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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 redirect to Romance languages. There is a general consensus that this should not be a stand-alone topic; however given that there are a number of suggestions for merging content from this I have not deleted the history. Black Kite (talk) 11:44, 20 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Romance peoples[edit]

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Romance peoples (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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A WP:POVFORK page for a contentious topic.

Delete and redirect to Romance peoples as nominator. Non-salvageable as its very nature begs the question. In fact, the exact relationship between different peoples who speak Romance languages is conceptualized differently in different countries, yet this page presents it as a sort of primordialist ethnic "kinship", super-ethnicity, or "ethnoclub" -- a very specific POV. Even if we accept that POV, it struggles to adhere to important policies, and the reason it does so is because its sourcing is by its very nature problematic. The list of "Romance peoples" meanwhile is far from a majority view ("Savoyards" are presented as some stateless people, yet Moldovans are presented as Romanians), yet at the same time, mysteriously, Romance speaking ethnic groups in the Americas are excluded. All of these Romance peoples are said to have origins "traceable to the process of Romanization, which was carried out through the expansion of Ancient Rome", yet in many cases this is rather dubious as Romanization happened after the Empire collapsed. The sourcing relies on Minahan and Pop, who clearly represent a very specific viewpoint on the matter (Minahan in the same publication presents Californians as a "stateless nation" -- one of many examples I could pull). But the very premise of the page is grounded on a POV that is not "the Truth", it is but one of many rival POVs, and it clashes with rival views such as French civic nationalism which conceptualizes "Frenchness" as merely "loyal citizenship as a part of France" (not some specific "heritage"), various views that emphasize the non-Latin origins or influences of various Romance speaking groups, as well as non-static views of ethnicity. We have discussed this on Talk:Romance peoples and with one dissenter we all seem to agree the page is quite problematic; although similarly disputable cases like Slavic peoples and Germanic peoples do -- rightfully -- have their own pages, this one is different as while "Slavic peoples" and "Germanic peoples" are thought by the majority view to have been a meaningful grouping at some point in history, Romance peoples as a super-ethnic group distinct from Roman citizens (who also included the ancestors of Welsh people, Berbers, Albanians, Greeks etc) and ethnic Latins did not exist until it was conceptualized by Romantic nationalist movements in the 19th century, and today the view is only really widely popular in Romania. --Calthinus (talk) 17:59, 1 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Some other specific issues:
  • linguistic/national minorities -- if being a "Romance people" means speaking natively a Romance language and having an identity whose "decisive factor" is Ancient Rome, does that mean not only immigrants but also Bretons, Basques, Germans in Trentino-Alto-Adige, Arbereshe, Grikos, etc are incapable of being French/Spanish/Italian?
  • Ethnic origins are controversial and we are assuming a specifically Ancient Roman POV by equating language with "origins" -- the Romanization of many of the involved peoples did not actually happen then. In Sicily in the Middle Ages, Sicilian Romance replaced Siculo-Arabic and Greek. Gaulish was still spoken at the time the Empire fell. Whether the Romanians emerged during Roman times with the Romanization of Dacians or much much later remains a heated controversy nowadays. Does this mean Sicilians, French people, and Romanians are "disputed" Romance peoples? Or do we give up the equation of origins with language in this case, and thus admit that the raison d'etre of the page falls apart?
  • Ancient Rome as "decisive factor" in identity? -- I seriously doubt that most French people, Spaniards, Portuguese, or Italians would tell you that "Ancient Rome" is the single "decisive factor" in their identities. Most sane people would acknowledge it is a factor, not the decisive one, and the same would hold for ideas of "kinship" -- French people for example have a civic national identity that bonds people based on the present rather than the past, and acknowledge (yes) a Roman heritage which they share with Spaniards, but also a Frankish heritage shared with Dutch/Germans, a generic "European" heritage shared even with Finns, a Celtic heritage shared especially with Bretons, et cetera, and how do you in an NPOV way say one is "more important" than the others? Yet Ancient Rome being a factor is also true for many other peoples in Europe and elsewhere. The Legacy of the Roman Empire is not just Romance languages, after all.--Calthinus (talk) 18:45, 1 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. Calthinus (talk) 17:59, 1 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Ethnic groups-related deletion discussions. Calthinus (talk) 17:59, 1 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Social science-related deletion discussions. Calthinus (talk) 17:59, 1 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Krakkos: Could you please provide some specific references to show how this passes the GNG? – Joe (talk) 18:35, 1 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete or redirect to Romance languages. The article seems to be strung together from passing mentions of "Romance" and "peoples" in the same sentence (e.g. as shorthand for Romance speakers). I haven't been able to find any sources that treat Romance language speakers as a coherent ethnic group – neither Magocsi nor Pop do, as far as I can tell. – Joe (talk) 18:35, 1 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - I am not posting my !vote just yet, but a few observations. First, Calthinus, you can remove the word delete from your own observations as AfD assumes a delete vote from the nominator. Secondly if this is a POVFORK then a merge rather than a delete appears to be the appropriate route. Third, the arguments about the problems with the article are not deletion arguments as deletion is not cleanup. Of course, WP:TNT could apply, and is the one reason I might go with delete after some more thought and research. However there is a clear case for notability of the article. A quick search shows that Romance Peoples are treated as a group in a number of WP:RS, such as this one. On the other hand, some of the sources do indeed caution that the term Romance Peoples doesn't make sense in the way other terms (Celtic Peoples, Germanic peoples etc.) because of the later date of emergence of Romance languages. See page 7 of this source. So the difficulties in writing the page are clear, but the notability is not really in question. It may be that the page needs to be blown up and rewritten in a different way though. I will see what others say on that point. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 18:44, 1 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
