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==RfC==
{{closed rfc top
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| result = This is an easy close both in terms of the strength of argument by the editors who participated and of strength of arguments as regards Wikipedia policy: there is a clear and strong preference for secondary sources and modern scholarship. [[User:RandomCanadian|RandomCanadian]] ([[User talk:RandomCanadian|talk]] / [[Special:Contributions/RandomCanadian|contribs]]) 21:14, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
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Should the prehistory and early history sections of this article be less focused on controversial [[Origin stories of the Goths|origin stories]] like [[Jordanes]]' ''[[Getica]]'', and more focused on archaeological, linguistic and contemporaneous historical evidence?--[[User:Berig|Berig]] ([[User talk:Berig|talk]]) 17:20, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
:We should notify normal editors of this article and talk page? (I see you've done a round of notifications to people you often work with, but...) Obvious ones include {{u|Mnemosientje}}, {{u|Srnec}}, {{u|Carlstak}}, {{u|GPinkerton}}--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 19:30, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
*'''Conditional yes [ADDED: but open to other approaches].''' I think I agree, but it depends a bit on how we would define this fairly broad wording in practice. Is there any chance it will lead to disagreements about what the RFC meant? Seems a good discussion to have though. Thanks. I do think we need to mention Jordanes of course. He is the original Scandinavian origins story, even though his version is obviously dubious. My opinions are explained in several recent discussions.--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 17:32, 31 March 2021 (UTC) It is discussed more above but maybe it helps to say {{red|I am worried about people using this to turn our summaries of archaeologists' findings into "archaeologists have have proven Jordanes right" (about a simple transfer of a whole people, as opposed to a complex range of interaction options)}}. It should of course be possible to avoid that issue, but...--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 19:54, 31 March 2021 (UTC) I also agree with Srnec that reducing discussion of Jordanes is not really hitting the nail on the head yet. {{red|If we simply treat Jordanes as correct, and for example start to treat the Gutones as the identical to the Goths}}, an idea which would arguably not exist without Jordanes (according to the experts), then this proposal could make the article worse. (Influence from Vistula direction is not the same as a mass migration.)--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 07:14, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
:::Wolfram: {{tq|"the question is not whether Scandinavia was the "original homeland of the Goths"; at best it is whether certain Gothic clans came from the north across the Baltic Sea to the Continent."}} (Wolfram, ''[[ History of the Goths]]'', 1990 [https://books.google.be/books?id=xsQxcJvaLjAC&lpg=PA81&vq=homeland&pg=PA37#v=onepage&q&f=false p.37]) (Note that for the Poland to Ukraine migration proposal, Peter Heather is not in agreement with a large part of the field, with his confidence in real significant movement of people, as described by Jordanes.)--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 07:42, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
*'''Yes'''. One line in a lengthy text has generated massive commentary, and to orientate the prehistory section in terms of this origin myth leads to endless complications in doing justice to the controversies it has generated. Scandza warrants mention of course, something along the lines:'Jordanes writes that the ultimate origin of the Goths lay in the island of [[Scandza]] from which they are then said to have emigrated in 1490 BCE.'[[User:Nishidani|Nishidani]] ([[User talk:Nishidani|talk]]) 18:11, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
::Right, but did that any one line create so much debate because of something intrinsic to it, some true belief of the editor who just could not get it, or just because drama is being created artificially, using whatever anchor points are available? The history of the discussions recently and further back would indicate it is the latter. But I agree with the idea of attempting to remove anchors. --[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 19:13, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
:::Don't think we should worry about that, per the general scholium's advice about ''hypotheses non fingo''. [[User:Nishidani|Nishidani]] ([[User talk:Nishidani|talk]]) 08:28, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
::::Maybe my way of framing my concern was wrong. The concern is that trying to reduce discussion of Jordanes might not be hitting the nail on the head. It might clear the mess a bit, but will this article then be filled with more synth derived from archaeology articles (which in turn all actually refer to Jordanes)? That has been equally or more controversial and the article could be worse. (Because worse balanced.) See also the "vote" of Srnec below. Is Jordanes the real problem? I think the problem is more generally that Goths are Goths, but these complex issues concern debatable "pre Goths" and there is a long-running attempt to treat them as simply Goths. (Which some academics do, like Heather, but there is clearly no consensus, and we know that.) I think there are still gaps in our working consensus. I have made a new RFC below.--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 08:38, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
::::Well, for the moment, I'm going to concentrate on reworking [[Jordanes]]'s biography. Once we have a fairly basic outline of his life and works there, some of the material that burdens unduly this page can perhaps, consensually, be shifted there to put some flesh on the skeleton. [[User:Nishidani|Nishidani]] ([[User talk:Nishidani|talk]]) 12:29, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
*'''Yes''' – The amount of explanatory footnotes and focus on essentially discrediting a controversial primary source account from antiquity is excessive. General readers benefit less from extensive scholarly disputes about source credibility than they do from matter-of-fact, academically substantiated evidence from secondary sources about what we know from archaeological records, linguistic evidence, and the available history of the people. We should certainly trim down the overly abundant and lengthy explanatory citations. Some of these are way outside the scope of an Encyclopedia and are more befitting of specialized scholarly journals. It's not that there's anything wrong with much of it, but it does not benefit the typical reader. One of the points of disagreement I have had with a certain editor over the years has been this very fact and that individual's insistence on exhaustively including scholarly debates that are of little interest to the VAST majority of Wikipedia's readers. We must distinguish between Wikipedia and the ''Oxford Journal of Ancient History'' (sorry if this feels flippant). Otherwise, readers will find the article less useful. --[[User:Obenritter|Obenritter]] ([[User talk:Obenritter|talk]]) 18:24, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
::Probably me? But no problem. I'd say in any case your point is very logical here, and on this article it is easy to see we are slipping off the tight-rope to one side, and we need to move back the other way. Furthermore, I've learned here (with some credit to Krakkos) that we ''can'' spin off smaller articles which are MUCH less controversial for all parties. Honestly, my vision for [[Germanic peoples]] was similar (more to spin-offs, shorter article) but in the first round of changes that was difficult for all of us to imagine. It is hard to agree on moving OUT some favourite bit. In the long-run that is probably the way there also. The experience on this article has made me believe more in that strategy. We just need to avoid POV forks. I hope the well is not too poisoned by talk of Goffart agendas! :) --[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 19:13, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
*'''Sections are fine as is:''' In my view, the History sections are fine; the fact that some aspects are disputed is not ideal, but that's life. [[User:Peter K Burian|Peter K Burian]] ([[User talk:Peter K Burian|talk]]) 19:19, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
*'''Yes''', let's stick to mainstream scholarship on this topic. [[User:Bloodofox|&#58;bloodofox:]] ([[User talk:Bloodofox|talk]]) 19:35, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
*'''Yes''', I think focusing more on what archaeologists, linguists, and historians have to say about the Goths origins and less on the text of Jordanes is in order.--[[User:Ermenrich|Ermenrich]] ([[User talk:Ermenrich|talk]]) 20:22, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
*'''No'''. I'm being a bit deliberately contrarian here, but the whole problem is an obsessive focus on origins. And it's genuinely impossible to overstate the centrality of Jordanes to this issue. There's nothing ''less'' controversial about the archaeology, because its ''ethnic'' interpretation hinges on written evidence. If we want to write an article that is all matter-of-fact, we have to drop the Goths' origins. They spring into being fully formed north of the Black Sea and that's that. Everything before that has a question mark after it. And it just so happens that no other question marks in Late Antiquity are as contentious as the ones concerning Gothic origins. Nobody debates the origins of the Franks like this.<br />I have just read (and edited) the "Prehistory" and "Early history" sections. The latter contains little Jordanes and is mostly an analysis of possible early mentions in Strabo, Pliny, Tacitus and Ptolemy. The former is indeed centred on Jordanes and is not a pleasure to read (not least because of the copious footnotes). I just don't see how adding more about the Wielbark culture will improve matters. I would suggest splitting off material to [[Origin stories of the Goths]] and renaming that article [[Origins of the Goths]], reducing the load on this article and allowing for fuller development of various theories. Before I edited it out, there was mention of the ''Gutasaga''. That sort of thing strengthens nobody's case without elaboration. Moving stuff to a separate article, would allow for some elaboration of all sides. [[User:Srnec|Srnec]] ([[User talk:Srnec|talk]]) 00:38, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
:::For the record, I am not opposed to this direction of moving forward. The choice between this philosophy and the one proposed by Berig depends, for me, on the practical details. Berig's proposal sounds simpler, but Srnec has had more recent editing and source-checking experience on this article and I suspect in practice Berig's proposal might need 2 or 3 more RFCs to convert into a clear agreement on real actions.--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 07:14, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
:::I should mention that I '''don't''' agree that the article about this debate should be move to [[Origin stories of the Goths]], which has nice clean boundaries and a good size. I am coming to believe that we need an article to cover the enormous literature on the '''''Ethnogeneses'' (plural) of the Goths'''. This would be a place to clearly separate out the archeaological discussions, refer to the Jordanes discussions and perhaps most importantly finally give a home for the ''Traditionskern'' theories from other approaches, and not let them be presented in misleading ways as simple mass migrations. Post World 2 literature about the Goths tends to see them as a series of peoples, re-founded over and over, sharing some common threads, but not physically the same population. This article is failing to explain that.--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 07:51, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
*'''Yes'''. Obenritter has verbalized thoughts I've had about the article, but expressed it better than I could. I agree that the amount of explanatory footnotes is excessive. I personally find them of great interest, but I think they are distracting and of little interest to the general reader. A greater focus on the archaeological, linguistic and contemporaneous historical evidence will benefit general readers far more than copious notes on the nuances of abstruse (to them) scholarly disputes. Although Srnec takes the "nay" side, he does make some good points. [[User:Carlstak|Carlstak]] ([[User talk:Carlstak|talk]]) 02:32, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
*'''Yes, but also relocate some material'''. I agree with the gist of Obenritter's comment, but Srnec also makes some good points, especially about renaming [[Origin stories of the Goths]] to r [[Origins of the Goths]] (especially since the original is ambiguous and implies only origin myths that the Goth had about themselves), then moving much of this material to that page, and leaving behind here only a [[WP:SUMMARY]]. This would also obviate the need for a bunch of distracting footnotes, since they would really belong (probably better as regular prose, not footnotes) in the origins article. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 06:41, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
*'''Yes'''. Our most reliable sources for Gothic prehistory and early history are reviews of the archaeological, linguistic and contemporaneous historical evidence by modern scholars. The reliability of Jordanes and ''Getica'' is heavily disputed, and details on that dispute are better discussed in other articles. The aim of this article should be to present an overview of the Goths for a general readership based on reliable secondary and tertiary sources. When modern scholars think Jordanes is relevant to archaeological, linguistic or contemporaneous historical evidence on the Goths we can briefly mention it, but that's all. The explanatory footnotes makes the article less readable, but also provides information which is useful, for example for discussions like this RFC. Reaching consensus on this talk page about various disagreements will hopefelly enable us to reduce the explanatory footnotes. [[User:Krakkos|Krakkos]] ([[User talk:Krakkos|talk]]) 10:13, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
*::Two concerns about this. 1. I disagree on a detail which I suspect might be important to you: the words "''and early history''" in the first sentence. ''Historians'' (and philologists) are the most important sources for the historical Goths. As soon as we hit that period, which is the first period everyone agrees that we are talking about "the" Goths, archaeology, linguistics, etc. take a supporting role. 2. I am not against citing archaeologists ''for their archaeology'' (in this article and in spin-offs), but in the past WP has reported very little of that. What this article has seen much more of, are citations from comments in archaeological articles about ''non-archaeological evidence'' (especially Jordanes) which have effectively been used as a way of getting the stories of Jordanes into the article through a back door, without the proper use of sources which are authorities on Jordanes. If this RFC just leads to ''more'' of that then I think I am probably not the only one who would be forced to change my vote to a strong no.--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 10:43, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
*:::Well said; I was thinking something vaguely like this but hadn't worked out how to articulate it. This kind of "back-door [[WP:UNDUE]]" problem comes up a lot in all topics that run up against the antiquity wall (King Arthur, early history of Ireland, origin of the Vikings, historicity of the Jesus and the Bible, etc., etc.). <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 11:09, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
*::::That's a useful clarification! Thanks.--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 13:47, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
*'''Yes'''. Scholarly evaluation of the entirety of the evidence should be summarized to set Jordanes' account (and the divergent evaluations of it) in context. [[User:Yngvadottir|Yngvadottir]] ([[User talk:Yngvadottir|talk]]) 22:03, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
:'entirety of the evidence'? Put so laconically, that seems to me unworkable, because the problem is the fierce abundance of contradictory interpretations of virtually every datum. Take one example from our text that caught my eye over a week ago on first reading this.
