Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Eastern Orthodox Slavs


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. ✗ plicit  13:56, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

Eastern Orthodox Slavs

 * and Catholic Slavs


 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

This article is nothing more than a loose collection of WP:OR and WP:SYNTH to imply an inherent connection between speakers of Slavic languages who just so happen to be members of an Eastern Orthodox church, which is then extrapolated to claim a political-cultural-religious unity amongst all post-1991 sovereign states that happen to have both a Slavic-speaking majority and an Eastern Orthodox church membership majority (also through Azundar's self-made map that has no sources, replaced in 2021 by Klukajdrvec's self-made map that has no sources). Such generalisations ignore the non-Slavic and non-Orthodox populations within these states (Belarus is even claimed to have a non-Orthodox majority, yet is still included in the group), as well as Slavic-speaking Orthodox believers outside them. I've tried making improvements to the article in June 2020, and urged people to cite RS to prove the claims within the article. Some have been added since, but they fail consistently upon verification: the source never says what the article says – it usually just mentions Slavs and Eastern Orthodoxy in passing without substantiating the specific claim in question – or even says the opposite, such as the first source Hilsdale (2014) p. 329. Anything else in the article just says something about adherents of Eastern Orthodoxy in the purported set of countries, or is about the history of Eastern Orthodoxy in general or in Bulgaria in particular, selectively ignoring all the non-Slavic adherents and states of Eastern Orthodoxy, and non-Orthodox Slavs within Slavic-majority states. The article was created in May 2017 by User:Azundar, a permanently blocked sockpuppet of User:Bulgarian Archer who has also been permanently blocked in June 2017 for multiple disruptive edits on North Slavs. Most likely, they created this article as OR/SYNTH for reasons of language-based religious nationalism in order to claim the existence of a united identity and history where there is none (the Historydoctor.net reference is very misleading, it only talks about the Middle Ages, not 'today', and does not mention 'Ukrainians', 'Belarusians', 'Macedonians' or 'Montenegrins', nor 'nations' etc., but the article claims 'Eastern Orthodox Slavic nations today include the Belarusians, Bulgarians, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Russians, Serbs and Ukrainians.'), not in order to add encyclopedic verifiable knowledge to Wikipedia. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 10:43, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Ethnic groups-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 11:10, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Christianity-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 11:10, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Comment have you found no RSs talking about the topic? Also, I feel Catholic Slavs should also be deleted. Veverve (talk) 17:36, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
 * No, I haven't. This is an arbitrary grouping of a linguistic and a religious group, which you may find in a passing generalisation in a book or two, but it's not a widely recognised ethnic group or political community etc.. Good that you mention Catholic Slavs! Yes, that is a very similar article in style and scope without good RS, also created by a permanently blocked sock of a permanently blocked user. Could we add that article to this nomination entry perhaps? Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 20:07, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I've also nominated Catholic Slavs now, redirecting it here. If I should make it a separate page, please say so, then I will. But I think it will be more convenient to discuss both in the same place as the articles are very much alike with the same problems. You can find both 'Catholic Slavs' and 'Eastern Orthodox Slavs' in books, for example Google Books, but as mentioned, they are only passing generalisations. We could also theoretically write articles about, say, Germanic Catholics, Latin Protestants, Lutheran Celts or Hellenic Mormons by that logic, but all those articles could really say is: members of group X of churches who speak languages of the Y family. (Note, by the way, that Muslim Slavs does appear to be a legitimate concept with sufficient RS backing it). Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 20:43, 8 February 2022 (UTC)


 * Delete In agreement with the nominator. TrangaBellam (talk) 05:04, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete I agree with deleting but suggest that a redirect to Eastern Orthodoxy might be an option.Gusfriend (talk) 09:12, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete -- The Orthodox article is somewhat more substantial than the Catholic one. I expect sources could be found for some of the data, but the nations are the result of the break up of the Ottoman and Austrian and some other empires at the end of WWI, or of second Balkan War or of Yugoslavia or of USSR.  It assumes that these countries are linguistically homogeneous, which is not necessarily the case.  It would be more useful to tackle this (if at all) from the other side, by looking at the linguistic family of Orthodox and Catholics (etc) in Europe.  Germanic Catholics would not be as ridiculous as some of the other suggestions.  Peterkingiron (talk) 15:06, 12 February 2022 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.