We also already cover the idea of pan-Romance identity in Pan-Latinism. What this page does separately by its very existence is assert that the idea is true. Which is a valid personal POV to have. But not a consensus view. --Calthinus (talk) 18:51, 1 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Sirfurboy: I don't think the topic is "clearly" notable. You've linked to the one single mention of the phrase "Romance peoples" in a work of racist pseudoscience from 1890. Your second link is about an entirely different ethnolinguistic group that happens to have Romance in its name. Do you have anything better? – Joe (talk) 18:55, 1 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Really this should have been covered in WP:BEFORE. Here goes: [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]
I could go on, but do I need to? -- Sirfurboy (talk) 19:03, 1 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Source one -- puts "Romance peoples" in quotes in the source, and is talking about historical Romance philology in this case before 1950. Source two -- is about philosophy. Source three -- your quote is He [WEB Du Bois] had read American and British historians in earnest discussion about the "Latin" spirit of the Romance peoples, and perhaps he believed some of it -- that's Appiah mocking the concept. --Calthinus (talk) 19:09, 1 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Helmolt is from 1907 [[9]].--Calthinus (talk) 19:13, 1 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
This one you had [[10]] is only about "the Swiss Romance peoples".--Calthinus (talk) 19:14, 1 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Aaaaaaand the last one was originally published in 1929.[[11]]--Calthinus (talk) 19:15, 1 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
This is a deletion discussion. The question is whether there is anything notable to say about "Romance Peoples". What we say about them, how we define them, problems with the definition etc. are editorial discussions for the page, which I have already indicated I believe is problematic. The point is that these are a small seelction of hundreds of sources that refer to "Romance Peoples" in various contexts and either discuss the term or assume (perhaps unwisely) that the definition is understood. As I said, I think WP:TNT is a reason to delete the page - if you can argue that there is nothing salvageable on the page, and for that you could argue that the term "Romance People" is too nebulous and this page too specific (for instance), but if you just wish to dismiss the many many sources one by one, then I am not seeing any reason for deletion here. Note also that date of publication is not a reason to dismiss a source - if the notion is an outmoded concept then it deserves an article explaining that. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 19:22, 1 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
If it matters to you, I would be fine with you writing a page about the history of the concept (i.e. Ancient Egyptian race controversy) but perhaps that would better be accomplished by expanding Pan-Latinism. Sirfurboy you misunderstood what I was doing with the sources. It was not "hahah your sources suck sucks to suck". I was using them to point out what I've been saying all along -- that the concept itself is an aspect of romantic nationalism popular before 1950 (hence all the non-RS sources from those times you found) and furthermore, that modern authors even in the sources you produced are giving it the side eye, hence Posner's quotations around it, and Appiah's sarcastic retort "Latin" spirit... and perhaps he believed some of it. --Calthinus (talk) 19:26, 1 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Aside from the issue of many of these books being so outdated as to fail WP:RS, "hundreds of Google Books hits" does not equal "hundreds of sources". WP:GNG requires depth of coverage. With the possible exception of the 1907 Helmolt book, these are all passing mentions of the article title with no actual discussion of it as a coherent topic. – Joe (talk) 20:19, 1 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - Another point I would like to clarify. The nominator, Calthinus,says this is a POVFORK. I am unconvinced. The page history shows it was created in 2006, and although it was renamed from Latin Peoples to Romance Peoples, I don't see any evidence it was forked from any article. The Romance languages article is older but I cannot see any fork from there. What is the evidence for saying this is a POVFORK? -- Sirfurboy (talk) 21:00, 1 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • The origin of the page does not matter for what should be done with it. If you use POVFORK to specifically mean "was created to circumvent an existing consensus" then yes I used the term wrong. If you use colloquially as many do POVFORK to mean "a page or category that relies on assuming one side of an argument for its defined topic when neutral presentation of the same material exists elsewhere" (in this case: Romance languages for the languages, Pan-Latinism for the viewpoint) then that's what I was saying. --Calthinus (talk) 21:10, 1 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete and/or restore the redirect to Romance peoples Romance languages per Joe (and my own talk page comments). Srnec (talk) 22:22, 1 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Srnec You mean restore redirect to Romance languages? Ktrimi991 (talk) 22:27, 1 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Correct. Thank you. Srnec (talk) 22:38, 1 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
