Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/North 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 merge to North Slavic languages. This AfD is long and complex enough that new people would likely not join in. Reading over the comments, there seems to be a clear consensus that the topic is not ripe for coverage on its own. That being said, there is not a clear consensus for deletion. Since the most common suggestion is merging, that is what I see as the most favored outcome. Guerillero Parlez Moi 22:45, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

North Slavs

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

The purpose of this article is unclear, and I doubt it can be given a legitimate purpose. The added value of this article separate from "North Slavic languages" is questionable, because it uses language as the basis of this ethnic grouping, but extrapolates into many directions to topics (such as a Polish food shop in England) that have nothing to do with language groups and would normally never be brought up in a discussion about North Slavs as an (ethno)linguistic grouping, but only in discussions about 'national' cultures such as Polish culture, Czech culture etc. Note that just because the categorisation of Slavic languages into North and South is far less common than into West, East and South does not make 'North Slavic languages' an illegitimate subject: the article "North Slavic languages" exists and survived a 2005 deletion nomination. But that doesn't mean that therefore automatically 'North Slavs' has separate added value. Secondly, it suffers from many of the same problems that the articles on Eastern Orthodox Slavs, Catholic Slavs, and later Muslim Slavs were deleted for a few months ago (and I can almost copypaste the same objections to this article from there): this article is a loose collection of WP:OR and WP:SYNTH with rampant generalisations to imply an inherent connection between people who just so happen to be speakers of North Slavic languages, which is then extrapolated to claim a political-cultural-religious unity amongst all post-1991 sovereign states that happen to have a North Slavic-speaking majority population living inside their borders. Such generalisations ignore the non-North-Slavic populations within these states, and often the North-Slavic-speaking people outside them as well. I've tried making improvements to the article in February 2022, and again today, urging people to cite RS to prove the claims within the article. Some have been added since, but they almost always fail consistently upon verification: the source never says what the article says – it usually just mentions a specific ethnic group that this article claims are 'North Slavs' in passing without substantiating the specific claim in question – or even explicitly says something else, such as Karatnycky (2001) p.81 clearly saying that Belarusians form only 78% of the Belarus population (estimated at 10 million), and does not mention Belarusians outside Belarus, so there is no reason to claim there are 10 million ethnic/linguistic Belarusians in total. Anything else in the article just says something about the number of speakers of specific 'North Slavic' languages in the purported set of countries, or is about the history of Slavs or Slavic languages in general or several 'national' histories in particular, selectively ignoring all the non-North-Slavic people in these states, and North Slavs outside these states. I can go into more specifics, but I think you will have gotten the message by now. The articles 'Eastern Orthodox Slavs', 'Catholic Slavs', and 'Muslim Slavs' were deleted in February for very similar reasons. The Talk:North Slavs page also shows that right after this article was created in April 2017, other Wikipedians have launched similar objections to the article as a whole, or specifically the same objections that I have listed here. The only added value this article might have is where it concerns very dubious and outdated views about race and ethnicity from the era of scientific racism, featured for example in that 1879 Phrenological Journal and Science of Health (for the record, phrenology is pseudoscience), and Ruggd (1938) saying: "the north Slavs have a little lighter hair and skin color than the south Slavs; and far to the north they have much lighter hair". But I don't think that requires its own article; that can be moved to the 'scientific racism' article. At most, 'North Slavs' should be a redirect to 'North Slavic languages', but nothing more. Whether the same scrutiny should be applied to the articles West Slavs, East Slavs and South Slavs would be an interesting follow-up question, but I'll just take this article for now, and await your assessments. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 10:12, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Ethnic groups-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 10:16, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
 * PS: Tagging, , and  who were substantially involved in the earlier deletion discussions and may have good arguments pro or contra deleting this one. It's not entirely the same situation but very similar, so your opinions could be valuable for making a decision. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 10:30, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I will also tag here the users, , , - all of whom have provided valuable input to actual North Slavs page in the past by removing/adding content where necessary and/or aiding with tackling vandalism.


