Talk:North Slavs

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Term[edit]

Is North Slav not merely a collective name for East and West Slavs when combined and as opposed to South Slavs? Don't get me wrong, I know that the term North Slav for this concept has been used (on rare occasions) but at the moment it may seem a little confusing because when you take the following articles: East Slavs, West Slavs, South Slavs, North Slavs - in a single list then one generally expects to find a different set of nations in each group. When I noticed the article, even I thought the page might be about some extinct nations (possibly absorbed into northern Russian) - rather like East Germanic which existed with Gothic and others related. For what it's worth, South Slavs are also divided into east and west based on ancestral route into respective region. Todays's Bulgarians, Macedonians, Pomaks, Gorani and Greek Slavs make up the eastern group and the rest form the western branch, all with some overlap and ethnic revisionism along the fringes. I am just interested in whether it is best to keep this article but make it shorter to complement East Slavs and West Slavs. --OJ (talk) 10:06, 29 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's worth keeping because it represents a different viewpoint that has not been well-represented on Wikipedia up until now. And there is no need to shorten it in my opinion, especially the main core of the article that explains why some use this category instead of the East and West divide. It is a bit like South Germanic, but with much more info and reliable sources available. --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 16:18, 29 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
You've written a good article, of that there is no doubt. I also see the South Germanic connection. My point is that work needs to be done either here or on other pages because as things stand: having North Slavs alongside East Slavs and West Slavs creates confusion because the latter pair are merely subcategories of the former. --OJ (talk) 16:09, 30 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks and you have a fair point. Maybe we could do a section on how North Slavic was also used as a term for a now extinct branch of the Slavonic peoples? For example this: North Slavic languages#An extinct branch of Slavic.5B1.5D. However, this would need much expansion since that section is not well sourced and contains little info. --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 17:17, 30 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Yes an expansion would do good for sure. But maybe the real work needs to be done outside the named articles - maybe we need to clean up everywhere else. We need to be careful not to mislead readers into thinking North Slavs refer to a "fourth branch". That said, I feel inclined to creating a similar situation for South Slavs who in their own way are traditionally split east and west. To be honest, I personally prefer North Slavs over East and West. Obviously I fully accept the East/West distinction because there is a long-standing dichotomy (Catholic/Orthodox) much like with South Slavs, and more recently the East Slavic group were Soviet Union while the West Slavic group formed separate countries despite their client status during the period. The point is that there is no specific East Slavic, South Slavic or West Slavic progenitor; also the manner in which all became separate is the result of the adventures of each branch. If we removed borders across the Slavic lands and discarded things such as flags, ethnicity and anything else man-made (i.e. political properties), we find a gradual change from Slovakia into Ukraine, and Poland into Belarus with regards dialect, culture, mentality and all else. So it is not for any political reason I favour North Slav. I intend to spend time in the near future exploring sources that may warrant separate east south and west south articles. Then the Slavic branch articles will be neatly divided into four: a north and south, and an east and west for both sectors. --OJ (talk) 11:37, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds good, thanks for taking the time to get interested in this. --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 15:53, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Just because you "personally" prefer the meaning, does not make it fact. Bulgarian Archer (talk) 19:51, 11 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm so glad this disruptive vandal has been blocked, but I'm afraid he will return in one form or another. --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 00:27, 12 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Original research[edit]