This is an interesting proposal but I would note that no one disputes the common origins of the English-speaking world in the British Empire, nor the sense of connectedness that comes with actually natively speaking the same language. We do have Celts (a pretty good page), Slavic peoples, Germanic peoples... but in those cases there was at least a concept of a unified ethnic group that eventually branched out (perhaps Tacitus and Strabo did not present "the Truth"... but the concept existed).-Calthinus (talk) 00:22, 2 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Romance speakers are not discussed in scholarship as a group of people related to each other. Instead, Romance languages are. AFAIK. I do not see any sufficient reason why the short content of this article can not be moved to Romance languages or Romanization (cultural). Ktrimi991 (talk) 00:36, 2 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of France-related deletion discussions. Krakkos (talk) 14:10, 2 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Geography-related deletion discussions. Krakkos (talk) 14:10, 2 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. Krakkos (talk) 14:10, 2 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Italy-related deletion discussions. Krakkos (talk) 14:10, 2 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Portugal-related deletion discussions. Krakkos (talk) 14:10, 2 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Romania-related deletion discussions. Krakkos (talk) 14:10, 2 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Spain-related deletion discussions. Krakkos (talk) 14:10, 2 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
A few you missed from the Latin peoples AfD. Pinging them, though not including =the Paleolithic Man sock or the Che sock. Of the ones you missed, 3 voted keep, 3 voted delete so it's clearly a good faith error, no worries. Pings: Fakirbakir, Lankiveil, Meclee, Stalwart111, Ilywrch, Orser67. --Calthinus (talk) 02:00, 3 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: I don't believe I've ever contributed to this article. Skimming over it and its sources, I do think the article has some major issues that need to be addressed. However, my first impression is that it's perfectly salvageable, with work. Try to remember that all cultural groupings are by definition artificial constructions—they're defined by the ethnic, linguistic, racial, religious, or geographic boundaries we set for them. The only question we need to answer in order to determine whether this topic should exist is, whether it's received significant coverage within the scholarly community as a whole. I'm not sure that the existing sources cited by the article are adequate to answer that question: some give the impression of being heavily dependent on the point of view of a small number of scholars with something to prove about their own ethnic background. One of them that just looks problematic is a source identified as "GP". What the heck does "GP" stand for, and why is it authoritative for anything? Maybe I'd have a clue if I knew what it stood for. That said, the concept of "European cultures derived from Romanized peoples" does strike me as a valid categorization and topic. So could the principal authors of this article—or anyone else, really—please find some sources that might feel more scholarly and less-narrowly focused, which clearly state a justification for this article? If it's going to continue as though it represents a mainstream concept, and not a fringe theory, it needs to demonstrate wider acceptance within the scholarly community. P Aculeius (talk) 15:45, 2 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep and open Merge discussions with either Romance languages and/or Pan-Latinism articles Redirect to Romance-speaking world - see comment - updated rationale, Sirfurboy below. I have had to read and think a lot about this one, but I think the deletion arguments are all misconceived, although there is not much in the article as it stands that we may wish to keep, as it is clearly heavily reliant on a single authority and some of the conclusions are, to put it kindly, "debatable". Despite this, my view is essentially to keep, and to understand this I will deal with each of the points made by those arguing for delete. I believe this will cover all arguments made:
  1. The deletion argument by the nominator was that this is a WP:POVFORK. Yet he later admitted it was not a POVFORK, and there is indeed no evidence that it is. Thus the primary deletion argument fails. - see updated rationale below.
  2. The nominator then followed up that there was non salvageable content on the page. Yet that is not wholly true. The page presents a particular point of view that is problematic, but it is sourced and put forward by a notable academic. The space the view is given may not be WP:DUE - indeed it definitely needs balancing - but there is salvageable content here, so WP:TNT does not apply.
  3. I see no evidence that a WP:BEFORE was carried out. This is problematic because, as per my comments, a search for sources pulls up literally hundreds of references in books and scholarly articles, discussing Romance Peoples. I have read through over a hundred summaries of papers now, and read several of the papers more deeply, and established that the clear majority of these talk about matters of language, and reference to Romance Peoples is simply understood as people who speak Romance languages. Yet a significant minority of the papers talk about aspects of Romance culture as though it were something identifiable (for instance talking about the literature of Romance Peoples or about their art. The construct "art of the Romance Peoples" being no more problematic than "art of the Bretons" or any other such category). Many of these papers are old, but they are in published papers and published books. Moreover even the language references are notable of something - although what that something is has to be considered carefully. I am left in no doubt that some article about the Romance peoples is notable. But the question is whether the article that is notable is this article. This article does not reflect the array of sources, and many of those sources would support the same material in the Romance Languages article. So WP:GNG is satsfied but that does not mean this is the article that should exist. The main argument for notability of the information in this article is the sourcing on the article itself, because the main source is himself a notable academic.
  4. The material is controversial and the existence of this article gives credence to a minority viewpoint: Yet this is easily fixed by editors by refocusing the article and discussing criticism of the concept of Romance Peoples as a single group. There are sources making that exact point. To that end this article is salvageable as a whole and could stand in its own right, but as an analysis of the concept of Romance Peoples. Yet that material could be subsumed in the pan-latinism article.