 * Comment: My first thought was that a universal Slavic peoples page would be way, way too long and require an immediate split but perhaps a merge in that direction is the way to go. I wonder how much of the content of the page is unique to the page. Gusfriend (talk) 10:52, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Good point. We could move all useful content from this page to either North Slavic languages and/or Slavs where applicable, and wherever it is not duplicated content already, and make this a redirect to whichever is more appropriate. (Incidentally, the Slavs article has similar issues, although not as big as this article. But as I said, let's do one article at a time). Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 11:10, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Comment on maps: The use of maps in this article is also questionable. Using File:Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at its maximum extent.svg with the caption 'Many of the North Slavonic nations used to be part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Russian Empire' seems WP:OR. The File:North Slavic languages.png in the Languages section is fine, but that section only has added value if there is something substantial to say about North Slavs beyond linguistics, otherwise it is just duplicating content from North Slavic languages. But most of my objections are against File:North Slavs and South Slavs.png, an April 2017 self-made map of the article's creator Samotny Wędrowiec, because it has similar problems to the maps that were used in the now-deleted Eastern Orthodox Slavs and Catholic Slavs articles (namely File:Orthodox Slavs.png, File:Eastern Orthodox slavic nations.png, File:Catholic Slavs.png and File:Catholic Slavs by percentage.png) in that it seems to constitute WP:SYNTH. In February 2022, I've demanded sources for this map. To their credit, Samotny Wędrowiec provided no less than 10 sources for the map, but unfortunately they all have various issues. I've not checked all the sources yet (in some cases that was impossible because pages are not given or the books cannot be found online), but in other cases they failed verification, or are simply too old (namely pre-1991 and can thus never be reliably used for demographics or language policies in post-1991 states). Even the most reasonable source (which nevertheless still has some problems), O.T. Ford's "Reference base: Slavs", makes a clear distinction between areas where Slavic languages are spoken by the majority of an area's inhabitants ('presence of Slavic as a native dialect'), and whether there is 'state sponsorship of a Slavic dialect', or both. Moreover, unlike File:North Slavs and South Slavs.png, Ford's maps do not distinguish North and South Slavic (even though the text next to it does). If File:North Slavs and South Slavs.png is to have any function, then in my opinion it would be to indicate 'state sponsorship of a Slavic dialect' in post-1991 states, and base itself on sources that provide information on that, and remove everthing else. All that would give us is a map of which post-1991 states sponsor a Slavic dialect as an official language; it would not say much about North Slavs as an ethnic group (especially not those North Slavs living in states where they constitute minorities), or about North Slav demographics or these states' demographics (after all, there are countries in the world where the official language(s) is/are not the native language of the population's majority, e.g. Hindi (43.63%) and English (0.02%) in India in 2011). Alternatively, the map could be used to indicate which countries have a majority population of North and South Slavic languages, in which case we are talking purely linguistic demographics, and not about official state language policies. Either way, this map would belong in the North Slavic languages article, and not in an article about North Slavs as an ethnic group (if that merits its own article to start with, which I doubt, hence this deletion nomination). Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 11:04, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Some valid points, but I don't understand how you can separate language from ethnicity so confidently and nonchalantly. While language can be separated from ethnicity, the latter cannot be understood without the former. Regardless of how alike a group of people in the same area may look, no matter how many of the same customs they all partake in, they will not think of themselves as the same nation/ethnic group/imagined community if they cannot understand each other in the slightest. --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 15:45, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
 * That is not always the case. In many cases around the world, ideas about ethnicities, nations or imagined communities are not based on language but something else, for example shared religion, geography, history, customs, etc.
 * For example, India has many different versions of nationalism, including Hindu nationalism / Hindutva (based on religion), Hindi nationalism (based on language), Indian nationalism (based on state/geography/history/customs), Islamic Kashmiri separatism (based on religion) etc.. Hindu nationalists do not regard the Indian nation as monolingual, but they do see it as monoreligious. Indian nationalists tend to be secular and accept the Indian nation as multilingual and multireligious. As I stated earlier, the two official languages of the country are not even the native language of the absolute majority of the population, so equating country and language and then claiming that a particular country is the 'nation-state' of a language-based group sometimes simply doesn't work.
 * A more compelling case is that of nationalism in former Yugoslavia: while Yugoslavism is a language-based nationalism (and sometimes a historic/nostalic or communist-based one), Croat, Serb, and Bosniak nationalism are religion-based. Although these nationalists may nowadays claim they speak separate languages, most scholars agree that Serbo-Croatian or BCMS is a single but pluricentric language that only became heavily politicised during and after the breakup of Yugoslavia, which was primarily caused by religious differences. The idea that nations and nationalisms are or should always be language-based is very Eurocentric, but even in Europe, as the Yugoslav case shows, nationalism is often not language-based, and nationalists imagine themselves as separate from other groups despite sharing a common language.
 * Even more obvious examples are how most Brits/English/Welsh/Scots/Northern Irish, Irish, Americans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders etc. are native English speakers, all call their language 'English', and yet do not believe they constitute a single 'nation'. That is why I can 'separate language from ethnicity so confidently and nonchalantly', because it is very often done around the world, and we should not make the assumption that everyone always connects them. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 18:10, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, that is quite true and I agree with most of what you said here, but bringing it up is unnecessary when the entire Slavonic identity and category is based on language. This is why we refer to Slavs not purely as an "ethnic group", but an "ethnolinguistic group". If Slavic languages are the main defining element of Slavic peoples, then surely North Slavonic tongues will be the main element for North Slavic peoples.


 * And just as you accuse me of Eurocentrism, I could say that you are trying to force Western and colonial concepts onto Eastern European and Slavic realities, which are quite different. For Eastern Europe, language and religion have been the main points of division. Without Slavic tongues there would be no Slavs, without North Slavic dialect continuum there wouldn't be North Slavs. Simple as.