I am afraid the article contains a good deal of WP:SYNTH. The general part is OK. But the sections "History" and "Religion" are suspicious. Since this is not a universally recognized classification, you must cite only sources which directly speak of North Slavs. Even the North Slavic languages is rather contested concept. Staszek Lem (talk) 22:29, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It is not as much SYNTH as a question of context. For example, if you look at this source, you find "North Slav" highlighted precisely because it refers to both constituent branches, and this is why they appear in parentheses immediately after. --OJ (talk) 02:06, 4 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Well, WP:SYNTH is exactly about context: one takes texts from different contexts, puts them together, and here you go. I cahallenge you to find source whics speaks directly about "History of North Slavs" and "Religion of North Slavs". The book you cite says "The North Slavs (West and East) have long been separated from their southern Slavic kin" simply means a mechanical W+E. I don't see any evidence taht "History ov North Slavs" as anything more than HoWS+HoEs, and arbitrary selection of elements of this combined history is OR (specifically, it is wikipedian's picking of facts to allege that is a summary of their allegedly common history). Staszek Lem (talk) 17:05, 4 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I admit that those sections of the article were a bit rushed in comparison to the others, I could try to polish them up at some point. Though personally I don't see a problem with the example used here. --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 19:18, 4 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The term itself is used, through not common, and perhaps obsolete. But if we can define North Slaves as tribes/people in countries X, Y, and Z, then it seems fine to discuss their religion etc. even if there is no single book on North Slavic religion or history. We just have to make sure we make it clear we are talking about Polish and Russian religions or histories, for example, instead of North Slavic religion. Generally, unless there are any controversial statements etc. I don't think there is much to worry about here. Btw, what would be useful would be a discussion of the term - is it used in modern works, by whom, who invented it, etc. Of course it is possible there are no sources for that... --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 06:33, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Staszek Lem - No such things as a "mechanical W+E". If a comprehensive term happened to exist to refer to both the Germanic people and the Baltic people to the exclusion of everybody else, then there is a reason for this. Since the arbitrary example I gave you is such that the populations are not bilaterally connected in any way, there exists no "mechanical" title for reference. Plus, if this page is SYNTH then I see no reason why any publisher would speak in such a way when he could just as easily have said "West and East Slavs" omitting "north" and avoiding parentheses for the subgroups. What this example actually proves is that the terminology may be esoteric where English speakers may be concerned which is why the constituents are provided in brackets, in other words if the reader were expected to know what was meant by North Slav then the author need not have provided the list. For instance, if we said "The United Kingdom (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland)", then we are assuming the reader may not be fully aware of which entities compose the UK but might nevertheless be expected to know the four items. In this source, "North Slavs" stands alone. Since we know this is a people then it is natural that there should be a history and religious beliefs among the populace. --OJ (talk) 07:29, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Well, my worries were due to relative obscureness of the term; I don't have any specific concerns. Now that you mentioned "Germanic + Baltic", for quite some I was mulling about a less artificial example of "Polish+Lithuanian+Ruthenian" conglomerate. Despite religious (Catholic vs. Orthodox) and linguistic (Slavic vs.Baltic), this area has a long history of interaction and strikingly common cultures. I've been wondering if there are any scholarly comparative discussions about "Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth heritage", even forgetting about political musings, such as Międzymorze. Staszek Lem (talk) 16:04, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

More than likely there will be scholarly material on Polish-Lithuanian connections. The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was a major powerful state for two centuries and I totally support any article you may propose that focuses on the relationship between the nations (which had to exist logically) as opposed to the territory and the governance. The place of the Ruthenians I am not too sure of since this nation is sadly obscure in that few people on the west side of Europe will have heard of them. The hard thing about any comprehensive Slavic article is that a great deal of "heritage" is historiographical - promoted/revived in the wake of Pan-Slavism so that 200-300 years later it is easy to believe that those things were an unbroken part of every culture since inception. To give you an example, even the very terms north, east, west and south Slav could deceive a rational person that the terms are a legacy of real time historical events. In fact, Yugo-Slav (South Slav) was coined precisely in the last two to three centuries which shows that despite Slavic knowledge, all the ramifications are a very recent development. Without Croats and Serbs claiming "south", Poles and Russians would not have referred to them (or us in my case) as "Yugo". But this doesn't stop latter-century writers from using "South Slav" when referring right back to original settlement when those tribes settled all over mainland Greece, Albania and Romania where today their descendants are absorbed into the other nations. With this, my own thoughts are that north Slav need apply to anything specific for the Slavic populations north of the dividing gap for south, and the terms east and west are best applied to the specific unity and heritage for their internal constituents (e.g. Czechs, Poles, Slovaks, Sorbs, etc. for the west branch). It is not a tidy split though. Since 1939 and the Soviet annexation of eastern Polish lands, we now have a vast Catholic area across western Belarus and western Ukraine but the populations have mostly assimilated with regards their spoken language and their ethnic identity. This makes writing difficult and leaves certain things slightly unclear. --OJ (talk) 07:29, 7 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