  5. srnec's response appears to be just a WP:VOTE but does mention the talk page of the article. I thus read through the talk page, where editors discussed this AfD before proposing it. Per policy, AfD is not a vote. It is the arguments that matter, and there should be policy reasons for deletion.
  6. Many of the talk page comments are the same but Austronesier makes pertinent comments about what can actually be in this article that is not found elsewhere. This, to me, is the best argument for not having this article. If we had no Romance languages article then his article would contain all the language material, but here the language material is merely being duplicated. Likewise the pan-latinism aspects of this article are covered in the pan-latinism article. There is information in this article that is not in those yet, and should be merged. Indeed Austronesier's argument on the talk page is for a merge into Romance languages. His arguments are sound for merger, and that is now my view too. There is information in this article that should be retained, and the merger process is required as per policy to comply with Wikipedia's license and relevant copyright law. Merger retains the page history and authorship, whilst ensuring information is presented in more focused and fuller articles that can do justice to the subject without needless repetition.
Merger must be carried out per WP:MERGE. AfD is for deletion only, so my view is necessarily to keep the article, so that a merger discussion can be opened and perhaps a merger enacted. It is not the role of the admin closing an AfD to impose a merge. That has to be proposed separately. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 17:28, 2 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Some of these points are good. Perhaps I should have done this as a merge discussion, that's entirely on me, my bad. But I want to point out a few things. In addition to WP:AGEMATTERS (please let us not go back to that exchange regarding Helmolt, or uh... Brinton......) your statement about "Breton art" suggests to me you should review WP:CONTEXTMATTERS -- Information provided in passing by an otherwise reliable source that is not related to the principal topics of the publication may not be reliable; editors should cite sources focused on the topic at hand where possible. Sources should directly support the information as it is presented in the Wikipedia article. -- i.e. a statement about the "art of Romance peoples" in a book not about anthropology/ethnology is emphatically not reliable for stating that Romance peoples are a salient and well-bounded category. Nor would "Breton art" be usable to say Bretons are a valid group -- thankfully, we have plenty of actual RS for Bretons though. Also, replying to because the main source is himself a notable academic : the main source, who at the time of writing still has half the citations on the page is James B. Minahan. His career (GScholar: [[12]]) -- all books about "stateless nations" such as... California. Erm, no, that book establishes the notability of Romance peoples to the exact same level as it would a hypothetical page for Stateless nations occupied by the United States. The other, Pop, is cited less currently and as KIENGIR noted, his views are not consensus even in Romania. Which author exactly are you referring to?--Calthinus (talk) 02:37, 3 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
more on Pop for the interested
Also, on Pop, here is Ro-Wiki: Este adept al curentului naționalist.[5]... Academia Română, al cărei Președinte este Ioan-Aurel Pop, publică Comunicatul privind identitatea și unitatea istorică și lingvistică a românilor din nordul și sudul Dunării.[15] Prin acest comunicat "Academia Română ia act cu îngrijorare de continuarea și intensificarea unor activități politice care urmăresc denaturarea adevărului cu privire la aromâni și la dialectul aromân. Scopul acestor activități este declararea aromânilor ca minoritate națională în România, ca popor armân, distinct de poporul român, având o limbă proprie, armâna, diferită de limba română. Aceste activități fac parte dintr-o acțiune mai largă de separare a românilor sud-dunăreni - aromâni, meglenoromâni, istroromâni, vlahi timoceni, ca și a altor români din afara granițelor României ... de limba și de poporul român". ... În urma acestei acțiuni neprotocolare, Președintele Academiei Române, Ioan-Aurel Pop, a punctat poziția edificatoare privind Rezoluția de unire de la Alba Iulia (din 1 decembrie 1918) și autonomia clamată de vicepremierul ungar pe teritoriul românesc.[16] ... Conform cercetătorului Mădălin Hodor, care a publicat în aprilie 2018 un articol în Revista 22, la 13 mai 1985 (în perioada în care ocupa postul de asistent universitar la Universitatea Babeș-Bolyai), Pop a fost înregistrat drept colaborator al UM 0225 – unitate din cadrul Direcției de Informații Externe a Departamentului Securității Statului, care se ocupa de urmărirea emigrației românești și de contracararea acțiunilor ostile RSR desfășurate de centrele de propagandă din străinătate.[20][21][22] I don't want to put that last part in English as it is potentially defamatory and I don't want to assume guilt -- feel free to use Google Translate if you can't read Romanian!-- but that is bad, even if we don't accept the insinuations made in Romanian media after Madalin Hodor's leak, because undisputed is that Pop accepted a "patriotic" role in countering "propaganda" that tried to assert that Aromanians were distinct from Romanians (that's another big controversy, people in Greece have a rather different view on the matter, and Greece and Romania have clashed acrimoniously over the issue). Surely the author is also accomplished -- I very much want to also emphasize that [[13]] -- but the potential conflict of interest here puts "independent from the subject matter" into jeopardy. Still a valuable especially for Romanian history, but cannot be relied upon in isolation especially in touchy "national origin" matters like this.--Calthinus (talk) 03:51, 3 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Not going to run that through translate, but I noticed in my research for this discussion that Pop has a English WP article recently created and in a very poor state (just a bare stub). I applied a notability template but the page creator correctly demonstrated that Pop meets WP:GNG. Nevertheless, if there is more to know about Pop, it would be appropriate to put it into his article, per the usual caveats about WP:BLP. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 13:37, 3 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
In fact, the above quote is an excellent example of Cherry picking from the Romanian Wiki article. "Good" job!! :) (Rgvis (talk) 21:18, 5 February 2020 (UTC))[reply]