 * Finally, this is a request of a personal nature, but please use paragraphs when possible to divide larger bodies of text. This makes it much easier to read and less difficult to concentrate on each argument made, especially after reading a lot in one go. Thank you.--Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 19:23, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
 * A collection of ethnic groups doesn't become a thing just by virtue of them speaking languages belonging to the same linguistic subgroup or family. That's a commonly held view among some Wikipedians, but not matched by how the outside world (= academia) approaches it. The only thing that counts are reliable sources which cover the topic as a subject of its own right, and not based just on the formula "the X peoples are the peoples speaking languages of the X family". That's a definition, but not a topic. Finally, ethnolinguistic group doesn't mean what you might think it means (another Wikipedia idiosyncrasy): please click on the link to the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Austronesier (talk • contribs) 21:08, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I get your point, but that's not exactly what I said either. --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 02:08, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Incidentally, those who think that the majority of linguists are mistaken in dividing the 'North Slavic languages' into West and East Slavic because they have somehow been led astray by the (irrelevant) observations that most Slavs in the western part of this geographical area are Catholic and use the Latin script, whereas most Slavs in the eastern part are Orthodox and use the Cyrillic script, have a burden of proof to explain why the majority of linguists weren't somehow led astray by exactly the same religious and writing system divisions that exist amongst speakers of the 'South Slavic languages' in the Balkans. Occam's razor favours a simpler explanation: the minority of linguists who think there is a 'North Slavic language family' may have been led astray by the (irrelevant) observation that the South Slavs are separated from the other Slavs in the north by geography (Ford may be one of these linguists). Although linguistics isn't an exact science, and taxonomic classifications can and are sometimes revised (just like in biology), the majority of linguists probably has a good reason to conclude that a subdivision of Slavic languages into East, West and South (rather than North and South) is justified by linguistic evidence independent from such irrelevant observations. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 10:16, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
 * FWIW, Ford is not a linguist (PhD in geopgraphy), and his website is a WP:SPS. I start to get the impression that no comparative linguist (who are actually "in charge" of linguistic classification) is involved in the North Slavic proposal. A big red flag, also for the article North Slavic languages. –Austronesier (talk) 11:09, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Not true, as shown by several sources in the article - though not only in linguistics but also archaeology and folklore studies. Can't be bothered to look through all of them for examples right now, but I just added a new one from Zbigniew Gołąb, who in at least one work uses the "North Slav" model alongside the West and East Slavic standard he usually goes for. It's all very context-dependent. --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 14:10, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Upon a quick Google Books search, I've found that the "North Slav" category has been in even more widespread use than I had previously believed, not just in linguistics either but especially in terms of differentiating the North Slavs from the South Slavs within the former territories of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The nations considered North Slavonic by these sources are almost always Belarusians, Czechs, Poles, Russians, Slovaks, and Ukrainians (Rusyns/Ruthenians and other minority groups are sometimes mentioned too), though one source differed in that it put Rusyns and Slovaks in the South. I've stopped adding these sources at this point though as it's becoming redundant. --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 15:15, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Oh, thanks for correcting me on Ford's credentials. Well, that explains a lot! A geographer is exactly the kind of person who would be led astray by the geographical split rather than the actual linguistic evidence. I agree, it's time that we really look sharply into the North Slavic languages article and make sure the info there at least passes GNG, RS, OR, SYNTH etc. before we can even consider whether North Slavs as a separate article could or should exist. I'm leaning towards the comparison that Samotny made (on the talk page in April 2017) with the article South Germanic: we state clearly that it is a rarely-used term with many different contradictory meanings, none of which has broad support amongst scholars. In doing so, we should also be careful with maps, avoiding to imply that any of them accurately represents reality, and that all of them are merely models that are disputed by the consensus, and by each other. I'll take Palgrave as the basis for the rewrite. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 15:45, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I've just rewritten the North Slavic languages page according to the South Germanic model. Samotny edited both articles and used a lot of the same sources, and so they had a lot of the same problems in choice of sources, representation of sources, and general style. I've added a lot of tags to parts of the text that may still be salvaged if appropriate sources or clarification are provided. As far as I can see though, the definition of 'North Slavic languages' as simply being a combination of West and East Slavic languages is just one out of many definitions, and it is not necessarily the most widely used or popular one. Countless combinations have been made by various writers from 1841 to present, and they more frequently disagree than agree with each other. This undermines the future of a separate North Slavs article even further. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 17:44, 17 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Comment: The main problem I see is that the article contains a lot of original research and tries to present a fringe perspective as relatively mainstream, with lots of peculiar hedging ("is not universally accepted", "while ... is often the standard model") with a mishmash of trivia about cuisine, religion, or political affiliation as supporting "evidence" for a supposed racial or linguistic group. Mainstream (Slavic) linguistics does not endorse a basic north/south grouping of Slavic, but this article takes that as a viable premise and runs with it. Doremo (talk) 11:23, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Exactly my point. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 11:31, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Comment (leaning towards redirect to North Slavic languages): Obviously, this article has a big SYNTH-issue. Most sources talk about individual groups which are included here as "North Slavs", but without any mention of the latter concept in the source. The question the is: how much of WP:SIGCOV about North Slavs is left if all synth pieces are thrown out? And how many sources which actually mention North Slavs in the intended meaning have more to say than something like "North Slavs are the speakers of the North Slavic languages"? E.g. something about shared culture, history, food or whatever? Since the North Slavic languages are a controversial concept with little mainstream acceptance, a grouping of peoples solely defined by this criterion is even more tenuous than Romance peoples, a grouping of peoples that is based on a uncontroversial linguistic subgroup, and yet for which WP has nothing but a redirect per community consensus. –Austronesier (talk) 12:25, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
