Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Scots Gaelic people


 * 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. Spartaz Humbug! 07:29, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

Scots Gaelic people

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

Recreation of a subject earlier merged in 2019 after an AfD (Articles for deletion/Gaels of Scotland) The Banner  talk 09:40, 2 August 2022 (UTC) Comment this is hard to consider separately from Lowland_Scots_people, also up for deletion. The problem is that the Gaels article (into which the original Gaels-of-Scotland article got merged) deals with the unity of the Gaelic peoples across Ireland and into Scotland. It does not deal with the disunity of the Gaelic Scots from the Lowland Scots. But the social relationships, histories, and differences between the lowland Scots and the highland Gaelic Scots go back centuries, have been written about by so, so many; there's no question of the notability of both groups, their interactions, and their social history. The question to my mind is more whether it's appropriate to keep these two articles separate, or to have a single article dealing with the Scottish peoples and histories (across two ethnic and linguistic backgrounds), and another single article dealing with the Gaelic peoples (across multiple nations). I am not a Scottish historian, and feel the question is too big for me. I cannot support a delete; the subject is too notable, and the material in these articles too good to lose. I cannot suggest a merge or reorganisation because this is a volunteer project and it would be a truly huge amount of work for whoever picks it up. Elemimele (talk) 13:40, 2 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Ethnic groups and Scotland. Shellwood (talk) 09:51, 2 August 2022 (UTC)
 * It certainly doesn't make sense under the name of Scots Gaelic people. I think the issue here is POV - not in the sense usually debated about on Wikipedia but in a cultural sense. By and large, looking at it from inside the Gaelic/Irish-speaking community, there are just Gaels, some of whom happen to be in Scotland, some in Ireland. If I search for Gàidheil Albannach ('Scottish Gaels') I get 297 ghits, if I search for Gàidheil ann an Alba ('Gaels in Scotland') I get over a thousand ghits, if I put in the equivalent Irish terms, its 2 vs 1610. It goes further than that. While within each country the language is referred to as Gàidhlig or Gaeilge respectively, usually when referring to the other one, people just use the same term and append the country i.e. Gàidhlig in Scotland is Scots Gaelic, but Gàidhlig na h-Èireann (Gaelic of Ireland) is 'Irish Gaelic', and vice versa. There currently is just one article for Gaels because separating the two conceptually is not easy. The least worst name would probably be Irish/Scottish Gaels, but that does not address the fact that the way the page content is written is, well, wrong. Gael ≠ Highlander, not by ANY stretch of imagination or fact. Akerbeltz (talk) 09:12, 3 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure that Irish/Scottish Gaels is a useful name because it overlaps too heavily with Gaels in total. If you exclude Gaels who've moved into the rest of the world, just as all peoples move around, there isn't much of Gaelic people that wouldn't automatically fall in Irish/Scottish Gaels. No, the lowland-highland divide is of course a generalisation that's often wrong. But it's also a generalisation that's widely found in sources. These aren't great hits because they're a bit tertiary, but Britanica clearly believes in a basic South-West to North-East divide, and so does this article at scarf.scot: . We have to deal with what sources say, even if we think it's an oversimplification or wrong. My feeling is that AfD is not a great venue to discuss this, because it's not a matter of deleting individual articles. It's more about how do we distribute a huge mass of obviously notable material between appropriately-titled articles; it can't be dealt with at the level of individual articles in the way AfD works. It would better have been a giant request for comment across projects covering Gaelic and Scottish history. Elemimele (talk) 19:02, 3 August 2022 (UTC)
 * clarification: by SW to NE divide, I mean a crude line running from the SW to the NE, with the Gaelic speaking people, of Gaelic origin, to the North and West, while the Scots who spread from the South being mainly to the SE side of that line. But these lines are always rather rubbish. It's insane to think that people stay in one place, unchanged, without mixing, for centuries, and it would be very socially unhealthy if they did. Elemimele (talk) 19:08, 3 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I don't get what you mean with I'm not sure that Irish/Scottish Gaels is a useful name because it overlaps too heavily with Gaels in total. If you exclude Gaels who've moved into the rest of the world, just as all peoples move around, there isn't much of Gaelic people that wouldn't automatically fall in Irish/Scottish Gaels. There are Gaels as an indigenous population in Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man. Yes, there's a diaspora but I don't think that's hugely relevant unless we're talking about Nova Scotia. Of course they'll overlap? I mean, it's a bit like trying to say German people is too broad and we need to split this into Low German and High German people and then argue that there's too much of an overlap? But maybe I'm just not getting what you're saying :)
 * That aside, going purely by the sources, Scots Gaelic people seems like a totally made up term that has no basis in the literature, excluding the Wiki page and its copies, I'm not really getting any ghits, whereas there's at least some for Irish/Scottish Gaels. Akerbeltz (talk) 21:25, 3 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I think we're trying to say almost the same thing. I believe there is no point in having an article on Scottish/Irish Gaels distinct from Gaels because they are the same thing. You believe, and I'm inclined to agree, that there is no point in having an article on Scottish Gaels because there really is no such thing, there are just Gaels, some of whom happen to live in Scotland, some in Ireland (and a few elsewhere). But that isn't the subject of this article. This article, and the article on the Lowland Scots, together, are actually a review of the subject of ethnicities as a whole in Scotland, and the claims of many sources that the Scottish population can be broadly separated into two general groups, those of Gaelic origin who tend to be found more to the North and West (who in many sources get referred to (conflated?) as Highlanders), and those of Southern origin who tend to be found more towards the South and the East (whom many sources refer to as Lowland Scots). I don't think it's great to have one subject split over several articles. But merely deleting this one won't make the subject go away, and it can't be merged with the existing Gaels, because that's not the right place for the subject; it would be almost like writing an article about the French and adding three paragraphs on why French isn't the same as Belgian. I'll admit though, I have a very strong dislike of articles on ethnicity and racial types; ethnicity seems to bring out the worst in human nature. Elemimele (talk) 07:15, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

