Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 11:33, 11 June 2020

Add new posts BELOW this line:

Precious anniversary

Precious

Five years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:30, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

• Thanks, Gerda, but things here ain't what they used to be. <sigh> - Tom | Thomas.W 18:33, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I see that, but you are you. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:06, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

ArbCom 2019 election voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2019 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 on Monday, 2 December 2019. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Misplaced Pages arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate in the 2019 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:08, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

CESNUR article

Since you recently commented on the recent ANI thread on an organized promotion effort related to CESNUR, I'd like to ask you to help review that organization's article here on Misplaced Pages. In an attempt to comply with the spirit of WP:CANVAS, the same message is being sent to everyone who commented on the ANI thread, and no specific editing-conflict is being referenced: the article could simply benefit from more eyeballs. Feoffer (talk) 08:20, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

New Page Review newsletter December 2019

Reviewer of the Year

This year's Reviewer of the Year is Rosguill. Having gotten the reviewer PERM in August 2018, they have been a regular reviewer of articles and redirects, been an active participant in the NPP community, and has been the driving force for the emerging NPP Source Guide that will help reviewers better evaluate sourcing and notability in many countries for which it has historically been difficult.

Special commendation again goes to Onel5969 who ends the year as one of our most prolific reviewers for the second consecutive year. Thanks also to Boleyn and JTtheOG who have been in the top 5 for the last two years as well.

Several newer editors have done a lot of work with CAPTAIN MEDUSA and DannyS712 (who has also written bots which have patrolled thousands of redirects) being new reviewers since this time last year.

Thanks to them and to everyone reading this who has participated in New Page Patrol this year.

(The top 100 reviewers of the year can be found here)

Redirect autopatrol

A recent Request for Comment on creating a new redirect autopatrol pseduo-permission was closed early. New Page Reviewers are now able to nominate editors who have an established track record creating uncontroversial redirects. At the individual discretion of any administrator or after 24 hours and a consensus of at least 3 New Page Reviewers an editor may be added to a list of users whose redirects will be patrolled automatically by DannyS712 bot III.

Source Guide Discussion

Set to launch early in the new year is our first New Page Patrol Source Guide discussion. These discussions are designed to solicit input on sources in places and topic areas that might otherwise be harder for reviewers to evaluate. The hope is that this will allow us to improve the accuracy of our patrols for articles using these sources (and/or give us places to perform a WP:BEFORE prior to nominating for deletion). Please watch the New Page Patrol talk page for more information.

This month's refresher course

While New Page Reviewers are an experienced set of editors, we all benefit from an occasional review. This month consider refreshing yourself on Misplaced Pages:Notability (geographic features). Also consider how we can take the time for quality in this area. For instance, sources to verify human settlements, which are presumed notable, can often be found in seconds. This lets us avoid the (ugly) 'Needs more refs' tag.

Happy New Year Thomas.W!

New Page Reviewer newsletter February 2020

Hello Thomas.W,

Source Guide Discussion

The first NPP source guide discussion is now underway. It covers a wide range of sources in Ghana with the goal of providing more guidance to reviewers about sources they might see when reviewing pages. Hopefully, new page reviewers will join others interested in reliable sources and those with expertise in these sources to make the discussion a success.

Redirects

New to NPP? Looking to try something a little different? Consider patrolling some redirects. Redirects are relatively easy to review, can be found easily through the New Pages Feed. You can find more information about how to patrol redirects at WP:RPATROL.

Discussions and Resources

• There is an ongoing discussion around changing notifications for new editors who attempt to write articles.
• A recent discussion of whether Michelin starred restraunts are notable was archived without closure.
• A resource page with links pertinent for reviewers was created this month.
• A proposal to increase the scope of G5 was withdrawn.

Refresher

Geographic regions, areas and places generally do not need general notability guideline type sourcing. When evaluating whether an article meets this notability guideline please also consider whether it might actually be a form of WP:SPAM for a development project (e.g. PR for a large luxury residential development) and not actually covered by the guideline.