 * A redirect is a good suggestion, and the comment above makes a good argumentation for it. Doremo (talk) 12:50, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I agree with Austronesier and Doremo. If we removed all synth, we would probably only be left with SIGCOV for linguistics, and primary sources containing outdated pre-WW2 ethnology/scientific racism stuff. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 13:32, 16 June 2022 (UTC)~
 * We cannot just remove the racial "science" stuff as if it never existed. If it's part of the history of a topic then it's not in our place to whitewash it, regardless of how inaccurate or bizarre it may seem to us in the present day. Also, I think the three of you should actually have a read through some of the more recent sources to see that there is much more to this (e.g. providing exact page numbers for some of the sources is redundant when much of the text, or indeed an entire article/essay, argues the point mentioned). There is a lot of willful ignorance on your part with regards to these. --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 15:53, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
 * The onus of proving WP:SIGCOV or lack thereof lies with you on both sides. So far I have seen many valid arguments about SYNTH, but since the purpose of an AfD is not cleanup, we should get to the point of substantially looking at what is left of the article after pruning SYNTH and off-topic material (e.g. the entire section "Population"; AFAICS, none of the sources talks about these individual ethnic groups as being part of the "North Slavs"). So far I can only see tens of kilobytes here devoted to theoretical considerations why the article should exist or why it shouldn't. –Austronesier (talk) 16:07, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Then perhaps this discussion should focus on only one section of the article, because the "Population" part is indeed the most problematic. In truth I cannot defend it well either. That paragraph needs either a complete re-write or deletion. However, to amplify these issues and apply them to the rest of the article and somehow try to make a point for complete deletion is quite ridiculous. --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 16:22, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid I have to say: the issues with the "Population" section are symptomatic for the whole build-up of the article, though. I have added a few tags about problematic points. Personally, I find tag-bombing always a bit embarrassing and pointy, but I will continue to add a few more if necessary for the benefit of this discussion. –Austronesier (talk) 16:43, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
 * As for sources working in outdated concepts such as scientific racism or racial essentialism: of course we can have articles about obsolete concepts, but we should then present them as such. We cannot reify them back to legitimacy by building content based on obsolete frameworks, but using modern sources which simply do not subscribe to those frameworks. –Austronesier (talk) 16:17, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
 * That is absolutely fair. Let's do that instead of erasing things from existence. --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 16:22, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Could you confirm or correct me if this is what you meant by ? The publication info all seems to match, but the contents have nothing to do with North Slavs. Perhaps there was a mixup? Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 18:31, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I completely missed this when you wrote it first. I honestly cannot even remember what this was used for. However, I used Google search inside the book and it brought this up on page 44: "The Slavs. Many of the new immigrants are Slavs, who are divided into two main divisions - the North Slavs and the South Slavs, or Jugo-Slavs. The North" and then the preview cuts off. So looks like it is relevant, but I can't view the rest. I'll see if I can find more of this text elsewhere. --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 13:31, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Are you the author of this paper? This would not be allowed per WP:SELFPUB. I think this source should be removed. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 19:09, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
 * No, though looking at it now in 2022 I can see why you might think so. The original version did not have any images, iirc, so the author has since modified it with the map I made and other content from Wikimedia Commons apparently. Makes sense, considering not much else comes up on WM when searching "North Slavs". However, I don't see why that would make it any less viable for use in this article. That's just the reality of digital media and information technology. The Lindsay source you brought up earlier also seems to have changed, but much more drastically, since I first used it in this article. I will get to responding to your other points here soon, just a little overwhelmed atm with research and responses at the same time. --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 19:15, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Fair enough, although it's curious that the paper was updated in April 2017 to include those maps, and you uploaded that File:North Slavs and South Slavs.png on 27 April 2017, so the author would have had mere days to notice and include that map after you uploaded it. He has a Polish name and also indicates having studied at Newcastle University, while you added a source about a Polish food shop in... Newcastle. Is it someone you know, or is it a coincidence? If it is someone else, he is violating your copyright, as well as that of others whose maps he has included in the paper without mentioning the licence ("Samotny Wędrowiec CC-BY-SA 4.0" in the case of File:North Slavs and South Slavs.png), and you could sue him if you wanted to.
 * I don't live in Newcastle, but I have been there many times - I've taken photos of Polsih shops in the region before to use in a different article about Polish migration to the UK. There are over half a million Poles still living in the UK (there were even more of us before Brexit), so things like this are bound to happen sooner or later. Anyway, going back to the topic, I could try to reach out to the author on academia.edu if I can be bothered, and I sure could use some more money haha, but tbh I would probably lose more in lawyer fees than gain! In all honesty, I didn't even know this was the case; I'm not too familiar with or particularly fond of copyright (more often than not it seems to protect large corporations instead of creators), and I'm flattered anyone else would use photos/maps I've made, so I'm not vexed with their use of them. --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 13:26, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Either way, the paper does not appear to be peer-reviewed, it is a bit of a mix between an opinion piece and an essay with a few scholarly footnotes here and there. Although a lot of academic work is published on academia.edu, people can self-publish articles without peer review there as well, so the website itself does not make a specific paper a reliable source. WP:RS/P does not mention 'academia.edu', so perhaps we should pose this question to the community (RfC) for future academia.edu cases.