:<blockquote>Getica claims to be based on an earlier lost work by '''Cassiodorus, which also made use of an even earlier work by the Gothic historian [[Ablabius]].'''</blockquote>
:I.e. (a) a claim (poorly put: Jordanes cites this Ablabius just three times)
:(b) an assertion passed off as a fact that this Ablabius lies behind Cassiodorus's lost work.
:(c) a claim that an historian called Ablabius existed
:(d) a claim that he was a Gothic historian.
All of these assertions/claims are contentious. Just that one line would, on this page, engender a ''vagina notionum'', to play on the noted phrase by Jordanes. T his is a Dantean recipe for editors: ''lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate''.[[User:Nishidani|Nishidani]] ([[User talk:Nishidani|talk]]) 05:19, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
::You are right. The second and third sentences of the Prehistory section need to be changed. There are basic errors there. I will start a new talk page section.--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 07:38, 2 April 2021 (UTC) ADDED: [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Goths&diff=1015579891&oldid=1015579823 done]--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 08:26, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
*'''Yes'''. per [[User:Obenritter|Obenritter]][[User:Sea Ane|Sea Ane]] ([[User talk:Sea Ane|talk]]) 20:53, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
* '''Closure has been requested''' I have requested the closure of this RfC at [[Wikipedia:Closure requests#Requests for comment]].[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Closure_requests&diff=1021718628&oldid=1021528993] [[User:Krakkos|Krakkos]] ([[User talk:Krakkos|talk]]) 08:58, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
{{closed rfc bottom}}
 
== RFC on article focus ==
{{closed rfc top|There is a clear (in fact, nearly unanimous) consensus in the discussion below that the article should '''focus on Goths as described in modern scholarship'''. <small>([[Wikipedia:Non-admin closure|non-admin closure]])</small> [[User:Eggishorn|<span style="background-color:#FF7400; color:#FFFFFF;">Eggishorn</span>]] [[User talk:Eggishorn|(talk)]] [[Special:Contributions/Eggishorn|(contrib)]] 19:23, 8 May 2021 (UTC)}}
<!-- [[User:DoNotArchiveUntil]] 09:01, 6 May 2021 (UTC) -->{{User:ClueBot III/DoNotArchiveUntil|1620291680}}
Yes or no or something else? This article should primarily focus upon '''the Goths described by Roman historians from the third century'''. The earlier Vistula [[Gutones]], for example, are relevant, but a distinct topic which should not be simply equated to "Goths".--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 08:03, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
 
Possibly interested users (please add any missing): {{u|Berig}} {{u|Krakkos}} {{u|Nishidani}} {{u|Srnec}} {{u|Mnemosientje}} {{u|Carlstak}} {{u|Obenritter}} {{u|Peter K Burian}} {{u|Bloodofox}} {{u|Ermenrich}} {{u|SMcCandlish}} {{u|Yngvadottir}} {{u|Alcaios}}
*'''Yes''', I am the one proposing that this is the focus. I think it is obvious, but in practice we have not all been working this way. The academic disputes about Gutones, Gauts, Wielbark etc are not about Goths as such, and involve ''several'' disciplines. They always include mentions of Jordanes, Ptolemy etc. They are too complex to handle in this article as a short aside near the start, without causing major problems, as we have seen. Reducing discussion of Jordanes is an idea which seems to have some consensus. If we reduce this key part of the origins discussion we should also reduce the other parts which are typically discussed together with it. A major complication in the literature is that academics often treat Gutones as predecessors of the Goths, in the sense of having a name and traditions which were passed on, even when they do not literally believe in a large migration. This important point has been very difficult to get worded properly here without taking over the article. Possibly we need a new ''Ethnogenesis/ Traditionskern/ Origins of the Goths'' article? I am not a fan of using the ''Origin Stories'' article for archaeology, etc.--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 08:26, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
*'''This article should focus upon the Goths as described by modern scholars'''. Modern scholarship on the Goths mostly focus on material from the 3rd century onwards, but material from earlier periods is usually included as well. In his ''[https://www.amazon.com/Goths-Peter-Heather/dp/0631209328 The Goths]'' (1998), which is often considered the standard work on the Goths in English, [[Peter Heather]] devotes about 15% of the book to these earlier periods. This is about the same amount of attention which this article Wikipedia article gives these periods.
:The names ''Gutones'' and ''Goths'' are identical in the [[Gothic language]]. Practically all linguists and archaeologists treat the ''Gutones'' as Goths. Heather treats the ''Gutones'' as Goths. [[Herwig Wolfram]] (author of the standard work on the Goths in German) [https://books.google.com/books?id=xsQxcJvaLjAC says] that {{tq|"whenever the Gutones are mentioned... these terms refer to the Goths"}}. The entry for [https://www.degruyter.com/document/database/GAO/entry/RGA_2152/html Gutones] in the ''[[Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde]]'' is a redirect to Goths. There are certain historians, such as [[Arne Søby Christensen]], who doubt a connection between ''Gutones'' and Goths, but even he [https://books.google.com/books?id=AcLDHOqOt4cC&pg=PA33 concedes] that it is {{tq|"normally assumed that [the Gutones] are identical with the Goths"}}. This article should focus on what is normally assumed by scholars, while taking note of minority viewpoints. It already does that. Our article ''[[Gutones]]'' is a [[WP:POVFORK|POV fork]] based on a minority viewpoint and a more or less a verbatim copy paste of material from Goths and [[name of the Goths]], and should probably again be a redirect to this article.