Um no, it is not cherrypicking if it is a particularly troubling case of a conflict of interest... Not in the least. That's like "Come on police officer, I only ran one red light, you're cherrypicking my driving!" A COI is a COI, end of story.--Calthinus (talk) 04:30, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, this is your personal interpretation and POV, but obviously your quoted text is only a part of the larger context. So, let's keep trying to make balanced editings in accordance with NPOV policy, from all points of view. Thank you! (Rgvis (talk) 08:26, 6 February 2020 (UTC))[reply]
Rgvis my "personal POV" tends to agree with Pop: Aromanians are Romanians, Bessarabians are Romanians, Romanians can be considered native to Romania, etc. And I have made clear I think his work is valuable and will continue using it -- attributed. But what we cannot have is a page about "pan-Latin peoples" -- not his domain anyways -- based mostly off him and Minahan. It is TNT at best. You are welcome to try to rescue it by improving it. --Calthinus (talk) 18:03, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - updated rationale from Sirfurboy - I am revising my position slightly following further investigation. I now believe that there is evidence of a WP:POVFORK, and furthermore that a straight merge cannot resolve the issue. I stand by my other arguments above that there is salvageable content here, but I believe the correct response is to close with a redirect to Romance-speaking world. The redirect will preserve page history, allowing the creator to salvage and merge content where it is appropriate. I have updated my !vote above to this effect. Here is why:
I have now discovered that this article was created as a fork on 14 December. Prior to that it was a redirect to Romance-speaking world, a page I was not previously aware of. That page could be expanded, but covers the topic area of the vast majority of sources I uncovered. Romance Peoples as speakers of Romance languages are fully covered by that page, and so the notability of the vast majority of the sources point to that being an appropriate redirect target. I think the redirect should be restored to there as the most notable topic page for this area.
This page contains notable material from a notable academic. However the same editor who created this page also created the academic's page on 31 August. That page is: Ioan-Aurel Pop, and remains a stub. The Romanian article for this academic is much fuller, and the page could be expanded from that article, but I believe much of the material on this page is most appropriate on Pop's article as a description of his views and research. This would also allow that article to become much more encylopaedic.
User:Peterkingiron's view, which I very much respect, is "merge somehow". I agree. I think it makes sense to merge information to Pop's article and perhaps into other articles too as appropriate, but there is not a single merge target. the page creator is an active editor, and I think if we close as redirect, this will preserve the page history in a manner that he or others can access and merge to Pop and other articles as appropriate. A straight merge would involve redirecting this page to the merge target, but that is not the correct redirect target, so this AfD should be closed with redirect to Romance-speaking world. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 11:06, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
It's important to note that when this article was created on 14 December 2019, it had only been a redirect to Romance-speaking world for 2 months. That redirect was made in October by the now-banned sockpuppets 142.116.202.86[14] and Forza2020.[15] Prior to that this article had for a long time been a redirect to Italic peoples or Latin peoples. Romance-speaking world was created on 14 May 2016. Latin peoples/Romance peoples was created in February 2013.[16] Krakkos (talk) 19:35, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, you are correct about that, and that was the IP sock of Human Taxonomist AKA Sprayichio. I had not noticed he had done that. However, looking at the page history, you did not put it back the way it was (a link to Italic peoples) but created a new page and that new page is technically a content fork, although I accept it was very much in good faith. I would not want to go back to the way Sprayichio left things, yet I think the rest of what I said today still holds. The content on this page is notable, but moreso on Pop's page than here. Romance-speaking world has the disbenefit of being where Sprayichio pointed it, but it does appear to be the most logical target to me. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 21:40, 5 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge somehow --Romance-speaking Europe is currently a redirect to a section of Languages of Europe, but that is what this article is trying to be (though it is not doing it well). I do not like Romance languages as a redirect target, because that does not cover the content of the article under discussion and it is already a very long article, mostly about linguistics. Peterkingiron (talk) 18:48, 2 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete or redirect to Romance languages per WP:NOTABLE and WP:NPOV. If Romance peoples are just defined as peoples speaking Romance languages, and this is the only thing we can say about them, then the primary topic is Romance languages. "Romance peoples = peoples speaking Romance languages" is just a dictionary entry, but not a topic. Some sources (such as Magocsi 2018)[1] only use the term as a kind of "folder label" without any deeper implications, and many (especially contemporary) sources which deal with the nations and ethnicites of Europe do not employ the concept of "Romance peoples" at all, e.g. Cole (2011)[2] (where only one author out of 88 makes a single mention of "Latin peoples" [i.e. "Romance peoples" in sense on the current article]) and Waldman & Mason (2006),[3] and also good ol' Auntie Encyclopædia Britannica does not bother about a topic called "Romance peoples". Per WP:NPOV we should not elevate a non-topic to a topic, just because some sources do so. The meaningful topic "Romance peoples" that would not only rest on shared linguistic history, but also on shared culture etc. is covered in Romans. With the transition of the Romans into the individual Romance-speaking ethnicities and nations (and also being absorbed into non-Romance speaking groups), the history of "Romance peoples" ends. And btw, readers are not really that interested in the topic [17], except for the "storm in the WP-teacup" views starting in mid December.

