparing to living, contemporary humans, from a service such as MyTrueAncestry."[9]

I ask that you please stop pushing this dehumanizing, baseless conspiracy theory of Germans just disappearing one day.

You are wrong, and it is unacceptable, immoral, and unethical to be spreading this false information that is harmful, and can have material consequences.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:6c40:5e00:7e3a:e5bb:6f86:917a:96a4 (talk) 01:59, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

@2600:6c40:5e00:7e3a:e5bb:6f86:917a:96a4: You should first make up your mind whether you want to discuss Germanic peoples or Germans. These two are quite different things.
In any case, since this is the talk page of Germanic peoples, I will answer about the topic Germanic peoples (although IMO, Andrew Lancaster already has sufficiently explained the case). The Germanic peoples of classical times do no longer exist indeed. Many of these ancient ethnic groups contributed to the ethnogenesis of the modern Germanic-speaking peoples to various degrees, and this is certainly still visible in the genetic ancestry of many individuals belonging to the latter (again: to various degrees!). However, the ethnogenesis of the modern Germanic-speaking peoples is more complex than that, and should not be reduced to one selected genetic signature, or to linguistic affiliation alone.
There is not a single one of these ethnic groups that has an unbroken one-to-one continuity from ancient times until now. The Goths, Vandals, Cherusci, Hermunduri etc. have disappeared. No modern sane individual self-identifies as a Goth, Cheruscan etc. (except maybe in historizing role-play and by denying their actual ethnicity). This is hardly a "conspiracy theory".
In modern ethnography, "Germanic peoples" is not a meaningful entity except for being a shorthand for "Germanic-speaking peoples", even though amateur geneticists who propagate their simplistic misinterpretations of valid research results in blogs and forums, and their readers believe otherwise. –Austronesier (talk) 10:02, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

A couple of attempts to distill a short answer to the anonymous writer's comment:

• No one has argued that the classical Germanic peoples just disappeared. The term/category faded out of use. (It is not even really clear how important the category was ever critical to members of these groups, or the neighbouring peoples. We have a small number of confusing references by Roman authors, and a tradition of how to read them.)
• To the extent that "Germanic peoples" can be sloppy shorthand for "Germanic language speaking peoples", then of course ethnic groups exist which strongly associate with such languages, and no one has argued otherwise. It is not the subject of this article though. We have many overlapping articles covering this.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:14, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

@Andrew Lancaster:

@Austronesier:

Extended comments

The importance, or lackthereof, is irrelevant. As this relates to genetics. It is not even really clear how important the category was ever critical to members of these groups By "Germans" I think you mean the Deutsche people, which is a nationality, nationality is not genetic. Anyone can be Deutsche, anyone can be Cuban, anyone can be Japanese. The Germanic people(s) are a distinct, identifiable genetic group, with a shared matrix. The Sami are a distinct identifiable genetic group. The Germanic people(s) of "classical times" DO, indeed, exist, today. Yet again, I must provide the evidence, disproving your (baseless) presuppositions. This is, again, contradicted by my previously provided citations, containing scientific papers.[10][11][12] Again, "This DNA has been processed, and, for quite some time now, has been available for public use, for comparing to living, contemporary humans, from a service such as MyTrueAncestry."[13] They did not disappear, they did not stop existing. Their genes did not dematerialize out of existence. The Germanic people(s) of today are the product of these ancient people(s), through genes, that have been passed down, from parent to child, over many generations. Your comments regarding language are irrelevant, as this is is a genetic matter, not a linguistic one. You have conflated established tribes, with genetics, consistently in your posting. The Ancient German tribes, indeed, no longer exist, as established tribes. The genes, of these ancient Germanic tribes, do, however. At no point did the ancient Germanic people(s) break off, sever, or separate, from the Germanic people(s) of today. Allow me to continue. The opening of the Germanic Peoples article: The Germanic peoples (Latin: Germani[a]), were a collection of ethnic groups note: ethnic "groups" doesn't apply, here, to the ancient Germans, it is an ethnic GROUP, not groupS.) Okay, now let's check the ethnic group page: An ethnic group or ethnicity is a category of people who identify with each other, usually on the basis of a presumed common genealogy The first thing, in this article, as an identifier, is GENEALOGY. From Merriam-Webster Definition of genealogy: an account of the descent of a person, family, or group from an ancestor or from older forms Again, this article designates "Germanic Peoples" as an ethnic group(s). If the living Germanic peoples are an ethnic group, and the ancient Germanic peoples are their grandparents, the Germanic peoples, relative to those that which this article concerns itself with, STILL exist. Again: At no point did the ancient German peoples break off, sever, or separate, from the Germanic peoples, of today. The problem here, is that this article is about ETHNICITY, not tribes, or linguistics. If you'd like it to be about ancient Germanic tribes, or linguistic groups, consider altering the article, to reflect this. Or making another one, all together. I have since demonstrated, with the use of scientific papers, that the ancient Germanic People(s) do, as an ETHNIC group, indeed, still exist, and never STOPPED existing. I say this again out of critical importance: The continued use of "were" in this article is dehumanizing, unacceptable, inappropriate, irresponsible, immoral, and unethical, and I believe it ought to be changed, on the basis of the provided evidence. Forgive my awkward formatting, and whatnot, I am, relatively speaking, new to using Wikipedia, and am still learning my way around, I have since made an account.

-Benjamin N. Feldenstein

I have split this out as a new section, as it clearly had nothing to do with the section it was inserted into. I can't get anything worth replying to out of the above post, and don't see much point replying to it at any length. There are no citations, and there appears to be no good understanding of what this article and related ones are even saying, or what the published sources say. This article uses published sources concerning the classical Germanic peoples. There is no scientific genetic definition of any "people", ethnic group, or tribe, and in any case no evidence that these neighbours of the Gauls and Romans were seen as linguistically or genetically united. In the few sources we have they are clearly defined as a mixed group of diverse named peoples, united by geography and perceived lack of mediterranean civilization. Essentially they were the neighbours of the Gauls, and contrasted with the Gauls. To the extent that they formed a military threat this was under the leadership of various Suebian related peoples, who were clearly named as a large group of peoples who were newer to the area. On Wikipedia, we have to take our bearings from what the best published sources say about these things. Note:

• We can not use Wikipedia as a source on Wikipedia. That would be WP:Circular.
• I have adjusted the opening sentence of ethnic group because it was poorly written and clearly not matching the sources it cites.

--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:30, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

@Andrew Lancaster:

Extended contents

You didn't provide a single citation for anything you just said, or anything else you've conjectured. Where are YOUR citations? There are, however, citations, for MY assertions, of which are provided below. I, yet again, will post them. This is, again, contradicted by my previously provided citations, containing scientific papers.[14][15][16] Again, "This DNA has been processed, and, for quite some time now, has been available for public use, for comparing to living, contemporary humans, from a service such as MyTrueAncestry."[17] These citations disprove your baseless claims that the so-called "Classical Germans" are separate, and are unrelated to the Germanic peoples of today. The Germanic peoples ARE, not WERE. They did not disappear, or stop existing. Your assertions above are not substantiated by any citations, and or evidence. Further evidence disproving your claims that the Germanic peoples of today do not descend from the so-called "classical Germanic peoples" Regarding the genetic composition of England< https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/19/7/1008/1068561 Using novel population genetic models (using samples from living individuals) that incorporate both mass migration and continuous gene flow, we conclude that these striking patterns are best explained by a substantial migration of Anglo-Saxon Y chromosomes into Central England (contributing 50%–100% to the gene pool at that time) When we compared our data with an additional 177 samples collected in Friesland and Norway, we found that the Central English and Frisian samples were statistically indistinguishable. This paper includes DNA processed, and analyzed from SEVERAL ancient Germanic peoples, showing the contemporary English, do, indeed, descend from them. This study, alone, disproves your baseless, and unsubstantiated assertions that the so-called "classical Germanic peoples" share no connections to the contemporary Germans, of today. but I will go on. Langobard genetics https://www.genomeweb.com/sequencing/genetic-analysis-elucidates-ancient-longobard-social-organization-movements A principal components analysis of the Szólád and Collegno samples, in conjunction with modern references, showed that the ancient samples harbored genetic ancestry that overlaps with that of modern Europeans. For the sake of the length of this "talk" page, I will withhold anymore papers on genetics, as the provided papers sufficiently, and comprehensively, debunk your baseless, unsubstantiated assertions, and conspiracy theory style conjecture. Here is an entire write up with citations detailing the matrix of the contemporary living Germanic peoples, sourced from historical documentation, genetics, and linguistics. https://haplogroupi2b1ismine.wordpress.com/the-germani-germanic-peoples-origins-and-history/#genetic Let us detail yet even more evidence, with respect to the matrix of the contemporary, living Germanic peoples. https://scholarship.tricolib.brynmawr.edu/bitstream/handle/10066/18702/2016DinhC.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_low001199601_01/_low001199601_01_0023.php http://linguistics.byu.edu/classes/Ling450ch/reports/german.html http://linguistics.byu.edu/classes/Ling450ch/reports/frisian https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199772810/obo-9780199772810-0211.xml http://linguistics.byu.edu/classes/Ling450ch/reports/Danish1.html https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3637&context=etd http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/~fkarlsso/Hist_Ling_Nord.pdf</ref> You now have historical documentation, linguistic, and genetic evidence, all which display a direct continuity of the so-called "classical Germanic peoples" that resulted in the contemporary Germanic populations, as well as uniformity, between them. I will ask, yet again. Where are YOUR citations? Where is YOUR evidence? Your dangerous, dehumanizing, borderline racist, and baseless rhetoric must stop. It is becoming increasingly clear that you've an agenda here, that you're trying to spread, thankfully, it is not supported by evidence.

-Benjamin N. Feldenstein

No one is denying links between ancient and modern peoples, so please stop pretending that, but obviously being descended from a Visigoth does not make you a Visigoth, and none of the papers you cite say anything like what you want them to say. On the other hand, you are not even making any clear editing proposals. Please either make a clear proposal or stop bombarding this talk page, which is intended for discussion about editing strategies for the article.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:03, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

The Early Germans by Malcolm Todd

Which version of Malcolm Todds book The Early Germans was used when writing this article? In the notelist, a 1999 version is used, while the version listed in the bibliography is from 2004. I have the 2004 version of this book, and the 1999 citations in this article are not verified in the 2004 version. Krakkos (talk) 10:16, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

@Krakkos: Evidently the 1999 book was originally used. Fortunately, I have both versions, so a simple index search and a few minutes of effort enabled me to find the cited information within the 2004 version, which I corrected within the article...so you can verify it accordingly now.--Obenritter (talk) 00:45, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

Expansion and restructuring

Hi! I came across the article today and read a few paragrahs. With regard to the "expansion tag" i think terms like Roman-era, believed to have and Roman period (all in the lede) should be replaced. The sentence: These "Visigoths" were given a large part of what is now southwestern France. is redundant (IMO) without mentioning the Visigoth Kingdom in Iberia. Is it OK to add references in German? All the best Wikirictor 18:33, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

German-language sources are acceptable as long as they are reliable. The current lead gives undue weight to fringe views and makes a number of unsubstantiated fantastic claims that are contradicted by reliable sources. It's definition of the topic in question reads like the intro to an ancient Roman encyclopedia rather than a modern English-language Wikipedia. The fact that the lead links to Germanic languages in scare quotes says it all. I wish you good luck in implementing your proposed changes. Krakkos (talk) 20:31, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

@Wikirictor:

• I agree that German language sources can be used.
• What would "Roman period" be replaced with? The article is currently about the Roman era Germanic peoples, and not Germanic language speakers, who are sometimes called "Germanic peoples" as a kind of shorthand in non-specialist tertiary works, but not reliable sources (even if Krakkos does not like this). This has been debated many, many times on this talk page and other in other parts of Wikipedia. (Some of the Germanic language speakers are one PART of what is covered, so it is of course an over-lapping topic.)
• Concerning the Visigoths I think the point you raise is a classic question of where to draw the line when writing a lead. Of course all these things should be discussed in the main article, but we should not try to include everything in the lead. It has probably gotten a bit to long.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:52, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
• Also, thanks for adding the citation to Liebeschuetz. I think it is the type of source which needs to be used more on this article and it contains a lot of material which can be useful to editors of this article, including references to older authors.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:07, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

the double footnote system is not well done

We currently have both footnotes with comments (efn template) and citation notes (sfn template). However, many of the efn footnotes are extremely trivial or off-topic, and many are effectively just citations which should surely be in the other type of note. I can't help thinking that some of us have gone overboard in the use of templates more generally because for example I see cases where a clear citation is given, but it has apparently become so unclear in the editing window, that someone has come along and added a "citation needed" template.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:03, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Looking over the history of the article there is an incredible over-loading of the bibliography, with almost constant additions of new references about Roumania, English poetry, Geography of Europe, etc etc. Anyone who wants to check it themselves will be able to confirm that these additions are being made as part of the project by user:Krakkos to find some kind of source to justify his obsessive efforts to say that there is still a "modern Germanic people" and that linguistic groups are identical to ethnic groups, which reliable sources, even the ones that have some sympathy such as Liebeshuetz, recognize to be controversial. We eventually need to remove these sources, and replace them with more appropriate ones to the subject. Also, these constant attempts to reinsert these claims, duplicating them into every section, and also in other articles, strange new categories etc, is also a bigger problem that is clearly designed to be difficult to track and repair. It may eventually require more systematic action and community discussion.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:37, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

restructuring: further ideas

Currently the structure is:

1 Ethnonym

1.1 Germani

1.2 Teutons

2 Subdivisions

3 History

3.1 Origins

3.2 Early Iron Age

3.3 Earliest contacts

3.3.1 Pytheas

3.3.2 Migrations of the Bastarnae and Scirii

3.4 Cimbrian War

3.5 Encounter with Julius Caesar

3.6 Early Roman Empire period

3.7 Conflict and co-existence with the Roman Empire

3.8 Migration Period

3.9 Fall of the Western Roman Empire

3.10 Early Middle Ages

3.11 Post-migration ethnogeneses

Starting with the first sections, and keeping in mind to create a sctructure which does not encourage the duplication we keep seeing, here is an idea:

3.3 Earliest contacts

3.3.1 Pytheas [rework/shorten]

3.3.2 Migrations of the Bastarnae and Scirii [rework/shorten]

3.4 Cimbrian War

1 Ethnonym

1.1 Germani [rework/shorten]

1.2 Teutons

3 History

2 Subdivisions in classical sources

3.5 Encounter with Julius Caesar

3.6 Early Roman Empire period

3.7 Conflict and co-existence with the Roman Empire

3.8 Migration Period

3.9 Fall of the Western Roman Empire

3.10 Early Middle Ages

3.11 Post-migration ethnogeneses

To delete, and potentially replace with a new discussion on prehistory and/or a new discussion upon pre-imperial movements of people (but I don't see any good sourced material yet to write anything worth including).

3.1 Origins

3.2 Early Iron Age

Comments welcome.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:11, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

RfC: Is information and sources on peoples speaking Germanic languages and following other aspects of Germanic culture, within the scope of this article?

Is information and sources on peoples speaking Germanic languages and following other aspects of Germanic culture, within the scope of this article? Krakkos (talk) 10:51, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Close to a year ago, the topic of this article was subtly transformed from being about peoples "identified by their use of the Germanic languages" to being about peoples "identified by Roman-era authors as distinct from neighbouring Celtic peoples".[18][19][20] This major change of scope was only partially discussed in beforehand at the talk page, in a RfC initiated by a trolling IP sock[21][22] of Freeboy200.[23] As a response to the change of scope, an article titled Germanic peoples (modern) was created. In a subsequent discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Germanic peoples (modern) (2nd nomination), the majority of participating editors were in favor of merging that article into this, and the result was a redirect. More recently, i have attempted to merge content, such as citations from Francis Owen and Edward Arthur Thompson and plenty of other scholars, into this article. Owen and Thompson were both university professors who wrote books on the subject of Germanic peoples.[24][25] With the current scope used as justification, these sources have been removed[26][27] as "inappropriate sources" that are "about another topic (speakers of Germanic languages)".[28][29] This leads to the question of this RfC: Is information and sources on peoples speaking Germanic languages and following other aspects of Germanic culture, within the scope of this article? Krakkos (talk) 10:51, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

I want to put on record that this summary, not only the RFC, is not accurate or helpful. The real concerns editors have with this article, even those of Krakkos, are so hard to resolve partly because of this way in which Krakkos works on it without coordinating with others. No one has argued that we can't discuss Germanic language speakers in this article, but we do need to distinguish different uses of terms in our sources and make those distinctions clear here. Such balancing is very difficult when there is a bull in the china shop.

The Thompson source which continues to be used here is problematic because it is a tertiary source and out of date. Owen's work is essay like and based on a theme that the "Germans" are still in the process of becoming "European". Both Thompson and Owen are not from the most recent generations of authors and this is a complex and moving field, and also Krakkos uses them in concerning ways. Krakkos has tended to push the use worse sources even more, such as books about Europe generally or about specific regions such as Roumania, or Spanish grammar.

It is also clearly hard to see this RFC as good faith when it is quite clearly connected to a sudden massive effort to create another new article out of this one, as rejected in the past.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:03, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

• Yes - Per WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and WP:BROADCONCEPT.

In reliable sources, Germanic peoples are generally treated as peoples characterized primarily as speakers of Germanic languages (and followers of Germanic paganism, Germanic law, Germanic warfare etc). Explicit definitions can be found from Edward Arthur Thompson,[30] Malcolm Pasley,[31] Encyclopædia Britannica,[32] and the Webster's New World College Dictionary.[33] The body of this article, and the sources most frequently used, are clearly using this definition. They include plenty of information about peoples such as Norsemen. Norsemen were not "identified by Roman-era authors as distinct from neighbouring Celtic peoples". Norsemen lived outside of Germania after the Fall of the Western Roman Empire and had no Celtic neighbors. They are considered Germanic because they spoke Germanic languages. This is the primary concept for the term Germanic peoples.