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 7095 Low – 4991 High – 7095

To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself here

Evlekis

What a can of worms you opened...and a lot of work for me! You're right on all three, and there were more, both unblocked and already blocked (generally as NOTHERE).--Bbb23 (talk) 17:04, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

Heruli

Hello Thomas, I am surprised at your aggressive edsum and post. You deleted a third of an expanded article and 6 different sources. Funnily enough, I dare say I am probably the main writer of the version I edited today, and which you have reverted to, so it is a surprise. I don't think there was anything controversial. In any case, I request that now you have done a major revert and deleted a lot of decent-looking sources, that you explain the problem on the article talk page. See WP:BRD. If the problem is only Goffart, please say so, and we will go to WP:RSN, but the answer there is easy to predict: Goffart is certainly not a fringe writer. He does have some ideas that are not consensus ideas, and we should indeed be careful to present those in a careful way. On the other hand, is there any area in this article which is really a subject that is controversial according to you? What sources can you bring to the discussion? Please explain.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:05, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

• @Andrew Lancaster: If you had merely expanded the article I wouldn't have reverted you, but you didn't, your totally undiscussed major rewrite of the article was instead a POV attempt to rewrite not only the history of the Heruli but the history of all Germanic peoples, based on a source that best can be described as fringe, since it totally deviates from the mainstream view. And we do not do things like that, all major rewrites *must* be discussed, and supported by other editors, before being made, and we can *not* give undue weight to sources that deviate from the mainstream (see WP:UNDUE). So do not make edits like that. - Tom | Thomas.W 21:33, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Please explain on the article talk page which exact sentences in the mass of deleted materials were undue, and why.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:44, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

I think Thomas made the right call. The recent rewrite of Heruli was not an improvement at all. The rewrite contained a bloated lead full of original research and unsourced dubious claims. Walter Goffart's theories are quite extreme and not representative of mainstream views on the subject, so we should not be giving him undue weight. It was about time that someone finally reverted these unhelpful changes. Krakkos (talk) 22:20, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

There were, I think, 6 different sources deleted, from various quite different "schools" and approximately 1 third of the article deleted. Despite several messages posted, even on other articles, nothing controversial has been explained except the name of one well-known author? Please explain exactly which sentences need consideration concerning due weight, on the article talk page. If that one author is the only problem, then we can go to WP:RSN or similar. If it is one sentence, then let's look at it. etc. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:57, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

I have no opinion on the recent changes made at Heruli. I haven't even looked. But describing Goffart as "non-mainstream, boirdering (sic) on fringe" is absolutely absurd. He has written major works published by academic presses while employed by the U of Toronto and Yale. His works are reviewed and argued over by the most important names in the field. You cannot write about Jordanes or the Getica without citing him. He is a polarizing figure, sure, but he is as "central" as a historian can be. Srnec (talk) 02:59, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

• @Srnec: Any historian who has as his stated goal the total removal of all Germanic peoples, and everything relating to them, from history, and writes things like the quotes below (they're quotes from Goffart's book "Barbarian Tides" from 2010), is an utterly fringe source...

"The main goal of this book is to reform thinking and writing about the barbarians in late antiquity by driving out the anachronistic terms "German" and "Germanic" and the baggage that goes with them"

"There were no Germans until a Germany materialized little by little in the European Middle Ages. Rome faced outward toward multiple and mutually antagonistic peoples. The existence of an ancient common Germanic civilization reaching deep into the B.C. period is a learned invention of sixteenth-century Germans, based on classical sources well known to us... There was no "Germanic civilization" long ripening north and east of the imperial frontiers."

"There was no Germanic world before the Carolingian age."

"I would be content if "German" and its derivatives were banished from all but linguistic discourse on this subject."

"The adjective "German;' an umbrella term for many of the diverse northern barbarians of the late Roman period, is the key to such unifying compounds as "the Germanic world;' "Germanic migrations;' "Germanic peoples;' "Germanic style;' "Germanic law;' "Germanic grave goods": wherever it turns up it simplifies and unifies, and presides over collective actions that did not take place... "German" will not go away by itself; it has to be stubbornly shown the door."