NS map[edit]

File:North Slavic languages.png: Samotní Tulák, please provide a description to this colorful map (probably as text in file description, because there many small details). Staszek Lem (talk) 16:58, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sure thing, good suggestion. I have now added a legend in English, Polish, Russian as these are the only three languages I know (more or less) how to communicate in. However, the template for the Russian language is broken for some reason and I have no idea how to fix this. Any ideas? --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 21:36, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

No such ethnic group[edit]

You cannot combine West and East Slavs into one homogeneous ethnic group. While it's true that Eastern and Western Slavs did not experience Turkish influence like the South Slavs, that does not mean one can group them as being similar due to the fact that they are still two fundamentally different branches. West Slavic languages have lexical and phonetically differences not present within the East or South Slavic languages. For example, you would not call a Slovak or a Russian today a "North Slav" because they are not part of the same culture and branch. Slovaks are clearly Western Slavic and Russians are clearly Eastern Slavic. Bulgarian Archer (talk) 19:39, 11 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Bulgarian Archer, first of all, please sign your comments. It is basic etiquette on Wikipedia. Secondly, your arguments against this are all POV and nowhere in the article (or in the sources used) is it stated or even suggested that the North Slavs are "one homogeneous ethnic group". Thirdly, Bulgarian/Macedonian have several features that are not present in any other Slavic language, yet they are still considered Slavonic tongues. Finally, if you can group together as culturally and linguistically diverse nations as the Bulgarians and Slovenians as South Slavs, then I see absolutely no problem in putting Slovaks and Russians (who have more in common) in the North Slavic branch. --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 01:17, 11 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

How nice of you to vandalise this talk page by removing my original response, as well as trying to blank the article itself using another IP address. Serves me right for feeding the troll by assuming that you wanted to have a genuine discussion about this; perhaps next time I should not assume good faith and just ignore dunces like you straight away. --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 00:26, 12 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Diferences between languages.[edit]

I am Czech and I can say that we understand Slovenian and Croatian way better than Russian. David Kumprecht (talk) 16:32, 14 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Please read WP:SOAP. This is an article talk page, not a forum in which to express your WP:PPOV. Thank you. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 20:36, 14 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Due to centuries of interaction with the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires, Turkic influences in the region are also greater than in the north.[edit]