If information about the primary concept is considered beyond the scope of this article, a separate article could be created. Articles for speakers of every other major Indo-European language family currently exist, so it would be strange not to have one on Germanic peoples. Creating multiple articles like this is however discouraged per WP:BROADCONCEPT. The best solution is therefore to include information and sources about peoples speaking Germanic languages and following other aspects of early Germanic culture, into this article. Krakkos (talk) 10:51, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

• • See now also my remarks in the section below entitled Revisiting the article topic controversy. This addresses what the real problem being hidden under this misleading RFC, and also the pseudo concern about article length which has suddenly become urgent for Krakkos today only after I started shortening the article based on previous discussions and consensus.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:51, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Sources of Krakkos. [Moved to sub-section below]

Misleading explanations about the history of this article [New sub-section below]--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:53, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

• Pinging Andrew Lancaster, Johnbod, Yngvadottir, Bloodofox, Ermenrich, Alarichall, Obenritter, Katolophyromai, Florian Blaschke, Hrodvarsson, Austronesier, Joshua Jonathan, Benjamin N. Feldenstein, Dimadick, and KIENGIR, who have been involved in related discussions, per WP:APPNOTE. Krakkos (talk) 10:51, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
• Yes I don't see major distinctions between ancient and medieval Germanic people. Romans are not the only people who left written sources on the subject. Dimadick (talk) 11:10, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Presumably you think this article is about Germanic speaking peoples then? If it is, then it should not be about all the Germanic peoples. There are obvious ways to do this, but, as Krakkos has hopefully considered, it will lead to new problems. See my new section below. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:30, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

• Yes is is within the scope of the article, and no one has ever said otherwise, but it is not the topic of the article. This Rfc is just the latest attempt to confuse everyone. It is irrelevant to any editing discussion, but the explanation of Krakkos shows that the question posted is not the question he wants to ask (which is a question he has already asked many times). I propose this Rfc should be closed, at least as currently worded. Referring to the IMPLIED question, (1) Norse peoples were "Germanic language speaking peoples" and (2) "Germanic peoples" is a term sometimes used as a shorthand for Germanic language speaking peoples. It is a topic handled in other articles and also relevant to this article. (3) But being exact with our terminology, like we have to be, there are TWO concepts with an overlap, not one. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:15, 17 January 2020 (UTC) I should also say that the Norse peoples were also at least sometimes listed as "Germanic peoples" in the classical sense, at least on the edge of that concept, and they are discussed in this article. They were not only speakers of Germanic languages. So also the implied question is misleading and does not easily connected to any real editing discussion. People should bring real sources and real editing decisions to this talk page, and stop trying to re-play the same RFC over and over.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:19, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Uh, what? The Norse peoples were not speakers of Germanic languages? No wonder this absurd debate goes nowhere ... ---Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:01, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Please read it again more slowly. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:46, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

To get everything out from between the lines: Norse people were and are Germanic speaking peoples. They were also sometimes considered to be Germani in Roman times. These are the two sourceable meanings of Germanic peoples. To avoid the ambiguity which is the real problem we can re-title and shift and split articles like Krakkos keeps doing, but the REAL question here is what sourced material we would have for yet another article about Germanic speaking peoples. There are too many over-lapping articles, and Krakkos has a history of massive restructuring of groups of topics without discussion and agreement, and without good judgement and logical forethought.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:54, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

• Yes. The whole debate is completely bizarre. There is no definable point at which the ancient Germanic peoples stopped being Germanic peoples. We have articles about Iranian peoples, Turkic peoples, Balts, Slavs, etc., without some arbitrary temporal cut-off; it's impossible for me to see why there should be one here. What some people are doing here can only be described as waging a holy war based on an irrational dogma and completely divorced from sources, facts, and reason. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:02, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

So we are all agreeing, but not. You are going beyond the RFC, and the fact that everything in this RFC is between the lines makes it effectively useless. But anyway, based on this logic of having articles for all peoples into modern times independent of sourcing etc, we should have articles on modern Goths, modern Vandals, etc? If not, why not.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:46, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

• Yes, I think that the article's scope should continue to the present day, in line with other language/ethnic groups. It should also be made clear that modern scholarship has cast a lot of doubt on there being any sort of "Germanic" identity (and in same cases eschews the term entirely).--Ermenrich (talk) 15:11, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

See my response to Blaschke above.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:46, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

• Yes, the scope of this article should include Germanic peoples from antiquity until the present day. The article did this previously, while mentioning how the modern manifestation of ethnic and racial identity was misused and abused for nationalistic political purposes (and the associated dangers)—so to this end, I am in favor of primarily focused attention on ancient and medieval peoples with a brief transition into modern ethnic identity. --Obenritter (talk) 19:27, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

The article changed when discussions like this lead us, the editors, to define whether we were talking about Germanic-speaking peoples, or the original Germanic peoples, the Germani. We got strict and we looked at the sources. The problem we found was that these are clearly two over-lapping subjects, not one, and that the best sources, written most carefully, tend to reserve the term for the Germani. The article must discuss both either way, but it has to be primarily about one. So which one? (Germanic-speakers, or classical Germani?) Currently it is the Germani, and so it includes non Germanic language speakers in classical times, and it is a set of peoples who no longer exist, but who clearly set the scene for medieval and modern Germanic language speakers.

Another approach is to split into two articles, but then based on our previous study of the sources the current name of this article can not be used for Germanic speakers. So if we split, "Germanic peoples" should become a dab, and the other two might be "Germanic speaking peoples" and "Germani" for example.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:42, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Just to be clear though, I have NO PROBLEM with your vision for this article. It can be primarily about the classical peoples and have later sections that link to the "legacy" including Germanic speaking peoples. That has been the basic model most of us have agreed I think, except Krakkos who keeps adding and deleting things in ways which make no sense to me. This RFC comes out of a chaotic period however where Krakkos is making massive changes. Krakkos is apparently very dissatisfied, and in action. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 00:20, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

• Yes, it is in the scope of the article.(KIENGIR (talk) 23:45, 17 January 2020 (UTC))
• @Krakkos: what is your brief and neutral statement? At over 5,000 bytes, the statement above (from the {{rfc}} tag to the next timestamp) is far too long for Legobot (talk · contribs) to handle, and so it is not being shown correctly at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/History and geography. The RfC will also not be publicised through WP:FRS until a shorter statement is provided. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:14, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

  My apologies. This can be used as the statement: "Is information and sources on peoples speaking Germanic languages and following other aspects of Germanic culture, within the scope of this article?" Krakkos (talk) 23:26, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

  But it is clearly not the real question! In any case you already started acting, and creating mirror article to this one, as you've tried to do in the past. But as the feedback to your RFC shows, there is no call for splitting this article in two. (See Germani which you are building from material from here and deleting as you go.) And you have never given a clear explanation about why this is needed. You have to explain what you are really doing and why. Wikipedia requires people to work together. You've been warned many times by people trying to help you (including me) that you need to stop making massive undiscussed actions like you have been doing again. I would say there is a broad consensus that this article needs work, but there is no consensus at all that splitting this article or making these types of edits is improving Wikipedia in any way. Why don't you let this article try to stand on its feet and stopping adding and deleting things so inexplicably the whole time? Let other editors try? --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 00:20, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

  @Krakkos: then it needs to be the first item after the {{rfc}}, and be given its own timestamp, in accordance with WP:RFCST. Legobot is incapable of wading through the replies to find the intended statement. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:20, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

  @Redrose64: Thanks for the correction. I will remember this if initiating further RfC's in the future. I hope everything is OK now. Krakkos (talk) 09:34, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

• Note to closer - There appears to be universal agreement that information and sources on peoples speaking Germanic languages and following other aspects of Germanic culture is within the scope of this article. A majority of the respondents have also stated that information on modern peoples speaking Germanic languages is within this article's scope, although such information should not be given much space. I want to note that i agree with the majority on this question too. Previous ambiguity on these questions have led to a lot of controversy at this article in recent times. A clearly worded statement from the closer on these questions would therefore be of great help in ending the ambiguity, and thus mediate controversy. Krakkos (talk) 11:45, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

No there was no previous ambiguity about this, and it was not the cause of the problems. This RFC was called too late, in an attempt to justify actions that this RFC does not justify, because the wording is deliberately uncontroversial. See the what the RFC should have said in the sub-section below.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:07, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

That the RfC is appropriate and its wording is sufficiently "controversial" can easily be determined by examining the edit summary of these two edits by you.[34][35] Krakkos (talk) 18:37, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Please make your point more clearly in the appropriate place. Anyone watching this article knows you have a secret plan to change this article; and the RFC and the new article are clearly meant to back that up. You are already editing as if everyone has agreed to major changes which you have never even explained, let alone got agreement for. You also clearly believe they are going to be controversial to other editors, so you know you have a responsibility. You also have no choice: Make an honest proposal first, before trying to move ahead with your secret plans. You need to propose what each new version of the changed set of articles you envision will look, and what they will be titled, etc. This needs to be consistent with WP policy and not just a POVFORK. Do that first, and stop working as if you already did it.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:32, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

User:Krakkos who proposed the RFC should really be explaining why he has created another new article

Everyone will say yes to the RFC. It is pointless. See Germani which is a WP:POVFORK as clear as day. User:Krakkos please convince other editors about why you are once again attempting to make a new version of this article under another name. It is clearly somehow connected to this RFC as shown by the original subtext you gave it which mentioned your past attempts to make a new article. Why have you done this with no warning or agreed plan about how it would be done?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 00:32, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Watching the edits of Krakkos on his secret new article done with this RFC shows that what he really should have been asking opinions about was whether the term "Germanic Peoples" should be used exclusively for "Germanic (language) speaking peoples", which is a MUCH more controversial proposal. Anyone care to vote on that?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:23, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

• No, I definitely disagree with this proposal. This would put Wikipedia in strong conflict with almost all reliable sources, and it requires the complete re-writing of this article to the point where it is not clear what it could even be about. It is really a hidden article move and POVFORK. It is much more problematic than the proposal first made above.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:23, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Sources discussion moved out of RFC

As noted above I take the liberty of moving this out of the RFC discussion.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:21, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Sources of Krakkos. Owen wrote an essay-like book partly concerned with WW2 arguing that the Germans are still becoming European, trying to track that all the way back. Consider WP:DUE. The only work of Thompson being cited is the Encyclopedia Britannica. See WP:TERTIARY. Pasley wrote about literature and the citation seems to say that the adjective "Germanic" can be used in a linguistic sense. It is in the context of German usage. So, like Halsall and Heather, the writer is being careful to explain a potentially confusing secondary meaning of "Germanic". As we are writing a tertiary source for a non-specialist audience we should be even more careful.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:18, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Francis Owen was for decades Professor of German and Chairman of the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Alberta. Fluent in Old English, Old Norse, German, Russian and a host of other Indo-European languages, Owen specialized in the study of Early Germanic literature, which is our most important source on the subject of Germanic peoples. Well versed in archaeology, anthropology and history, Owen spent thirty years collecting data throughout Europe for the writing of his book The Germanic People (1960), which was his magnum opus. This is a rigorous scholarly work from one of the world's most foremost experts in the field. It's not an essay.

Edward Arthur Thompson was for decades Professor of History at the University of Nottingham. He was the author of the book The Early Germans (1965), which is a scholarly work on the subject of this article. When Malcolm Todd, Professor of Archaeology at Durham University, published his book The Early Germans, he dedicated that book to Thompson. Thompson was clearly one of the leading experts on the subject of Germanic peoples. That's why he was commissioned by Encyclopædia Britannica to write their article on Germanic peoples. An encyclopedic article, written by one of the world's foremost experts on a subject, is an excellent source when writing an encyclopedic article on such a subject, particularly with regards to defining the subject. Krakkos (talk) 14:43, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Obviously there is no need to defend the character and life of people who wrote 2 or 3 generations ago. That is missing the point entirely. The point is that you use them in questionable ways and these works do not represent the latest consensus in the field. They can't.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:48, 18 January 2020 (UTC) And after double checking, I confirm my description of Owen's book as essay like. There are not footnotes or endnotes and his preface states that the book relies on trusting the research of others. I find no discussions about the kinds of debates which we have been concerned with. That does not mean it is a bad book and of course Thompson and Owen are potentially useful for this article - just NOT for discussion of what the latest consensus is on a particular point of recent controversy we have all been concerned with getting right on this article. But honestly why is this even being disputed?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:55, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Edward Arthur Thompson and Francis Owen are more representative of the consensus in the field than yourself. Owen's book is only one of a dozen sources that have been used, and Thompson's book in the Encyclopedia Britannica article cites all the major works that had been published in the field. Almost a year has passed since you, without any prior discussion or reasoning, entirely changed the scope of this article.[36][37][38] So far you have failed to provide a single source for this change of scope. Meanwhile, you are demanding perfect sources from others. Your double standard is staggering. Krakkos (talk) 16:09, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

What an extraordinarily misleading remark! Interesting that you say there has been no discussion or sources given for the changes! Also interesting that above you say the changes were made by a sock puppet. Fact is that anyone can check the record and see years of discussion involving both of us over a long period, often looked at sources you have trouble with like Heather and Halsall etc. But for the issues most important to you, you can only find out-dated and off-topic sources about Roumania, Spanish Grammar, European geography, German literature, and the like. Why would that be?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:20, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

What a load nonsense. The sources i have recently provided are all of high quality. If you have such high regard for Peter Heather, let's look at how he defines the subject. Here is an excerpt from his article on the ancient history of Germany in Encyclopædia Britannica: "Germanic peoples occupied much of the present-day territory of Germany in ancient times. The Germanic peoples are those who spoke one of the Germanic languages... Clearly the people who came to speak Proto-Germanic must have been isolated from other Indo-Europeans for some time, but it is not obvious which archaeological culture might represent the period of the shift. One possibility is the so-called Northern European Bronze Age, which flourished in northern Germany and Scandinavia between about 1700 and 450 bc... Germanic peoples such as the eastern Franks, Frisians, Saxons, Thuringians, Alemanni, and Bavarians—all speaking West Germanic dialects—had merged Germanic and borrowed Roman cultural features. It was among these groups that a German language and ethnic identity would gradually develop during the Middle Ages."[39] Krakkos (talk) 16:48, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Now you are cherry picking new sources which you never want to use! Why not discuss these sources in the sections where I am trying to get such discussion???? The point is that your editing behavior is very problematic. Other editors might want to look at the discussion I managed to now get going on your new mirror article Germani which show how you badly you use the sources.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:13, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

As editors will see at the Germani talk page, Heather is one of the sources Krakkos has problems with. When we look at the context of cherry-picked words both Heather and Halsall, who disagree on many things, make sure to mention here and there whether they are talking about Germanic speakers or Germanic peoples in the other less controversial sense. Both authors point out that recent (understandable, reasonable) tendencies to equate the two cause confusion. We all know such comments are common in the generations AFTER Owen and Thompson. And yet on Wikipedia we are ignoring exactly those warnings. Why would we do that? I would say it fits perfectly with the fact that Krakkos actually does not use such sources for this subject, but instead uses WW2 authors and books about Roumania, Spanish grammar etc. Anyway, I would be interested to know when Heather wrote the Encyclopedia article which is now being mentioned, and also to see more of the context around the words chosen by Krakkos.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:25, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

User:Krakkos you have now added the cherry picked quote to make your WP:POINT [40] so this makes it more urgent that you give us the words before and after especially the first sentence of this Heather quote. I also note that it is from decades before his better known work which is quite clear about these matters and which we have been discussing at Germani. So you are perhaps knowingly choosing to side with the earlier Heather despite his later clarity. That seems pretty hard to justify?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:21, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

It was you who brought up Peter Heather as a quality source. How can it be cherry picking to introduce a relevant citation from a scholar you mention as reliable?

Heather's article in Encyclopedia Britannica can be read here. The best way to understand the context is to read the source yourself.

When referring to Heather's "better known work", i assume you're referring to his book Empires and Barbarians (2009).[41] As a matter of fact, that book makes no mention of "Germanic peoples".[42] A book which doesn't mention Germanic peoples is not useful for defining Germanic peoples. Krakkos (talk) 21:46, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

It is clearly NOT cherry picking to note that your supposed authority (actually I do not believe you have been using Heather in the past) has changed his own approach concerning the words and definitions he uses in this topic! Choosing to use the approach your authority REJECTED is certainly cherry picking. You are also right that in 2009 Heather's language is more careful, so he uses terms like Germani and Germanic speakers. That is indeed my point. But it is clearly nonsense to say that because of this change in terminology, to be more exact and less ambiguous, that his newer works are now irrelevant as if they are about a different subject! Changing the words you use does not change the reality being referred to! If we are really taking Heather seriously then we should try to understand what he means, not google his books looking for bits to pick out of context.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:16, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Put it this way. You are now claiming that Empires and Barbarians has nothing in it about the topic of this article. That is an incredible claim. Can you see that problem? Both Heather and Halsall, along with other recent authors make it clear that definitions are being refined and that terminology is being used more carefully as a result. That is exactly what WP therefore needs to do, according to core content policy.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:20, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Practical. I've shown that Heather's changed his approach on terminology and is being more precise in more recent works, where he deliberately uses terms in a way to emphasize that the Germanic dominated part of Europe was not all Germanic speaking. We therefore should not be using his 1973 source to effectively make WP disagree with him, as in this recent edit. It should be fixed. It is clear that the consensus has shifted around in recent decades on these issues, and it is our job to report that in a balanced way. All our recent specialist sources mention this evolving situation. (Halsall, Heather, Liebeshuetz, Wolfram, Todd, etc.) Why is there so much resistance to allowing WP to report this? --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:36, 18 January 2020 (UTC) And of course Owen and Thompson can not help us because they had no time machine.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:37, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

What i claim is that since Empires and Barbarians does not mention the term "Germanic peoples", it is not an appropriate book to define the term "Germanic peoples". This is not the same as claiming that the book is irrelevant to the topic. The topic of this article is not "the Germanic dominated part of Europe". It is about Germanic peoples. For inhabitants of "the Germanic dominated part of Europe", an interesting subject indeed, we now have the article Germani. Krakkos (talk) 23:09, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

So, incredibly, you are really going to claim that when writers in a field explain they are using new more careful wording and definitions, actually it actually means they are no longer talking about the same subject? You are going to insist the 1973 wording must be referring to something else. You're saying Peter Heather has for some reason decided not to mention the Germanic Peoples in the 2005 or 2009 books, because those exact words don't appear? On the other hand, you have no problem assuming that he means the same thing as you when he uses the word Germani, and asserting that it can not mean the same as Germanic Peoples. This is amazing. Frankly you seem to be unable to parse books logically and see the connections properly between them. I honestly don't know how else to put it.