 * That's fair, I quite like how accessible academia makes things for people from outside of, well, the academia. Just like Wikipedia, I think stuff like this should always be freely available to all. Though obviously with that comes the issue of establishing reliability. However, I still do think there is plenty of value in this source and think it should be kept. If not as a journal then at least as an online source in "cite web" format. --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 13:26, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
 * On a separate note, as I also indicated in the edit summary: the search function (ctrl+F) does not work properly in documents published on academia.edu, it only scans the contents of the page you're looking at. You can't use it to find all occurrences of a word or character combination in the entire paper, the website doesn't let you. The words 'North', 'South', 'East' and 'West' do feature in the Lindsay paper, but without pages, it can be hard to verify these specific claims. (Might this be the reason why the Lindsay paper appears to have changed 'drastically' because you can't find back certain words you thought were there?) Perhaps we can somehow download the pdfs and search the texts offline, because Adobe Acrobat Reader or other programmes will allow us to scan the entire text and find what we're looking for. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 07:54, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
 * This could be the reason or it could just be my poor memory. I believe you can download papers from the website if you have an account there. At this point I'm not too fussed with leaving the Lindsay source out though, as it was used only for only one statement iirc. So it's not as valuable to the body of the article as for example the Palgrave, Ford, or other academia stuff. --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 13:26, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the quote from the Minnesota source. I've been able to extract some more text. The entire passage is as follows: "Many of the new immigrants are Slavs, who are divided into two main divisions — the North Slavs and the South Slavs, or Jugo-Slavs. The North Slavs include the Poles, the Bohemians, the Ruthenians, the Slovaks, and the Russians. The Jugo-Slavs include the Serbians, the Montenegrins, the Croatians, the Slovenians, and the Dalmatians. The Poles. Over three million people of Polish parentage live in our country..." It is an interesting passage, which somewhat aligns with the North vs South Slav concept, but it is a primary source, a sociological rather than linguistic source, and it uses outdated groupings of people such as 'Bohemians, Ruthenians, Dalmatians' etc. and they fail to mention the Bulgarians, Belarusians, Rusyns and various other relevant groups. It's up to linguists to analyse these primary sources and explain how they imagine North Slavs, like the Palgrave 2016 book does; Wikipedians cannot cite these sources directly in order to claim '[North Slavic is] a classification of both the East Slavic and West Slavic groups together that has been in use for several centuries, but is not universally accepted'. The source does not mention 'East' or 'West Slavic', let alone say that 'North Slavic' is a combination of the two that makes more linguistic sense; therefore, using this source in this way constitutes OR and SYNTH. I'm going to have to remove it. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 15:07, 21 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Oppose: Although I'm glad you recognise that "just because the categorisation of Slavic languages into North and South is far less common than into West, East and South does not make 'North Slavic languages' an illegitimate subject", I also think you are greatly exaggerating the problems within this article. For example, when you say that "this article is a loose collection of WP:OR and WP:SYNTH with rampant generalisations to imply an inherent connection between people who just so happen to be speakers of North Slavic languages, which is then extrapolated to claim a political-cultural-religious unity amongst all post-1991 sovereign states that happen to have a North Slavic-speaking majority population". Where on Earth do you find these claims of a "political-cultural-religious unity" among North Slavs? All it speaks of is the common ancestry and (some) shared characteristics of these peoples in terms of language and culture. There is a clear religious divide between Catholics and Orthodox Norh Slavs, which both the article and some of the sources speak of, as well as a clear political divide (NATO/EU/US-allied and CIS/Russia-allied).


 * I already spoke of this in the relevant edit summary, but the sources for population numbers in that table were copied from the respective Wikipedia articles for each of the nationalities and/or states. It was maybe lazy or rushed on my part to not check them beforehand, but I think I can be excused for thinking that if they've been in use on Wikipedia for years then surely they'd at least pass basic reliability for this article too? Assuming the sources were indeed as bad as you claim (most days I'm currently spending more than half of my waking hours at work, so I cannot check each and every one of them now), I deleted them and the entire table from the page. It didn't really add much to the article anyway. However, if they were indeed full of nationalist propaganda, then I suggest bringing this up in all the article talk pages where they've been used. Though good luck getting through to anyone there, as many of those pages are ethnic nationalist playgrounds.


 * Your suggestion that the same treatment you propose here might need to be applied to articles for West, South, and East Slavs is an intriguing one. However, I do not think you will have much luck. Whereas the South Slavic category makes sense thanks to differences that developed throughout history due to geographic distance between North and South Slavs, the East/West grouping - especially today - exists almost solely for political reasons and you will be met with armies of devout and nationalist Slavs arguing that they're East or West because they don't want to be grouped with "the enemy". The North and South divide is just much more reasonable from a scholarly POV that focuses on language, customs, geography, history, etc. And yes, this article does place a large emphasis on language, but that's because languages are the key element in the formation and delineating of ethnic groups, followed by other cultural elements and (especially historically) religion.