This sentence is a nonsense. What means Turkic influence? Byzantine and Ottoman Empires were not Turkic ones. The Byzantine Empire was a Christian empire with Greek used as an official language. The Christians in Ottoman Empire had a separate Orthodox community called Rum Millet, where Greek was used as lingua franca. The Ottomans by the way were Muslims from different origins (Greek, Slavic, Turkic, Arab, Armenian, Iranian etc.), who spoke Ottoman language, which borrowed, in all aspects, extensively from Arabic and Persian, but not Turkish one. Jingiby (talk) 05:19, 18 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Byzantine and Ottoman Empires were not Turkic? What, sorry? From Wikipedia: Turkic soldiers in the army of the Abbasid caliphs emerged as the de facto rulers of most of the Muslim Middle East (apart from Syria and Egypt), particularly after the 10th century. The Oghuz and other tribes captured and dominated various countries under the leadership of the Seljuk dynasty and eventually captured the territories of the Abbasid dynasty and the Byzantine Empire.[1]; Turkic peoples and related groups migrated west from Turkestan and present-day Mongolia towards Eastern Europe, the Iranian plateau and Anatolia (modern Turkey) in many waves. The date of the initial expansion remains unknown. After many battles, they established their own state and later constructed the Ottoman Empire. The main migration occurred in medieval times, when they spread across most of Asia and into Europe and the Middle East.[1]; As the Seljuk Empire declined following the Mongol invasion, the Ottoman Empire emerged as the new important Turkic state, that came to dominate not only the Middle East, but even southeastern Europe, parts of southwestern Russia, and northern Africa.[1].
In this way Russia is also Turkic state being under Mongol Empire, the Golden Horde, the White Horde, the Crimean Khanate and the Kazan Khanatea for several centuries. A Ukraine too. Jingiby (talk) 17:21, 18 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
And what is that supposed to mean for the purpose of the sentence in question? Staszek Lem (talk) 19:45, 18 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
By the way, the sentence is correct. It only needs a valid source. It is ridiculous to question Turkic influence in Balkans. Staszek Lem (talk) 19:43, 18 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The sentence is nonsense. There is Islamic influence on the Balkans, not a Turkic one. The Ottoman culture was Islamic not Turkic. There is not a Turkic culture. Jingiby (talk) 04:58, 19 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, please... seriously. Anyone familiar with the various Slavic cultures and their history knows that what you are claiming is WP:PPOV nonsense, not the statement in the content. Please strop trying to create WP:SYNTH out of historic events in Eastern Europe. All you've established is an embarrassing non-argument. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 05:14, 19 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Check the article Culture of the Ottoman Empire. Citation: Despite newer added amalgamations, the Ottoman dynasty, like their predecessors in the Sultanate of Rum and the Seljuk Empire, were thoroughly Persianised in their culture, language, habits and customs, and therefore, the empire has been described as a Persianate empire."[1][2][3][4] Throughout its history, the Ottoman Empire had substantial subject populations of Byzantine Greeks, Armenians, Jews and Assyrians, who were allowed a certain amount of autonomy under the confessional millet system of Ottoman government, and whose distinctive cultures enriched that of the Ottoman state. Nothing about Turkic influence. 06:14, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ a b c Carter V. Findley, The Turks in World History (Oxford University Press, October 2004) ISBN 0-19-517726-6
Jingiby, I still think your claim that it is not Turkic is ridiculous, but I appreciate your newest edits at the page. This is a good compromise which I'm willing to accept, the others will probably find it ok too. Glad to know you're not here to start trouble as we have had some vandalism on this page in the past. Thanks! --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 10:43, 19 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Please, check Byzantine commonwealth and Rum millet. Jingiby (talk) 11:44, 19 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Help with vandalism please[edit]

Another anonymous user recently showed up to remove content and label everything they disagree with as either not cited or using an reliable source (reminiscent very much of of the Bulgarian guy who used sock puppets a while earlier). I would really appreciate it if a Wikipedian with extra privileges or some kind of admin rights could look behind the scenes and check if this recent editor is not connected to the same vandal, or someone else entirely. I will ping OJ, Staszek, Piotrus, Iryna here as legitimate users who have helped with similar troubles in the past and contributed greatly by adding/removing/modifying content on this page in the past or participating in discussions. Thanks in advance, --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 14:52, 30 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It's on my watchlist. Cheers. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 17:55, 30 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I would not characterize the IP edits as vandalism (they're not introducing profanity or nonsense, or blanking sections), although some of it may be tendentious. Some of the tags have more merit than others, but broad statements like "[The North Slavs] separated from the common Slavic group ..." or "There are major North Slavic population hubs in North Asia ..." really should be backed up by reliable sources. Doremo (talk) 06:41, 1 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't really have much against some of these tags, but to remove content and sources (e.g. Łesiów's quote) just because it doesn't agree with your personal agenda is something that should not be accepted by Wikipedia. Feel free to add some of the tags back - especially if you feel they ought to be there - but there is no reason to just delete sourced content like that user did. --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 23:34, 4 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I have reverted the edit to restore the good intermediate edits (commas, numerical order of notes) and have also restored the sourced content that was removed by the IP. Doremo (talk) 03:37, 5 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 13:48, 5 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Alright, I've cleaned up some of the tags, removed most of the redundant ones, replaced some with reliable sources, etc. Feel free to replace the ones left with any decent sources you find. Also, whoever added those tags in the first place did so with zero respect for the English Wikipedia's punctuation rules (i.e. they placed ALL of them before full stops, commas, and so on) which is another reason why we should have reverted those changes to begin with. If someone is too lazy to do things properly, they shouldn't do them at all and leave it to people who give a damn. I'm sick of fixing other people's rubbish. Uneducated vandals think they can just flick through the article and drop tags wherever they like throughout in an effort to discredit the article as much as possible. Ughhh.... --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 14:36, 5 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Synthesis and original research[edit]