Trying to find some other way to communicate with you, I have not seen any published source which distinguishes the Germani from the Germanic Peoples. Have you found one Krakkos? Same question as we discussed here. Both terms can clearly be used two overlapping ways, but I've seen no author who contrasts them. Have you?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 23:33, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Effectively it is the same issue we are discussing here--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 23:55, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

The difference between Germanic peoples and the classical concept of Germani is explained at Germani through the use of numerous reliable sources. I doubt Peter Heather wrote his article in the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1973. He was only 13 years old at the time. I have replied in detail at Talk:Germani#Falsified citation from Peter Heather. Krakkos (talk) 11:32, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Editors can check to confirm that the arguments you are using are still incompetent, also on your secret duplicate article.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:09, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Misleading myth making about the history of this article

In this RFC we have for not for the first time seen angry references to the history of this article which was supposedly changed without warning by me only recently, after no discussion, and at the behest of a sock puppet user. This is very dishonest. I would like to call out this dishonest accusation against me, and ask Krakkos to justify this. What has been presented so far are only a couple of diffs showing that I changed a couple of sentences at the top of the article in 2019, but the accusation is that there was no discussion before this. Editors are invited to type "Lancaster" into the archives search. My first post on this talk page was in 2011 and involved the misuse of genetics sources. That fact that different parts of the article implied completely different definitions of what the article was about was already an old topic then, as were controversies where people tried to rewrite the lead. I was certainly involved in such discussions by 2012. Funnily enough the first post of Krakkos on this talk page, which was only in 2018, meaning he has no right to talk about the past of this article before my 2019 edit, but was also a complaint about these exact same problems which Krakkos says were never discussed. See Archive 6 ("The lead does not adequately summarize the contents of the article. Undue weight is given to etymology and the relationship between Germanic tribes and the Roman Empire. It would be better to make these parts shorter so that one can include other important information addressed in the article." [43]). The exact same archive, just above, shows that Freeboy200 arguing against me for the same position as Krakkos [44], and then it is not far before we get to these discussions repeating in the lead up to the edits where the changes were, according Krakkos, made without pre discussion. At least by March 2019 (Archive 7), Krakkos was also involved in those. But look at the history for yourselves. What we should all be embarrassed by is how long it is taking us to make a minimally acceptable article. Shame on User:Krakkos for such blatant and personalized dishonesty.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:16, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

You didn't merely change "a couple of sentences". Your edits entirely changed the scope of the article, from being about a peoples primarily defined by speaking Germanic languages to being about peoples defined by the Romans as being "distinct from neighbouring Celtic peoples".[45][46][47] To make matters worse, your change of scope was in contradiction of the source used.[48]

Let's have a look at "the past of this article before" 2019. Prior to your edits, the previous[49] scope of the article had been in place since 2006 (more than 13 years).[50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62] Freeboy200, a barely literate trolling sockmaster, initiated three clumsily phrased RfC's in 2018 and 2019.[63][64][65] It was during the third RfC, initiated by an IP sock of Freeboy200,[66][67] that you drastically changed the scope of this article.[68][69][70] As can be seen from the RfC's of Freeboy200, or any other discussion ever carried out on this talk page for that matter, you never received a mandate to change the scope of this article. Krakkos (talk) 21:46, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

I don't know what your obsession is with Freeboy200, but you have to admit you are focusing on one bit of text at the top of the article, not even in the actual article, as if it was magic, and ignoring all other context in the article and on the talk page right? The article has a long history of being very bad, and everyone including you noticed that different parts of the article were using different concepts of what the article was about. Freeboy was not the only person noticing the problems. There is no getting around that. There was no good happy period in the history of this article. If you can't even admit that then you are out of touch with reality, and that makes it very difficult for anyone to work with you.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:04, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

@Krakkos: You ask for scrutiny, but have requested to close the RfC within three days? I wonder what kind of comments you expect to elicit except for ready-at-hand POVs? It takes more than that time to inspect the heap of information and meta-information piled up in diffs and quotes provided by Andrew Lancaster and you in a discourse that is increasingly held to the exclusion of other editors. –Austronesier (talk) 15:53, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Almost every posting by Krakkos on this talk page and the Germani one is a "leading question" with the aim of getting useful "admissions" for ... whatever. Also...

• Krakkos has cited the RFC once now already to justify a bad edit. 1:29, 20 January 2020‎ Krakkos added a new section under "Ethnonyms", which already includes Germani and Teutons, called "Germanic": "includes information and sources on peoples speaking Germanic languages, per unanimous consensus at Talk:Germanic peoples#RfC: Is information and sources on peoples speaking Germanic languages and following other aspects of Germanic culture, within the scope of this article?" Concerning this, I registered concerns and have been discussing on the talkpage of Krakkos.[71]
• You can also get some insight into "whatever" by looking at the original subtext of the RFC.[72]

Close to a year ago, the topic of this article was subtly transformed from being about peoples "identified by their use of the Germanic languages" to being about peoples "identified by Roman-era authors as distinct from neighbouring Celtic peoples".[73][74][75] This major change of scope was only partially discussed in beforehand at the talk page, in a RfC initiated by a trolling IP sock[76][77] of Freeboy200.[78] As a response to the change of scope, an article titled Germanic peoples (modern) was created. In a subsequent discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Germanic peoples (modern) (2nd nomination), the majority of participating editors were in favor of merging that article into this, and the result was a redirect. More recently, i have attempted to merge content, such as citations from Francis Owen and Edward Arthur Thompson and plenty of other scholars, into this article. Owen and Thompson were both university professors who wrote books on the subject of Germanic peoples.[79][80] With the current scope used as justification, these sources have been removed as "inappropriate sources" that are "about another topic (speakers of Germanic languages)".[81][82] This leads to the question of this RfC: Is information and sources on peoples speaking Germanic languages and following other aspects of Germanic culture, within the scope of this article?

Normally by now most of us would have come to a point and actually made a clear proposal. We might all be happy by now. Krakkos has some kind of issue with doing this, and it is making the article worse, just like he refuses to discuss his sweeping category innovations which also cause problems.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:09, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Austronesier - Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Requests for closure states: "The default length of a formal request for comment is 30 days... if consensus becomes clear before that and discussion has slowed, then it may be closed early. However, editors usually wait at least a week after a discussion opens, unless the outcome is very obvious, so that there is enough time for a full discussion." The outcome of this RfC has become obvious, and discussion has slowed. Everyone agrees. Even Andrew Lancaster agrees, and he has suggested that the RfC be closed.[83] Requesting an early closure of this RfC is in full accordance with policy. Krakkos (talk) 16:12, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

@Krakkos: You have pinged me, and I haven't come up with a comment yet, and so it is a bit quick to say that "Everyone agrees". I can assure you that it is not a sign of lack of interest in your RfC that I have not answered yet. And I have explained above why. –Austronesier (talk) 16:57, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Why do we need a section about the term barbarian?

Can anyone explain why this material should be in this particular article: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Germanic_peoples&diff=936219612&oldid=936213084 --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:36, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

User:Krakkos please explain your insistence on this section. It is obvious that barbarian was not a synonym for Germanus.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 00:27, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Because the wider section is about names given to Germanic peoples. According to the source (Thomas Burns), "barbarian" was a name frequently used for Germanic peoples in classical times. You removed a whole bunch of sourced content without explaining why.[84] It's not overly important to me whether we have a section here on the term barbarian or not, but such removals (when the content is not transferred elsewere) should not be performed without any explanation or prior discussion. Krakkos (talk) 10:58, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Are you seriously saying "barbarians" means the same as "germani"? Clearly it is an adjective which can be applied to them, but it can also be applied to any non Roman/Greek. Indeed, if the problems with this are not clear to you then I needed to explain more. On the other hand that would seem to indicate a basic WP:COMPETENCE problem.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:02, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Do you need time to re-check this or can we delete this? If Burns or anyone else has on the other hand really said this and I am wrong, then can you please give a direct quote?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:32, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

The content in question was originally added by Obenritter.[85] I'll leave it up to you and him to verify it. The source used can be read here. Krakkos (talk) 21:03, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

No Obenritter added a quite understandable remark about how the Romans called Germanic peoples barbarians. You have now changed the article to say that "barbarians" could be a synonym for "germani", the subject of this article. Can we just admit that is nonsense? The reason for removing Obenritter's addition is that we are trying to shorten the article and focus it, not that it is wrong. I also remove things I wrote. The reason for removing what you have now created is that it is nonsense. Clearly you have no source at all, but were just making a WP:POINT as part of several other edits and reverts. The source you link to explains exactly what I am saying on pp.19-20.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:27, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Revisiting the article topic controversy

Personal comments
I invite other editors to look at the talk page including archives, but clearly User:Krakkos is going to keep disrupting this article, related articles, and various talk page, aiming to confuse "Germanic speaking peoples" with all usages of the term "Germanic peoples".

Currently, after many Rfc's etc, this article is about the Roman era "Germanic peoples". Here are some statements to work with, and to at least clear some of the smoke. I think they are consistent with modern scholarly consensus and what most WP editors involved have thought, as per discussions and sources mentioned in the past here, and on the article:

• The term "Germanic Peoples", used in the most accurate sense, are the same as the Germani. Germani is just the Latin translation. So:
  • the material currently in this article could have either of those names. But see below...
  • there should be no article about a modern version of these peoples. They no longer exist. (And no that does not mean they died out suddenly. The category just stopped being used, except in a linguistic sense.)
• In a less accurate sense, "Germanic Peoples" [or Germani] can mean "Germanic speaking peoples". [Both Halsall and Heather, who disagree with each other on many things, describe this as a secondary usage.] So:
  • in this linguistic sense, more accurately "Germanic speaking peoples" has a modern and classical meaning. But...
  • if we had an article about this, it is not clear to me what content it would include, or how it would be different to Germanic-speaking Europe, which itself is an article which is hard to justify, or Germanic languages.

So, if there were something to write about the topic Krakkos has had trouble sourcing, then there is an obvious way to name the articles using less ambiguous terms. The content currently in this one could all be moved to Germani, and "his" one could be "Germanic speaking peoples". In other words we would turn "Germanic Peoples" into a dab. The problem seems to be that Krakkos actually wants to keep the confusion, and create two article based on this one, because there is not much sourceable material for his distinct topic of interest? (If not, then why are we not going that way, and where are those sources.) The problem is that this would be a WP:POVFORK.

• It is difficult to maintain quality when there are too many over-lapping articles.
• POV pushers use such chaos to stay under the radar and create alternate reality articles. This is why POVFORKing is not allowed on WP.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:34, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Update. There are clearly discussions in other sections which can be referred to. To help:

• Should this article title be used for a new article exclusively about "Germanic speaking peoples"? I certainly think not but you can vote/comment here.
• Should the current primary topic of this article be moved to a new article called Germani, as Krakkos has already started putting into effect without agreement? (Note that this does not in any way imply removing discussion of historical Germanic speaking peoples.) Comment/vote here.
• Other ideas? Perhaps post here.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:21, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Update 2. See comment of Krakkos today. I want to remark in that context that if we are to have two articles: one about Germanic language speakers (including modern ones) and one about Roman era Germani, then I believe the present article title would have to become a dab linking to both, and the article about a language group needs a word included such as "speaking" or "language". The problem of significant overlap would also have to be clearly addressed and is still a real concern.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:20, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

But please no one make an RFC on this unless there is agreement about the wording that RFC.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:22, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

This article is titled "Germanic Peoples." This title does not reflect an article of which would contain only a focused, comprehensive composite of the Germans of Antiquity.

If the title is to REMAIN "Germanic Peoples" it must reflect that, thus it must encapsulate the history of the Germanic peoples from their matrix, to today.

There is absolutely no reason a Wikipedia article titled "Germanic Peoples" should be limited to Antiquity.

Benjamin N. Feldenstein (talk) 02:50, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Let's keep it sober

The article has lots of problems. But to fix them editors will need to consider much more detailed issues than what you have been posting. Have you looked at the draft? See here. Please don't comment within that draft yet, but feel to use its own talk page under a new section. But there is no point making vague personal attacks, only constructive detailed comments which are based on the published sources, and consistent with Wikipedia policy.

--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:48, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

This thread may be the most relevant proposal. Let's keep it sober, no accusations, just the question: what's the topic of this article? Either it is stricly the Germanic people from Antiquity and the early medieaval times (Germani); or it is Germanic speaking peoples, which includes both Germani and contemporary groups.

My gut sense says me that "Germanic peoples" refers to the Germani; present-day Germanic speaking peoples are descendants of those people. Yet, most "X-peoples" seem to refer to "X-speaking people, so an alternative is to make this page a broad page, with a separate page on Germani. But I don't know what that would be about, except a page with a list of Germanic-speaking countries and "peoples," and a historical background of this info. The point is, what does "Germanic" mean today? Is that still an ethnic qualifier? To speak for myself, I'm Dutch, from Frysian/Gronings/Saxian descend, but I wouldn't seriously call myself "Germanic," only in a semi-joking sense. As Andrew proposed, "Germanic language speakers" would be a better term.

So, turning this page into a redirect to "Germani," with a hatnote at that page to a Germanic peoples (disambiguation)-page may be the best idea, linking to "Germani" and "Germanic language speakers," c.q. Germanic languages.

Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 09:57, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

@Joshua Jonathan: Thanks a lot for your attempt to bring some structure into this discussion. Unfortunately, there are a couple of other sober comments/proposals scattered all over this talk page. Maybe it would best to open a new thread (hoping it won't be spammed anymore with peripheral, incompetent or drama comments)? –Austronesier (talk) 11:24, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

This talk page is currently getting a bit of a rest because discussions of Krakkos and myself continued most recently on the talk page of the lead draft, then moving to the Krakkos talk page and also the talk page of Germania. To avoid wasting space here I'd look at those first before trying to start again here on the "big picture" on this page. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:49, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict)@Joshua Jonathan: I would not want to rush into any new RFC until we settled things enough to make sure the question itself was clear, but my understanding from the last years on this talk page is that if we have to pick a "winner" between the two topics you mention, it would be a close call. But I am not sure that is the only issue:

• Article stability. Historically, no matter what gets said, editors insert bits of BOTH topics into ALL articles around this topic, and I think it will be difficult to stop that. An article which tries to "pick a winner" will therefore be unstable. Some editors (and ALSO most published sources) do not even see the distinction being made, while some editors know the distinction but also very VERY strongly about them.
• Source and discussion overlap. As mentioned, the sources which discuss these "two" topics very often treat them as "one", and our editors and readers very often struggle to see the difference. The differences are in fact to some extent also controversial in reliable sources. Even for the advanced readers, to understand one of the "two", you need to understand the other, and to explain one of the "two", you need to explain the other. All the evidence to be discussed is the same, and there are valid different ways to split that up.

In my experience, the turning point needed in such articles can come from an effort to structure the article well, and take time to carefully balance the tricky bits. After that it will be easier to make sure new materials go to the right place, and easier to explain misunderstandings. If we have to do that in two very similar articles, it will be much more difficult both to get this done and to maintain it. If we split the articles we just have all these problems, but multiplied.

• Practical path: my proposal is to FIRST put in a big effort to TRY the one article model which many editors have argued for. If that does not work then we discuss again. Splitting will then be easier also, if splitting is decided upon. At the moment I think any attempt to split will be very messy indeed. The devils in the details are bigger than they might look at first.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:08, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Thanks for your efforts Joshua Jonathan. I agree with Austronesier. Opening a new thread will make things less confusing.