 * What's quite sad is that there have been at least several attempts to vandalise this article in the past, plus maybe more that I haven't witnessed. All of them seemed to be politically motivated with crypto-nationalist agendas based entirely on anecdotal evidence. Others have also gutted the page, but most of them were well-intentioned like yourself and some have actually helped to improve the quality here. Overall, I think as a long-existing historical concept in science (yes, the racist stuff too, whether we like it or not) and cultural studies that seems to have gained some more spotlight in recent years this topic deserves its own article. It 100% deserves it considering we have separate pages for South, East, and West Slavs. If you feel there are some issues with it, though again I feel you have greatly exaggerated them to justify this nomination, then we should aim to improve them instead of binning all its contents or attempting to transfer them to some other article where many people will keep deleting them due to their personal views against this. --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 15:34, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm glad that you think I am well-intentioned; I think the same about you. However, some of your texts, choice of sources, and the way you represent sources, unfortunately do not comply to some of English Wikipedia's rules and standards. I'm trying to be fair and balanced towards you, others who have contributed, to the texts and sources, and to the images. I don't (yet) think this article necessarily needs to be deleted, or merged with another (as the others have noted, North Slavic languages is the most obvious candidate for a merger), but I don't see a lot of reasons to keep this as a separate independent article anymore.
 * To your specific remarks:
 * The 'claims of a "political-cultural-religious unity" among North Slavs' is implied by generalisations throughout the article, some differences that you mention notwithstanding, even though those differences themselves also tend to be based on yet more generalisations, e.g. 'There is a clear religious divide between Catholics and Orthodox Nor[t]h Slavs', which I actually doubt, and which is part of the reason why I previously successfully AfD'd the articles 'Catholic Slavs' and 'Eastern Orthodox Slavs'.
 * 'if they've been in use on Wikipedia for years then surely they'd at least pass basic reliability for this article too'. In practice, copypasting texts and sources from one article to another is tolerated on English Wikipedia (I sometimes do it myself; I often check the source first before I copypaste the text to another article, unless I have no reason to doubt it), but just because it has been here for a very long time doesn't mean it's true. People and texts can be wrong for a very long time. I'm glad you decided to remove the section, as it was becoming clear it was untenable.
 * 'if they were indeed full of nationalist propaganda, then I suggest bringing this up in all the article talk pages where they've been used.' Indeed, I may well do so per WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS. In fact, I've already marked some similar issues on the West Slavs, East Slavs and South Slavs pages today after starting this AfD (although those pages probably don't merit an AfD just yet).
 * 'Though good luck getting through to anyone there, as many of those pages are ethnic nationalist playgrounds.' That is a good reason for fixing those pages, too. Besides, a case can be made that this article "North Slavs" also kind of started out as an 'ethnic nationalist playground'; although you state on your user page that you 'reject nationalism', you do state 'This user is a North Slav.' and 'This Slavic user is interested in the heritage of his ancestors', so one may be forgiven for thinking that you wrote this article because you wanted to tell the world about your own ethnic identity rather than contributing to the sum of all knowledge. Which leads me to your final point:
 * 'this topic deserves its own article. It 100% deserves it considering we have separate pages for South, East, and West Slavs. (...) many people will keep deleting [the contents of this article] due to their personal views against this'. I'm afraid I'll have to remind you that Wikipedia is not in the business of WP:Righting Great Wrongs, such as 'Spread[ing] the word about a theory/hypothesis/belief/cure-all herb that has been unfairly neglected or suppressed by the scholarly community'. I think that may well have been your motivation behind creating this article, not only because of what you say here, but also the comment you left behind in the edit summary when you first created this article on 28 April 2017, namely 'About time this view got a proper article on Wikipedia'. As Doremo also noted above: 'the article contains a lot of original research and tries to present a fringe perspective as relatively mainstream'. I can understand that you really like this view, and that you want to tell other people about the view, and that more of them will agree with the view, and that you're disappointed by people who repeatedly disagree with the view, but unfortunately, that cannot be an argument for creating or keeping an article. Without SIGCOV, it just won't meet general notability. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 19:50, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I admit that I started this article because I was interested in and (for the most part) agreed with the concept, but this is true for all Wikipedians. We choose to get involved in certain topics or areas of research due to our personal curiosity or agreement with them, but (at least most of us, I hope) try to contribute in a way that remains unaffected by our own opinions. If we create pages for things we are not interested in then the content is likely to be of inferior quality, because who in their right mind would dedicate so much of their free time to writing about stuff they find boring without getting paid for it? In other words: our interests guide our choice of research, but not our method. How able we are to achieve true neutrality in practice is another matter entirely, as we are all human. Anyway, thank you for the kind words and understanding. --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 02:08, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I agree with you, and in fact my personal experience mirrors yours in this regard. I myself originally started out writing stuff on Dutch Wikipedia about (my) purported ethnic identity (amongst other things) as well, and it is part of the reason why my username is still 'Nederlandse Leeuw' ('Dutch Lion', which is a heraldic symbol of Dutch national identity). However, I soon discovered that, although we're allowed and even encouraged to write about things that interest us, we should make a clear distinction between opinions and facts, and always comply with the rules and scope of Wikipedia. In fact, if we are too emotionally or personally attached to a topic, we can best avoid writing about it, because our feelings may cloud our judgement, objectivity and neutrality. If our work is then challenged by others who rightfully point to Wikipedia's standards, that leads to a lot of stress and frustration. I can see that you experience some of that now, and I know that can be tough, because I've often been in your current position.