:I don't think we should entirely remove this article's coverage of material prior to the 3rd century. It may however be an idea to reduce the complexity of that coverage, particularly through reducing discussion of [[Jordanes]]' ''[[Getica]]''. That question is already being discussed in an RFC posted above less than a day ago. I must say that creating mulitple RFC's on practically the same issue within such a short period of time is not helpful for consensus building. [[User:Krakkos|Krakkos]] ([[User talk:Krakkos|talk]]) 09:38, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
::To be clear though, no one is arguing that the Gutones, or even Jordanes, are not important topics which should be mentioned in this article, ''so we agree that far''. But I strongly disagree with your insistence on simply equating Gutones to Goths. Many academics strongly disagree, and most write only of a ''Traditionskern'' connection which we are not doing justice to here. Even the academics who believe in a simple migration like Heather, spell the connection between the ''two'' peoples out, and why he disagrees with others, rather than just assuming they are identical in all his word usage. (You constantly push for a simple ''equation'' here on WP, as in your recent change to the Classification section, ''but'' that is clearly OR, and can never be the consensus stable version.) I also strongly disagree that this RFC is the same topic as the above one, which already seems decided. This RFC is clearly looking at how this can be done in practice, and takes into account some concerns of people who posted. --[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 10:34, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
*'''Focus on Goths as described in modern scholarship''', per Krakkos. The treatment in current reliable sources should guide the treatment on Wikipedia. This is basically exactly the same situation as [[Celts]], which is certainly not limited to the Keltoi as described by the ancient Greeks, who were thought of as a group of tribes, but rather is a modern ethno-linguistic topic of considerable breadth and also some controversies. We're pretty good at coverings those when we see the forest not just the individual trees. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 11:05, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
::We should be careful not to make this more complex than it is. I don't see any significant similarity with the Celts situation, because there is and was one ''clear'' set of peoples called Goths, and academics have not expanded that much to other peoples in any simple or uncontroversial way. For example, I don't think anyone calls East-Germanic speakers collectively "the Goths", parallel with what happens with Celts. The Gutones are either argued to be the ''same'' people in an earlier phase, or else seen as an earlier related proto-Gothic people whose name and culture probably influenced that of the historical Goths. So it is nothing like the name extension we see with Celts. (As Nishidani pointed out, Procopius talks about a larger category of Gothic peoples which included Vandals and Gepids, but I don't think we need a separate article for that as it has not much influenced modern academic usage?) The principle you state sounds fine in theory, but I'm not sure how you would think this wording is different from the wording at the top of the RFC?--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 11:26, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
* '''Focus on Goths as described in modern scholarship''', per Krakkos and SMcCandlish. The treatment from current reliable secondary sources should guide the discussion of the Goths on Wikipedia. Scholarly observations should not be necessarily constrained to Roman opinion from the the Third century. The article should concentrate on what is known about them and not the lengthy classification arguments about ethnic assimilation and/or academic identification disputes. Those are mentionable to be sure, but should not be exhaustively expounded. All the effort on what the Goths "might have been" and intellectual conjecture taken from varied primary source interpretations do not aid the general reader. Reminder – we are building an Encyclopedia and not writing for a scholarly journal. Yes, we want academic integrity and appropriate sourcing, but the granularity of the discourse has to remain within the framework of a general reading audience.--[[User:Obenritter|Obenritter]] ([[User talk:Obenritter|talk]]) 13:13, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
::I am concerned for the RFC that this wording is being used instead of a simpler wording. I fear that it is unclear, and I am also worried because I think I see a likely way that it could be used badly. Consider the similar wording used in this discussion: [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Goths&diff=1015133619&oldid=1015132186]. {{u|Obenritter}}, {{u|SMcCandlish}}, I agree with what I think both of you intend, but can you help me check for sure? I clearly agree with removing detailed discussion of uncertain conjectures to a new or existing article or articles, shortening such discussion here about the core Goths topics, but I would not agree with converting ''uncertain'' academic positions into ''certainties'' on this article based on the wording used in thee RFC answers. Do you both agree? The obvious case which is presumably in mind is Gutones = Goths. One editor wants these to be equated in a simple way in Wikipedia "voice", and has been long been using a similar wording to this. It is possible to find individual scholars who argue the case of course, and it is a reasonable case, but it is still argued to be an "intellectual conjecture" by many respectable academics, and even the academics who argue for it distinguish the two peoples they are arguing can be connected. (They lived in different periods, for one thing, and no classical source equated them.) So, I hope no one will be removing ''mention'' of uncertainty ''because of this RFC wording'', being reinterpreted as justifying that. Do you understand my concern?
::Smaller point, also to get as much clarity as possible: I agree with Obenritter about this: I think no one here argues that we have to only use the opinions of Roman authors. In order to interpret the written sources of that period we cite modern ''historians'' and other experts from fields contributing to those discussions. Do you agree? The materials which everyone seems to agree to be making a mess of this article concern the so-called ''prehistoric'' Goths, and the scholarly conjectures and debates about those. My aim in this RFC was to make sure we all agree on this. Hope that makes sense.--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 13:46, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
:::Andrew -- you are right that we should not be confirming any monolithic ethnonym or naming convention from antiquity as definitive. We should point out that some scholars equate Gutones with the Goths and others contest this. However, no exhaustive and lengthy explanatory footnotes are needed. We can simply cite a work and page number for a couple scholars in one case where they support this idea and a couple page-number RSs that represent the converse. That means trimming out a lot of the scholarly debate and allowing those so inclined to research the information further for themselves. What we are trying to prevent here are diversions "into the weeds" which have been incorporated throughout this article, the Germanic peoples page, and the like. We know you know your stuff and so do many of the editors in this group. What we don't want is a mish-mash of our scholarly disagreements (by way of our support for one author's opinion or another) searing through the page. Does that make sense?--[[User:Obenritter|Obenritter]] ([[User talk:Obenritter|talk]]) 14:15, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
::::Thanks for the clarification! Makes perfect sense to me! I suppose we can almost say that one of our jobs as WP editors is to limit the amount of scholarly disagreements discussed per article (but never to hide them)? Seems like a good aim. If there are too many on one article, then everything including talk page discussion get more difficult. Concerning [[Germanic peoples]] I agree it is a cautionary tale for this article. It still has too many topics. However, it was worse, and it will get better. I just don't think anyone has a good proposal yet on which bits should be farmed out next. More to the point, I don't think we should really have the same dilemmas here because the core topics of the Goths are relatively clearly defined.--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 14:26, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
:::::Agreed Andrew. {{u|Nishidani}} made a great point. In places where there is deep academic contestation, we can produce offshoot articles. See: Gutones vs. Goths debate page (hypothetical for now). All of that fine work you've done on that specific topic can then be salvaged and included on a new expository WIki-page dedicated to that problem/issue.--[[User:Obenritter|Obenritter]] ([[User talk:Obenritter|talk]]) 14:31, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
::::::There is in fact a Gutones article, which Krakkos mentioned above. Needs more work. I think a section about Wielbark eventually needs to be added. So that is one more article where we could place some of this.--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 15:27, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
::::I'm reminded of a remark on the various theories of the etymology of [[flamen]], as a reflex of the [[Proto-Indoeuropean|Vedic]] word for 'prayer'(''bráman-'') or cognate with the Gothic word for 'worship (''blotan''), a generalization that runs:
::::<blockquote>That such cases are strictly speaking undecidable, so far from calming debate, has seemed to stimulate bickering in the scholarly literature.'[[Andrew Sihler]] ''New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin,'' [[Oxford University Press]] 1995 p.198</blockquote>
::::I think here we are basically all on the same page.[[User:Nishidani|Nishidani]] ([[User talk:Nishidani|talk]]) 14:33, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
::::I would add, regarding "converting {{em|uncertain}} academic positions into {{em|certainties}} on this article", that doing so isn't what anyone has proposed, and doing it wouldn't be permissible under [[WP:DUE]] and [[WP:NOR]] policies, anyway. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 12:56, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
:::::Let's say I could predict which arguments those words were intended to be used for, based on what has happened before, and it has indeed now started. So it is very important that I asked for clarifications. Please look to the newest RFC. What this article needs is outsiders to try to help break a circle.--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 18:51, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
*'''Comment''' Invited by the bot. It would take me an hour of reading to intelligently weigh in on either side but I've been involved in many similar / parallel situations and might be able to suggest a framework. "Goths" is just a word, not an inherent topic. Then you have to decide what it includes. The best guide is the common relevant meaning or closely related sets of common meanings for the term. ("Relevant" and "closely related" excludes meanings like the modern day kids who wear black.) "Common meaning" in this case (since there is no widespread common meaning with the public) would be the common meaning amongst historians and scholars. Not because they know some inherent truth, but because they are "the public" for the purposes of common meaning in this case. That would mean that anything that some significant group of scholars/historians calls "Goths" should be included in this article. If there is significant debate about use of the term for a certain group, that part can have attribution type wording like "Some historians consider xxxx to be Goths". <b style="color: #0000cc;">''North8000''</b> ([[User talk:North8000#top|talk]]) 14:29, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
::Thanks North. By my interpretation this is the kind of solution Nishidani and Obenritter and myself (and maybe everyone) is considering. OTOH, I honestly don't think we have an extreme case here of a word where it is difficult to point to uncontroversial core topics.