Having said that, i believe we should we should determine our decisions in this matter upon what reliable sources say, rather than our gut sense. Reliable sources generally define Germanic peoples as speakers of Germanic languages (see here). This concept is quite different from the classical Roman concept of the Germani, which referred to the peoples of Germania regardless of language and culture (Some modern scholars such as Peter Heather equate Germani to Germanic-speakers). The modern concept of Germanic and the classical concept of Germani are quite different. For example, the Aesti and Vistula Veneti were classified by the Romans as Germani, but they are rarely classified as Germanic in modern scholarship. Meanwhile, the Goths, Vandals, Norsemen and Anglo-Saxons were not classified as Germani by the Romans, but are usually classified a Germanic in modern scholarship. This article currently includes plenty of information about Goths, Vandals, Anglo-Saxons and Norsemen. The modern Germanic concept is notable and deserves to be the primary topic of its own article. This used to be that article until it was changed one year ago without discussion, explanation or provision of sources.[86] If the classical concept of Germani (inhabitants of Germania) are deemed notable enough to have its own article beyond Germania, then a separate such article should be created, rather than displacing the topic of this one. Krakkos (talk) 13:03, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

So in short there are source-based arguments for both of the "two" topics to be called various different things. No one is of course arguing not to use sources, but the sources use different approaches, and don't tell us any of these are wrong simply; and many don't even both to spend much time on the distinction you and Joshua Jonathan are (correctly) making here, and should of course make in any version of this article. Furthermore all the sources treat the two carefully distinguished definitions as part of the same narrative. You can not explain one without explaining the other? --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:14, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of "Origins" and "Early Iron Age" sections in their current form

Feedback? I have made this proposal in larger discussions, but I separate it out here for people to remark any concerns. Note that I see no problem with the idea of discussing such topics in principle, but the emphasis of the current sections is material concerning Germanic language pre-history (therefore focused on Scandinavia etc without explaining why in a clear way), but using material about periods long before we can speak sensibly about even Indo-European being in western Europe. I think the focus of any eventual pre-history or archaeology sections has to focus on Iron age evidence, and continental evidence. I also think this is clearly a range of topics that can better be done in summary form in this article, deferring to various specialized articles.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:52, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Keep - Deleting information on the origins of Germanic peoples and their developments in the Early Iron Age would not be an improvement for this article. Krakkos (talk) 16:50, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

The current material is mainly even outside that limit though? Did you look at it?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:07, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

The current material begins with the Nordic Bronze Age. This is in accordance with reliable sources:

• Peter Heather writes: "Clearly the people who came to speak Proto-Germanic must have been isolated from other Indo-Europeans for some time, but it is not obvious which archaeological culture might represent the period of the shift. One possibility is the so-called Northern European Bronze Age, which flourished in northern Germany and Scandinavia between about 1700 and 450 bc... Evidence from archaeological finds and place-names suggests that, while early Germanic peoples probably occupied much of northern Germany during the Bronze and early Iron ages."[87]
• The American Germanist William G. Moulton writes: "Archaeological evidence suggests that about 750 bce a relatively uniform Germanic people was located in southern Scandinavia and along the North Sea and Baltic coasts from what is now the Netherlands to the Vistula River."[88]
• Malcolm Todd writes: "The reaction against extreme nationalism had gone too far. In the 1980s the pendulum began a backward swing. Once again, arguments which trace the origin of the Germanic peoples to a remote period of European prehistory, to the later Neolithic, are heard... It is possible to accept that the ancestors of the Germans known to our earliest surviving historical accounts can be traced back to the mid-first millennium BC."[89] Krakkos (talk) 20:50, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

You are only addressing the modern linguistic concept of Germanic languages, which is the subject of other articles on Wikipedia. Our article is nothing like this though anyway. We have remarks going back to the Neolithic citing your Waldman and Mason.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:22, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Please press CTRL+F, type "Germanic people" and read through the quotes once more. Krakkos (talk) 21:25, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Please explain your point? The proposal we should be discussing concerns the material currently in this article, and this article is about Germanic peoples, not "proto Germanic" which is a concept from modern linguistics which is only indirectly relevant to this article. (The ancestors of the people who brought language which became important to the Germanic peoples.) To handle this fully in this article would require lengthening the article and you called for it to be shortened. It is surely better handled in linguistics and archaeological articles, and done properly. Also, I noticed what your "..." is hiding in the third bullet ("the case does not carry conviction"). Also see "to what extent the progenitors of these cultures were 'Germanic' or 'proto-Germanic' is much more problematic". In the meantime, archaeological studies have been done which are relevant to the Germanic peoples, including ones who spoke actual (not proto) Germanic languages, but nothing in the sections proposed for deletion is about that. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:48, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Similarly, here are some more parts from the passage by Heather (1973) which you similarly chose not to cite:

• "Clearly the people who came to speak Proto-Germanic must have been isolated from other Indo-Europeans for some time, but it is not obvious which archaeological culture might represent the period of the shift."
• "Solid historical information begins about 50 BC when Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars brought the Romans into contact with Germanic [speaking] as well as Celtic peoples."
• "Evidence from archaeological finds and place-names suggests that, while early Germanic peoples probably occupied much of northern Germany during the Bronze and early Iron ages, peoples speaking Celtic languages occupied what is now southern Germany. This region, together with neighbouring parts of France and Switzerland, was the original homeland of the Celtic La Tène culture. About the time of the Roman expansion northward, in the first centuries BC and AD, Germanic groups were expanding southward into present-day southern Germany. The evidence suggests that the existing population was gradually Germanized rather than displaced by the Germanic peoples arriving from the north."

But our current "Origins" section clearly gives a VERY different story. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:16, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

The way I see it

• (a) there is nothing in the current two sections under discussion worth keeping. I am open to proposals, but there are only snippets which are even close to what reliable sources say, and there is very little which is focused on the topic of the article.
• (b) of course we could try to make a replacement section, perhaps called "Before Graeco-Roman contact" or something but then it would be shorter and completely different and as discussed earlier it would logically fit differently into the structure of the article.

So I don't see much point trying to preserve the current version. See sub-section below for just a taster of what we have now.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:47, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Peter Heather was 13 years old in 1973. I suggest you take another look at the source. Krakkos (talk) 11:28, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Did I get the publication date wrong. As an online tertiary source it is difficult to see it, but I thought I saw that date. Why not just say when it was published? Do we need to discuss that? Not sure what your point is. It is a good reminder that it is a tertiary source being used to say something about linguistics, but not by a linguist.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:07, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Example passage from the sections proposed for deletion

Currently we have the following, just for example, and it is clearly EXTREMELY misleading (compare to Heather or Todd above):

Concomitantly, during the 2nd century BCE the advent of the Celts of Halstatt and La Tene arose in nearby territories further west but the interactions between the early Germanic people and the Celts is thought to have been minimal based on the linguistic evidence.[42] Despite the absence of the Celtic influence further eastwards, there are a number of Celtic loanwords in Proto-Germanic, which at the very least indicates contact between the people of Gaul and the early Germanic cultures that resided along the Rhine river.[43] Nonetheless, material objects such as metal ornaments and pottery found near the areas east of the lower Rhine are connoted as Jastorf in nomenclature and are characteristically distinguishable from the Celtic objects found further west.[44]

• First, the Halstatt and La Tene cultures are in fact much older in Germania than we are saying. They cover the whole Iron age in this region. Furthermore they are thought to have formed there from the also local Urnfield culture taking us back to the Bronze age and the first Indo-Europeans in Europe. We are wrong by a thousand years! Why would that be?
• Second our text shows signs of "back and forth" with someone having tried to de-emphasize the material and linguistic links between Celtic and Germanic. I don't recognize this as being typical of what reliable sources say. In any case our text is not consistent and can be shortened. There is recognized evidence of links.
• Third our text is saying that Celts were only found near the Rhine - not in the south or east of Germania. This is disturbingly dishonest. They were still in those areas in the time of Tacitus, and modern scholars believes this is part of the oldest Celtic homeland. Heather as quoted above believes these peoples never left the area.
• Fourth, someone has tried to imply that the Jastorf culture was near the lower Rhine while Celts were not. Why would we describe the Jastorf culture as being "east of the lower Rhine"? Why would we be talking about Celts only "further west".

Anyone notice a pattern to these distortions? This is just an example. It is clearly not worth keeping at all and should be removed.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:47, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Update. I have edited at least this part.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:44, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Merge proposal. Germani to be merged back to here (new split off article by Krakkos)

The reasoning is given above and on the article talk page, and I think it is obvious. User:Krakkos has proposed such things before and has always been rejected and unable to explain a logical plan. Also in this case, as shown above, Krakkos is clearly aware that ALL responses to this new creation (once it was discovered) are negative. This article here needs to be improved and coherent, but removals of material, such as those also proposed by me, should be discussed here given the history. The creation of this section gives a place for adding any further comments.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:57, 18 January 2020 (UTC) BTW in order to work according to Wikipedia policy anyone wanting to keep two articles needs to explain what the difference should be between the two. If there is a large overlap that is a problem.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:02, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

• Split per WP:SIZESPLIT, WP:CONSPLIT and WP:GNG. The Roman exonym Germani is a distinct and notable subject in it's own right. WP:OVERLAP or any other part of WP:MERGEREASON does not apply. This article already exceeds recommended size and merging would make the problem even worse.

Venn diagram of overlap between Germani and Germanic peoples. Based on Guy Halsall, Gudmund Schütte and other reliable sources. WP:OVERLAP clearly does not apply in this case. Krakkos (talk) 17:37, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
Disputed interpretation of sources. I've seen no source which includes Aesti etc in top but not Goths etc.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:33, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

WP:SIZESPLIT states that articles larger than 100,000 bytes "almost certainly should be divided". This article is currently at 134,128 bytes. Merging Germani into this article will increase its size even more, and make it less readable.

WP:CONSPLIT states that articles with similar titles but covering separate subjects should be split. The nominator has himself admitted numerous times that the Roman term Germani and the English term Germanic peoples[90][91][92] (or Germanic-speaking peoples as he would like to call it), are separate subjects.[93][94] He has used this as an argument to remove quality sources, such as Francis Owen, Edward Arthur Thompson and others, from this article.[95][96][97] As explained in the sources at Germani, the term Germani was applied by the Romans to all inhabitants of Germania, including Balts, Celtic, Baltic Finnic and Germanic peoples.[98][99] Germanic peoples living outside of Germania, such as the Goths, were referred to as Scythians or Getae rather than Germani. As historian Guy Halsall says, the "modern definition" of Germanic peoples "does not equate with the classical idea of the Germani".[100]

The Roman term Germani is a notable subject in its own right. It easily passes WP:GNG. It is from the Roman term Germani that the name of Germania, Germany, Germans, Germanic languages, Germanic peoples and other important entities derive their name. Previously, all of these articles have contained largely duplicated information on the etymology of their name. Gathering this information in one article is a good way to avoid content forking. The origin of the term Germani is obscure and has been given much scholarly attention. It is an important term both from a linguistic and historical viewpoint. Krakkos (talk) 11:51, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

The controversies that have raged at this article in recent times are rooted in the campaign of the nominator to transform the scope of this article from being about the modern definition of Germanic peoples into being about the classical idea of the Germani. Having an article on the Roman term Germani will help mediate such controversies, and enable us to look forward and spend our energies towards building Wikipedia further. Krakkos (talk) 11:51, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

• Pinging Andrew Lancaster, Johnbod, Yngvadottir, Bloodofox, Ermenrich, Alarichall, Obenritter, Katolophyromai, Florian Blaschke, Hrodvarsson, Austronesier, Joshua Jonathan, Benjamin N. Feldenstein, Dimadick, and KIENGIR, who have been involved in related discussions, per WP:APPNOTE. Krakkos (talk) 11:53, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

The longer term plan for this article should be discussed in the section above, where I am trying very hard to get discussion, NOT in this merge discussion. What would be in the COMPLETELY NEW version of this article for example? Concerning the merge proposal though, article length was clearly never the reason for your new article, and POVFORK creation is not a solution.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:00, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Just to point to what I explain in other sections: What Halsall means by ["Linguistically [...] we can justify [...] Such a"] "modern definition" is, when written out less ambiguously "Germanic (language) speaking peoples". There is no mystery about that, and splitting that topic off in a less ambiguously titled article has always been a possibility, though it seems most editors have not liked that idea. Indeed there are several language-based articles. OTOH, if your new Germani article is an article MOVE, then you should certainly have proposed it properly and clearly.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:07, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

And to be clear, no, WP does not need a special article to discuss speculations about the unknown etymology of "Germani".--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:13, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

• Merge, obviously. The new article has taken the core of this article, and Krakkos has given no explanation about what this article will be about in the future. There are already WP articles about Germanic languages. So it is effectively a "tricky" way to move/re-title this article using a WP:POVFORK. Krakkos knew when he started that this idea was opposed.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:00, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

• Split My vote is for a split, as it relates to the Germans that lived during, and around antiquity, including those refereed to by Romans as being "Germani," who might not have been genetically German, and contemporary Germans,

I, also, hereby request that the "were" in this article, is changed to "ARE" as Germans still exist, and never stopped existing like @Andrew Lancaster: has tried so hard to make everyone here, and on this website think, even going so far as to gaslight, and alter definitions, as if this is Soviet Russia.

I have provided substantial evidence, genetic, linguistic, historical documentation, ect. that the Germans of today are descendants of Germans from Antiquity, as well as pre and post-antiquity.

I have also provided substantial evidence to declare Germans a genetic group, with a shared mono-matrix.

I acknowledge that the "Germanii" were not all of this genetic group, yet were still referred to as being Germanic, by those of Antiquity.

Which is why I support a split.

-Benjamin N. Feldenstein

User:Benjamin N. Feldenstein This answer gives the problem that it is difficult to see how you avoid the present article not being a simple copy of the other one which would certainly be against Wikipedia policy, so can you please explain what would be different about the two articles. They would overlap a lot? 99%?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:06, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

@Benjamin N. Feldenstein: In case it has escaped your attention: the contemporary Germans are not the topic of this discussion. Krakkos is talking about the contemporary Germanic peoples as defined in some sources as comprising the contemporary ethnic groups speaking Germanic languages. This would include the contemporary Germans, but is a much larger entity. –Austronesier (talk) 08:35, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

• Merge Per reasons put forward by Andrew Lancaster. I repeat parts of a comment I have made earlier in a section above: I think it is very "unhealthy" to make-size splits and to hold an RfC about the article topic at the same time. This creates unnecessary content forking and an imbalance between the core material (e.g. information about "Germani" is relegated to a split article) and circumstantial material (e.g. the concept of speakers of contemporary Germanic languages as "modern Germanic peoples" is pushed into the lead) which remain in this article. For the duration of the RfC, I recommend to leave the article as is (or better, restore a less-forked version), and stop moving out material to secondary articles. Some of the latest edits leave a bad aftertaste and reek of tactics. –Austronesier (talk) 08:36, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

FWIW the parallel editing disputes show that size reduction was never the real concern. This article's size can easily be reduced by removing or reducing the distorted and poorly sourced side discussions about topics which can be better handled in other articles, but Krakkos is opposed to those efforts and indeed started rushing to secretly split the article as a reaction to them - despite having first called for efforts to shorten the article.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:25, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Indeed. This article used to cover "topics which can be better handled in other articles". There was a discussion one month ago in which it was generally agreed that the article was too long. As a result, Early Germanic culture was created. That discussion is located at Talk:Germanic peoples#Article length. You have previously stated that Germanic-speakers (Germanic peoples) and Germani are separate topics.[101][102] I agree with that. The fact that these topics are separate has been the source of intense edit-warring in this article for a long time. By creating an article for each topic, we may get an end to the edit warring and find a way forward to building Wikipedia. Krakkos (talk) 11:19, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

But the two articles would have to contain 99% the same information, and that is clearly against WP policy WP:OVERLAP. Our reliable sources also have to mix their discussions of the two subjects, because they are so intertwined, and they give us no clear authority to make some of the distinctions you want to make. It is, as discussed, easier and more policy consistent to shorten this article or split it in many other possible ways (which you've attempted to block!). The second policy problem is that it seems pretty clear that if there is a difference between the articles it will be to do with inserting controversial materials such as lists of modern Germanic peoples. So it would be a clear case of a WP:POVFORK. I think you have to admit these two policy problems are clear.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:34, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

I think we also need to take a step back and think about what Krakkos has now written. He is now saying his actions in creating the secret duplicate article WOULD make sense if we knew the rest of his plans, which clearly include major changes to THIS article. So that is what we should be discussing, and this duplicate article should be put off until we hear the REAL plans. User:Krakkos mentions my own comments about possible but he should reply to those in a proper place, here. This section here is simply about re-merging the secret new article which is a duplicate of the current article. If it only makes sense as part of a bigger plan, then agreeing a bigger plan comes FIRST.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:15, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

• Merge per Andrew Lancaster and Austronesier. Johnbod (talk) 15:32, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
• Merge per same. Krakkos's underhanded tactics are disruptive. Carlstak (talk) 16:01, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
• Comment Could editors in favor of merging please cite a relevant paragraph of WP:MERGEREASON rather than resort to attacks on me? This discussion should be decided by policies and sources rather than personal animosities. Krakkos (talk) 16:32, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Given @Andrew Lancaster: and his repeated abusive gaslighting, unsubstantiated claims, and doubletalk, at this point, I have no idea what he even wants, believes, or thinks the article of "Germanic Peoples" ought to be about.

Celts and Celts_(modern) both have two separate pages.

@Andrew Lancaster: Are you open to having two pages, like Celts and Celts_(modern) but for Germans, or are you not?

@Krakkos: you are for creating two distinct articles, one for the Germanic peoples, and the "Germanii," of which include the peoples of antiquity, correct?

I just want to get a clear representation of what is going on, but @Andrew Lancaster: is making that incredibly challenging.