References

  1. ^ Magocsi, Paul Robert (2018). Historical Atlas of Central Europe: Third Revised and Expanded Edition. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 1487523319.
  2. ^ Cole, Jeffrey (2011). Ethnic Groups of Europe: An Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 1598843028.
  3. ^ Waldman, Carl; Mason, Catherine (2006). Encyclopedia of European Peoples. Infobase Publishing. ISBN 1438129181.
–Austronesier (talk) 19:54, 2 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep quick google books search shows that the concept exists. The problem is not the concept but the article. The concept should not be confused with "Romance language speakers". Staszek Lem (talk) 20:09, 2 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge or Delete per arguments of Joe, Srnec, Ktrimi991 or somehow Fix those issues Calthinus referred on conflicting origin theories shall if be about (A)romanians, Albanians, or anybody involved by the previously mentioned concerns.(KIENGIR (talk) 13:13, 3 February 2020 (UTC))[reply]
  • Keep or Merge with the Romance-speaking Europe article, as already other related concepts, Latin Europe and Romance-speaking Europe, are not or vaguely presented on English Wikipedia (in contrast with other Wikipedia editions). It should be also mentioned that this (sociolinguistic and cultural) concept is used by scholars from various schools (Ernst Gamillscheg, Walther Von Wartburg, Carlo Tagliavini, Gustav Gröber, Karl Vossler, etc). (Rgvis (talk) 11:40, 4 February 2020 (UTC))[reply]
@Rgvis: Most of these were linguists, so it would be interesting to see where they used "Romance" as a cultural concept beyond the linguistic relationship. N.B. that all of these names represent early and mid-20th century scholarship.
As for Latin Europe, it is covered as object of pan-Latinism, beyond that, the topic Romance-speaking Europe has concise coverage in the current redirect. –Austronesier (talk) 12:30, 4 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Latin Europe (not to be confused with pan-Latinism) is just a disambiguation page and not an article , while Romance-speaking Europe is only a subsection of a section from another article. (Rgvis (talk) 08:26, 6 February 2020 (UTC))[reply]
  • Keep

I don’t agree with the deletion of this article or its merger with another and I will explain. I only agree with its improvement through edition. It makes sense to have it because:

1- This is an article about a related group of peoples, ethnic groups, (plural). It can be said that a group of peoples (ethnic groups) is related when they have some shared common cultural characteristics (language, mores, a cultural heritage from an older ancestral people or peoples) and have some common ancestors (although they don’t descend exactly from the same people or groups of peoples), and have individual characteristics that don’t annul or invalidate their closer kinship to other peoples. Of course this is not absolute, there is some degree of subjectivity but there has to be a common ground, a basis. This is in short the criteria that can be used to say that some peoples are more related between themselves than to others, that is to say, they are a group of more closely related peoples;

2- Of course there is not only one single factor that makes a group of peoples related, but in the other hand it is not only one factor that annuls or invalidates the closer kinship of a people (ethnic group) to another or that annuls the existence of a group of related peoples like the Romance/Latin peoples in this case;

3- However some in this discussion have the equivocal idea that individual ethnic groups have to think that they are the same people to be related, a coherent ethnic group, there seems to be a confusion here. A group of peoples aren’t a single ethnic group, that is, a people, it only means that they are related, not that they are exactly the same. Some confuse the term “ethnic group” assuming that a group of ethnic groups means the same think as a single people but it doesn’t. Ethnic group, in this context, is synonymous with people, the term “ethnic group” is used because a people is a composite of individuals, families, etc, and people that live in several regions of a country, the subethnic groups, that think and see themselves as belonging to a people, with its own identity and name, and although somehow related (by ancestry, language, mores, etc) they are not identical or homogenous. Others confuse ethnic group with state or Nation State (a political entity), well, ethnic groups or peoples and states are not the same thing, a state could have several ethnic groups living in its territory, people from several ethnic groups can be citizens of the same political entity. Even if it is policy of several states to not recognise ethnic groups as such and only individual citizens, that doesn’t mean that the ethnic groups don’t exist in those states. If several proposers for the deletion of this article can’t known such basic things, which is what, they are too ignorant and incompetent to decide if an article about a group of related peoples (i.e. ethnic groups) should exist or not;