*'''No'''. The article should present what modern scholars say on the topic, not what ancient historians said. {{U|North8000}} articulates that what we do in cases of substantial disagreement among scholars is attribute statements. [[User:Yngvadottir|Yngvadottir]] ([[User talk:Yngvadottir|talk]]) 22:03, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
::{{re|Yngvadottir}} thanks for your input. To help editors understand how to convert this to editing directions, can I please ask you to clarify? ''No one is arguing against using modern scholarship.'' The question is about the core topic of this article. Obviously one of the issues of specific interest to editors here is whether we can aim to shorten (and move elsewhere) the detailed discussion here of scholarly debates about the proposed ancestry of the Goths before the third century, when the peoples called Goths by scholars first appear. Of course no one is talking about totally removing discussion of the ancestors either, but indeed using wording like North8000 mentions, "Some historians consider xxxx to be Goths", where xxxx might include [[Gutones]] or the [[Wielbark culture]]. Does that match your thinking?--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 07:20, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
*'''Let's stick to modern scholarship'''. Per several commentators above, I agree that we need to stick to what modern scholars say about this topic. [[User:Bloodofox|&#58;bloodofox:]] ([[User talk:Bloodofox|talk]]) 23:11, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
::{{re|Bloodofox}} thanks for your input. To help editors understand how to convert this to editing directions, can I please ask you to clarify? ''No one is arguing against using modern scholarship.'' See my similar question above to Yngvadottir. --[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 07:20, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
::::Andrew. There's a sufficiently large set of comments here for someone like yourself to go ahead and outline the shape of the prehistory section as you think it should run, taking in all of these suggestions, together with your own view. Why not drop in a draft, so that editors can comment, tweak etc., it, while these RfC conversations continue. An alternative work in progress, that would give us all a far clearer and more manageable picture to mull over and hone? [[User:Nishidani|Nishidani]] ([[User talk:Nishidani|talk]]) 07:26, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
{{od}}'''Tasks: my understanding.''' I think the shortening of the Prehistory section is already preceding in a sense. See the edits by Srnec. Another thing agreed seems to be that we are over-foot-noting (e.g. comment of Obenritter). Krakkos seems to accept that, but I think he is arguing that we should leave that while things are being discussed. So that should start being done carefully, as consensus becomes clear. A bigger job, which no one seems ready to do today, is starting to improve the [[Wielbark culture]] article, and expand the [[Gutones]] article to include a section on the Wielbark culture. Those would seem to be low-hanging fruit jobs which will help editors get a vision for how to go further. It is not yet clear if we need to create a new article, and that is connected to the question of where we should have is where to discuss the "Traditionskern" (charismatic clan etc) models and how they apply to the two proposed migrations of the "proto" Goths. Perhaps it can be handled well enough in existing articles.--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 07:49, 2 April 2021 (UTC) ADDED: Apart from the '''Prehistory''' section, clearly the '''Lead''' and '''Early History''' sections as they currently stand should also be reviewed with these two RFCs in mind. Significant parts are written from the assumption that scholars are trying to prove Jordanes correct (for example, asking where archaeologists think "Gothiscandza" was), and are not about the Goths as such, but about their probable precursors.--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 09:43, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
* '''Focus on Goths as described in modern scholarship''' Apart from all the historiographical and linguistic concerns, this rubric should be implemented merely on editorial grounds for clarity and concision. Readers who want to pursue the subject further can consult the various spin-off articles (those to be created, and those to be improved). [[User:Carlstak|Carlstak]] ([[User talk:Carlstak|talk]]) 14:25, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
* '''Closure has been requested''' I have requested the closure of this RfC at [[Wikipedia:Closure requests#Requests for comment]].[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Closure_requests&diff=1021718710&oldid=1021718628] [[User:Krakkos|Krakkos]] ([[User talk:Krakkos|talk]]) 08:59, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
{{closed rfc bottom}}
 
== RfC on [[User:Krakkos/sandbox/Goths|proposal]] to simplify the Prehistory, Early history and Movement towards the Black Sea sections and merge them into a single Origins and early history section ==
{{closed rfc top|Read in context of the prior two RfC's on this topic, there is a '''clear consensus to substantially trim these sections'''. The specific text proposed, however, has drawn significant objections and a consensus to implement it as-is is not apparent in this discussion. There is a '''rough consensus to use the proposed text as a basis''' for further refinement. Whether the participants in this discussion believe such refinement should take place in a sandbox, in the article directly, or on this talk page is not clearly established below but can be determined through the [[WP:BRD|normal editing process]]. <small>([[Wikipedia:Non-admin closure|non-admin closure]])</small> [[User:Eggishorn|<span style="background-color:#FF7400; color:#FFFFFF;">Eggishorn</span>]] [[User talk:Eggishorn|(talk)]] [[Special:Contributions/Eggishorn|(contrib)]] 19:59, 8 May 2021 (UTC)}}
<!-- [[User:DoNotArchiveUntil]] 13:01, 7 May 2021 (UTC) -->{{User:ClueBot III/DoNotArchiveUntil|1620392480}}
From the earlier [[Talk:Goths#RfC]] and and [[Talk:Goths#RFC on article focus]] posted above, it is obvious that there is a clear consensus among editors that the [[Goths#Prehistory|Prehistory]], [[Goths#Early history|Early history]] and [[Goths#Movement towards the Black Sea|Movement towards the Black Sea]] sections are too long and complicated, too reliant and focused on [[Jordanes]] and his ''[[Getica]]'', and that they should be give more emphasis on the analysis of archaeological, historical and linguistic evidence by modern scholars. Much of these sections are my work. I have sought to address the concerns of the community through a proposal. '''Can [[User:Krakkos/sandbox/Goths#Origins and early history|this proposal]][https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User%3AKrakkos%2Fsandbox%2FGoths&type=revision&diff=1016468587&oldid=1015600693], in which the Prehistory, Early history and Movement towards the Black Sea sections are simplified and merged into a single Origins and early history section, be implemented at Goths?''' [[User:Krakkos|Krakkos]] ([[User talk:Krakkos|talk]]) 10:31, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
:This proposal has been modified twice in order to adapt to comments from other users below. For the original 2 April propoposal see this diff.[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Goths&diff=1015602643&oldid=1015601949] For the first modification on 2 April see this diff.[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Goths&diff=1015618420&oldid=1015618187] [[User:Krakkos|Krakkos]] ([[User talk:Krakkos|talk]]) 10:31, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
Pinging [[User:Berig|Berig]], [[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]], [[User:Nishidani|Nishidani]], [[User:Obenritter|Obenritter]], [[User:Peter K Burian|Peter K Burian]], [[User:Bloodofox|Bloodofox]], [[User:Ermenrich|Ermenrich]], [[User:Srnec|Srnec]], [[User:Carlstak|Carlstak]], [[User:Mnemosientje|Mnemosientje]], [[User:SMcCandlish|SMcCandlish]], [[User:Yngvadottir|Yngvadottir]], [[User:Alcaios|Alcaios]], [[User:Pfold|Pfold]] and [[User:North8000|North8000]], who have participated in similar previous related discussions. [[User:Krakkos|Krakkos]] ([[User talk:Krakkos|talk]]) 12:18, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
 
*'''Suggestion.''' Thanks. Can you please post a diff (or diffs) above showing so we can see the differences with the current version and/or the March 18 version? (Ideally both.)--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 12:20, 2 April 2021 (UTC) '''Disturbed.''' For the record I note this was not done. I still believe reverting to the March 18 version is the simplest option which all new changes should be compared to. Other editors may not realize, but this whole discussion was triggered by major changes after March 18 which should not have happened, and the first question has to be whether to revert those. It is silly to compare only versions which are in effect completely the proposal of the same editor. Are we playing chess? --[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 18:58, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
*'''Overall support''', though I'm not closed to revision suggestions, etc., and I still agree with earlier commentary to '''move some of this material to what is presently [[Origin stories of the Goths]] and renaming that [[Origins of the Goths]]''' (or [[Prehistory of the Goths]] or whatever), leaving behind more of a [[WP:SUMMARY]] at this article. This just is not the place to pore in depth over all the disputation about the Goth's origins; we have an article for that already. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 12:37, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
*'''Needs more work for me.''' Thanks for making this quick effort but this section is basically now an alternative version of the [[Gutones]] article, with too much detail about them, whereas what has been removed and de-emphasized should as per the RFC become more important, not less important. (Wolfram p.13: {{tq|The Goths of the third century were considered a new people to whom the old Scythian name applied. No ancient ethnographer made a connection between the Goths and the Gutones. The Gutonic immigrants became Goths the very moment the Mediterranean world considered them Scythians.}}) One principle I think was agreed in the RFCs is that Jordanes discussion should be reduced, ''but'' his influence ''should not be hidden''. We should not place the stories of Jordanes in modern clothing. Why mention Jordanes at all if we do not mention that he is the original source of the idea that the ancestors of the Goths took part in 2 migrations? I think we must handle him first then, letting our readers know about his influence on historians. That would be the quickest way to handle him. We can quickly summarize that Jordanes is not considered reliable, but various recent scholars argue for one or both migrations being some kind of reflection of real events (but probably not a real migration). Then we can quickly mention (1) the Gutones (but less detail), (2) the archaeological evidence of Scandinavian contacts with the Vistula, and OTOH [[Wielbark culture]] (Vistula) influence on the [[Chernyakhov culture]], which is widely considered Gothic (3) the newer thinking that instead of a migration there were smaller scale influences. (I don't think anyone wanted ''less'' of 2 and 3, but perhaps even ''more''. These 2 points have been de-emphasized and over-simplified in some past versions. 3 currently has no home article either.) So this comment is based on what I understand the RFC responses are saying.--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 12:50, 2 April 2021 (UTC) List of concerns with first and second proposals ('''Work still needed'''):
:*'''Simple equation of Gutones with Goths''' is not acceptable. It is not found in scholarly sources. And we have a Gutones article. This is a case of making certainties out of uncertainties.
:*'''Title "Early Goths" is not acceptable.''' For same reason. Discussion on this talk page suggest there is near unanimity among recent editors that '''Origins of the Goths''' would be suitable for this topic. (It has been discussed as possibly needing a new article.) I would, predictably, prefer something more uncertain like "Origin hypotheses" or "Origins debates".
:*'''Over-simple attitude of 2 migrations of Jordanes''' is not acceptable, and just mentioning Jordanes less hides the source of these migration stories, which makes the situation worse, not better. We agreed not to do this in previous RFCs.