-Benjamin N. Feldenstein (talk) 21:08, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

This really doesn't address the issues here - we have always had Germans (for people from Germany, mostly), which is not involved here. You may have noticed how Celts (modern) spends much time explaining how dubious and nebulous the concept is, which would be even more the case here. Johnbod (talk) 21:23, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Benjamin N. Feldenstein - This discussion is not about Germans or other modern Germanic peoples. It is about whether the Roman concept of Germani and the modern concept of Germanic peoples are equivalent. Andrew Lancaster wants to merge both concepts into this article and transform this article into being exclusively about the Roman concept, thereby excluding any information or sources on the modern concept.[103][104][105] Krakkos (talk) 21:44, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

That is quite dishonest. The event we are dealing with is not the merge of two old/different articles, but that Krakkos has created a new article which has the same topic as this one currently does, built from the same materials, and since that was discovered he has made comments indicating that this is part of a bigger plan which will also involve changing other articles including this one. I am like other editors open to various approaches, as long as they are logical and consistent with Wikipedia policy and the sources, but Krakkos does not want to make any clear proposals to discuss. But the new article is currently a mirror of this one and that is against policy for obvious reasons. Step one for Krakkos has to be making a proposal, not making a new duplicate article.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:03, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Andrew Lancaster - You're calling Germani a "duplicate article" of this one. The Germani article is defined as being about an "exonym used by the ancient Romans for a diverse group of peoples living in the areas north of the Danube and east of the Rhine in classical antiquity." You believe that this is the scope of this article (Germanic peoples) as well? Krakkos (talk) 22:13, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Of course it is. You have in the last day even blamed for being the cause of this being the topic. The new duplicate article which you made secretly on your own, without pre-discussion, was made by reworking the opening of this article, making a few wording changes here and there. I don't consider to be a real article yet, because it is so obviously made in conflict with your fellow editors and likely to be deleted. On the other hand if you want this article here to be about something else, or (as it seems) to effectively move it to another title you must make a full proposal, before beginning work. You know there were serious concerns about previous proposals like this. You keep hinting that your new article would not be a duplicate if you were allowed to make changes to this article, but you have never made any proposal on this talk page about what these plans are. That is a big problem with the way you are working. Your past uncoordinated mega-schemes have a long history of ending up a mess, and there is no reason for other editors to allow you to make Wikipedia worse. If you have a proposal, first propose it. All these other discussions are just details for now until we have clarity about your big secret mega plan.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 23:14, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Andrew Lancaster - For thirteen consecutive years (2005 to 2019), this article was about peoples identified as speakers of Germanic languages.[106][107][108][109][110][111][112][113][114][115][116][117][118][119] In April 2019 you changed the scope completely into being about peoples "identified by Roman-era authors as distinct from neighbouring Celtic peoples".[120][121][122] When was it decided by the community to make this drastic change of scope? Krakkos (talk) 23:36, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

You keep making these inaccurate good old days accusations, so that is not new or interesting. (I would say I worked with the other editors to get a consensus about what this article, which had different bits about different subjects, was about.) The strange thing is that you flick between blaming me for "changing" the topic to what it is now, and pretending you've never heard that this was what the article was about, and you can't understand why anyone would say you've gone out and made a sneaky duplicate article without any pre-discussion in a way you knew would be controversial. You are not very good at play acting.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 23:44, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Could you provide us with a link to the discussions were you gained a consensus for the change of scope? I have provided a large amount of sources for the fact that Germanic peoples are primarily defined as speakers of Germanic languages. For almost a year you have failed to provide a single source veriyfing your claim that Germanic peoples are primarily characterized as being "identified by Roman-era authors as distinct from neighbouring Celtic peoples." Are you still unable to find a source? Krakkos (talk) 23:50, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

You should stop changing subjects in circles now. (I don't recall that line being a big concern for anyone so no I was not looking for that. If you are interested in the archaeology of the article check the archives.) But you aim to delete it all anyway right, because you are already writing the new version of this article? So I think this article is facing much bigger changes according to the unclear plan you started to put into action already before I called for discussion, and it is time for you to explain the whole plan and see what other think. You've spent several days trying to throw up smoke screens. As people can see on your talk page archives, those of us who have tried to work with you before know that you have a history of starting massive un-discussed projects which are not well planned or executed. That is the last thing this article needs. Make your proposals and let's have the real discussion. This is Wikipedia not your personal website.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 00:14, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Asking yet again. Could you please provide us with evidence that your change of scope of this article was supported by the community, and provide us with a source justifying this change of scope? The subject of this discussion is Germanic peoples, not my talk page archives. Krakkos (talk) 00:20, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Last discussion was a few hours ago? [123] and the history of such discussion is far lower priority than explaining what you would prefer and propose should happen in the future. Please explain that now. This is high priority because you already tried to start making massive changes before I forced discussion, and you're clearly rearing to go again. Your tendency to make massive undiscussed changes is very relevant. Make proposals for discussion. We can come back to any necessary details, but I suspect they will interest no one once we get the bigger questions out of the shadows. In the best case scenario, if we have a good plan everyone can accept, then most smaller questions will then fall much more easily into place. The big questions need to come first. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 00:37, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Since you've repeatedly refused to provide evidence that your change of topic was backed by consensus, and failed to provide sources for this change, it's safe to assume you have neither. That settles this discussion. Krakkos (talk) 10:03, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Groan. Please stop changing subjects and start being constructive in discussions - in the sections about those topics. This section is about a merge proposal. The article topic has been what it is for years now and it has been unifying into one topic in steps, not from one small edit. There are years of discussion in the archives and if you want to talk more about them use the section above which was about that! Also note that WP is not based on democratic voting but also policies and reliable sources. But anyway, for you there was clearly something "settled" when you started the new article, but what have you been planning and what do you intend to do? On Wikipedia it is not enough for one editor to tell fellow editors "I have now decided what is going to happen"? What have you decided? Is it a secret? (Please answer in the section about the article topic controversy.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:25, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

The merge proposal of this article is determined by your interpretation of the topic of this article. The topic of an article is determined by sources and community consensus. You have so far refused to refer to any sources or previous consensus for your interpretation of the topic of this article. Plain and simple. This is the last time i will reply in this thread. Krakkos (talk) 10:47, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Actually you have yourself agreed with me concerning what this article is about for the last few years (even though you apparently don't like it). And you yourself have explained above (in this section) that your reason for this new article, your argument against merging, depends upon understanding your ideas to change THIS article, which you refuse to explain publicly. So to justify your new article you also need backing for major changes to this article. This is what you are saying yourself, over and over. So by your own account the articles should be merged unless your bigger plans are first proposed and accepted. Otherwise we simply have two articles covering the same topic, and a silly stand-off, created by you artificially. There are clearly already strong clear concerns about how your ideas can be policy consistent, and you can not deny that you will be fully aware of that, just as you were already when you started this duplicate article secretly. You need to explain how articles will be titled, how redirects will work, how the articles will not have high overlap, what they will contain and not contain, etc. Who knows, maybe everyone will agree. Why are you working in such a silly way?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:40, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

@Krakkos: if this is the case, I unequivocally support a split.

@Johnbod:Your depiction of The Celts (modern) page is distorted, and is not representative of material reality, as such, I cannot respond to this assertion.

The identity of a people, or peoples is only dubious, and nebulous if you ignore evidence, with immediately flashes RACIST AGENDA, to me. Thankfully, combating a racist agenda, of this nature, is simple because we have plenty of evidence, topped off with genetics, so as to paint a clear picture, as it relates to Germans, and Celts.

Germans is primarily concerns itself with national identity, not the Germanic peoples, of which include, but are not limited to, the Dutch, English, the Frankish French, Danes, Icelanders, and Americans.

So, unfortunately, that article won't be of much use here, I'm afraid.

Benjamin N. Feldenstein (talk) 22:03, 19 January 2020 (UTC)Benjamin N. Feldenstein

Benjamin, this concept of modern Germanic peoples has been discussed here many times it some detail. There are two possible ways to understand you: (1) there are still modern Germanic speaking peoples, defined in a purely linguistic sense (2) there are today Germani, a national/ethnic group, defined by more than just shared language (or indeed shared ancestry). There are various articles touching upon different aspects of (1) including this one, and different approaches can of course be discussed. Concerning (2) we don't find acceptable published sources to show there is any nation today called the Germani. We don't see nations of people growing up calling themselves Germanic peoples, or being seen by outsiders as Germanic peoples. No one writes scholarly books about such a people, and what their institutions are. (We do find small clubs and societies who design their own new Germanic clubs etc. but that is another matter.) The controversy about (2) won't go away by creating new articles. It needs better sources. If (1) is your concern then there might be new ideas worth discussing. But who is proposing anything about that? In the past, editors seeming to be concerned about 1 ended up having to admit that linguistic definitions were not enough for them because they really wanted to be able to say, for example, that Austrians are Germanic, but not Nigerians, Kenyans or Indians. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:30, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Note - Having considered the arguments of Austronesier, i have now reached the conclusion that the creation of the article Germani was made prematurely, given the fact that there was already an ongoing RfC at this page. I have therefore made Germani a redirect to Germanic peoples. Krakkos (talk) 22:56, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Krakkos! I have only noticed this now, since comments are still plastered all over place (sigh!), so it's easy to miss even the important ones. –Austronesier (talk) 10:06, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Another split off article created by Krakkos: Early Germanic culture

Can editors here please check whether they have any concerns with the split-off creation of Early Germanic culture. I have to post it here without any explanation about the reasoning, because at the moment the only way to see what is happening for this and related topics is to watch the user contributions of User:Krakkos, who can not use talk pages properly for some reason, and yet constantly moves things around making normal redirects and watchlists almost useless. At first sight I have no major issues with this particular case, but of course its creation has implications for this article also.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:05, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

There is also the enormously dubious Category:Early Germanic culture, which should be deleted (after checking what else he has emptied to create it, following his usual sneaky pattern). Much of the issue here is that there is no standard definition of "early", and much stuff is included that I doubt any source calls "Early Germanic" - anything Anglo-Saxon, Carolingian or Visigothic for example. Johnbod (talk) 15:36, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Wobrey, William; Murdoch, Brian; Hardin, James N.; Read, Malcolm Kevin (2004). Early Germanic Literature and Culture. Boydell & Brewer. ISBN 157113199X. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |registration= and |subscription= (help)

See the above source for what falls under Early Germanic culture. 17:07, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Pages? On the google preview I'm not seeing a definition. Of course, when dealing with literature, which is the main subject of the book, one is at least on firm ground when a Germanic language is used. In art history, the use of "Early Germanic" to cover the enormous scope the category covers is unknown in English. Johnbod (talk) 17:49, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Serious misrepresentation of reliable sources by Andrew Lancaster

Some days ago, Andrew Lancaster added Chapter 6 from the book East and West in Late Antiquity by Wolf Liebeschuetz (2015) as a source for his claim that "the idea that the Germanic peoples originally shared any single core culture or language before their contact with Romans is doubted by historians."[124] This claim currently figures prominently in the lead.

I have taken the time to look up the source, and has found that this is a complete misrepresentation. At pages XXV and 99, Liebeschuetz writes: "Chapter 6 reviews the debate on the nature of the Germanic tribes that established kingdoms in the provinces of the Empire. It argues that these people did indeed possess both core traditions and a sense of shared identity, and that these had evolved well before their entry into the Roman world... [C]ontinuous transformation is not incompatible with the possession of core-traditions. The various Germanic tribes possessed such traditions... Some traditions, especially language, all the tribes had in common."[125][126] Contrary to what Andrew Lancaster implies, this is not the claims of "recent historians", but controversial fringe theories promoted by Andrew Gillett, a self-styled "independent scholar". Liebeschuetz dismisses these theories as "flawed because they depend on a dogmatic and selective use of the evidence".[127]

Yesterday, Andrew Lancaster added the book Empires and Barbarians by Peter Heather (2012) as an additional claim for his above-quoted claim.[128] That book doesn't even mention "Germanic peoples".[129]

How long will this editor be allowed to disrupt this article with nonsense and misrepresented sources? Krakkos (talk) 15:03, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Good to see that you have now taken the time to read that. Putting aside the bluster, you mention two edits that I should justify and that is of course fine if you'd avoid the other stuff. :)

• I did not add the citation to Liebeshuetz, but it is a good source, to be used with others. Krakkos cites me adding "the idea that the Germanic peoples originally shared any single core culture or language before their contact with Romans is doubted by historians."[130]. Krakkos is correct that Liebeschutz goes on to give some counter arguments to what the field is generally thinking. Note that his report of what the field is thinking is MORE important to Wikipedia. I won't bother citing our core content policies, because I am sure we all know this. I would note that my wording makes it clear that there can be differences of opinion on this matter. What I wrote is that there is increasing doubt in the field.
• Concerning Heather my version of the named book says it was published 2009. Krakkos is being a bit strange here because he could and should have mentioned that we've been discussing this, and given the URL [131].

I am thinking I've worked correctly, but feedback is called for please.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:55, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

You cited a 2012 version of Heather's book.[132] Since when did Andrew Gillett become representative of "what the field is thinking"? Krakkos (talk) 18:08, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

• I have Heather's book. It says 2009. Do you have any relevant point to make?
• I have no idea why you are mentioning Andrew Gillett. Liebeshuetz names him as an example of a whole new "generation" of scholars. I suppose we can say Halsall is one also. Liebeshuetz seems like a reliable source, so if he thinks the field has gone this way... --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:01, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

To the benefit for other participants in this discussion, I quote from both sources:

"We cannot of course know whether or not these people felt any sense of Germanic solidartiy, or to use modern jargon, a sense of Germanic identity. But the fact that the Latin Germani does not appear to have had a Germanic equivalent, strongly suggests that there was no sense of Germanic identity." – J.H.W.F. Liebeschuetz (2015), East and West in Late Antiquity, p.97.

The above-mentioned quote on page XXV refers to individual tribes. In chapter 6, Liebeschuetz is specifically refuting extreme views that hold that "Goths", "Franks" etc. only came into being as distinct entities upon their entry into the Roman sphere, and puts forward evidence that each of these were ethnic groups bound together by a core of traditions. But he clearly does not defend the concept of a pan-Germanic identity.

"When we talk of Germanic Europe, therefore, we are really talking about Germanic-dominated Europe, and there is no reason to suppose that the entire population of this truly vast area – some of it militarily subdued in the recent past – was culturally homogenous in terms of belief systems or social practice, or even it that it necessarily spoke the same language." – Peter Heather (2009), Empires and Barbarians, p. 6.

I cannot see that Andrew Lancaster has misquoted any sources here. –Austronesier (talk) 19:11, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Andrew Lancaster cites the sources in question for the claim that "recent historians" doubt that Germanic peoples "originally shared any single core culture or language before their contact with Romans". A statement by Wolf Liebeschuetz that Germanic peoples in Roman times probably didn't have a shared identity is not a verification of Andrew Lancaster's claim. Not having a shared identity is not equivalent to not sharing a language or a core culture (see Serbo-Croatian and Yugoslav Wars).

"Germanic-dominated Europe" is not equivalent to Germanic peoples. Many cultures and languages were spoken in German-occupied Europe. This does not mean that Germans do not share a core culture or language. Likewise, the fact that Germanic peoples dominated certain non-Germanic peoples in Roman times does not equate to Germanic peoples not having a shared culture or language. Krakkos (talk) 21:28, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

When it comes to core culture and language, Liebeschuetz has this to day:

"Germanic tribes... did indeed possess both core traditions and a sense of shared identity... The various Germanic tribes possessed such traditions... Some traditions, especially language, all the tribes had in common.." – J.H.W.F. Liebeschuetz (2015), East and West in Late Antiquity, p.xxv, p.97.

These sources are completely misrepresented. Krakkos (talk) 21:28, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Throwing my hat into the ring here. Whether the Germans of Antiquity "had a sense" of a shared identity, or not, is irrelevant, given contemporary evidence, that is bound with genetics.

Andrew Lancaster your disruptive behavior here must stop. I have provided you with plenty of evidence, but you've, with prejudice, rejected ever bit of it. You cannot continue to behave this way.

Benjamin N. Feldenstein (talk) 22:10, 19 January 2020 (UTC)Benjamin N. Feldenstein

Benjamin N. Feldenstein - Please remember to distinguish between Germans and Germanic peoples. Also pay attention to WP:NOR and WP:SYNTH. These policies are frequently violated by Andrew Lancaster, so make sure not to violate them yourself. Krakkos (talk) 22:33, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

@Benjamin, you are not replying to me so I don't know what you are accusing me of. I am also not sure what you think has been proved or what you think is relevant. It is however Wikipedia here and so what is important is the opinions of these published experts. Our job here is to summarize them, not to summarize what you think, or what Krakkos thinks. This is the basic core idea of Wikipedia so clearly if you think it is wrong you should not be here.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:42, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

@Krakkos, as already discussed, the problem for your position concerning Liebeschuetz is that he describes himself as disagreeing with the new generation about these things. So even though he does not like it, yes, he is a source for "the idea that the Germanic peoples originally shared any single core culture or language before their contact with Romans is doubted by historians." He says this clearly. But you know there are more sources too, so what is your point really? Why are you trying so hard to avoid making a proposal about the major changes you started making? The sooner you get to that the better for all of us surely? --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:42, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Wolf Liebeschuetz says that a certain "post-Wenskus generation" denies that Germanic peoples had a "core-traditions".[133][134] Who is this "post-Wenskus generation", and when did they become representative of the views of recent scholarship? Liebeschuetz slams the theories of the "post-Wenskus generation" as "very strongly ideological" and "flawed because they depend on a dogmatic and selective use of the evidence." Liebeschuetz himself states that all Germanic tribes spoke Germanic languages.[135] Malcolm Todd states the same.[136] Recent scholars such as Peter Heather[137][138] and Christopher R. Fee[139][140] defines Germanic peoples as speakers of Germanic languages. This is also how Germanic peoples were defined earlier by Edgar Charles Polomé,[141][142] and Edward Arthur Thompson.[143] You have removed sources from all of these scholars and replaced them with a secondary reference to the denials of the "post-Wenskus generation".[144]

Who are the "post-Wenskus generation" (apart from their apparent leader, the "independent scholar" Andrew Gillett), and since when did they become more qualified than Wolf Liebeschuetz, Malcolm Todd, Peter Heather, Christopher R. Fee, Edgar Charles Polomé and Edward Arthur Thompson to define the subject of Germanic peoples? Krakkos (talk) 23:23, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

As explained by my edit summaries I removed some of the new notes you were adding because they were not being used to confirm the text of article, but rather as a kind of way of carrying on a talk page argument within the article. That is a no no, so please don't do that. Wolf Liebeschuetz is in any case a valid source for writing about a new generation that he disagrees with. Post Wenskus is clearly a chronological term so, not a term which restricts this new generation to a small part of the new generation by the way. Concerning all the other names you roll out you are not making any clear point. For example Thompson is from before this new generation right? How can he have commented on it? Your latest edit is verging on vandalism [145], trying to make the article incomprehensible? Please let's not worsen this pre-existing article at least just to make a WP:POINT?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 23:36, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Who are the "post-Wenskus generation" (apart from their apparent leader, the "independent scholar" Andrew Gillett), and since when did they become more qualified than Wolf Liebeschuetz, Malcolm Todd, Peter Heather, Christopher R. Fee, Edgar Charles Polomé and Edward Arthur Thompson to define the subject of Germanic peoples?