To avoid WP:SYNTH (which much of this article seems based on) it should cite sources discussing "North Slavs". Many of the cited sources fail verification because they do not discuss "North Slavs" (and the authors of those sources would probably reject the concept). Synthesizing them to reach or imply a conclusion is WP:OR (i.e., facts, allegations, and ideas for which no reliable, published sources exist). Doremo (talk) 14:50, 5 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Nonsense. Plenty of these sources actually mention North Slavs, and I have just replaced some of the ones that didn't with ones that do. --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 15:01, 5 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
No, it is not nonsense. Poor citation makes a poor article. Cite sources that discuss "North Slavs," and do not synthesize or falsely cite sources that do not support the material in the article. Doremo (talk) 15:04, 5 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Some of the other sources mentioning North Slavs were removed in the past. Also, why are you so determined at removing content from this page, dropping tags wherever possible (even in places that make little sense), making the article look as unreliable as possible and littering it with this stuff, then place that template at the top? What is your agenda exactly? We've already had a really frustrated Bulgarian, then someone else who came up with ridiculous statements like "Ottomans/Byzantines weren't Turkic", and so on. Where do you fit in all of this? I'm sorry for assuming bad faith, but at this point I have to. Every single time I've assumed good faith this page would end up repeatedly vandalised and violated, to the point where it had to be protected for a time. --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 15:06, 5 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Added some more sources, including one dating from 1879 (this actually surprised me - I had no idea "North Slav" was in usage so early). Anyway, sorry for pinging yous again, but it would be nice to get input from more than just the two of us on this: OJ, Staszek, Piotrus, Iryna. If any of you would like me to stop pinging you about content associated with this page then please let me know. I personally think adding the template is uncalled for, especially considering that I've already cleaned up the citations quite a lot since the flooding of tags by that IP. Also, calling a concept that has existed since 1879 at the very least existed since 1841 at the very least as original research is ridiculous. --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 15:17, 5 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Found even more literature from the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th century where the concept of North Slavs is used in the same way as in this article, all incorporated now as sources or about to be. Interestingly a source from 1922 mentions it in a different context (I will mention this too soon). Ok, I am taking the template off as it should be obvious to everyone now that this is not something I or anyone else just recently made up - North Slavs has been around as a term and sociological/linguistic/cultural/historical/genetic concept since almost 200 years ago at the very least. Doremo, please learn from this. It takes more effort to actually take some time to improve an article than just slapping a template on top of it and calling it OR because you don't like it... --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 15:41, 5 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Even more writings from the early 20th century have now been added as sources to the article, ALL of them explicitly mention North Slavs or north Slavs. --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 16:08, 5 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I've restored the tag (as an unresolved and ongoing issue). Please read the guidelines at WP:WNTRMT and let a 3rd party deal with it. Doremo (talk) 19:18, 5 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
You really are a lazy individual... --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 15:56, 6 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

In the section above with the same concern I was worried about sections of History and Religion. However the discussion convinced me that once it was reliably established which nations constitute NS, we can summarize their histories and religions as long as no new conclusions are drawn Because the distinctive feature of OR/SYNTH is statements, explicit or implicit, not found in the sosurces. Therefore to make this dispute focused, the originator of the dispute, please state which exactly statements are disputed. Staszek Lem (talk) 18:27, 6 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Cite sources that discuss "North Slavs" - this is a valid request. However since it is already established that Poles are North Slavs (under the point of view presented in the article, it is OK to use sources which discuss Poles as long as these sources are not used to support statements about the concept of "North Slavs" itself. Staszek Lem (talk)

(and the authors of those sources would probably reject the concept) -- If there are researchers who reject it, then it would be a good idea to add section "Criticsm of the concept"}}. Staszek Lem (talk) 18:30, 6 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The Living Age[edit]

The Living Age, a long-running periodical ... -- The Living Age is a publisher. We do not attribute theories to publishers, but to scholars. Please specify who exactly used this term in this way. Staszek Lem (talk) 18:40, 6 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Good point. I found this through Google Books and I don't think I had access to the full preview, so that's the issue. I will have a look later when I'm less busy - thanks for pointing this out. --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 20:46, 6 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Samotny Wędrowiec: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=inu.32000000706814&view=1up&seq=220. –Austronesier (talk) 10:44, 16 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed deletion of Category:Slavic countries and territories[edit]

It is currently being proposed that Category:Slavic countries and territories be deleted. This article is related to that category. The relevant discussion is located at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2020 January 8#Countries and territories by language family. The discussion would benefit from input from editors with a knowledge of and interest in North Slavs. Krakkos (talk) 11:18, 10 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sources[edit]

I open this section to discuss the merits of various sources used in this article one-by-one, starting with Serafin (2015).