:*'''No mention of the modern scholarly pro-Jordanes argument.''' We are now including no mention at all of the very fundamental issue that scholarly proponents of Jordanes now rarely believe in real migrations, but rather culutral influences. (Heather's understanding of the second migration is obviously an exception, but does not constitute a consensus.) This seriously misleads our readers.--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 12:08, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
*'''General support but more trimming''' – Something more of a synopsis. Hypothetical: ''Origin myths and ethnic classification for the Goths remain disputed. These range from classical sources that claim the Goths migrated from Scandinavia (Jordanes' Getica)(source citation accompanied by short explanatory note), their emergence as misidentified groupings of Butones, Gutones, etc. (source citation), whether they were originally Scythians (source citation), or XXXXX. Archaeological findings and linguistic analysis also complicate the discussion as XXXXX claims that XXXX while so and so claims XXXX (source citations)''. What part of the point here is that we don't need excessive discussion when so much about the Goths' origins are disputed and unknown. Loads of academic conjecture do not help the general reader. It's wonderful stuff to this forum's audience (but we are the well-versed minority here). [[User:Nishidani|Nishidani]] made it pretty clear in his post that what this article needs is some trimmed down yet informative information with side-shoot articles where necessary. It seems that [[User:SMcCandlish|SMcCandlish]] is suggesting similar with the comment that "This just is not the place to pore in depth over all the disputation about the Goth's origin." Maybe I'm wrong, but this was my take on what the RFC concluded.--[[User:Obenritter|Obenritter]] ([[User talk:Obenritter|talk]]) 13:19, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
*::I've invited you and the other participants in this discussion to comment on my draft [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Andrew_Lancaster/Goths]. It will also probably need to be pared down etc, because as a starting point I am trying to be relatively complete, concerning things which are priorities to various editors, so we can really see the decisions we are making when we do reduce it. FWIW its worth I've placed your skeleton draft in the left column and started working in the right column.--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 20:16, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
* '''Update''' {{re|Andrew Lancaster|SMcCandlish|Obenritter}} Thanks for the support and advice. I have updated the proposal through trimming coverage on contemporaneous historical records, and combined the five paragraphs on it into a single paragraph. [[User:Krakkos|Krakkos]] ([[User talk:Krakkos|talk]]) 14:27, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
*:Again thanks Krakkos, but for me at least this still seems to be mainly about the Gutones, who have a seprate article, and is pushing the idea that Gutones = "Early Goths". (I have to say I really don't like that section title.) See my Wolfram quote above, which is an example of how everyone, including people who see Gutones as the "precursors" of Goths, see Gutones and Goths as two separable topics. I thought everyone wanted us to do something like this: Part 1. Jordanes frames the migration discussion but Jordanes is unreliable. Part 2. Other evidence relevant to the topic continues to be debated by scholars (Gutones, Archaeology, Traditionskern proposals, etc).--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 15:18, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
*::The [[Thervingi]], [[Greuthungi]], [[Visigoths]], [[Ostrogoths]] and [[Crimean Goths]] are separable topics with their own articles, but that does not mean that they shouldn't be covered in this article. The same principle applies to the "Gutones". The idea that "everyone" considers the "Gutones" and Goths to be "two separable topics" is simply untrue. If everyone believed that, the why is the entry for the [https://www.degruyter.com/document/database/GAO/entry/RGA_2152/html "Gutones"] in the ''[[Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde]]'' a redirect to its entry on [https://www.degruyter.com/document/database/GAO/entry/RGA_2029/html Goths], while their entry on the [[Lemovii]] (a much less notable people mentioned together with the "Gutones") is a distinct article? That the "Gutones" are the same as the Goths or at least ancestral to them is supported by such an overwhelming amount of scholars that many don't even bother to discuss whether there is a distinction between them. Here are some citations from authorative works on this question:
*::*{{talkquote|"[The] Goths are met in historical sources... [in] northern Poland in the first and second centuries... '''Goths are first mentoned occupying territory in what is now Poland in the first century AD'''... The history of people labelled "Goths" thus spans 700 years, and huge tracts of Europe from northern Poland to the Atlantic ocean... [T]he Wielbark culture.... took shape in the middle of the first century AD... in Pomerania and lands either side of the lower Vistula... [T]his is the broad area where our few literary sources place a group called Goths at this time... Tacitus Germania 43-4 places them not quite on the Baltic coast; Ptolemy Geography 3.5.8 locates them east of the Vistula; Strabo Geography 7.1.3 (if Butones should be emended to Gutones) broadly agrees with Tacitus... '''The mutually confirmatory information of ancient sources and the archaeological record both suggest that Goths can first be identified beside the Vistula. It is here that this attempt to write their history will begin.'''" – {{cite book |last=Heather |first=Peter |author-link=Peter Heather |year=1998 |title=The Goths |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eCf0Tjg0BukC |publisher=[[Blackwell Publishing]] |pages=XIV, 2, 21, 30 |isbn=0-631-209-32-8}}}}
*::*{{talkquote|"Goths lived close to the Baltic in northern Poland in the first two centuries CE" – {{cite book |last1=Heather |first1=Peter |author-link1=Peter Heather |date=2012 |chapter=Goths |chapter-url=https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195170726.001.0001/acref-9780195170726-e-545 |editor1-last=Gagarin |editor1-first=Michael |title=The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome |url=https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195170726.001.0001/acref-9780195170726 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |pages=323-324 |isbn=9780195170726 |doi=10.1093/acref/9780195170726.001.0001 |access-date=April 1, 2021}}}}
*::*{{talkquote|"Goths... a Germanic tribe whose name means 'the people', first attested immediately south of the Baltic Sea in the first two centuries." – {{cite book |last1=Heather |first1=Peter |author-link1=Peter Heather |date=2018 |chapter=Goths |chapter-url=https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780198662778.001.0001/acref-9780198662778-e-2090? |editor1-last=Nicholson |editor1-first=Oliver |title=The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=A09WDwAAQBAJ |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |page=673 |isbn=9780191744457 |access-date=January 25, 2020}}}}
*::*{{talkquote|"Goths—or Gutones, as the Roman sources called them... Hereafter, '''whenever the Gutones and Guti are mentioned, these terms refer to the Goths'''." – * {{cite book |last=Wolfram |first=Herwig |author-link=Herwig Wolfram |translator-first=Thomas J. |translator-last=Dunlap |title=History of the Goths |publisher=University of California Press |date=1988 |orig-year=Originally published in German, 1980 |pages=12-13, 23 |isbn=978-0-520-05259-8}}}}
*::*{{talkquote|"During the first century and a half AD, four authors mention a people also normally identified with 'the Goths'... '''It is normally assumed that [the Gutones] are identical with the Goths'''." – * {{cite book |last1=Christensen |first1=Arne Søby |author-link1=Arne Søby Christensen |year=2002 |title=Cassiodorus, Jordanes and the History of the Goths |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AcLDHOqOt4cC |publisher=[[Museum Tusculanum Press]] |pages=32–33 |isbn=9788772897103}}}}
*::The overwhelming majority of authorative works on the Goths consider contemporaneous historical evidence from the 1st and 2nd centuries in northern Poland to be within the scope of the history of the Goths. This should mean that such evidence is also within the scope of the Wikipedia's coverage of the history of the Goths. [[User:Krakkos|Krakkos]] ([[User talk:Krakkos|talk]]) 16:25, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
*:::I think your reply shows a problem. Apparently this draft is trying to slip the Jordanes version of the migration stories (except with the time re-setting that you keep mentioning) in through the back door. You are using an OR argument that the Lemovii are also Goths, in exactly the same way as the Visigoths are Goths, which is clearly not true. You are using snippets of words from writers who disagree with you, like Christensen. If we are going to use quotes like the ones you give for Wolfram, then we'd have to explain that in his text being a Goth is not about ancestry, which is the opposite of what you want our readers to think he means. That is exactly the kind of technical issue everyone wants us to keep short. (The idea of Wenskus and Wolfram is extremely popular among academics by my reading?) We have also discussed many times how you switch to Heather as the main authority for the second migration, but don't want to use him for the first migration (because he is a sceptic). In other words, your ultimate real source is Jordanes, and you pick anyone who agrees with Jordanes on an issue. This is not what the RFCs called for.--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 16:47, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
*:::::ADDED out of sequence: I should have mentioned the first Heather is (finally) not from one of his tiny tertiary entries, but a work peope really cite. It put it to everyone that the words "this attempt" are not just in the quote as a joke. This quote gives a completely different impression, if taken on its own at least, from the snippets out of dictionaries.--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 20:36, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
*::::For the benefit of other editors, here are some comments by Krakkos concerning the [[Gutones]] article, during the first of the current RFCs: [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Goths&diff=1015410588&oldid=1015407062]. So Krakkos does not want that article to exist at all, which is relevant here, and certainly does not want detailed discussion of pre-Goths moved out of this article at all - which is in contrast with most editors who have commented on the RFCs. One problem for Krakkos is that the Gutones article handles the topic differently than this one. I would say it is correct and balanced, and I think others agree. Krakkos sees it the other way around and calls this article and that one "POV forks". The arguments for the position Krakkos can only control on this article are the same "cherry picking" ones being used in this discussion, and that was the reason for the "what scholars say" wording which Krakkos used in the second RFC. ''"What is normally assumed by [selected] scholars" should, according to Krakkos, simply be treated as a fact.''
*::::This is just one of several circular discussions which has been going on for more than a year. We are not making small progress, because as the March 18 comparison shows, this article can slip backwards quickly after a round of difficult improvements followed by a "decent pause". This article needs to break free from its past. '''This will never happen if one party is always taking extreme positions such as demanding that Gutones are simply the same thing as Goths.''' Most of us have learned to handle splitting off complex subjects so that there are not too many in one article.
*::::No one is arguing that the Gutones are not likely to be predecessors of the Goths in some uncertain way, and no one wants to hide that, but we ''can'' split them out, so we ''should''. (See the RFCs.) They are NOT normally referred to as Goths in any simple way. --[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 19:24, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
*:::::Yeah, "likely to be predecessors of the Goths in some uncertain way" seems to be about the size of it. We're certainly not going to arrive at a situation where WP has no article at [[Gutones]], so any shaping of this material that is angling for that can just forget it. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 03:35, 3 April 2021 (UTC)<p>PS: I agree with the overall direction, of compressing this down to a paragraph. And, yes, various groups do need to be mentioned in the course of this; the fact that they have their own articles is part of why we can afford to make this section more concise. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 03:45, 3 April 2021 (UTC)</p>
*::::::'''Needs Traditionskern rejoinder.''' {{re|SMcCandlish}} compressing is a reasonable aim for the material we have in this proposal, but I want to remind of various discussions above which indicate to me that some OTHER material may also need to be (re-)ADDED. One of the most important things we need to add is a reference to the very popular post-WW2 scholarly argument that to the extent Jordanes was partly right about the two migrations (which is what this section is effectively going to be about), instead of two simple migrations his story reflected cultural contact and the movements of small numbers of people who carried their culture with them, in two steps. Historians are divided about both steps, but most who argue for either step being real now argue in these terms. One or two sentences would probably be enough and should be possible. I think without such a rejoinder we keep the problem of a fuzzy uncertainty being converted to a simple certainty (i.e. two straight-out mass migrations). This is all about converting from Jordanes literalism to modern scholarly understandings.--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 09:49, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
*::::::'''Title is wrong.''' This is another long-running circular discussion which can be found repeated over and over on this article, with the same minority position constantly being pushed into new drafts and constantly rejected. We should not call the "pre Goths" Goths, so we should not refer to the Gothic "origins" discussions as the "Early Goths" topic.--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 09:49, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
*Thanks for the ping. Maybe me being a dummy on this topic can be useful. So here's my dummy view. So it seems that nobody is calling Gutones "Goths" by that name, that Gutones are to some extent precursors of Goths, and Gutones have a separate article. If so, why not put only enough here on Gutones to set the stage for the surely-Goths material, and otherwise leave the Gutones coverage to the Gutones article. <b style="color: #0000cc;">''North8000''</b> ([[User talk:North8000#top|talk]]) 15:41, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
*:Thanks for your input, [[User:North8000|North8000]]. This article should be largely written for "dummies" like you so your input is crucial :D On the "Gutones"-Goths question i added som citations in a comment above which may be of interest. I would really like to hear your overall impression of the proposal i have outlined. Cheers. [[User:Krakkos|Krakkos]] ([[User talk:Krakkos|talk]]) 16:32, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
*:{{ec}} {{re|North8000}} That makes sense to me and is how we normally work on Wikipedia.--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 16:46, 2 April 2021 (UTC)
*'''This RFC is not workable'''. [[User:SMcCandlish|SMcCandlish]] you seem to be implying that this RFC is still active but I believe it is already clear that this RFC is no longer functioning as an RFC: The proposal works with a link to a proposal, and the link has been adjusted <s>several times</s>. This means it is no longer possible to count "votes" because they all relate to different versions. OTOH none of the votes show an clear yes or no. Furthermore it is clear from the discussion that the drafts were not even intended to come closer to a consensus.--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 08:01, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
*:RfC's are [[WP:NOTAVOTE|not a vote]]. They are consensus discussions, and consensus can certainly emerge after examining various revision proposals. That's generally how it's done. And it takes times. RfCs typically run for an entire month, and can be extended beyond that. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 08:37, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
:::Yes it is not literally a vote. I just used that as shorthand. It reflects the fact that RFCs are not meant to be as fluid as a normal talk page discussion. There is meant to be a simple proposal, which is not normally meant to change, so that there can be a gathering of feedback which all refer to the SAME proposal. Otherwise, why have an RFC? They are intended to gather clear feedback? What I see above is very consistent feedback, and then a rewording of the proposal and doubling down on the POV-position which was written into the first draft. So where to next on this RFC? More rewriting of the proposal at the top?