Ask Liebeshuetz? But why are you saying all these people would describe RECENT opinions in the field as being different than Liebeshuetz? OTOH Peter Heather, who you list as if he would be opposed, could arguably fit the bill as an example for you. He clearly says that there is no reason to believe that the Germanic speakers / Germani (same thing for him) all shared any culture or even language. He explains that the terms are shorthand at least in his 2009 book. And Halsall also fits the bill. He says (2007 pp.23-24) that even if the Germani shared a language it still doesn't mean they formed any unity, and there was nothing interchangeable between Franks and Goths, Saxons and Lombards, or Germani and modern Germans. He suggests it is sometimes worth writing out "barbarians north of the Rhine and Danube" just in order to avoid such misunderstandings coming from the confusing words. In this context, describing the field, which is important for us, he says "The problems of Germanism have long been recognized". etc etc etc. Why do you think we should prefer your opinions over those of Liebeshuetz and Halsall about what historians believe recently? And did Thompson really have a time machine?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 23:56, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

You're the one citing the "post-Wenskus generation" to back up your claims.[146] So you're the one that has to explain who they are. Who are the "post-Wenskus generation, and which scholars are part of it?

Heather states that the peoples of Germanic-dominated Europe probably spoke different languages. Where does he "clearly" state that "Germanic speakers" didn't speak Germanic languages? This sounds like a ridiculous statement. Please provide a direct quote and link.

Halsall states that Germanic "does not equate with the classical idea of the Germani".

I'm not basing my content on my own "opinion". I'm basing them on scholarly sources, and it's not just Thompson. These include Malcolm Todd, Peter Heather and Christopher R. Fee.

Asking again for good measure: Who are the "post-Wenskus generation" and which scholars are part of it? Krakkos (talk) 00:15, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

So you don't think Liebeschuetz is RS????? I think this is just a constant changing of subjects. Compare to your original post in this section. You are just making things going in circles. We have discussed all these points before in other sections and on your secret Germani duplicate article, and it is not my job to teach you to read. Either you are completely WP:INCOMPETENT or else you must know, because you have been typing out their words and linking to them over and over, that Liebeschuetz, Halsall, Todd and others have all mentioned the trend among modern historians (even if they personally do not agree in the case of L and T) to be sceptical of "the idea that the Germanic peoples originally shared any single core culture or language before their contact with Romans is doubted by historians" (the words you are pretending to think are unsourced). But all this is trivial for now, because the real topic we should be discussing is what happens next for this article, and it seems you intend to make all these concerns irrelevant anyway. Please now stop these circles and make a clear proposal about your plans for massive change to this article which you attempted to start until I forced a discussion. Otherwise we are all stuck, and these discussions are pointless. Explain what you were starting to do.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 00:27, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Let's put some of these remarks about sourcing for this sentence to bed "the idea that the Germanic peoples originally shared any single core culture or language before their contact with Romans is doubted by historians". Facts:

• Despite the time spent, Krakkos has proved unable to comprehend that Liebeschuetz (2015 google books, see pp.88ff,) agrees with Wenskus and Gillett on doubting past scholars concerning a unifying core culture uniting the migration period Goths, Franks, Vandals etc "as a whole" (i.e. as Germani). (Krakkos's use of Fox News language - "Liebeschuetz slams the theories of the "post-Wenskus generation" - is highly misleading.) Liebeschuetz's disagreement with Gillett is on specifics which go beyond the weak claims of the sentence we need to source.
• Liebeschuetz is one of the scholars who still thinks that the Tacitus era Germani were united by language, and this is worth looking at. First of all he describes the field as not all agreeing on this, and that is important for our editing decisions concerning this sentence about doubts in the field. Secondly, the only source for his position, as he describes it, is Tacitus, whose use he defends, though he clearly sympathizes with criticisms of this source. L (p.95, fn4) cites 2 places in Germania 43 which speaks of a Suevian language which proves some tribes to be Germani; and 46 which says the "Peucini called by some Bastarnæ, are like Germani in their language". As we do not write WP based on one source I should note here two of the reasons many scholars are unconvinced by these Tacitus passages about language. Neither Tacitus passage strictly requires that there is a single unifying Germanic language. Furthermore concerning the Bastarnae, Tacitus disagrees with other Roman authors who call the Bastarnae Scythian, and in the case of Livy, even specifically say that their language was like the Scordisci, who were Gaulish or in any case not Germanic speakers. Halsall also points out that other Indo-European languages would likely also be described as being like Germanic. (For Halsall, see below.)
• Krakkos shrieks in bold all over this talk page that Andrew Gillett, though cited as important by Liebeschuetz, is categorized as an "independent scholar" on the academia.edu website. Of course that should not matter, because in any case we know he is cited by lots of authorities as an important writer, and his bibliography on academia.edu also shows he has been consistently asked to published in high profile editions, journals, etc. But using that rather rough-edged website's category in this way says a lot about Krakkos's competence I am afraid. The page itself describes him as "Formerly University of Toronto Centre for Medieval Studies, Macquarie University Dept Ancient History". Here is his profile at Macquarie. He is an associate professor, with an impressive record. He is a potential reliable source for this article.
• Krakkos is unable or unwilling to convert Liebeschuetz's term "post Wenskus generation" into something which is comprehensible away from the context it comes from. Reinhard Wenskus died 2002, which is the year Gillett wrote the first influential article which L cites. So L is simply referring to scholars who are prominent in the 21st century, more or less, in contrast with those prominent late last century. But as noted above, for the sentence we are sourcing, which only says there are doubts, the older generation would also have agreed (according to Liebeschuetz).
• Krakkos continues to read Peter Heather (2009 p.5) as saying that only the Germanic speakers at Teutoburger Wald are called Germani now. This is such incompetent reading that I don't know what to say. The Teutoburger Wald victory is given by Heather only as an example of why older generations writers misunderstood the importance of the Germanic-dominated Europe, and its "Germani, as these Germanic-speakers are now called". There is absolutely no way to read this as being a terminology Heather would only use for the Teutoburger Wald! Heather clearly really does equate the terms "Germani" and "Germanic speakers", despite Krakkos claiming the opposite over and over. Whether or not Heather would say these terms strictly only refer to people who spoke Germanic speakers is not necessarily important for anything we are needing to discuss for this article.
• Krakkos continues to read Halsall wrongly, saying that "Halsall states that Germanic "does not equate with the classical idea of the Germani".". The main discussion is here. Here is the passage Krakkos reads as evidence for his position (emphasis added by me):

Linguistically, we can justify a grouping on the basis that all these peoples spoke a related form of Indo-European language, whether East, West or North Germanic. Such a modern definition, however, does not equate with the classical idea of the Germani.

It is as plain as day for anyone able to read such works, that Halsall is NOT defining any "modern definition" of "Germani". He does imply an old idea/definition for that word, but he is not calling it wrong or right, and he is definitely not saying people have stopped using that definition. And in contrast he talks about the possibility of a newer way of "grouping" (a categorization, a concept) which uses languages, but he proposes no word in this passage! Indeed, one of the points he expresses in this source and others is that if we in the 21st century group peoples by language (as Halsall and others do sometimes) it can be confusing if we also use old words with too much baggage, because it won't match other ways of using the same words. He thus finds terminology such as Germani and Germanic peoples to be unclear and worth trying to avoid, so he is certainly not giving us strict rules about how to define these terms. In practice he often defines terms specifically, early in a work, like someone making making a key for a map. In one well-known book (2007 pp.23-24) he says he will use Germani only in the classical way, not a linguistic way, for example, whereas for linguistic uses he says he will risk making long constructions in order to be clear.

So obviously Krakkos's push to deliberately use the ambiguous "Germanic peoples" to only mean "Germanic speaking peoples" is in conflict with Halsall's overall philosophy and advice. In any case, the sentence under discussion has a weak wording which is easily covered by these and other reliable sources. There has not been any attempt by Krakkos to find sources describing tendencies in the field, only attempts to discover tendencies directly by googling one or two authors, for one or two words. That is a clear case of WP:OR, and a particularly unfortunate example given the problems Krakkos has to interpret academic texts and Wikipedia policy in a practical way.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:34, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

WP:TLDR. Krakkos (talk) 09:49, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Who are the "post-Wenskus generation"[147] and which scholars are part of it? Krakkos (talk) 09:58, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

...A significant movement of scholars prominent since 2002, according to one RS Liebeschuetz, who mentions another RS Gillett as a representative. In fact that is all we need for our sentence about doubts recently in the field. But Gillett, for your interest, was probably selected as a representative because he wrote articles that also summarized general trends, so it is convenient to cite him as someone who also lists other authors and their positions. Of course both these authors make it clear that such doubts, though perhaps a bit less, were already common among older scholarly traditions, so there is no need for this sentence to be seen as describing only the post Wenskus generation.

I note that your response to the work I did, which you pushed for, was tendentious indeed. Will you now explain what your secret plans are for this article and its current topic. Please demonstrate something which shows you can actually make positive contributions to Wikipedia and work with others.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:12, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Wolf Liebeschuetz describes the theories of Andrew Gillett as "very strongly ideological" and "flawed because they depend on a dogmatic and selective use of the evidence."[148] Since when did flawed and dogmatic ideological sources from a non-notable scholar become suitable to define the topic an article? Who else is part of the "post-Wenskus generation"? Krakkos (talk) 11:00, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Yes and read the rest of the nice things he says about him. But as far as our sentence being sourced, Liebeschuetz would also agree with it, and WP policy tells us not to use only one source when we know the field has different opinions. In this case Liebeschuetz himself tells us about trends in the field and that should guide us. And can you please stop switching your incomplete responses from article to article and section to section? [149]--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:27, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Except from Andrew Gillett, who else is part of the "post-Wenskus generation"?[150] Krakkos (talk) 11:47, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Who cares? Why is this important? What is your point?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:58, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

This is important because of WP:NOR, WP:V and WP:N. Clearly you're not aware of any scholars belonging to the "post-Wenskus generation" except from Andrew Gillett. This leaves us the question: What makes Andrew Gillett more qualified to the define the topic of this article than Peter Heather, Edgar Charles Polomé, Edward Arthur Thompson and Christopher R. Fee?[151] Krakkos (talk) 12:55, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

WP:INCOMPETENCE, in so many ways...

• Stop refactoring this thread in ways I have already rejected. I want this thread, which is a deliberately deceptive accusation of me to be kept together. WP needs good transparency and traceability concerning all your edit patterns. See WP:TALKO.
• As you should know very well but apparently don't understand, the source for the post Wenskus generation description of what has been happening in the field is not Gillett himself, but Wolf Liebeschuetz who you seem to see as an RS.
• A person like Thompson (d.1994) who wrote before a certain group of scholars (from about 2002 according to our source) can not be a source for comments about them, obviously?
• The policies you cite are only relevant here if they have something to say about how we source the sentence you mentioned. Because the sentence does not go as far as Gillett, it is clear that Liebeschuetz and several other authors you've been quoting, would also agree. Example (pp.99-100):

I am not claiming that there was after all a Germanic culture, continuing without interruption from prehistory to modern times, and a fundamental national character. My point is rather that we have enough evidence to show that the tribes of the Age of Migration did have their own evolving traditions, and that it is reasonable to assume that these traditions made a significant contribution to the making of Medieval Europe.

• Andrew Gillett is also an RS. Just because one author says he disagrees with another author, the core content policies you mention do not tell us we can use the criticized one!!!! The policies you cite are very clear about this. By the way, Gillett says similar things about others of course, in the intro to the work Liebeschuetz cites [152]. Following your logic we can't use anyone who has ever been criticized!
• Quite clearly I am NOT saying I know nothing or whatever, I am saying your demands are NOT RELEVANT, and a distraction from much bigger editing concerns coming from your recent disruptive behavior, which needs to be addressed openly, urgently. Stop the distractions!!!
• If you read Liebeschuetz you'll see he refers not only to Gillett and his generation but also, as more examples, to the contributors in the Gillett volume. FWIW you can see them listed here.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:45, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

• Does the Distant Past Impinge on the Invasion Age Germans? - Walter Goffart
• Reinhard Wenskus on ‘Ethnogenesis’, Ethnicity, and the Origin of the Franks - Alexander Callander Murray
• Nation versus Army: A Necessary Contrast? - Michael Kulikowski
• Was Ethnicity Politicized in the Earliest Medieval Kingdoms? - Andrew Gillett
• Visions of National Greatness: Medieval Images, Ethnicity, and Nationalism in Finland, 1905–1945 - Derek Fewster
• Ethnic Identities as Constructions of Archaeology: The Case of the Alamanni - Sebastian Brather
• Volkstum as Paradigm: Germanic People and Gallo-Romans in Early Medieval Archaeology since the 1930s - Hubert Fehr
• From Kossinna to Bromley: Ethnogenesis in Slavic Archaeology - Florin Curta
• Ethnicity, Theory, and Tradition: A Response - Walter Pohl
• Ethnogenesis: The Tyranny of a Concept - Charles R. Bowlus

You cite a reference to the "post-Wenskus generation" by Wolf Liebeschuetz for your definition of Germanic peoples as "a category of ethnic groups of continental Northern European origin, identified by Roman-era authors as distinct from neighbouring Celtic peoples."[153] Which member of the "post-Wenskus generation" defines Germanic peoples this way, and where has this definition been published? Krakkos (talk) 13:54, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

I think that specific footnote in that specific edit is just a result of the chaos you create on articles, in this case by your frantic double footnote-system additions, sustractions, etc, which read like a sort of WP:POINT-making exercise connected to things on this talk page. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:10, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

So now it's my fault that you're sources are falsified? Go and fix it then! Rephrasing the question: Which scholar defines Germanic peoples as "a category of ethnic groups of continental Northern European origin, identified by Roman-era authors as distinct from neighbouring Celtic peoples?" Krakkos (talk) 14:26, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

If you have a specific proposal, make it. Otherwise I request that we do nothing concerning this sentence until we have an agreed plan about what the topic of this article and any new offshoots are going to be. There is no point you suddenly wanting 5 footnotes on every sentence in the lead. Please stop editing and explain your proposed plans. Otherwise we are going to be editing the same articles with different understandings of what they are about.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:34, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Repeating unanswered question: What makes Andrew Gillett more qualified to the define the topic of this article than Peter Heather, Edgar Charles Polomé, and Christopher R. Fee? Krakkos (talk) 13:55, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

No one made any such claim and you are making no sense. These questions are irrational and useless. Wikipedia editors define what the topics of Wikipedia articles are. As a Wikipedia editor who has made it clear that you intend to make major changes to the topic, which means all these details are a side show for the time being, please tell us about your proposals openly, so we can then have a more useful discussion.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:10, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

When you're removing[154] sourced definitions by Peter Heather, Edgar Charles Polomé, and Christopher R. Fee, and replacing it with a definition sourced to the "post-Wenskus generation" (as represented by Andrew Gillett), this IS the claim you're making. Rephrasing the question: If Andrew Gillett is not more qualified to the define the topic of Germanic peoples this article than Peter Heather, Edgar Charles Polomé, and Christopher R. Fee, why are you justified in replacing the definitions of Heather, Polomé and Fee with the definition of Gillett? Krakkos (talk) 14:26, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

For a sentence saying that some scholars doubt something, we only need a source saying some scholars doubt something. We are not saying Wikipedia doubts something. I should not have to be explaining these basic types of editing concepts, over and over and over. In any case it is a side show. First please put your working ideas into the open so that we do not have a continuation of the stupid situation where one editor is knowingly re-working articles so that their topic definition does not match what other editors are writing.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:34, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Two simple and fundamental questions for Andrew Lancaster

In April 2019, Andrew Lancaster, made a series of profoundly radical edits. He changed the article topic from being about peoples identified as speakers of Germanic languages into being about peoples "identified by Roman-era authors as distinct from neighbouring Celtic peoples".[155][156][157] The previous topic had lasted for thirteen consecutive years (2005-2019).[158][159][160][161][162][163][164][165][166][167][168][169][170][171] As far as i can tell, he did not provide any sources, and he did not refer to any consensus, to justify this change of topic. This raises two fundemental questions:

(1) - In what sources are Germanic peoples primarily defined as being "identified by Roman-era authors as distinct from neighbouring Celtic peoples"? Please provide a link and quote.

(2) - When was a consensus reached that the topic of this article should be changed from being about peoples speaking Germanic languages to being about peoples identified by the Romans as being different from neighboring Celts? Please provide a link to the discussion in which this consensus was reached.