... etc

- Tom | Thomas.W 08:56, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

• Walter Goffart is of course a university professor and his books are published by mainstream publishers. However, his above quotes on Germanic peoples are clearly not representative of the mainstream views on the subject. Goffart's idea of Germanic peoples never having existed clearly differs from accepted scholarship. In his most recent works, Goffart admits himself that his ideas on Germanic peoples have gained barely any acceptance. Misplaced Pages defines a fringe theory as "an idea or viewpoint which differs from the accepted scholarship in its field". We should be careful about giving him undue weight in this subject. Krakkos (talk) 10:53, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

@Krakkos: The fact that Goffart's ideas are so far away from the mainstream view that they're totally off the chart, and have gained no acceptance among other scholars, is what makes him a fringe source, which per WP:UNDUE means that his ideas, if they even deserve to be mentioned at all, should be presented in a separate sub section, not used as the main source for a total rewrite of the history of the Germanic peoples, as Andrew Lancaster is doing. - Tom | Thomas.W 11:42, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

@Thomas.W: I have seen this collection of quotes before on WP I think. Honestly you have been sold a version of Goffart and indeed the other scholars, which is inaccurate. You have to read several pages at once, slowly, and the same is true of many historians. Goffart's position on the term Germanic is a methodological issue, not a literal denial of existence. You have been misled about WHAT is controversial in Goffart, which is much more complicated. None of that has anything to do with the Herules deletion. Some of the key deletions were of Vienna school and even RGA sourcing. My edits are very far from being some sort of Goffart POV drive! I simply make it my aim NOT to censor any of the better known arguments. We can see which they are because the better known authors all cite each other. They funnily enough never cite Oxford dictionaries, but they certainly respect Goffart even when they disagree. Also be careful to remember that this type of historian (also Heather and Halsall) still uses "debating tactics". This means strong words are sometimes used, and that means we need to be very careful about picking out one or two that seem dramatic or crazy. These are not idiots. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:43, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

@Krakkos: from the tone I presume the admission you cite by Goffart is about the accommodation controversy? That would of course have nothing to do with anything we are working on, and is quite a technical subject where there is no clear consensus yet.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:08, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

• @Andrew Lancaster: I have already pointed you to WP:UNDUE at least once, but I'll do it again now, and to make sure you read it I'll even quote bits of it here. Goffart is a fringe source since his ideas are very far away from the mainstream view, and have no support among other scholars, and per WP:UNDUE

"Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represents all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources. Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means articles should not give minority views or aspects as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views or widely supported aspects. Generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all, except perhaps in a "see also" to an article about those specific views. For example, the article on the Earth does not directly mention modern support for the flat Earth concept, the view of a distinct (and minuscule) minority; to do so would give undue weight to it." (my emphasis)

Which is why you can not totally rewrite the history of the Germanic peoples based on Goffart's theories the way you're trying to do, and doing it without any prior discussion, as you did on Heruli, is totally unacceptable. And your repeated demands, on multiple pages all over the place, that I give a detailed explanation for every little bit in the edits I reverted on Heruli are ridiculous: you made an undiscussed POV total rewrite of the article, based on a fringe source (yes, Goffart is fringe, and I have explained why multiple times by now), I reverted it (with a detailed explanation for why in the edit summary...), so per WP:BRD it's now up to you to discuss it on the talk page of the article, and get support from other editors for it. - Tom | Thomas.W 16:21, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

I have posted proposals. I see no constructive responses. I also frankly do not believe you have been reading Goffart, or any sources critical of him, though it is clear as day that you have been reading Krakkos, because no one else writes like this. So we are literally not even on the same page. From your first aggressive edsum, you seemed not to want any rational discussion or information from me. So I guess it means the article talk page discussion with you is never going anywhere? It seems the only reason for the revert was Goffart, so at least we can work towards re-adding material not sourced to Goffart, surely. Concerning Goffart we can get community input if necessary, but Goffart is certainly not "fringe" for WP policy purposes, and Krakkos has been through this before. Due balance discussions, OTOH, require you to give a bit more information about your concern. (Just saying that any mention of an author is undue is not a "balancing" discussion anymore.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:56, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