 * At some point, I realised that there are certain styles of writing, certain articles, certain choices of sources, certain representations of sources, that I cannot maintain against Wikipedia's quality standards, and that I had to let go of some of my early editing practices and work. I stopped defending poorly written stuff from my early days and let it be deleted; in rare cases, I even nominated some of my own early articles for deletion, because I could not justify their continued existence in the face of what I had learnt to be Wikipedia's rules, standards and good practices. (And indeed, sometimes this concerned articles about my ideas about my own ethnic identity). The Dutch Wikipedia community praised my self-criticism, my willingness to critically review my own work and my ability set aside my personal pride and opinions.
 * Although I won't claim to be completely objective and balanced by now, because I remain just as human as you, this approach has allowed me to become a much better Wikipedian over the years (if I do say so myself). By now, I am much better at making sure that the stuff that I write about - because I find it interesting, and would like other people to read about - is likely to pass Wikipedia's standards and to be mostly kept indefinitely. That also means I sometimes have to let go of something I wrote if it turns out not to pass Wikipedia's standards after all, because certain rules exist that I didn't know about or failed to properly comply to, or because more refined rules have been established in the meantime that have raised the quality standards that some of my earlier work can no longer comply to.
 * I think I'm reading in your responses here and in your recent edits on the North Slavs article that you are now in this process of trying to find a new balance between your personal interests on the one hand, and complying to Wikipedia's standards so that you can ensure that what you write will be kept on the other. Unlike the authors of the 'Eastern Orthodox Slavs' and 'Catholic Slavs', who have both been blocked indefinitely for repeatedly violating Wikipedia's rules, you show a willingness to learn, to follow the rules, to admit your mistakes and improve your editing practices, which I really appreciate and would like to encourage. :) Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 07:18, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Wow, all of this is actually extremely useful and helpful... I think it might be the best advice I've ever gotten from anyone on Wikipedia. Yes, as you say, I think I'm trying to find that balance right now. I guess this is why I'm letting the "Population", "History", and "Religion" sections go with such ease, which would've come to me with much more difficulty - if at all - in the past. Thanks again for your help and very kind words. Also, I think you're doing some stellar work right now in the North Slavs article, for example with how you picked out what Ford wrote much more accurately than I or other Wikipedians did before (skim-reading is not always the best method, even if less tiring and time effective heh). --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 13:26, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

The Slavic languages constitute a huge linguistic continuum, almost without any clear demarcations. Subdivisions are arbitrary by definition. Whereas it's true that the division into West, East and South Slavic is most common, one should realise that it doesn't tell the whole story. Most importantly, it is not a genetic subdivision: we know pretty sure that there have never been West or South Slavic protolanguages, and from that point of view, I have serious doubts about the value of articles like West Slavs a well. Especially the division between South Slavic and the rest seems to be based on geography rather than linguistic characteristics. In terms of grammar, for example, Slovene is endlessly more similar to West Slavic than to Bulgarian, but lexically, Bulgarian is often closer to Russian than to its direct neighbours Macedonian and Serbo-Croatian. It not black and white, in any case. All I can conclude is that the distinction North vs. South Slavs is primarily a concept based on the fact that they are geographically separated from each other by non-Slavic people. Of course, West and East Slavic languages share certain characteristics that set them apart them from South Slavic, but there are just as many characteristics that link South Slavic to East Slavic or West Slavic. The least I would expect from an article about North Slavs is an accurate description of what really sets them apart from the South Slavs, but the fact that the article South Slavs doesn't even mention them, make me more than suspicious. Although the article has much improved after it was nominated for deletion (for example by removing such nonsense as a list of North Slavic cities), I still believe redirecting and moving part of its contents to North Slavic languages would be a better solution. Should it be decided that the article stays, I would at least suggest reformulating the first sentence, because the phrase "not universally accepted" is quite an understatement. Regards, &mdash;IJzeren Jan Uszkiełtu?  11:17, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Comment. Since it's me who started North Slavic languages once upon a time, please allow me to chime in. First, I fully agree with Nederlandse Leeuw that the whole concept of North Slavs is highly questionable. The way this article looks now (and also the way it looked until a few days ago) creates the impression as if we were dealing with an ethnic group. But let's ask ourselves one question: how many Poles, Ukrainians, Russians etc. would identify themselves as "North Slavs"? The answer is, obviously: (almost) nobody. There is no such thing as a North Slavic community. So who are, in that case, the North Slavs? According to the article, it's the speakers of West and East Slavic languages lumped together. But is that enough for an article about the people and not just the languages?