These are essential questions on which this entire controversy rests. Krakkos (talk) 12:43, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Krakkos who cares about your efforts to rewrite the past? Just explain what you are proposing for the future. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:48, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

My proposal is that information in this article must be based upon sources and consensus. Repeating the question: Where are the sources? Where is the consensus? Krakkos (talk) 14:00, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

We obviously disagree about the past. Say what you think should happen in the future.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:20, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

I'm not talking about the past, I'm talking about sources and consensus. The fact that you refuse to answer these two essential question speaks wonders. Krakkos (talk) 14:35, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

What is your point then about the sources and consensus? Are you saying you have a consensus supporting your new proposals? But shouldn't you define those new proposals first? If you really look for relevant things in the archives:

• Consensus has been difficult to get not because people agreed with you, but because of many fringe positions such as people wanting this article to be about Germans, a Germanic race, DNA etc, etc,
• Older versions of the article were agreed by serious participants, or many, to be mixing different topics and there was never a good coherent version (and we are still not there now).
• Discussions about sources such as atlases and books about Roumania and WP policy did not go your way. Obenritter recently described my role in getting this article into only clear direction we could find so far as something like a policeman! I don't really like that, but it reflects the reality that I was the main explainer of WP policy in those discussions, which you still clearly don't understand well. To explain more:-
• The idea of having an article about Germanic speaking peoples always got stuck so far because its proponents wanted different things in reality. Many really wanted a racial article which excluded most of the world's germanic speakers. Some clearly just wanted an alternate version of the history sections, and therefore substantially a copy. See WP:POVFORK. So it is obvious how such a discussion could be looked at again. Obvious questions would be: unambiguous title and clear redirecting etc, how to avoid overlap concerning Roman era, how to avoid too much overlap with Germanic historical linguistics articles.
• The idea of having an article about "Modern Germanic peoples" raised similar concerns of it simply being a work around WP policy. In that case you proposed it, and discussion stopped when, given the obvious doubts, I suggested you make some sort of draft document to show how it would avoid those problems. There is so little sourcing available that this article would have just been a WP:OR list with very bad sourcing and no notability justification. However as was noted many times the idea of there being "Germanic speaking peoples" is more sourceable, and indeed your sources for modern Germanic Peoples are mainly just referring to that in shorthand.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:55, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

This doesn't answer the question. Where are you sources? Krakkos (talk) 15:00, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

I don't accept your description of my past editing actions, and I am not interested in helping you make up details for the story. It is obvious how silly this is when we consider how much on this talk page, now and in the past, you've discussed sources about the current topic and shown that you agree it corresponds to something real, and appearing in reliable sources. Presumably this is some long winded way to imply something. Maybe that the sources demand that the article title be changed? But then make your whole vision clear concerning all the connected topics. Put it on the table. I'd welcome constructive proposals for the future. If you really can't get to the point and find a way to work with others, then you should cease editing this article, including the temporary POVfork at Germani. Wikipedia is not for people who work solo.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:16, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Proposal

The following discussion 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.

---

I propose that the topic of this article should be defined by how it is defined in reliable sources. Krakkos (talk) 14:28, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Do you agree with this Andrew Lancaster? Krakkos (talk) 14:30, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Stop playing games. Topic definitions do not have to match individual sources. They are editing decisions. Come out in the open and say what you really want.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:35, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Stop dodging the question, Andrew Lancaster. Should our editing decisions on defining the topic of this article be determined by how the topic is defined in reliable sources? Krakkos (talk) 14:51, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

You are being silly. They do not have to be, and as there is no proposal being made I can only speak of whether they always are or not.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:57, 20 January 2020 (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.

If racial "Germanics" are the problem, then let's also put this on the table...

This is something I placed on my talk page today. Perhaps worth posting here also, in the hope it cuts to the real core of problems on the said article, and gets more useful discussion?

In reply to the objection of Obenritter that I have been "deletionist" on Germanic peoples:

• I disagree if you think I am trying to "delete" material about Germanic-speaking peoples, but I can see that is the impression Krakkos is perhaps trying to create, by constantly inserting duplicated materials into the wrong places (especially the first paragraph) where they have to be deleted. However there is nothing stopping editors from adding more information about Germanic-language speakers, including modern ones, as long as it respects the existing logical structure. Languages are currently first noted in the second paragraph, because something needs to come second. (If the article was Germanic-language based first, Roman era secondarily, this style of edit would have the same problem. Duplicating things constantly into the first paragraph, and multiple sections, is a question of bad editing.)
• I do agree that I am one of the editors resistant to reintroduction of lists of modern Germanic peoples "by descent", i.e. racially, NOT linguistically defined e.g. Afrikaners, but not Jamaicans or Ashkenazi Jews etc., such as in the lists the article once had. Krakkos has not mentioned them since this latest split attempt, but he keeps referring back to his split attempt last year where these were certainly the real demand.[172] The more I look at the situation and past discussions, the more I think that this is the real reason why these things are being done now, and Krakkos is not wanting to explain any real rationale.

The racial idea is of course sourceable to old works (from Grimm up to the defeat of the Nazis). That historical way of talking can also be covered in this article and others as being something now rejected by scholars, and more typical of fringe groups. Instead, ancestral groupings are studied by population geneticists in quite new ways, with new terminology. The lists which are demanded would in contrast treat the old racial theories as current, when they are not. This is also reflected in the fact that Krakkos has never found good sourcing for modern Germanic peoples except in the linguistic sense. Lists of Germanic modern languages could be fitted into the article near the end without changing the topic. That has never been a problem.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:22, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

I'm trying to understand the current debate. What's your issue with defining Germanic peoples as the speakers of the Proto-Germanic language? Germanic languages are just linguistic descendants and historically beyond the scope of this article, as Romance languages are for an article about Romans (and similarly, the Latin language is a fairly acceptable solution for defining Romans as a people until the end of the Roman Republic). Azerty82 (talk) 20:29, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the question. I personally have no big issue with that option so that is a misunderstanding. Also, the result will be almost the same as because of the substantial overlap between the linguistic and classical definition. What we need either way, it seems, is more finality about the "racial" Germanic question (a third Germanic topic which is making people do strange things), and what, if anything WP can do about it. I can not speak for others, but I am guessing the following three options can all lead to a stable solution, keeping in mind the overlap of two uncontroversial topics:

1. Primarily about the Roman era Germani, and secondarily about the Germanic speaking peoples. (Current situation. Puts the oldest and most explanatory part of the subject first in the article so that we can, like in reality, move to the derived neologism. Modern Germanic languages handled near the end.)

2. Primarily about the Germanic speaking peoples, and secondarily about the Roman era Germani. (Not so different. Puts a confusing neologism first and would make a near chronological article a bit tricky. Structuring would require some thought and discussion.)

3. Two articles, for example, "Germani" for the Roman era Germani and "Germanic speaking peoples" for those. (Problem is how to avoid 90% overlap, so this has not been a popular option in past discussions.)

Does that make sense? I think the third option is a bigger debate, and the first, like we have now is less problematic. But I think none of these three options change the racial Germanic issue as defined above.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:18, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

The Proto-Germanic language theory derives from the existence of a) the Germani and b) Germanic languages recorded since the first millenium A.D., so I'd rather prefer option 1 – i.e., the Germani were a grouping of Germanic tribes that spoke a common language, Proto-Germanic. Azerty82 (talk) 23:10, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

@Krakkos:@Obenritter:@Florian Blaschke:@Austronesier:@Joshua Jonathan:@Ermenrich:@Carlstak:@Johnbod:

I think over several years, most editors who take the time also come to see 1 as the practical approach. I understand it to be the consensus. However, getting the article to look like this has been very difficult - leading to the frustrations. There is a complication that helps explain our problem. Not all peoples called Germani, at least in the earliest phase of Roman contact, definitely spoke Germanic as defined today. (See for example Nordwestblock, and Lugii.) I think most of us who've looked at this case on WP believe the overlap is so big between the two definitions (modern linguistic and early Roman) that it is easy and best to handle them together carefully with suitable comments to explain the imperfection of the overlap. The origin of my post here was a concern of User:Obenritter that I make it difficult for User:Krakkos to add information about the linguistic aspect. I am saying that is a misunderstanding, which is a useful opening for discussion:

• The content disagreement between me and Krakkos, which is not obvious from recent edits, is his aim to have Wikipedia defining a single racially defined modern Germanic people. (Stating this to be a fact, not mentioning it as an old controversial terminology.) In contrast, the linguistic definition of Germanic peoples, would not be difficult to integrate better if this other effort was not mixed into it, but...
• While I have rejected edits of Krakkos, this is most often because they duplicate information into multiple sections, and generally disrupt any attempt to give the article a structure. There have also been some terrible misreadings of sources, hidden within an exaggerated footnote thicket. This type of editing is something Obenritter has complained about many times to Krakkos over several years, and did not start with my efforts to clean the article up. But the more recent edits, as shown by the posts of Krakkos, are connected to a bigger aim also.
• As a result, there is not much in the article that makes anyone including me very satisfied. Attempts to recently portray the blockage as me pushing specific wordings is misleading. The article is certainly not my work. It is uneditable because of these problems. The article still has obvious problems noticed years ago. I would like to make a concerted effort for a period, and started a few weeks ago, which is when Krakkos created a new article, called a strange RFC, and deleted a big chunk of this article - leading to the situation of today.

I hope this helps clarify my perspective, in a way which can help us see the way forward.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:39, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

@Azerty82: The identification of Germanic peoples as speakers of Proto-Germanic (in analogy to Romans as speakers of Latin unfortunately does not work. Proto-Germanic is a totally unattested, reconstructed language based on evidence from attested Germanic languages and early loans into Finnish. Germanic peoples entered history at a stage when Proto-Germanic already had significantly diversified into distinct branches/languages. And for most Germanic peoples that were in contact with the Roman empire, we have little or zero documentation about the language they spoke, except for evidence from personal names (with the notable exception of Gothic).

@Andrew Lancaster: I can assure you that most editors will not put the blame on you alone for the current full PP. I have asked for full PP because of constant edit warring, and it takes two to war (at least).

As for the primary problem, the scope and topic of this article, we have actually two things to decide on (and is only then that we can discuss potential size-splits):

1. Which one of the several possible definitions of "Germanic peoples" do we adopt? (= Scope)
2. What meaningful and coherent information can we present in the article based on this definition (WP is an encyclopedia and not a dictionary)? (= Topic)

Both things matter, as we can see from sources that principally cover the subject "Germanic peoples". A simple example will suffice: the oft-cited EB article Germanic peoples employs the broad linguistic definition ("Germanic peoples, also called Teutonic Peoples, any of the Indo-European speakers of Germanic languages"). Yet the article only covers the "ancient" Germanic peoples and fades out in the Early Middle Ages. When we cite sources, we should do it in full context. Citing EB for a definition of "Germanic peoples", but only as justification to fill this article with content not covered by EB is cherry-picking of the most superficial kind.

Before addressing question 1 in the concrete context of "Germanic people", I want to ask first: is there a principal need in WP to classify ethnic groups into higher groupings/clusters etc.? Of course, classifing people into larger entities such as the obsolete concept of clear-cut "races" is an old endeavor. The idea of using linguistic affiliation as an objective criterion (instead of the discredited racial marker) for classifying the peoples on this planet is of course also not new, and goes back at least to Leibnitz. Modern ethnology and anthropolgy is however not concerned with simplistic models of lumping together ethnic groups based on a single marker, even though many wish so, as we can see from all these amateur-dominated websites and forums about human genetics. Comparative-historical linguistics and the establishment of language families are an important tool for understanding the relations between contemporary and historcal ethnic groups, but it's just a piece of the puzzle, and not the key to it. There is always a significant overlap between the distribution of cultural features and linguistic families (especially in families/subgroups with a relatively shallow time-dpeth), but also significant mismatches. This also holds for other markers such as those provided by modern genetics (and not just haplogroups!). Languages, cultures, genes diffuse and diversify in different ways. So the overall tendency to create a WP article corresponding to a language family is potentially misleading for our readers, especially if the ethnic groups concerned cannot be characterized by a marker other than linguistic affiliation.

In the case of the "Germanic peoples", if defined only by language, there is little more than linguistic affiliation which would hold the article together when covering the modern-day ethnicities. If we consider the latter the principal topic of the article, we can maximally create a shallow panorama-style article of pretty diverse European peoples, plus the artifical cut-off phenomenon when Ashkenazi Jews and Jamaicans for some invisible reason are not included, as Andrew Lancaster has rightfully noted. The linguistic definition alone leads to a dead end, and we need more than that for weighing out the sub-topics for a meaningful and coherent article.

The language criterion also fails if we go back in time. Bones don't talk, and yet archaeologists have good reasons to associate Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age cultures with later Iron Age cultures that can be clearly related to the Germanic people (maybe with even more coherence and continutity than between the "ancient" and "modern" Germanic peoples).

I don't want to offer a solution here, because I lack necessary expertise in details, but overall, the "long-standing" version which primarily covered the ancient Germanic peoples was IMO a good solution. –Austronesier (talk) 12:35, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

PS @Andrew Lancaster: please let us breathe, man! –Austronesier (talk) 12:36, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

LOL. I agree! Let me say two things in response to your remarks.

• Already the comment of Obenritter alerted me to the fact that the languages are poorly linked into the Roman era definition. Did I play a role in that (during the 2019 racial definition arguments)? Probably yes, but it was not my intention, and the editing and talkpage environment has been dysfunctional since. But see my drafting exercise.
• Does WP need all these semi-racial hierarchies? I share your concern and so do many others. I would add that "Germanicism" gives a special level of concern which needs to be handled carefully, as our 21st century linguistic and historical sources all mention in their various prefacing remarks.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:13, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

@ @Austronesier: The analogy is not perfect indeed. As specified in another comment, the proto-Germanic theory was born as a consequence of the historical existence of Germani, not the other way around. Still, proto-Germanic may be the most reliably reconstructed proto-language, as we have inscriptions from all three branches/dialects dated to the first centuries A.D., which allow another dive into the past of 'only' 500 years (as could fairly reconstruct Vulgar Latin with Romance texts from the first millennium A.D. The analogy stops here.) Azerty82 (talk)

@Andrew Lancaster: We share in the effort and caution about keeping modern "Germanic" people out of the discussion for these ancient peoples. We've collaborated for several years on that front. Where I think some confusion arises is the seeming conflation being made that Germanic people implies some monolithic affiliation. That is not what this article originally argued, but only that they have related Proto-Germanic roots. If this were not a true statement, then many of the Germanic tribes that worked together to fight Rome—many of whom eventually were assimilated—would have never had the ability to communicate and coalesce to that end, but they did (at least if we believe the ancient historical accounts). Nonetheless, you have been correct in many of your rebuttal edits and deletions to contributions made by Krakkos. My concern was that you too were joining the deletion camp in response to his reckless editing, some of which may have been justified (when it was misplaced or redundant material) but some of the quality content itself has also vanished entirely. This page and the associated Talk Page have become so convoluted that it's hard to tell which direction to go and yes, I find Krakkos culpable for much of this. His carte blanche approach to editing the Germanic peoples Wikipage has indeed, mutilated this article, taken some of the information out of context, and created an editorial conundrum. Not sure what to do about all of this and so frustrated with the incessant bickering that I decided to just step away from this one. Other high-caliber editors like @Florian Blaschke:,@Austronesier:,@Joshua Jonathan:,@Ermenrich:,@Carlstak:, or @Johnbod: may be able to untangle this, but I don't have the sufficient bandwidth right now and my this has gotten on my nerves–meter is pegged.--Obenritter (talk) 20:41, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Obenritter, I think your caution was very helpful to me for showing a potential area I had left out too much, so thanks for making those critical remarks. I think the article can link up a lot of the interesting topics in a logical structured way. Drafting now seems a good way to test how many. After that we can potentially decide more articles are needed, for example. Using a draft page is not always a good idea but I think when the editing has been unstructured and untrusting it can help.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:55, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Obenritter, that's a bloody shame—the article needs your expertise. Unfortunately, I feel the same way. I'm not sure I would function well in what often feels to me like a toxic editing atmosphere; I'm too highly strung. I do think Andrew Lancaster is doing the best he can under difficult circumstances, and he at least acknowledges his mistakes. Carlstak (talk) 22:30, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

@Austronesier: You're making a very good point about Ashkenazi Jews and Jamaicans, but it only demonstrates the whole problem that this article is beset by, namely the delineation of the topic of the article. Having the topic end somewhere in Late Antiquity or the early medieval period is just as arbitrary as excluding Ashkenazi Jews and Jamaicans. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:38, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

@Florian Blaschke: while it is not really "arbitrary" at all, see the comments at the start of this section: Obenritter said the article looks like I've been deleting efforts to add materials about linguistically Germanic peoples, whereas I fear this is a result of the article having poor structure, or a lot of editing which ruins structure, duplicates material and constantly tries to insert too much in the lead. Therefore I started the drafting trial. Have you looked at that? By starting with the lead I am trying to develop a way in which we can get a balance and a structure to cover topics better.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:06, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean – I've never seen any evidence suggesting discontinuity between ancient and medieval Germanic-speaking people. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 16:56, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

OK. It is a big topic. Vienna School: Wenskus, Wolfram, etc, argued against big continuity, replaced it with an elite "Kerntradition" concept. Then Walter Goffart and Toronto folk criticize that this does not go far enough. Bystanders like Liebeschuetz, Halsall, Heather etc comment with different degrees of sympathy for both sides. Hardly anyone argues for really strong continuity anymore it seems. I think I can say we have several editors who agree this should be better explained in the eventual article. Of course it makes most sense in an article like this one still is, which combines discussion of the Roman-defined Germani and the sometimes linguistically defined Germanic speaking peoples. Krakkos is aware of it also but for some reason still pushing for a split article which would make it hard to ever explain all this. I will keep working on that draft anyway.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:31, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

The "split article" about the "Roman-defined Germani" already exists. It's called Germania. As long as that article exist, there's no reason to push for the duplication of the topic of Germania here. Krakkos (talk) 19:17, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

In effect what this post and previous ones like it mean is that you have a new variant of your split proposal. But you are still not giving any real reasoning about why it would be a good idea. What improvements would this bring? How do we avoid high levels of duplication? Currently Germania is a very short article which has I think got nothing which is not in this article. So effectively you are once again talking about copying most of this article into that one, and the result is two articles which are 90% the same? If not, then please explain.