:::Concerning RFCs generally I tend to agree with your idea that they should be few, and when they occur they should be allowed to go long. But I have never found a rule which literally demands this, and I have in contrast learned the hard way that many Wikipedians think lots of short RFCs are not problem and should be encouraged. I am trying to work with whatever everyone else demands and accepts. I am open to whatever works. --[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 09:30, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
::Agree with SMcCandlish. And by the way, the proposal has only been changed once, and that change was a further trimming down of content in compliance with the suggestions of Obenritter, SMcCandlish and yourself. You said in your initial response that the proposal "needs more work".[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Goths&diff=1015606906&oldid=1015606603] For you to then dismiss the RfC as "not workable" once more work has been done is quite unfortunate. [[User:Krakkos|Krakkos]] ([[User talk:Krakkos|talk]]) 08:39, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
:::Yes ok you only made one proposal (sorry, honest mistake) and I was indeed willing to accept one adjustment, but AFTER that second proposal failed, AND after reading your defence of that and seeing that in fact your intentions had nothing to do with matching the various opinions posted in the three RFCs, where do we go now? Even if you say you're willing to change direction, it will still involve MORE changes to the proposal.--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 09:30, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
*'''Support''', per [[user:Krakkos|Krakkos]], [[user:SMcCandlish|SMcCandlish]] and [[user:Obenritter|Obenritter]] above.--[[User:Berig|Berig]] ([[User talk:Berig|talk]]) 10:12, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
*'''Support''', I think, per Obenritter. God, this page is making my head hurt; no wonder the estimable editor Alcaios dropped out of the entire discussion long ago. [[User:Carlstak|Carlstak]] ([[User talk:Carlstak|talk]]) 13:32, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
*'''Support''' Per [[user:Obenritter|Obenritter]] [[User:Sea Ane|Sea Ane]] ([[User talk:Sea Ane|talk]]) 12:31, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
Adding omitted participants to consider third draft below: [[User:Nishidani|Nishidani]], [[User:Peter K Burian|Peter K Burian]], [[User:Bloodofox|Bloodofox]], [[User:Ermenrich|Ermenrich]], [[User:Srnec|Srnec]], [[User:Mnemosientje|Mnemosientje]],[[User:Yngvadottir|Yngvadottir]], [[User:Alcaios|Alcaios]], [[User:Pfold|Pfold]] and [[User:North8000|North8000]]. --[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 18:10, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
*'''Update''' {{re|SMcCandlish|Obenritter|Carlstak|Berig|Sea Ane}} I have now modified[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User%3AKrakkos%2Fsandbox%2FGoths&type=revision&diff=1016468587&oldid=1015600693] the [[User:Krakkos/sandbox/Goths#Origins and early history|proposal]] further by trimming more content as suggested by several editors above. The content is fundemantally the same as in previous proposals, while the Prehistory, Early history, Movement towards the Black Sea hav all been shortened and merged into a single Origins and early history section consisting of two paragraphs. Feel free to let me now if this addional trimming has been a further improvement. [[User:Krakkos|Krakkos]] ([[User talk:Krakkos|talk]]) 10:31, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
:*'''Concerned'''. ''First'' (practical), I indent this responses, but we need to find some way to distinguish responses to this new draft from responses to the earlier drafts. ''Second'', I am seriously opposed to the misleading information which the 2nd and 3rd sentences represent when read together. [See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Andrew_Lancaster/Goths#Examination_of_Krakkos_proposal_7_April_2021 detailed analysis].] {{collapse|The 2nd is a repetition of past sentences we have discussed, which will mislead everyone that most scholars believe that the Gutones are the biological ancestors of the Goths, with no "mixing". That is bad enough, but extremely consistent with the racial purity concern which seems a constant in most controversies connected to you on this article, and previously on Germanic peoples. The new 3rd sentence now makes this worse, doubling down and removing all doubt, asserting that the scholars who think the Gutones were not necessarily the majority of the biological ancestors of the Goths are a separate minority group. Nothing could be further from the truth. The scholars in this third sentence are very common and likely to be the majority. They include many of the writers you like to cite because they use language seeming to equate Gutones and Goths. You know this. Third, the 4th sentence is also clearly extremely misleading: "Archaeologists associate the Goths with the Wielbark culture". Actually, archaeologists associate the Goths with being one of the peoples represented in the the ''Sântana de Mureş-Černjachov'' culture. They associate the ''Gutones'' with being one of the peoples present in the Wielbark culture. Sure, it is clearly true that scholars also associate the Goths with the Gutones and sometimes even mix the names up in their narratives. But you can't jump past all that and equate things. This will mislead our readers terribly. This ignores the context which is clear in our sources, distorts them badly. I stop at the 4th sentence. Overall this section is still too clearly aiming to simply equate Gutones and Goths. There is no field consensus for this, and even those who argue most strongly for a connection do not deliberately confuse their readers, or obsess on racial purity.|Collapsed. Use link instead}} Others may be interested to look at the sources and notes I am collecting concerning this drafting [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Andrew_Lancaster/Goths#Origins_drafting here], as the sources there (sometimes different sentences from the same works Krakkos cites) may give a different perspective.--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 11:20, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
{{od}}
Andrew, you are repeating yourself. This long response is pretty much the same as what you have posted in multiple posts above, and just makes this discussion harder to follow. Your description of the consensus among scholars is certainly incorrect. For example, here are some sources on the link between Goths and the Wielbark culture:
*{{talkquote|"Archaeologists equate the earliest history of the Goths with the artifacts of a culture named after the East Prussian town Willenberg-Wielbark." – {{cite book |last=Wolfram |first=Herwig |author-link=Herwig Wolfram |translator-last1=Dunlap |translator-first1=Thomas J. |year=1990 |title=History of the Goths |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xsQxcJvaLjAC |publisher=[[University of California Press]] |page=12 |isbn=0520069838}}}}
*{{talkquote|"[I]s now generally accepted that the Wielbark culture incorporated areas that, in the first two centuries AD, were dominated by Goths..." – {{cite book |last1=Heather |first1=Peter |author-link1=Peter Heather |year=2010 |title=Empires and Barbarians: The Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=suwVDAAAQBAJ |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |page=104 |isbn=9780199892266}}}}
*{{talkquote|"They are normally identified with the Goths (the Wielbark culture)." – {{cite book |last1=Christensen |first1=Arne Søby |author-link1=Arne Søby Christensen |year=2002 |title=Cassiodorus, Jordanes and the History of the Goths |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AcLDHOqOt4cC |publisher=[[Museum Tusculanum Press]] |page=40 |isbn=9788772897103}}}}
*{{talkquote|"For a long time the Wielbark culture has been identified with the presence of the Goths in Poland." – {{cite book |last1=Kaliff |first1=Anders |author-link1=Anders Kaliff |date=2008 |chapter=The Goths and Scandinavia |editor1-last=Biehl |editor1-first=P. F. |editor2-last=Rassamakin |editor2-first=Y. Ya. |title=Import and Imitation in Archaeology |url=https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/52159386/Import_and_Imitation_in_Archaeology_2008.pdf?response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DBiehl_P._and_Yu._Rassamakin_eds_2008._Im.pdf&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A%2F20200304%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20200304T170951Z&X-Amz-Expires=3600&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Signature=355de635ccfc657545d564dfe0a3352cc9d4fd13c6b2b0b86e3501149ddb9069 |publisher=[[:de:Verlag Beier & Beran|Beier & Beran]] |page=228 |isbn=978-3-937517-95-7 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200304171034/https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/52159386/Import_and_Imitation_in_Archaeology_2008.pdf?response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DBiehl_P._and_Yu._Rassamakin_eds_2008._Im.pdf&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A%2F20200304%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20200304T170519Z&X-Amz-Expires=3600&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Signature=ab126e33c136a90a8776d3d89b9de03e0480cf60c09420e07537c3077835febc |archive-date=March 4, 2020}}}}
*{{talkquote|"Goths occupied a vast territory encompassing the lands from the Lower Vistula in the north, large parts of eastern Poland and west-ern Belorussia, territories of Ukraine reaching in certain parts beyond the Dnieper River, Bessarabia and large parts of what is now Romania... In this territory four Gothic cultures were distinguished: the Wielbark culture, the Chernyakhov culture, Sîntana de Mureş culture and the Masłomęcz group." – {{cite book |last1=Kokowski |first1=Andrzej |author-link1=Andrzej Kokowski |year=2011 |chapter=The Goths in ca. 311 AD |editor1-last=Kaliff |editor1-first=Anders |editor1-link=:sv:Anders Kaliff |editor2-last=Munkhammar |editor2-first=Lars |title=Wulfila 311-2011 |url=http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:668706/FULLTEXT01.pdf |publisher=[[:sv:Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis|Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis]] |page=71 |isbn=9789155486648 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200305224440/http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:668706/FULLTEXT01.pdf |archive-date=March 5, 2020}}}}
I strongly encourage users to check the footnotes directly instead of having the views of scholars filtered through Andrew Lancaster. [[User:Krakkos|Krakkos]] ([[User talk:Krakkos|talk]]) 12:02, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
:::We should read the ''works themselves,'' as ''fully as possible''. You should not be playing a cherry-picking contest at all. None of these is a source for biologically equating the two peoples. (And this field is FULL of rejoinders NOT to assume ethnicity = real descent. Note also words like "dominated by".) Our sources, when you read them, go through the proper steps of mentioning the Gutones ''separately'' before taking whatever position or terminology they prefer. Just because you can find sentences which match what you want does not mean this reflects the intention of the author. None of these sources is giving a literature review. Your draft fails verification. The real source is Krakkos.--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 12:56, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
::::The sources above are cited for ''associating'' people with a material culture. The only person talking about "biologically equating" anything is you. I agree that editors should seek to read works as fully as possible, but for the average reader who perhaps would like to spend their time on other things, consulting the relevant footnotes directly is a good alternative. Certainly a better alternative than having scholarly views filtered through any of us. [[User:Krakkos|Krakkos]] ([[User talk:Krakkos|talk]]) 13:15, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
:::::I partly agree. But we have to do read the contexts and chose the words for our readers. Call it filtering if you want, but we can't avoid some of that. A very important example for this exact matter, is that our readers do not know that Wolfram is constantly referring to the concept of "ethnogenesis". In the book you cite he says the "Goths" had several of these, one when the "Scythian" Goths came into being on the Black Sea ('''p.44'''). (Note also the Gutones discussed under that name back around p.39. The quote you like is from the Intro, which is better than quoting from an abstract but still a bit dangerous.) '''I propose that people's common sense is that equating two peoples means a straightforward biological equation, ancestry.''' Can we agree on that? Please consider your text in that light. --[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 13:46, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
::::::Presenting the views of scholars in their own words in context is very helpful. Filtering their views in the wrong way is not. There is a consensus that the section on Gothic origins and early history should be trimmed, and that detailed discussion on scholarly squabbles such as the ethnogenesis debate should be placed elsewhere. Discussion on "biological" questions is also better suited somewhere else. [[User:Krakkos|Krakkos]] ([[User talk:Krakkos|talk]]) 14:22, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
:::::::I tend to agree but if we choose NOT to mention ethnogenesis and ancestry, then we must pick neutral words which do not require us to explain them. This is why we have to know the context and understand more than we put in the article. Simplifying is complicated. Using "exact words" sounds nice, but you make people say the opposite of their intention this way! "Cherry picking" is not some theoretical problem I invented to annoy you.