Serafin (2015)[edit]

How is this a WP:RS? It's an essay and doesn't appear to be a peer-reviewed publication, which is a must to pass WP:SCHOLARSHIP (with the exception of WP:SPS by established subject-matter experts). –Austronesier (talk) 17:07, 16 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It was written by a sociology scholar, plus it makes more sense (and outright refuses to play racial science) than many other sources on ethnicity in general. As for whether it's peer-reviewed or not, I don't know either way. I think it might have been cited a number of times in other publications though. --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 17:26, 16 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it is written in a very acceptable framework especially when compared to older sources, yet AFAICS, it is not published in any peer-reviewed academic journal or book, nor cited anywhere else than in WP. Its author being an academic scholar is not enough to pass the WP:SPS-threshold; the author really must have a track record of peer-reviewed publications and be widely cited in the field, before we can add their self-published stuff here. If in doubt, you can get a third opinion at WP:RSN, but I'm very sure people will tell you the same thing. –Austronesier (talk) 20:28, 16 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Austronesier: Hi, I see you've created this section to discuss the sources here, I didn't see that until now. I found the same or similar problems when I re-wrote the North Slavic languages article yesterday, but for completeness, I'll repeat my observations here, or respond to your observations wherever I haven't made the same already in the edit summaries of North Slavic languages, or on the North Slavs AfD discussion (some of which Samotny also already responded to). In the case of Serafin 'written in October 2014-January 2015 (excluding preliminary and additional research time)', 'slightly altered [in] April 2017 (...) with images added', I also noted '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.' I agree with your assessment that it is WP:SPS and should be removed, regardless of some of the better contents or the author's credentials, because it is not acceptable as a reliable source. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 11:58, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Živković et al. (2013)[edit]

This is a collection of six papers, and it would be great to have a more specific reference. I have a copy and can only see one passing mention of North Slavs in the chapter by I. Cvijanović. –Austronesier (talk) 17:11, 16 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

There are other mentions of northern Slavs in these papers that I gave page numbers for, though they seem to just use the concept unproblematically as if it was universally accepted - which is another argument to keep the page imo - and also in passing, so yes, agreed that they don't focus on this idea much in general. --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 17:26, 16 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
On page 186 (chapter written by Dejan Bulić), I could only find "the Slavic North", which defines a territory, not a group of people. –Austronesier (talk) 21:00, 16 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I followed your earlier decision to remove the Živković et al. 2013 ("belgrade") source. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 11:58, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Bloch (1933)[edit]

This source literally made me go "bugger me backwards!" Note that it is used to support the statement "Although the use of the East and West Slavonic categories is the standard model, some theorists claim that these two groups share enough of the same or similar linguistic and cultural characteristics to be classed together as one North Slavic branch." Here's the "relevant" quote with its entire context:

According to Symonds, who declares the South Italian to be "racially homosexual," all the soldiers in the Italian army have to sleep in their drawers, even in the hottest weather, because of the indecent attacks which the Sicilians and Neapolitans habitually make on them. The North Italians, in this respect, regard their southern countrymen as a quite different people. The same is true of the South Slavs of the Balkan Peninsuala, in comparison with the North Slavs of Bohemia, Poland and Russia.

— Bloch (1933, reprinted 2001), Anthropological Studies on the Strange Sexual Practices of All Races and All Ages.