Keep in mind that the current state of the articles should not be limiting us. As I try to envision a better version of this article a lot of what it needs touches upon the overlap of the "two" topics itself, because this is a very important topic in itself. Also the continuity question touches upon both, because it is partly a debate about the unity of the Roman era Germanics, and everything to do with that era touches upon both topics.

A non-overlapping logic would be to divide Roman era (Roman definition and linguistic handled together) and post Roman (mainly linguistic), but we can see on this talk page how editors and readers are going to not understand why we have done that. That will not be a stable solution. One of the main things both articles would need to be explaining, is what the difference is with the other article.

In any case practically it makes sense to trying structure everything into one article first, even if our aim is to discuss a split. We should not be rushing into splits, or even RFCs about splits until there is some reasoning on the table.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:05, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

What i am effectively saying is that we already have an article titled Germania, covering the Roman concept, and this article, which covers the modern ethnolinguistic concept. These concepts are both notable, but different. As long as Germania exists, there is no need to duplicate the topic of Germania here. Krakkos (talk) 21:31, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Not really true though is it? Germania is just one more over-lapping concept, not the "same concept", so this is simply a split proposal with the same problems as the previous split proposals. You would just overwhelm the existing article and turn it into the Germani article you were trying to make. What is the benefit of that? Concerning Roman era Germanic peoples both the linguistic definition and the geographical definition have problems, and both need to be discussed fully in order to have a real coverage of the topic. And the Roman era is something that would not be missable in either a Germani article or Germanic speaking peoples article. Again, you could make less overlapping articles by splitting into Roman and post Roman, but that would be like a part 1 and part 2 for readers. What I am not seeing is any argument about why any such splits and overlaps make Wikipedia better in any way. You seem to have splitting as your main goal? (You've been trying literally for at least a year now?)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:41, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

The article are already split. See Germania#Population and Germanic peoples. If you want to merge them. Feel free to propose that. But don't edit this article like it has been merged already. Krakkos (talk) 21:46, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Back to unconstructive again. Just so everyone realizes, you are now saying that the Germani article you wanted to create already exists, and it is a few paragraphs that do not even fill one screen. Everything in that whole short article is in this article, but you are saying that one small section of it is actually where Wikipedia is already covering the Roman era Germanic peoples? So that section is the main article, and this article is what?? How many times are you going to go through this cycle of pretending you didn't know this article is currently about the Germani? Don't you remember blaming me for it having the wrong topic, and keeping the post Roman stuff too limited? Where are you going with this? Please explain why you're putting so much surreal effort, over such much time, into creating a walled garden of fork articles.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:16, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Several problems in this discussion need to be distinguished:

• Why the drive over years to find a reason to split? The biggest elephant in the room is that Krakkos has not explained why we need to split the article. Everything User:Krakkos has been doing for a very long time is based on this aim. Recently Krakkos has unconvincingly argued that there is an urgent length concern, but until a few months ago the real reason Krakkos mentioned was that there should be an article which can include lists of modern Germanic peoples by descent. This is not only controversially and unsourceable, but also apparently connected to the mass of inter-connected and hierarchical Germanic articles and categories Krakkos has historically created all over Wikipedia, which are also controversial. The historical concept of modern racially Germanic people can only be handled within articles that can explain the whole history and controversy. They clearly can not simply be stated to exist in Wikipedia's voice, and listed out, as Krakkos has wanted in the past.
• How would we split? The biggest part of any article about Germanic peoples, using any definition, is going to be about the Roman era, and connections of the Roman era into later eras such as the migration period into the middle ages. An article which only starts after the Roman era would be strange and "headless". The sources show that all the different definitions compete with each other in many variants, and none of them are perfect. To understand any of them, there needs to be discussion of the others.
• Twisting of the Roman/non-linguistic definition(s) in sources. In this latest twist, Krakkos is writing as if it is clear that the Roman-style definition was purely geographical and all our secondary sources agree, meaning we can simply split it out into a section of a geographical article. This proposal has many problems, but it also clearly twists the sources. Liebeschuetz even makes the case that Tacitus had a linguistic definition in mind. Indeed this is something I need to improve in my drafting.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:16, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

The ancient Roman ethno-geographic concept and the modern ethno-linguistic concept have always been split into Germanic peoples and Germania. If you consider those the same topics, then you should propose a merger between those two topics before editing this article as if they had already been merged. Krakkos (talk) 10:13, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

This article isn't "currently about the Germani". The Goths, Vandals, Norsemen and Anglo-Saxons weren't "Germani". Their ancestors in the Pre-Roman Iron Age weren't "Germani" either. These peoples are given plenty of coverage in this article. In fact, the Roman ethno-geographic concept of "Germani" covers only a fraction of this article. Krakkos (talk) 10:17, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Sub-plot: accusations of major recent changes to article topic

Another confusion is being created by the accusation that I made major changes to this article's fundamental topic in April 2019. The accusation was first made by Krakkkos 20:11, 17 September 2019 (UTC)[173], and relate to a very minor edit made many months earlier [174]. The change was that the word "are" was converted to "were". As pointed out many times since then, it was ridiculous to call this an article topic change. The sentence as it stood was already about Roman era peoples, so the tense was simply logical, and there was nothing new about that topic being central in the article. OTOH, the whole article needs work to get balancing of such things correct, and such careful editing is being blocked not by me, but by Krakkos. I want to point out that this accusation about this edit only came months afterwards, and as a sort of add-on to a long discussion about .... the removal of the "modern Germanic peoples by descent" (not by language) from the article including the lead. But that removal was done after a lot of discussion. That material had been debated for years and deleted many times before it was more definitively removed. Again, it seems that many issues on the surface are actually proxies for the old dispute about the racial Germanism.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:18, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

You think denying an entire people's existence is a "very minor edit?" This dehumanizing rhetoric, again, is what leads to genocide, and human rights abuses, and it must not continue.

I have disproven your conspiracy theory style suppositions many times, within this talk page. You have absolutely no reason to continue to deny the existence of these people, if you are here in good faith.

You've not only displayed a lack of knowledge about this subject, but also have refused to stop spreading false information, and misinformation after you've been corrected, and or informed. You cannot continue to behave this way.

Benjamin N. Feldenstein (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 02:34, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Yes, it was a very minor edit. The sentence as it stood was already about Roman era peoples, so the tense was simply logical. No one has been stopping this article from discussing modern Germanic language speaking peoples, and if it looked that way it was a misunderstanding. Concerning claims of a modern Germanic peoples by descent, or genetically defined modern Germanic peoples, none of the sources you brought before mentioned any such concept, or even anything remotely similar. I think if that is the topic you want included then you need to show that such a concept is actually discussed in serious publications. On Wikipedia we summarize what published experts have written.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:57, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

No, it was not a very minor edit. Saying an entire people do not exist anymore is a major edit, with very serious implications, that you seem not to care about. Yes, my citations DID, in fact, show descent from the ancient Germanic peoples, of contemporary Germans, this study alone does just that. There were plenty more, but you keep ignoring them, for some strange reason.

Regarding the genetic composition of England

Using novel population genetic models (using samples from living individuals) that incorporate both mass migration and continuous gene flow, we conclude that these striking patterns are best explained by a substantial migration of Anglo-Saxon Y chromosomes into Central England (contributing 50%–100% to the gene pool at that time) When we compared our data with an additional 177 samples collected in Friesland and Norway, we found that the Central English and Frisian samples were statistically indistinguishable.

Please provide evidence for your claims that the contemporary Germans do not descend from the ancient Germans.

The above study certainly isn't supporting your case.

Benjamin N. Feldenstein (talk) 09:59, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

References

@Benjamin N. Feldenstein: For the benefit of readers who still care to read your repetetive comments: could you please stop misquoting academic sources by calling the inhabitants of Central England "contemporary Germans"? –Austronesier (talk) 11:00, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Austronesier What exactly have I misquoted?

Regarding the genetic composition of England

Using novel population genetic models (using samples from living individuals) that incorporate both mass migration and continuous gene flow, we conclude that these striking patterns are best explained by a substantial migration of Anglo-Saxon Y chromosomes into Central England (contributing 50%–100% to the gene pool at that time) When we compared our data with an additional 177 samples collected in Friesland and Norway, we found that the Central English and Frisian samples were statistically indistinguishable.

The English are the descendants of the Anglo-Saxons, among other Germanic peoples.

Your racism does not, and will not change this.

Benjamin N. Feldenstein (talk) 11:21, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

References

@Benjamin N. Feldenstein: The article that you cite does not call the inhabitants of Central England "contemporary Germans". It speaks of "Germanic immigrants (and their descendants). So that's a blatant misquote. Why is it racist to say that you misquote a source? –Austronesier (talk) 11:30, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

I misquoted nothing.

Are the direct descendants of Anglo-Saxons, Norsemen, among other German tribes living today NOT contemporary Germans?

Are they Chinese? African? Mexican?

I don't think so.

If they are not Germans, what are they? Hmm? As already established, "German" is genetic group with a mutual matrix. Not simply a linguistic, or cultural group, as you'd like everyone here to believe.

You are playing word games, which will not work, and I, quite frankly, do not appreciate you doing so.

Benjamin N. Feldenstein (talk) 12:24, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

It is indeed only a question of which words you use, a "word game". Normally, people do not say that modern descendants of Hittites, like I suppose most people of European descent are, actually should be called Hittites. No one can stop you using words in an unusual way, but on Wikipedia we use normal terminology. The genetics articles also use normal words, not your definitions. The normal term for an English person is an English person for example. One of the practical problems with your innovative use of words is that you have to pick one set of ancestors out of thousands of likely ones, so how do you choose one? In other words, why not call an English person a "Roman", a "Gaul" or a "Viking" or a "Frisian"? That would be confusing. Most English speakers would understand that "the Hittites no longer exist" does not mean they were all suddenly killed, but that for whatever reason, over a long period, the term Hittite is no longer being used.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:42, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Please define "Normal Terminology"

Are you using "English" as a nationality, or as a genetic group, an ethnic group, or a cultural group?? "English" etymology - "English (n.1)

"the people of England; the speech of England," noun use of Old English adjective Englisc (contrasted to Denisc, Frencisce, etc.), "of or pertaining to the Angles," from Engle (plural) "the Angles," the name of one of the Germanic groups that overran the island"

This, also, demarcates the English as German. So that won't work.

Roman, Gaul, and Viking, are not genetic groups. Frisians are Germans, Frisian also refers to their tribe of origin, of which is German.

Thus, this attempt of your is, unfortunately, fallacious.

"German" is a genetic, linguistic, cultural, and historical group of peoples, with a mutual matrix, or, in other words, an ethnic group, the English are part of this group.

Are you really going to attempt to deny that the English are, at least, largely Germanic, even after you've been given genetic evidence disproving your baseless assertions that they are not?

Is a person who is 100% descended from Suebians NOT Germanic?

Are the Danes not Germanic? What about the Norwegian people? Are the Swedish not Germanic? How about the Dutch?

They all speak German languages, and are genetically Germanic.

I am not interested in debating the identity of the English, in all honesty. The point was to show that the English are, in fact, a Germanic people, which I did.

The fact of the matter is the Germanic peoples never disappeared like you've tried so hard to make everyone believe.

What are your requirements for being considered Germanic?

Yet again, you are utilizing dehumanizing rhetoric, and are denying people their identity, and existence.

Benjamin N. Feldenstein (talk) 13:20, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

@Benjamin N. Feldenstein: Most if not all English people, Danes etc. would object to being called Germans. Pointing out that apples aren't pears is not a word game. –Austronesier (talk) 12:51, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Citation please. Fortunately, a person's objections do not change reality.

Benjamin N. Feldenstein (talk) 13:20, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Normal terminology, is what you find in published books, journal articles, dictionaries, and so on - including the ones you cited. You are clearly able to read that normal terminology? I believe you know quite well that English people are not described as "Germans" by anyone - not "genetic Germans", not "linguistic Germans", not "cultural Germans" etc. Germanic is a different word than German. As this methodology concerning how to use language is a Wikipedia policy matter, I do not think you should be writing long posts about it here. This is already a very busy talk page.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:29, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

You did not answer my questions.

Is a person who is 100% descended from Suebians NOT Germanic?

Are the Danes not Germanic? What about the Norwegian people? Are the Swedish not Germanic? How about the Dutch?

They all speak German languages, and are genetically Germanic.

What are your requirements for being considered Germanic?

The name of the English alone denotes them as being Germanic. They speak a Germanic language. The majority of their genetic makeup is Germanic.

I will ask again, what are your requirements for being considered Germanic? Because it appears that the English do not fit your nebulous bill.

If a living English person is 100% descended from Saxons, are they not Germanic?

Again, the point is not to argue over the identity of the English, the point is to disprove your baseless assertions that the Germanic peoples stopped existing.

So I would prefer if you'd stay on topic, instead of derailing this conversation to divert attention.

Benjamin N. Feldenstein (talk) 13:42, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

OK, by switching to normal terminology your questions can be answered a bit more meaningfully. The term "Germanic", or more carefully "Germanic [language] speaking" can indeed be used to describe the English, Danes, etc etc. This article also does this, but the article is also covering Roman era peoples (Chatti etc) who no longer exist. But NOTE most published authors are careful not to use the word "German" to mean the same as "Germanic", because that is normally going to be understand as meaning Deutsch-. Of course we have to explain all this better in the article.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:00, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Alright. So you've finally decided on fessing up to the fact that the Germanic people still exist.

So why does the article NOT reflect this?

Benjamin N. Feldenstein (talk) 14:05, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Well, parts of it do already, and the question of how to avoid confusion in the other parts is something several of us have been trying to find a common vision about. The article will certainly evolve in this respect one way or another. Terminology, one issue in your posts, is one issue we are struggling to get right. It will probably always annoy someone, but I think everyone agrees we can improve. Have you looked at my drafting ideas for a new lead?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:09, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Drafting: easier to show

To take pressure of this talk page, and try something else, I have created a drafting page in my user space. Please feel free to post comments on my talk page. I think eventually that the short article Germania should also be merged into this, but let's see if I can get a balance which proves it is possible to handle all the concerns of everyone - with the exception of the demand for a list of modern racial Germanic peoples, given in Wikipedia's voice. As usual in such cases the challenge is to get everything near the top of the lead, without creating a mess.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:28, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

I've made a comment on the draft - I encourage everyone to just make constructed suggestions/add supported text over there.--Ermenrich (talk) 15:42, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

To be clear to everyone, the draft page has its own talk page: [175] --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:48, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Etymology of Germani

I've noted before that despite some authorities having strong opinions about particular guesses, the etymology should be considered speculative. In case we need a source for an actual statement of this, here is a recent, language-oriented one: https://books.google.be/books?id=GO1oDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PA10 A Comparative Grammar of the Early Germanic Languages By R.D. Fulk --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:50, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

@Andrew Lancaster: Looks good as source for the statement that the etymology is uncertain (or per source: "unknown"; or per source of the source (Schmidt 1991): "disputed").

While we're at it: I will look for more sources about Gēr-manni generally being rejected as obsolete folk etymology (right now I only have Partridge 1966, cf. note [17]). Currently there is only the unsourced statement "Others have proposed" with a pseudo-source (of course Mallory & Adams don't claim such nonsense, they're just the source for the OR-etymologizing); and the know-it-all-ish OR explanation why it can't be true. Isn't it funny that such kind of OR always starts with "However"... However, this might be a generalization. –Austronesier (talk) 11:09, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

But is there any really "strong" proposal? If there is NOT, then a possible solution is simply to say something like "The etymology is unknown but historical proposals include [short list only, no details].--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:15, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

There are no strong proposals; some are weak within normal parameters, others are just plain nonsense. So yes, the most valid information is that it is unknown. And yes, the current bullet list creates undue weight over the primary statement. But I think Gēr-manni should receive special mention as the bullshittiest of all proposals, since it is still widely circulated (at least in German-speaking countries). –Austronesier (talk) 11:44, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

I don't remember if we already have a source for the criticism of that theory? In any case my basic idea is that the section should be shorter. (I think I ended up making that bullet list to be honest, but only because the material kept getting added to, and was very messy. That type of history is typical of many sections on this article.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:56, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Well, there is Partridge 1966, cf. note [17]: "The 'Spear Man' theory (OHG gēr, cf. OE gār, a spear) is obs.", and I have dug up some stronger-worded refutals from 19th and 20th century sources. Will add them later here. –Austronesier (talk) 10:52, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Would be great.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:32, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

It's worth noting that in Caesar's day, the "spear-man" would still have been *gaiza-mann-, so you'd expect something like **Gaisamanni instead. Most scholars these days seem to suspect that the name is actually of Celtic origin. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:01, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

@Florian Blaschke: Do you know a source that goes into these details? It's self-evident, but so far I have only found sources which dismiss the etymology right away, but without presenting the arguments (mismatch of vowel + medial consonant). –Austronesier (talk) 17:13, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

If the Germani near the Rhine really did speak another Indoeuropean language then all bets are off. I also sometimes wonder why the old Latin derived ideas are rejected by some modern authors. I think Isidore of Seville gave the most obvious Latin proposal and Strabo thought it was Latin for "genuine"?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:22, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Just for the record, the etymology of the name doesn't say anything definitive about the native language(s) of the tribes labelled with the name. It might have been a name given to them by neighbouring Celtic tribes. It's quite likely that names like Cimbri and Teutoni and certain river names (Vacalus is an example often named, IIRC) which do not show the expected effects of Grimm's law were mediated through Celtic-speakers. In any case, the original Germani, even if they primarily spoke Germanic dialects, were quite likely not the entirety of Germanic-speaking people.

Yes, and I suppose those add to the reasons that all options seem very speculative?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:54, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Have you already checked this article? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:22, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

I have seen Much mentioned but not read him yet given that he is further back. Will have a look. Thanks.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:54, 24 January 2020 (UTC)