 * Nice to see you here, IJzeren Jan, and thanks for chiming in! You make good points about how arbitrary linguistic subdivisions can be, and that the East-West-South consensus could be challenged. As I said earlier, in linguistics and biology, taxonomic reclassification based on new evidence and insights is not unheard of. But the evidence so far brought forth in this article and North Slavic languages is not compelling enough for Wikipedia to accept it, let alone 'to take it as a viable premise and run with it' (as Doremo put it) to establish an ethnic identity through extrapolation and SYNTH. I am seeing a consensus emerging here that a redirect/merger to North Slavic languages is the best solution, and to remove all material that isn't remotely connected to linguistics. I'm glad you also support my idea to review the added value of the articles West Slavs, East Slavs and South Slavs as well; I propose that we do that once a decision about North Slavs and North Slavic languages has been taken. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 12:58, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Totally agreed! In general, I don't think there's much additional value in having separate articles dealing with "speakers of languages X, Y and Z" if that's really the only connection there is between them. Cheers, &mdash;IJzeren Jan Uszkiełtu?  14:11, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Indeed, which is exactly why I'm reviewing all these articles' added value in general, and the specific claims made and sources used in particular. Samotny is right in observering that they often are or can become little more than playgrounds for ethnic nationalists, when they have little to no scholarly value beyond linguistics. Incidentally, while you're here, what do you think of the approach (first proposed by Samotny in 2017, and yesterday applied by me) to model the North Slavic languages article after the South Germanic one? I think this is about the most reasonable approach that Wikipedia can take to all the different concepts of "North Slavs" and "North Slavic languages", none of which are widely accepted, and all of which contradict each other. They're notable enough to be mentioned briefly in a list, but Wikipedia cannot support any concept in particular as the "correct" one. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 14:28, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Oh yes, I think that is a very good solution. However, in the case of North Slavic languages, I would still suggest working with subheaders than with a long list for a better reading experience, especially since the text after the bullet points is of very unequal length. Not only is the North versus South Slavic distinction clearly the most common of all uses, a separate header would also make it easier to merge material from North Slavs, which deals with the distinction as well. Besides, the other uses appear to be both incidental and obsolete. The fictional languages might warrant a separate subheader, too. Want me to give it a shot? Cheers, &mdash;IJzeren Jan Uszkiełtu?  15:23, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Well, that is the question. I was struggling with that as well. I think that at least the constructed languages merit a separate section, because they are "real" in the sense that they have been constructed and so there is evidence of their existence. All other concepts of "North Slavic" are just hypothetical. I removed the section heading that was there when I found the article, but I think you're justified in putting it back.
 * On the other hand, although the article currently gives most attention to the North versus South hypothesis (or the West+East hypothesis, if you will), most of those texts were added by Samotny in an effort to support his favourite definition of "North Slavic", and most of these sources are problematic (for the reasons we have outlined here, in the tags, in the edit summaries and on the talk pages). This far greater attention doesn't mean that this definition is actually the most common in all literature, nor necessarily the most favoured by linguists. It may simply be WP:UNDUE. Moreover, every time the North Slavs or North Slavic languages articles claimed this was the most common use of the terms, the sources consistently failed verification. As far as I have seen, there is no reason to assume this hypothesis is the most common, let alone the most plausible. As far as I'm concerned, they are all equally implausible. My suggestion is to remove all the badly sourced, SYNTH and WP:UNDUE materials, and give all these hypotheses more or less equal attention. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 20:18, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I guess you might be right about that. Several authors use the term "North Slav(on)ic" in various contexts, but in most cases they don't really define them. Berger, for example, seems to treat Czech and Slovak as something transitional between North and South Slavic. There are exceptions, though. Combrie and Corbett is definitely a standard work. On p. 114 they write: "There is little doubt, however, that by the ninth century there emerged at least three distinct dialects, South Slavonic, East Slavonic and West Slavonic, the latter two grouped as North Slavonic". And then there's this document of the Russian Academy of Sciences (p. 39): "Севернославянские языки. Восточнославянские языки и западнославянские языки, вместе противопоставленные южнославянским языкам. Это объединение не является особым таксоном в иерархии славянской языковой семьи, а выделяется для характеристики географического распространения явлений, не известных южнославянским языкам." (translation: "North Slavic languages. East Slavic languages and West Slavic languages together in contrast with the South Slavic languages. This combination is not a particular taxon in the hierarchy of the Slavic language family, but stands out to characterize the geographical distribution of phenomena that are not known to the South Slavic languages."). But I have to agree that it's not much. Cheers, &mdash;IJzeren Jan Uszkiełtu?  23:03, 18 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Delete a largely unrecognised concept that doesn't warrant an article, see also Articles for deletion/Northwestern European people. Hemiauchenia (talk) 17:15, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Absolutely untrue, as shown by the numerous, interesting, long discussions that have emerged from this nomination. The problem is not that the concept is "largely unrecognised", but that there are several differing definitions of it and the article that I and others wrote did not reflect that appropriately enough or in a manner good enough for the encyclopedic standards we aim for at Wikipedia. Whether that warrants a rewrite, redirect or deletion is something we'll see. --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 13:16, 22 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Further comments: Thank you for chipping in, IJzeren Jan, and for your continued efforts here, Nederlandse Leeuw. As I said at your talk page, I've had to disappear for a bit due to work. However, the author of one of the papers has gotten back to me and just updated his paper with a new version that mentions all the licences used. He also claims it was "reviewed by two other professionals", but I'm not sure what that means exactly and he did not elaborate. My guess is that it was a legitimate effort by several scholars, but most likely published only online on academia.edu? In any case, I think you are correct that I favoured one view above others in this Wikipedia article. When I first wrote the North Slavs page I had based the text on a much smaller number of sources, but my own research and yours into the subject since then shows that there are various concepts using this name that differ a bit. Although I still think the combination of East/West seems to be the most common one, the Rusyns especially and sometimes Slovaks too are the two ethnic groups that are in some sources grouped as South Slavs instead. --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 13:16, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
 *  This AfD discussion includes a proposal for merger to North Slavic languages,,, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and a notice of the proposed merger was posted to on June 22. As such, this AfD discussion may need to be extended or relisted to incorporate input from.


 * 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.