:::::::I have started an analysis of your draft on my userspace to save space and allow me to show how the approach you describe is having problems in real examples: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Andrew_Lancaster/Goths#Examination_of_Krakkos_proposal_7_April_2021]--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 14:40, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
::::::::Update. Krakkos I have now spent a lot of time looking at the details of your draft including the citations used, as you can review at the link already given above [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Andrew_Lancaster/Goths#Examination_of_Krakkos_proposal_7_April_2021]. It seemed time to stop work. I hope my effort will be appreciated and used in a positive way. I also hope this major effort focussed on a small bit of text will also be an opportunity for other editors to better understand some concerns I have about the way sourcing is done on this article. --[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 18:39, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
{{od}}
{{re|Andrew Lancaster}} I have undone your resectioning[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Goths&diff=1016527606&oldid=1016526945] of the RfC. It makes the RfC more convoluted. [[User:Krakkos|Krakkos]] ([[User talk:Krakkos|talk]]) 17:35, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
:I find it very difficult to understand how anyone could argue that creating a simple sub-sectioning is a "convoluted" resectioning. This is surely very normal and simple, and the alternative will certainly be convoluted. If we have no separation how do we know what people are responding to now? It almost looks like you want to ruin the talk page sometimes I'm afraid.--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 18:04, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
 
*'''Oppose'''. Not an improvement, in my opinion. It removes all the strong statements and leaves the weak. {{xt|"...subject to much discussion" "They are normally assumed..." "Some historians argue..." "Archaeologists associate..." "The Wielbark culture has been associated with..." "...subject of much interest, its reliability is disputed" "...some scholars have suggested..." "...are said to have been..." "The Vandals have been associated..."}} The first strong sentence we get to is {{xt|"From the 2nd century AD the Wielbark culture expands southeastwards at the expense of the Przeworsk culture"}}, which does not directly say anything about Goths. Thereafter we return to {{xt|"...has been connected..." "...which has led some to suggest..." "...it is believed to have contributed..." "This process has been compared to..." "...has been a source of much discussion..." "Some scholars argue..." "While the Chernyakhov culture is believed to have included..."}} That accounts for every sentence in the proposed section. Some of this is aesthetic and could be corrected by re-wording, but much of it is the unavoidable byproduct of trying to present a short summary of what is in fact a highly disputed subject even among experts. I believe this would be better presented ''at length''—and not in snippets—in an article dedicated to the subject, as I proposed above. The summary section here could then be more straightforward (and even shorter). [[User:Srnec|Srnec]] ([[User talk:Srnec|talk]]) 01:44, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
:::{{re|Srnec}} you've maybe put your finger on something concerning the length. I have no finished proposal to make, but drafting work here [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Andrew_Lancaster/Goths#Origins_drafting]. What I have been seeing is that we probably need to make it a reasonably long summary (say 500 words) or else very short indeed. I will probably develop several trial versions to test my thoughts on this. I would welcome your comments on that drafting if you have a moment Srnec. (You could use the talk page of that draft.)--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 06:56, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
::Material from the 1st, 2nd and early 3rd centuries are well within the scope of this article though. In his ''The Goths'' (1998), which is probably the most relevant source for this article, Peter Heather devotes c. 40 out of 300 pages (about 13 %) to those centuries. The proposal devotes c. 400 out of 8400 words (less than 5%) to it. If we were to give as much weight to these centuries as Heather does, the proposed section should be three times longer. Pretty much all the material from this period is under dispute. If we are to provide a short and balanced account of this material, weak statements are pretty much unavoidable. The most crucial thing is that the statements in the proposal reflect reliable and relevant sources. I think they do that quite well. [[User:Krakkos|Krakkos]] ([[User talk:Krakkos|talk]]) 10:13, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
:::{{re|Krakkos}} I guess weak statements are always avoidable. In fact, if we are finding them difficult to avoid, that's a good indicator you need to tweak drafting strategy. If we find that we have to write weak statements to fit a target size for example, then the solutions available include making it even shorter (and relying even more on other articles to handle things) or making the text a little longer than originally targeted. I believe one reason that it has become difficult to keep it short is that previous versions were also in some ways incomplete explanations. For example if we should not mention simple migrations, without qualification, if we know that scholars do not really mean normal migrations. So we either have to explain it carefully (longer), or not mention migrations at all, but rely on other articles (shorter). From playing around on my drafting page I am tending to the idea that this Origins section needs to be a bit longer than expected. But I hope it can be justifiable by being a bit more informative to readers, and perhaps even resolve some long-lasting editor concerns.--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 10:49, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
:::{{re|Krakkos}} The proposed change under discussion in this RFC would ''reduce'' the amount of material from the 1st, 2nd and early 3rd centuries in this article. Since this RFC is about reducing three sections to one, I find it odd that you think the proposed section should be three times longer. That's what it is now! Perhaps I should ask if you are in favour of your own proposed changes, or are you merely seeking "to address the concerns of the community"?<br>The problem I have with the proposal isn't the weak statements ''per se'' since, as you say, they are unavoidable in summing up the controversies. The problem is their ''density'' in the proposed section. In the article currently, hedged statements like {{xt|are usually thought to have been Germanic peoples}} and {{xt|Some scholars have equated these Guiones with the Gutones}} are balanced by stronger statements like {{xt|This area had been intimately connected with Scandinavia since the time of the Nordic Bronze Age}} and {{xt|Pliny writes that the 4th century BC traveler Pytheas encountered a people called the Guiones}}.<br>I do not wish to hold up improvements to the article, but I must say that I do not quite understand the concerns animating either of the open RFCs. To my mind, both proposed solutions make the identified problems worse. Clearly there is something I'm missing. [[User:Srnec|Srnec]] ([[User talk:Srnec|talk]]) 02:43, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
::::{{re|Srnec}} one of the concerns animating discussions about both the Lead, and the three sections (I think they all need to be discussed) is the question of whether the Gutones can simply be equated with the Goths, or do the Goths, at least the "core concept" Goths, start in the 3rd century. And because the answer so far is to look at modern scholars, drafts are showing a lot of quotes, and there has been a lot of discussion about what the sources ''really'' say. You mention two proposals, and I am not sure what you are counting. I have not yet made a proposal, and my draft page is currently more sourced than I would normally want for a real proposal, for the reason just explained.--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 05:27, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
:::::ADDED: lead drafting (incl. new version by Krakkos) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Andrew_Lancaster/Goths#Lead_drafting]; closest thing I have to a draft [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Andrew_Lancaster/Goths#Draft_with_excessive?_sourcing].--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 09:58, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
::::{{re|Srnec}} I think the proposal is an improvement. My impression is that the community wanted to shorten coverage on 1st, 2nd and early 3rd century material and place less emphasis on Jordanes and scholarly debates. On the other hand, as stated above, 1st, 2nd and early 3rd century material is clearly within the scope of this article, and there is a limit to how much we can reduce such coverage. I think the proposal has reached that limit. With the regards to ''Gutones'', most archaeologists and many historians, such [[Peter Heather]], do make a simple equation between them and the Goths. Other scholars (mostly historians) do not. I think the proposal balances those views quite well. [[User:Krakkos|Krakkos]] ([[User talk:Krakkos|talk]]) 09:31, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
:::::TLDR update: A promising direction of recent discussion. Some agreement between myself and Krakkos! We agree that Gutones do not "biologically" equal Goths. So then one concern of mine can be defined like this: If we pick the wrong words, our readers will understand that we are reporting a simple "biological" equation. Even Heather does not really believe that. I strongly believe the request for shortening should not lead to us misleading our readers on this.--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 10:51, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
*'''Tentative shorter draft proposal for Origins.''' (4th proposal in this RFC, 1st by me.) Maybe the short version here is worth considering as a way forward? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Andrew_Lancaster/Goths#Gothic_origins_2] --[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 11:53, 10 April 2021 (UTC) Letting people know about this shorter draft for the united and simplified ''Origins'' section which aims to avoid complexities: {{u|Berig}}, {{u|Nishidani}}, {{u|Obenritter}}, {{u|Peter K Burian}}, {{u|Bloodofox}}, {{u|Ermenrich}}, {{u|Srnec}}, {{u|Carlstak}}, {{u|Mnemosientje}}, {{u|SMcCandlish}}, {{u|Yngvadottir}}, {{u|Alcaios}}, {{u|Pfold}}, {{u|North8000}}, {{u|Krakkos}}. To remind of previous RFC discussions: more discussions about Gothic origins are of course covered in other articles such as [[Gutones]], [[Origin stories of the Goths]], [[Wielbark culture]], [[Chernyakhov culture]], [[Getica]], [[Gothic language]], [[East Germanic languages]], [[Berig]], [[Fillimer]], [[Oium]] etc, all of which are currently far less "over-worked" than this article. Comments anyone?--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 10:21, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