@Andrew Lancaster: If 99% of all scholars say A (in this case that the early Germanic peoples not only existed but also shared language, culture, laws and a lot more), and one says B (in this case Goffart saying that there was no such thing as a Germanic people, Germanic law, Germanic culture or anything else Germanic, at least not before Carolingian times), you cannot base a total rewrite of an article on what Goffart says (including not changing the mainstream "Germanic people" to the fringe "Roman Age people" as you've done...), it's as simple as that. And even discussing such a proposal, as you want us to do, is just a waste of time, since WP:NPOV explicitly disallows such changes. - Tom | Thomas.W 17:38, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Thomas, very simply 99% of scholars do not say what you've been told they say. Not at all. Name just one.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:03, 11 March 2020 (UTC) '

More carefully: Thomas, I do not believe you have looked at Goffart and his critics and understood them on this point, so I need to be more careful how I explain it....

But very simply 99% of living scholars do NOT say "Goffart is wrong about this" (unified Germanic culture in late antiquity). Not at all. Name just one. The doubts are now normal. The defenders are defending minimal cultural connections.

The reason for the added words is that I know Krakkos can find isolated words to say anything he wants. But can't we all?

On this particular subject of the existence of a single united Germanic culture in LATE antiquity, Goffart's position is only different in details from all other scholars. Most of his strongest critics on this point are also not so far from his position.

Does a Traditionskern transmission by a small mobile group a single culture make?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:25, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Andrew. Goffart is a mainstream historian. I do not see how anyone who has actually read Barbarian Tides could think differently. The idea that his long excursus on the Heruli is inadmissible in our article on the Heruli is asburd. His radical proposal to banish the word "Germanic" (except in a linguistic sense) from our histories of Late Antiquity does not need to be followed on Misplaced Pages just because we use Goffart as a source. But while that may be radical, it is not as if his theories are. Take this from Hugh Elton's review of Barbarian Tides:

The first four chapters are historiographically driven, short essays asking whether there were migrations, were the Germans responsible for the fall of the Empire, were there really Germans at all, and did the Goths come out of Scandinavia. G. rejects migrations, suggests that the Germans of modern scholarship are an anachronistic concept and that we should dispense with the term, and rejects a Scandinavian origin. Nicely written, but G. is here taking aim at concepts which no longer dominate the field, even if they crop up from time to time. The new volumes of the Cambridge Ancient History (13 (1998), 14 (2000)) and Cambridge Medieval History (1 (2005)) show how G's position on these issues is already mainstream, while more recent works, e.g. J. Drinkwater, The Alamanni and Rome (2007) or M. Kulikowski, Rome's Gothic Wars (2006), provide genuinely new insights. In particular, few, if any, historians still take Jordanes literally on Gothic origins, with P. Heather, 'Cassiodorus and the rise of the Amals: genealogy and the Goths under Hun domination', JRS 79 (1989), 103–28 succinctly summing up the issues. G.'s arguments here are often allusive, more about the historiography than about Jordanes himself, and thus difficult to understand for many. And while in agreement about the fictitiousness of 'early Germanic culture/society', we should accept that there was a similarity of Rhine and Danube societies at an economic, military, and cultural level that benefits from a single descriptor. If we don't use the Roman term 'German', then we need something else.

He explicitly disagrees with Goffart's radical proposal—banish Germanic—while calling his ideas mainstream. Srnec (talk) 22:06, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

The most recent editions of The Cambridge Ancient History includes chapters such as these:

• Todd, Malcolm (1997). "The Germanic Peoples". In Cameron, Averil; Garnsey, Peter (eds.). The Late Empire, AD 337–425. The Cambridge Ancient History. Vol. 13. Cambridge University Press. p. 461-486. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521302005. ISBN 9781139054409. Retrieved February 22, 2020. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |subscription= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Todd, Malcolm (2005). "The Germanic Peoples and Germanic Society". In Bowman, Alan; Cameron, Averil; Garnsey, Peter (eds.). The Crisis of Empire, AD 193-337. The Cambridge Ancient History. Vol. 12 (2 ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 440–460. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521301992. ISBN 9781139053921. Retrieved February 22, 2020. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |subscription= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)

These chapters fundamentally contradict Goffart's theories on Germanic peoples and contain no references to him. There is no indication in these works that his theories on Germanic peoples are mainstream.