4- Ironically Romantic Nationalism is mentioned in an unfavorable way because it was one of the origins for the term “Romance peoples” or “Latin peoples” and for seeing common characteristics between Romance or Latin peoples, but, in fact, it is narrow minded Nationalism that doesn’t recognize the kinship that several peoples have between themselves, wether cultural or genetic, that denies the very idea of any kinship and have the thinking of a single people like some kind of isolate not related to others, and Nation states are seen as an absolute reality (not to say other more sinister consequences), ethnocentrics are quite enthusiastic for denying any kinship to other peoples. It means that narrow minded Nationalism is one of the basis for the thinking that “Romance peoples don’t exist”;

5- If opinion is that important to establish if there is or isn't a group of related peoples - Has anyone made a poll in several countries to know if there is a majority or not of peoples in those countries that see themselves as Latin/Romance or Germanic or Slavic peoples or Indo-Iranian peoples or Celtic peoples?

6- Peoples and languages, although related, are not the same thing, so why merge Romance peoples with Romance languages? Is it anything to do with the rather dogmatic assumption that “Romance peoples don’t exist, only Romance languages”? What is the ground for that? In an other way of thinking… Yes! Why bother Wikipedia readers with thousands of pages that have peoples and languages separately, why not merge them all and readers only have to go to a single article with thousands of pages? This idea has its mad logic of course;

7- Lack of coherent criteria and double standards (or three or four…) by those who propose its deletion - Can anyone explain why is there Germanic or Slavic or Indo-Iranian or Celtic peoples (and articles about them in Wikipedia), but there are no Romance peoples and there will be no article about Romance/Latin peoples? What is the ground for that? I’m not entirely sure but I don’t see this kind of questioning and enthusiasm to delete the articles about the existence of Germanic peoples or Slavic peoples or Indo-Aryan peoples or Celtic peoples, to give the examples:

7.1- From the article about Germanic peoples: The Germanic peoples are strongly associated with "Germanic languages" as they are defined in modern linguistics. In recent times the idea that the early Germanic peoples originally shared any single core culture or language before their contact with Romans is denied by some[which?] historians. Well… because now speaking languages from a common ancestor is very important in defining a group of related peoples even if they did not share a single core culture. But that doesn’t matter because Romance peoples have a mysterious feature of not being related at all even if they share some common cultural features like related languages and Roman heritage… "Romance peoples don’t exist, that is an inquestionable truth!"

7.2- From the article about Slavic peoples: Slavs are Indo-European people who speak the various Slavic languages of the larger Balto-Slavic linguistic group. Modern Slavic nations and ethnic groups are considerably diverse both genetically and culturally, and relations between them – even within the individual groups – range from ethnic solidarity to mutual hostility. Well… because now speaking languages from a common ancestor is very important in defining a group of related peoples and ethnic groups are considerably diverse both genetically and culturally but they are still a group of related peoples, right? Even if some of them are not very nice to each other… Romance peoples seems to be a mystery, Slavs have diversity but they are related, Romance peoples have diversity therefore they aren’t related…. It’s very logical and encyclopedic…

7.3- From the article about Indo-Aryan/Indic peoples: The Indo-Aryan peoples, or Indic peoples, are a diverse collection of ethnolinguistic groups speaking Indo-Aryan languages, a subgroup of the Indo-European language family. Well… again speaking related languages seems to be an important criterium for other peoples to be considered related but not for Romance peoples obviously. So for Romance peoples… well, you know…

7.4- From the article about Celtic peoples: The Celts (/kɛlts, sɛlts/, see pronunciation of Celt for different usages) are a collection of Indo-European peoples of Europe identified by their use of the Celtic languages and other cultural similarities. The history of pre-Celtic Europe and the exact relationship between ethnic, linguistic and cultural factors in the Celtic world remains uncertain and controversial. Wow, it seems that language and cultural similarities are something regarding the existence of kinship between peoples, but wait…. It doesn’t apply to Romance peoples, we really have a mystery here… No, wait, because Romance peoples… you know…

7.5- From the article about Romance peoples itself: The Romance peoples, also called Latin peoples, Romanic peoples or Latin Europeans, are a collection of ethnic groups of European origin primarily characterized as speakers of Romance languages. They emerged through the Romanization of Italic peoples, Celts, Thracians and other peoples of Europe by Ancient Rome, from which the Romance peoples derive much of their heritage. That's odd, the article argues that Romance peoples are characterized as speakers of Romance languages but what seems to be an important thing for the kinship of other peoples does not matter at all regarding the existence of Romance peoples... Romance or Latin peoples are mysterious peoples, they speak related languages yet they are not related because language doesn’t matter to establish ethnic kinship, have a Roman heritage but that also doesn’t matter, have some common ancestors but that is annuled by the existence of other ancestral peoples that were Romanized, but other peoples that were Germanized, Slavicized or Indo-Aryanized or Celticized are no less Germanic, Slavic, Indo-Aryan or Celtic at all. Interesting... for Romance peoples nothing can prove any kind of kinship beetween them, in other peoples it is a proof of course, except for Romance! Well, it seems logical and quite coherent, not biased at all. Romance is one of the biggest ethno-linguistic mysteries of anthropology and linguistics and they live right in Europe and the Americas!