I know what a Highlander is and what it's usual definition is. I'm not questioning that. The point is though that this article claims that Highlanders = Scots Gaelic people - something that is both wrong (there are Highlanders who are not Gaelic speakers and there are Gaelic speakers who are not Highlanders) and cannot be backed up by reliable sources. The Scarf article actually makes a different point about Gaelic and Highlanders, not the one the Wiki page is trying to make. Akerbeltz (talk) 09:16, 4 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Okay, so let's focus on this as an AfD. If this is to close as delete, the admin who closes it is going to need some evidence. There are lots of possible reasons to get rid of the article. (1) The proposed reason, that it existed previously and got deleted. That doesn't hold much water; articles are regularly re-written, and if they're re-written with new referencing and content overcoming previous objections, they can be acceptable; an article should be judged on its merits, not on its title. (2) Because the article is basically wrong. I think this is your main concern? At the moment, the article is bristling in references, so we can't argue it's unsourced. We need either to demonstrate that the sources are bad, to prune parts that are wrong and not sourced, and to find sources that disagree with the current ones where we believe that sourced statements are biased, misleading or wrong. (3) The article isn't the best way to handle the subject. This is what I believe. I believe that the ethnic origins of the various peoples who live in Scotland is a notable subject, and can be sourced, but that it would be more helpful to have a single article on the peoples of Scotland than individual articles on particular ethnic groups, particularly as these groups are not necessarily confined to Scotland. This article already exists, at Scottish_people, which means I'm tending towards delete, with merging information to that article. I am not sufficiently aware of Scottish ethnic issues to know what information is correct and therefore mergeable. Does that make any sense? Elemimele (talk) 12:55, 4 August 2022 (UTC)
 * (note, however, that at Scottish People we have the following sentence: "From 1500 on, Scotland was commonly divided by language into two groups of people, Gaelic-speaking "Highlanders" (the language formerly called Scottis by English speakers and known by many Lowlanders in the 18th century as "Erse") and the Inglis-speaking "Lowlanders" (a language later to be called Scots)". To the uninformed reader, this looks like exactly what you contend is not true and not sourced). Elemimele (talk) 13:00, 4 August 2022 (UTC)
 * a) Galloway Gaelic only died out in the 18th century and is not included in ANY definition of 'Highlands' I've ever heard or read about. b) unless we're going to call the page 'Highlanders up until the 18th century' or something similar my point still stands. Yes, up until the somewhen in the 18th century most Highlanders spoke Gaelic but even back then not all, especially in the Norn-speaking areas of Caithness and most certainly these days it is NOT the case that someone from the Highlands will speak Gaelic. I wish it were so but the percentage of Gaelic speakers is very low today - which brings us to the even murkier question of whether you can be a Gael without speaking Gaelic ... Akerbeltz (talk) 14:48, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 21:27, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Comment: Perhaps the article shouldn't be deleted (right now) if information should be merged elsewhere. In addition, the article would probably need kept as a redirect for attribution purposes. — Danre98 ( talk ^ contribs ) 14:14, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Delete better covered under Gaels Akerbeltz (talk) 19:12, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

Delete. This article is hopelessly confused, often plain wrong and doesn't even have a grasp of its scope, with its very first sentence listing various alternative terms that mean different things, then an expansion of the definition which poorly matches these terms. This confusion would be alleviated by covering these matters at Gaels and at Scottish people. As with Lowland Scots people, it appears to have been constructed to advance an OR thesis and thus nothing is salvageable for merging. Also per the previous deletion at Articles for deletion/Gaels of Scotland. Mutt Lunker (talk) 12:30, 13 August 2022 (UTC) Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Vanamonde (Talk) 10:47, 17 August 2022 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.


 * 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.