On the reception of his theories on Germanic peoples in wider scholarship, Goffart says this in his 2006 book:

"As long ago as 1972, I expressed a wish that someone should write a history of the Migration Age detached from German nationalism... Nothing has happened since then to fill this desideratum. On the contrary, the front of the stage has been occupied by talk of "ethnogenesis" and of the importance of ethnicity in late antiquity. Philology, archaeology, comparative religion, etymology, and whatever else have been exploited in the tried and true fashion of deutsche Altertumskunde in efforts to render the "tribes" more tribal than ever. As little thought as possible has been given to making them less resolutely German... This model... found regaining strength after World War II in the Gottingen historian Reinhard Wenskus, in the Cambridge classicist A. H. M. Jones, and in hundreds of scholars outside as well as inside Germany, all agreed in seeing an existing "Germanic world" getting the better of a "Roman world." Goffart, Walter (2010). Barbarian Tides: The Migration Age and the Later Roman Empire. University of Pennsylvania Press. p. IX, 233-234. ISBN 0812200284. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |subscription= and |registration= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)

In a 2014 article on Germanic peoples, Guy Halsall, admits that denial of an early Germanic culture is a minority position:

"The first part of the essay calls into question the idea that the Germanic-speaking barbarians shared any sort of unifying ethos or culture that would allow us to conceive of them as a single entity. This section largely summarizes a particular direction in recent work, but the conclusion is still far from generally accepted or integrated in current study and so requires restating... The comprehensive rejection of the idea of a unifying Germanic ethos and identity among pre-migratory Germani removes the classic basis for nineteenth-century views of the German people as rooted in distant history... One inheritance of nineteenth-century (and earlier) notions of pan-Germanic culture is the unlikely notion that all Germani had access to a common range of cultural traits, upon which they could draw at will... Attempts to change this intellectually careless state of affairs are making only slow process." Halsall, Guy (December 2014). "Two Worlds Become One: A 'Counter-Intuitive' View of the Roman Empire and 'Germanic' Migration". German History. 32 (4). Oxford University Press: 519–521. doi:10.1093/gerhis/ghu107. Retrieved January 17, 2020. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |layurl=, |laydate=, |nopp=, and |laysource= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: year (link)

Denial of an early Germanic culture is a minority position, and Thomas.W is right in pointing out that we should not rewrite Misplaced Pages's coverage on this subject based upon such a minority position. Meanwhile, no one has ever argued that Goffart should be totally blacklisted from Misplaced Pages. That is a straw man created by Andrew Lancaster. The real issue is Andrew Lancaster rewriting of articles through original research, as he recently did at Heruli. Krakkos (talk) 10:02, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

I should add that the 2 long quotes show clearly that the position is common and respected and gaining ground slowly. That is all we need to know for our discussion as WP editors. You are also not understanding that the arguably dominant position about whether late classical Germanic peoples were unified, the Vienna school position, is also quite close to Goffart's position in terms of what you think is most controversial. Goffart and Pohl etc all criticize each other, but compared to your position they are almost indistinguishable.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:26, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

More Perspective. 1. FWIW I believe Thomas.W and other readers of the Krakkos news should consider how Krakkos described the position of Walter Pohl on his WP article. Everything Krakkos hates in Goffart can also be sourced from Pohl (and many others). We do not need to decide who is most prominent on any topic, but if we did have to choose, Pohl would be in the running concerning the question of the existence of a single Germanic people in late antiquity. Many German and Austrian scholars defer to his position, or a tweak of it, on such things. Complication: for Halsall etc in the quotes above Pohl is described as someone disagreeing with Goffart. But this does not mean he disagrees with the bits Krakkos is worried about. 2. Srnec above has mentioned what I think is a common opinion: that Goffart's novelty is sometimes overstated (even by himself). Relevant to WP then, if we have long discussions which result in switching citations from Goffart to Pohl, or whatever, what would have been achieved? --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:23, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