8- With no criteria and no deffinitions, only with fringe and extreme subjective views some could argue that “English don’t exist”, “Americans, don’t exist”, “Arabs don’t exist”, “Chinese don’t exist”, “ethnic groups don’t exist”, “related peoples don’t exist”, “nations don’t exist”, “individuals don’t exist”… etc, etc, etc, in some kind of post-modernistic mess, or the opposite extreme, an absolutistic ethnocentric thinking – "only single ethnic groups exist", "there is no such thing as related ethnic groups", "there are only Nation States", "an ethnic group only descends from the same ancestors", "an ethnic group or people descends from a pure ancestral group without any kinship to other peoples", "our ethnic group was born from the ground, we are not related to anyone else", etc, etc, or be double standard, some peoples form related groups because they have some common cultural characteristics (language, mores, etc) and have some common ancestors but others who also have some common cultural characteristics (language, mores, etc) and some common ancestors, by some mysterious way are not related at all, they are only individual peoples, not a group of peoples… all because of this or that, some single “magic bullet” criterium that invalidates any kind of kinship etc, etc

I seriously see no reason to delete this article, if this article is deleted, there will be no more solid ground for the existence of other articles about groups of peoples that use similar criteria to state that some peoples have a closer kinship and are a group of related peoples. What about consensus? To expect consensus about issues like this is impossible both in the peoples themselves and in Academia by scholars. Some people might think that yes they indeed are part of related Latin or Romance peoples (ethnic groups) others don’t, the same applies to Germanic or Slavic or Indo-Aryan or Celtic peoples;

I oppose the deletion of this article but I agree with its improvement through edition.Bird Vision (talk) 15:57, 4 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Bird Vision: Thank you for calling editors who do not share your POV ignorant, incompetent and narrow-minded. Here's a short reply by one them:
1–2: If there is more than language that binds the "Romance peoples" together to the exclusion of other European peoples, we are still waiting for a reliable and NPOV-source for that claim.
3: Nobody here conflates ethnic groups with the notion of larger groupings that comprise multiple ethnicities.
4: Nobody here conflates ethnic groups with nations.
5: Exactly. But the burden of proof is on you if you vote keep.
6–7: WP:OTHER. Drop the conspiracy stuff. The notion of "modern" Germanic peoples, Slavs, etc. is equally contested. Germanic peoples had PP for two weeks because editors were warring—among other things—about the notion of "modern" Germanic peoples.
Collegial greetings. –Austronesier (talk) 16:19, 4 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
And I thought I was longwinded :) But yes, I am afraid all your points 7.x are WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. What the admin closing this thread will need to see is policy reasons for keeping the article. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 16:27, 4 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Bird Vision: some poor closer has to read this. Could you make a condensed version?--Calthinus (talk) 17:29, 4 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
      • And this is not how wiki works. Your logic is like this "I know Romance peoples are a thing beyond language" > "people who don't acknowledge this are specifically narrow-minded nationalists" > "we should keep the page". Ad hominem is not an argument, we talk about content. Neither is the WP:TRUTH -- instead we rely on what WP:RS say. The difference between this and all the other crap you brought up ("English", "Chinese", "Arabs"), is that RS support those pages.--Calthinus (talk) 17:34, 4 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - I would keep it and improve it. I don't agree with deleting it.Codrin.B (talk) 16:23, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: As of this relist, the discussion seems to be leaning towards either deletion or redirection. But the consensus, to the extent it could be so labeled, is weak. So I'm going to give this another week for further discussion. Please be aware the conversation has gotten quite lengthy and confine your comments to what is germane, cite policies and or guidelines and be brief.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ad Orientem (talk) 00:48, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete – Of course the Romance languages grouping is legitimate, but nothing about that implies that the people who speak such languages are ethnically related. This is clear WP:OR and should be deleted. RGloucester — ☎ 10:37, 12 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge to Romance-speaking world, even though that page is pretty poor too. Keeping this page would somehow support the existence of a Romance ethnic group. --Jotamar (talk) 18:14, 14 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. I think this article has been created to help launder the ideas of Ioan-Aurelian Pop and give them greater respectability. I think there is an article to be written about the concept of “Romance peoples” with a discussion of criticisms of the concept but I can’t see the current article as a sensible starting point for that. Its purpose is to give credibility to a fringe theory and the best approach is WP:TNT. Mccapra (talk) 11:22, 16 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete as WP:SYNTH and WP:FRINGE. There has been no legitimate research that this really exists. Bearian (talk) 17:39, 17 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
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.
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Romance_peoples

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