* '''Closure has been requested''' I have requested the closure of this RfC at [[Wikipedia:Closure requests#Requests for comment]].[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Closure_requests&diff=1021718766&oldid=1021718710] [[User:Krakkos|Krakkos]] ([[User talk:Krakkos|talk]]) 09:01, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
{{closed rfc bottom}}
 
== RFC to move ahead on previous Intro and Origins proposals ==
{{Closed rfc top|There is limited participation and most of the discussion below is about what process is appropriate for revising the article and not the revised draft itself. There has been no further participation for well over a week and a close is requested. The only reasonable reading of this discussion is that the proposed draft '''did not gain a consensus''' in favor of implementation. <small>([[Wikipedia:Non-admin closure|non-admin closure]])</small> [[User:Eggishorn|<span style="background-color:#FF7400; color:#FFFFFF;">Eggishorn</span>]] [[User talk:Eggishorn|(talk)]] [[Special:Contributions/Eggishorn|(contrib)]] 18:40, 14 July 2021 (UTC)}}
{{red|NOTE ADDED 5 June 2021: Please ''do not close'' this RFC. It is on-going.}}--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 08:00, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
:ADDED 7 July 2021. I just note that I think the idea here, based on previous discussions, is to keep this discussion alive for a long period and not rush the final decision. Not sure how others see it or how long this should go.--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 10:19, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
 
<!-- [[User:DoNotArchiveUntil]] 07:02, 10 June 2021 (UTC) -->{{User:ClueBot III/DoNotArchiveUntil|1623308565}}
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::::::If I'm misreading something, I'll just sit out for a while. Anyway, I don't think the present thread is going to come to an active consensus to do anything, and stick to my advice to work on a draft and try to get buy-in on it (taking editorial suggestions to work toward a compromise version). <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 10:28, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
:::::::{{re|SMcCandlish}} This thread ''is'' meant to be an RFC about a specific draft. For any such draft RFC to work, indeed we need some feedback and "editorial suggestions". (That would also apply to any future draft.) ''So feedback is what is needed now.'' So far, this draft has had more positive feedback than the drafts of Krakkos in the previous RFC. The only criticism about my draft so far is from Krakkos who suggests my draft should have more footnotes. (Berig disagrees with the whole aim of shortening the origins discussions. That is not a criticism specific to any draft.)--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 12:17, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
::::::::This is far too much meta-discussion about my own input/viewpoint. I'm not in control of this discussion or any processes. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 16:10, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
:::::::::{{re|SMcCandlish}}, I can't really follow these occasional remarks, but the fact is that this RFC is now at a point where simple feedback (positive and/or negative) about the proposed draft is what would be most helpful. --[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 20:30, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
::::::::::I can support the Krakkos lead, for its concision, and your Origins section, for its appropriate post-lead detail and sourcing, which is nevertheless more concise than what we started all this to revise. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 00:23, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
::::::::::I agree with SMcCandlish on these points; they are my sentiments exactly. [[User:Carlstak|Carlstak]] ([[User talk:Carlstak|talk]]) 00:56, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
:::::::::::Thanks for the feedback {{re|SMcCandlish}} and {{re|Carlstak}}. I am not 100% clear what "more concise than what we started all this to revise" means. Does mean you find my draft to be on the short side? As background, feedback from {{u|Srnec}} on the previous drafts from Krakkos was pushing for a shorter version, as I understood it. Anything you think needs changing?--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 06:28, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
::::::::::::I don't mean that it's too short; rather, it is short enough [for me]. I.e., good job. If Srnec and someone else want to tighten it even further, I don't object, but I like how source-dense it is for the amount of verbiage, and how much verbiage it leaves for other articles to get into. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 05:29, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
:Well, maybe one step towards simplification would be to do the change to the lead if there is a consensus or no objections. <b style="color: #0000cc;">''North8000''</b> ([[User talk:North8000#top|talk]]) 12:09, 4 June 2021 (UTC)
{{Closed rfc bottom}}
 
== re-appearance of DNA section ==
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Even if we come to some clear action plans soon, it seems this topic might come back again, either here or on related articles, and discussions has been anything-but-helped by lumping big quotes into the normal talk page. So I hope this workpage helps: [[Talk:Goths/Quotes]].--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 13:06, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
 
:I've gone ahead and started a new article: [[Origin of the Goths]]. There seems to be a clear enough agreement that any attempt to expand discussions of this topic ''needs to be done somewhere else'', and I believe our explanations of the topic need expansion somewhere on Wikipedia if they are to be clear and accurate. Highly compressed versions are constantly going to be controversial distractions. From my work on this new article so far, a single independent article does seem possible. (I am open to other ideas about merging it to other Goth-related articles. Other relevant articles are [[Origin stories of the Goths]], [[Wielbark culture]], [[Name of the Goths]], and [[Gutones]] but I think the overlap is OK at this point.) I really hope this helps us in the future. I truly believe it ''can''.--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 10:45, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
 
== New section on warfare ==
 
{{u|Joe Flats 123}}, I think all or most of the material you've added is not specifically about Goths but about what we modern people call "Germanic peoples"? Ancient authors did provide distinct descriptions of the Goths, but I think you are using descriptions of ''other'' Germanic peoples? Roman authors repeatedly insisted that the Goths were a Scythian people in terms of their customs etc. For example, a major part of the new material is a block of text from Mauricius about the "Fair haired peoples" such as Franks and Lombards. These are western European groups who the Romans did not associate with the Goths. The Strategikon has a different section for discussion about Scythian peoples, and in Book IV this work makes clear that Goths, as in other works, are Scythian. Are you not using the wrong section of the Strategikon? To give an example of a difference, while the fair haired peoples can easily be drawn out of formation by simulated retreats, the Goths are experts in performing such simulated retreats. And rather than being happy to dismount, like the fair-haired peoples, this work claims that because they grow up on horseback, the Scythians are not happy walking around on foot. If on the other hand we say this is not explicitly enough about Goths, that's fine, but we can't use descriptions of western europeans as a stand-in, surely?--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 16:12, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
 
{{u|Andrew Lancaster}} I think you are right for the Strategikon section, i will delete that. However, i know that the paragraph or two before that talks about weapons and armour explicitly for the Goths, so i wont delete that. :)
--[[User: Joe Flats 123|Joe Flats 123]]
 
== another re-appearance of the DNA section ==
 
@[[User:Isacdaavid|Isacdaavid]] I don't know who reintroduced the genetics section, but you have reintroduced strong claims into another section, about the name of the Goths, indicating that DNA proves the "Goths" to be from Scandinavia. There is no such evidence, and this has been discussed and agreed here several times in the past. Of course there could be new evidence one day, but I don't see it?
*The Genomic Atlas website you are now citing as a new source does not appear to be a reliable source according to Wikipedia norms. If necessary please take it to [[WP:RSN]] and ask for someone else's opinion.
*The Stolarek et al. article from 2023 only mentions the Goths once: "Some theories link the emergence of the Wielbark culture with the migration of people commonly referred to as Goths". (There is a lot more that could be said about the problems of using a research report like this, with vague conclusions.)
*The Antonio et al. article of 2023 does not mention Gothic DNA, or the Wielbark culture.
On this basis I believe the genetics section, and also this misplaced genetics digression in the name section, should be removed or stripped down quite a lot. At the moment this is basically [[WP:OR]]. (I also don't see why all these things need to be repeated in a section which is supposed to be about the name of the Goths?) [[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 21:21, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
::Concur entirely with {{u|Andrew Lancaster}} about this matter. This topic has been repeatedly argued on pages related to the ancient Germanic peoples in general and this page especially. There is overwhelming consensus about the speciousness of these sorts of claims.
:::As an update {{u|Isacdaavid}} you posted on RSN (thank you) and received two very clear negative responses concerning the new source. I think we are going is that the DNA claims need trimming or deleting. If anyone has other evidence, or good proposals on ways of trimming it, now would be a good moment to get involved in this discussion.--[[User:Andrew Lancaster|Andrew Lancaster]] ([[User talk:Andrew Lancaster|talk]]) 17:38, 14 November 2024 (UTC)
:::I agree with deletion or trimming. And I know it's a new and fast paced field, but there is no exception to the requirement that we use secondary and not primary sources to write encyclopaedic articles. [[User:Sirfurboy|Sirfurboy🏄]] ([[User talk:Sirfurboy|talk]]) 17:51, 14 November 2024 (UTC)
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