How about skipping the attacks on other editors, your repeated insinuations and allegations only make you look bad. As you've been told multiple times articles should focus on the mainstream views on a subject, with views that deviate from the mainstream covered in proportion to how much support among scholars/reliable sources each view has. And Goffart's views are miles away from the mainstream view, which means that you can not, under any conditions, base a total rewrite of an article on Goffart's views, and the fact that he has next to no support among other scholars/sources (he even admits it himself...) means that his views probably don't deserve to even be mentioned in the articles, in spite of you obviously liking them. I don't, for multiple reasons, one reason being that Goffart seems a bit confused, conflating the words Germans and Germany with the term Germanic, and stating that he wants not only the term Germanic removed but also the word German and all its derivatives. There might have been some logic in that if the Germans had referred to themselves as "Germans", but they don't, the only major languages that I know of that use basically the same word for both Germans and the ancient Germanic peoples are English and Russian, all other languages that I know a bit about use totally different words for the two things, including the German language (deutsch/Deutschland, which has nothing in common with "Germanic" but is derived from a language spoken long ago in what is today southern Germany and means something along the lines of "our people"), while Romance languages use variations of Allemagne/Alemania, the Dutch language uses Duitsland (which is obviously derived from Deutschland), the Scandinavian languages use tysk/Tyskland, Finnish uses Saksa, Polish uses Niemcy, Czech uses Nemechka (or similar) and so on. - Tom | Thomas.W 21:44, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Trying to understand your concerns, I am at least now sure that for you the only clear concern was anything mentioning Goffart. Also it sounds like you are not open to any discussion about this subject, and so we are talking past each other. Let me know if I misunderstand? (BTW I know the quote you mention, because I've seen Krakkos use it before. The apparent confusion you mention would be resolved if you read through the whole section, and not just selected snippets, chosen to make you angry. Goffart used the word German for deliberate effect, not out of confusion. I can explain more if you want.)

So trying not to confront our Goffart problem too directly, here are some practical remarks:

1. Sometimes on WP we have to quote even controversial people, and sometimes controversial people also write non-controversial things.

2. Luckily, the Herules and similar smaller groups are however not subject to any big controversies, only a lot of uncertainty. Each ancient people has its own evidence and literature. I am only part of the way through adding a decent summary of it, with sources. Goffart's work is not defining that.

3. I understand now you were worried about seeing Goffart's name, but I made no major change of direction in my editing of the article. You deleted a lot of material including 6 sources (none were Goffart). I am confident you did not read it all. (I notice Goffart has been cited on the article for many years, and was not added by me. That's no surprise: Goffart is a commonly cited authority both on WP and in academia. But it is not controversial material.) I have been working in similar bursts for a long time on such incomplete articles. I hope you will eventually see that my edits and sourcing are far from dramatic of dominated by any particular school. Please give me the benefit of the doubt?

Finally I have to wonder: did you read what Krakkos wrote about Walter Pohl as I suggested? How can it be that the Vienna school (Pohl et al ) sounds so much like what Krakkos writes about the Toronto school (Goffart et al), if Goffart supposedly isn't close to the rest of the field? --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 00:04, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

You are probably not interested, but I have made some notes comparing the real explanation of Goffart and one of his critics, Liebeschuetz, here. I took time to read through long discussions and try to really give a fair summary, not based on whatever the most controversial words are, but if you see errors, please let me know.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:25, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

Misrepresentations

Obviously this is a deliberate misrepresentation . Consider WP:ASPERSIONS. Putting aside the wilder accusations, I think you'd be hard put to find a single edit of me doing anything which could be described "rewriting history" on WP, nor of me removing mention of the word "Germanic". In fact, I've been one of the main editors on Germanic peoples articles on WP for years, so if I am rewriting anything it is generally going to be something I am partly responsible for.

The most "controversial" edits in recent months concerned the structuring of the articles, and adding material and sources. In those debates what you do not like is that I was and am opposed, like most editors, to a minority demand for censorship of some of the most common scholarly positions, including some of the positions which have been defended by "conservatives" such as Peter Heather. Describing that debate as "rewriting history" would clearly be quite misleading.