That's some theorist, indeed. What are the "cultural characteristics", when Bloch only cites the meanest stereotypes about the supposed innate proneness of certain peoples towards anal rape? –Austronesier (talk) 19:18, 17 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I also removed this source: 'Outdated book about ideas about the sexuality of others which has nothing to do with linguistics and a lot more with geography and sociology'. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 11:58, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Oh damn, this is some bizarre stuff indeed! If it was me who added this source originally (I don't recall if it was or not) then I apologise, clearly it must've been done in some kind of rushed quantity over quality drive to establish notability or something. Had I known this was exactly what was written there then I wouldn't have used this source. --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 14:31, 22 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Lunt (2001)[edit]

For a change, this is a real gem of source. Published by Mouton de Gruyter, written by a Harvard professor, having an entire chapter of 70+ pages devoted to historical-comparative linguistics, with 11 mentions of "North Slavs (1)"/"North Slavic (10)" in said chapter, what else do we want? Yet, a few caveats for uncritically using it here to support the notion of "North Slavs":

  1. It explains why the Slavic area is discontinuous and we thus have northern and southern Slavs, but that's about it.
  2. It is a linguistic source, so it is better used North Slavic languages. While this article certainly can have a summary about the linguistic proposal (since the concept of "North Slavs" at least partially hinges on the latter), we can't turn this article or parts of it into a content fork of North Slavic languages. A summary section with a {{main}}-hatnote will be a more elegant solution.
  3. Lunt uses "North Slavic" to characterize the distribution of a very small number of isoglosses, but not as a classificatory term. His classification of choice is found in section 25.7 (p. 184), where he proposes a split Slavic into four branches: NorthWest (= conventional West Sl.), NorthEast (= conventional East Sl.), SouthWest (= western South Sl.), SouthEast (= eastern South Sl.).

Bottom line: good source, better used in the language article, but not cited as directly supporting the primary North-South split. –Austronesier (talk) 09:08, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I drew a similar conclusion. It is an RS that is of (limited) use in the language article, although it was not used in a correct way there. The text stated: 'They' i.e. the North Slavs 'inhabit a contiguous area in Central and Eastern Europe and North Asia.' But Lunt p. 183 'says nothing about 'Europe' or 'Asia', but can be used as (weak) support for the geographical separation observation', so I deleted that sentence and moved the source a few sentences up to back up Lunt's one single use of 'North Slavs' as a combination of 'West and East Slavs' as opposed to South Slavs due to their historical geographical separation. I didn't look at the other 10 occurrences of 'North Slavic', but if anyone wanted to use them in the language article, that seems fine by me, taking your caveats into account. I'll review how Lunt p. 183 is used in this North Slavs article now first. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 11:58, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It turns out that the Lunt source was heavily extrapolated here. Lots of history, geography and politics that Lunt doesn't mention were inserted here, which is SYNTH, and so I removed the bulk of it. What remains is indeed just a content fork of North Slavic languages, and doesn't support a separate North Slavs article.
Especially if we disregard the 10 'North Slavic' occurrences in Lunt, the 'North Slavs' use on p. 183 amounts to little more than an ad hoc grouping of West and East Slavs to make a simple geographical (and implied historical) juxtaposition with the South Slavs, without giving it any linguistic, let alone cultural, value, nor implying that the East and West Slavs therefore form some kind of unity that is stronger than the linguistic West-East subdivision, let alone that we can completely disregard the West-East subdivision as incorrect or unfair. There is no indication that Lunt challenges the West-East consensus outright; if anything, as Austronesier observes, he just proposes to rename West and East Slavic to NorthWest and NorthEast, and to split South Slavic into SouthWest and SouthEast, which is more a challenge to the consensus of South Slavic unity than it is to the consensus of East and West Slavic division. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 12:20, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Dingsdale (2002)[edit]

Samotny added pages 21 to 24 of Dingsdale to the article recently, although it's difficult to verify due to limited previews.