As per all previous attempts at discussion, you clearly are not interested in the real article histories or sources, and you were clearly only triggered by silly accusations made by another editor, involving two articles (as opposed to a "large number"). Your edsums are consistently misleading, and your talk page discussions show no intention of being constructive.

Your more recent interventions on Goths, Jordanes and Oium, had no relevance at all to any of those debates anyway, and were clearly seen as opportunities to cast aspersions.

Concerning these two reversions on Jordanes today, both have obviously misleading edsums . You have removed two templates, twice. That is clearly not a way of working which is normally acceptable.

Please stop your uninformed disruption vendetta, which make up all of your recent edits of several months. Please those two templates back, as a minimum, and use the talk page to explain other proposals which were reverted, as per WP:BRD.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:30, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

• You may be able to spend 24h a day pushing anti-Germanic POV on Misplaced Pages, but I have a life outside WP, so don't expect a quick reply to anything and everything you write here. And I'm not "casting aspersions", I'm calling a spade a spade, because you are pushing POV (such as changing "Germanic people" to "North European people", or similar, and using a very fringe, and blatantly anti-Germanic, historian with no support among other historians as your main source for rewrites), I also see the endless, and totally impenetrable, walls of text you post on all talk pages as a deliberate attempt to scare other editors off, so no, my comment on Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Oium was not a misrepresentation. So go somewhere else to play. - Tom | Thomas.W 14:44, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

OK, you have no time and you do not like Goffart. No problem. Been there. Any of us actually doing editing on these articles at the moment do need to find ways to report all the main scholars, and discuss it, and disrupting us won't make us do better quality work. In any case, those templates need to be put back in and your edsums were misleading. Your edits today have absolutely NOTHING to do with Germanic peoples or Goffart or long posts or being anti anything.

(And let me say I am stunned to now get the message that your mass reversion of 20 or so edits on Heruli was because of one word change? Am I understanding that right? But you never thought to mention it? Would have been easy to fix because I am not obsessed with which category words go in the first line. Give me a chance next time and post me a message? Try it.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:16, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

User IamNotU is reverting my Good faith edits

Hi Thomas W.

I am user shingling I am editing with good faith edits but IamNotU is reverting my edits. He has been warned by you not to revert them, please could you put a warning on his talk page thanks.

Good faith edit

I tried to upload the new image on the template of President of Northern Cyprus

Using this file Mustafa Akıncı 2017.jpg

And added time in office in the list of presidents section But he reverted them all I would appreciate if you revert it.

Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.67.197.131 (talk) 21:06, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Franky Wah

Why do you want this well-written and perfectly well sourced article of a notable person in the musical (club) scene to be deleted? I cannot believe that the declined draft is the only reason. --Step 553 (talk) 09:01, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

OMG this is all because I reverted your stupid 2-character pointless addition to Svenska Kennelklubben isn't it. How about you replace your dumb two spaces and quit following me around everywhere. Will that make you feel better? Step 553 (talk) 09:08, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

• Your draft (Draft:Franky Wah) was declined at AfC for being improperly sourced and about a non-notable subject, which you obviously didn't like, since you immediately created the exact same article in article space. Under normal circumstances your article would be moved to draft space, but since there already is a draft, with the same name and same content, such a move isn't possible, which is why the copy in article space should be deleted. - Tom | Thomas.W 09:13, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

What do you mean "declined"? Since when was User:Theroadislong an admin? It is his own opinion that Wah is not remarkable and the other things to decline such an article. That doesn't count as something official, to carry any weight here. --Step 553 (talk) 09:15, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

You're on thin ice. - Tom | Thomas.W 09:17, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

You trying to threaten me are you? Go read WP:NPA. I'll give you "thin ice". Step 553 (talk) 09:19, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

The article has now been deleted. I hope that's made you happy for the day. That's how you get your kicks is it you miserable wretch? Step 553 (talk) 09:37, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Having a good time Brownfngers? I see the social distancing has turned you into an even grumpier fart now you are not allowed to go visit Favonian or Bbbb23 to swallow their self-produced mayonnaise! Cooperative members are all straight. Humbugz (talk) 11:33, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

• Get a life, Evlekis. - Tom | Thomas.W 09:42, 11 June 2020 (UTC)