Page 21 mentions "northern and southern Slav nationalities" in passing; the context (including the very title of the book) makes clear that this is a purely geographical observation, not a linguistic classification of Slavic into subgroups. I don't know what pages 22 and 23 say. Page 24 contains a map, titled 'Figure 2.3 The broad patterns of ethnic nationalities in the Marchlands', but Google Books blocks it as a 'copyrighted image', so that can't be verified either. I'll try to get to it now. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 12:51, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Samotny Wędrowiec: Do you have access to page 22 and 23 of Dingsdale 2002? If so, could you share the link, or quote the relevant sentences about North Slavs so that we can verify the source? Also, if you can see what the map on page 24 shows, could you link to it, or describe it? Thanks in advance! Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 13:35, 21 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Janda (1999)[edit]

This source is clearly one from an expert linguist, Laura A. Janda, but it has the same problem as Živković ("belgrade"), the two Kortlandt papers, Grimm, Rappaport etc.: it doesn't define 'North Slavic' nor treat it as a topic, which is needed here to actually verify the definition. Janda uses 'East Slavic' and 'West Slavic' about equally frequently as 'North Slavic', so she doesn't seem to oppose the East-West subdivision in any way. Only if one reads the text really closely could one find out what she means by 'North Slavic' (she only makes clear that Czech is in that group on p. 215, and implies Polish, Slovak, Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian are as well, but drawing that conclusion seems OR), and it seems to me that, to Janda, it is nothing more than an ad hoc grouping of East+West Slavic whenever that is convenient as shorthand for writing out 'East and West Slavic' in its entirety. She does not discuss the use of the phrase 'North Slavic' over the course of history, and so it doesn't serve a proper purpose here anyway, because as such it is a primary source rather than a secondary one. I'm going to remove it, because unfortunately we can't use it here. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 14:28, 21 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Gołąb (1992)[edit]

This source from linguist Zbigniew Gołąb has exactly the same problem. It never defines 'North Slavic' (16 occurrences), but also uses - much more frequently - 'West Slavic' (40 times) and 'East Slavic' (48 times). Never is 'North Slavic' argued to be a better grouping than 'West and East Slavic', but always an ad hoc grouping of West and West for brevity's sake. The phrase 'North Slavs' never occurs, the phrase 'Northern Slavs' only once, and it seems again an ad hoc grouping. In fact, Gołąb clearly states his support for the consensus on p. 12 and 13, adding that it is not 'within the scope of our considerations' to further explore this division: 'The present-day Slavic peoples are usually divided into the three following groups: West Slavic, East Slavic, and South Slavic. This division has both linguistic and historico-geographical justification, in the sense that on the one hand the respective Slavic languages show some old features which unite them into the above three groups, and on the other hand the pre- and early historical migrations of the respective Slavic peoples distributed them geographically in just this way. Of course, the later political and cultural history of the Slavs very often strengthened the primary division. But this problem does not lie within the scope of our considerations.' This is one of the worst sources to rely on to argue that the East-West-South division is incorrect, and that a North-South division makes more sense, because Gołąb rather clearly argues that the East-West-South division is correct and he's not interested in exploring it further, because it's not relevant to his book. He doesn't even mention the North Slavic hypothesis as an alternative. I'm going to remove this source as well. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 14:48, 21 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Other comments[edit]

A thought that came to me which can be applied to all sources really: there are peer-reviewed journals out there, some more recent than others (though this applies especially to older academics from the 20th century), that read like Mein Kampf... So I think it best to study sources on a case-by-case basis rather than judging them solely by their supposed academic credentials. --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 17:30, 16 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I can share your impression about some sources in peer-reviewed journals, but WP:RS isn't really negotiable. We owe this to our readers. Also, I should add, not everything published in peer-reviewed sources is automatically WP:DUE for inclusion here. The two papers by Kamusella are nice examples for this; pretending to talk about linguistic classification (which by all standards is based on language data; lexicon and grammar), he presents a completely data-less and ideology-ridden critique of established scholarship. Apart from the fact that these paper are poor, they are also off-topic here and rather belong in North Slavic languages (if they were of better quality). –Austronesier (talk) 20:23, 16 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to both of you for your continued input here. I don't think some of the proper academic sources needed removing just because they didn't challenge the West/East split, iirc I even included a sentence or two about scholars who use the North Slavic grouping alongside West and East. Ad hoc or not, I think the fact that some authors felt the need to group these two families together as North Slavs/North Slavic is telling in itself and I don't see why these sources shouldn't be used in the article. --Samotny Wędrowiec (talk) 13:15, 22 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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