Wiktionary:Votes/2019-01/Banning Altaic

Voting on: Banning Altaic.

• Proposed action: Remove Altaic language grouping and remove Proto-Altaic as a valid language.

Schedule:

• Vote starts: 00:00, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
• Vote ends: 23:59, 21 February 2019 (UTC)
• Vote created: Crom daba (talk) 23:01, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Discussion:

• Wiktionary:Votes/2013-11/Proto-Altaic
• Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2019/January#Banning_Altaic_reconstructions

1. Support Little to no support amongst linguistics. Reconstructions are embarrassingly far-fetched and ill-conceived, both semantically and morphologically. --{{victar|talk}} 05:51, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
2. Support — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 06:58, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
3. Support I don't think there has been much new evidence to support the Altaic hypothesis from ever since the 1960's, when it was still in vogue. It's now firmly considered to be equivalent to pseudo-linguistics. — surjection ⟨?⟩ 09:43, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
4. Support Even if the Altaic hypothesis is true (a theory that lacks solid evidence) the proposed reconstructions are linguistically unsound.  --Lambiam 12:25, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
5. Support embryomystic (talk) 13:30, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
6. Support mellohi! (僕の乖離) 15:00, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
7. Support Crom daba (talk) 19:30, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
8. Support: Looking just at Japonic terms that appear in StarLing and related materials, I'm finding an error rate north of 25%. When every fourth "Japonic" descendant of a proposed Altaic term is in fact derived from unrelated components, the researchers' underlying approach is severely flawed -- and that calls into question all of the other proposed descendants as well. Some of the hypothesized relations are suggestive and may be worthy of further inspection. But on the whole, the Altaic reconstructions I have seen are problematic at best. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 20:23, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
9. Support Although some linguist supporting it exist, we do not have to include what would be not be seen outside of places where the context and meaning of those words were already explained. — This unsigned comment was added by Graeme Bartlett (talk • contribs) at 21:26, 23 January 2019 (UTC).
10. Support. I would still be fine with putative Altaic connections mentioned in etymology sections, as long as they use the word "controversial". —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:39, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
11. Support Tom 144 (𒄩𒇻𒅗𒀸) 03:01, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
12. Support Putative Altaic connections can be mentioned in the usual comparison way “compare Mongolic X”, “compare Turkic Y”, and so on, hypotheses directed at an Altaic connection can be mentioned without the “controversial” word (I mean if you know what “Altaic” means you also know that it is controversial). It appears that if the existence of Altaic is dubious then there are also no sound laws known secure we cannot reliably put reconstructions here, so as an entry language it must be banned. Fay Freak (talk) 14:23, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
13. Support There really is not much of a point to being a mirror for the Altaicists' databases. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 10:42, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
14. Support Ƿidsiþ 12:57, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
15. Support Altaic is the greatest and most widely-believed pseudoscience of historical linguistics, simply because it "sounds cool" and is therefore attractive to those not acquainted with historical linguistics. (I have encountered many people who, when hearing about my interest in historical linguistics, say things along the lines of "oh, did you know that Japanese is from Turkish?") By removing Altaic reconstructions from Wiktionary entirely, we can better fight against incorrect information, especially considering that so many people get etymological resources from Wiktionary. GabeMoore (talk) 19:04, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

    Support To be sure, I am personally very sympathetic of macrofamilies. I even find the Nostratic hypothesis interesting to say the least. But it would be misleading if Wiktionary included hypotheses that are so widely rejected. An appendix for reconstructions of Proto-Altaic should be allowed (because these reconstructions themselves exist undeniably, as much as constructed languages exist!) but the reader should not be made to think what mainstream scholarship rejects. Steinbach (talk) 12:51, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

    @Steinbach: It sounds like you're actually not is support of this vote, and rather see the entries moved to Appendix. --{{victar|talk}} 18:49, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

    I have struck Steinbach's vote, as this account is not eligible to vote per WT:VP. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:53, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

1. Abstain I am not a linguist, and my primary source of knowledge about linguistics is Wikipedia. פֿינצטערניש (talk) 22:58, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
2. Abstain, verging on Support: I don't see anything wrong with banning from the dictionary what seems to be garbage, but I'm not really qualified to judge. Per utramque cavernam 23:44, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
3. Abstain ‘Moscow school’ long-range reconstructions border on crackpottery. Traditional Altaic comparative linguistics (represented by e. g. Poppe, Ramstedt) isn’t nearly as bad (but still may be too controversial, and hasn’t produced an etymological dictionary). Guldrelokk (talk) 09:38, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

   @Guldrelokk: The only way they could be more crackpottery if they were made by Rasputin himself. XD --{{victar|talk}} 05:52, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

4. Abstain. I know close to nothing about Altaic and do not feel like getting into the subject. On this vote page, I see nothing that would lead me to oppose the proposal. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:55, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

• Passed with 15-0-4. — surjection ⟨?⟩ 10:12, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
• Question: should tut-pro remain as an etym-only language or be removed completely (including detemplating all etymology templates that use tut-pro)? — surjection ⟨?⟩ 11:03, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

  Whatever is done, some of the content on these entries needs to be moved to new entries, i.e. the Proto-Turkic, Proto-Mongolian, etc. @Crom daba, Allahverdi Verdizade --{{victar|talk}} 16:45, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

  Pinging @Suzukaze-c for the Japonic reconstructions. --{{victar|talk}} 18:32, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

  Pinging @Eirikr, 荒巻モロゾフ instead _(:3」∠)_ —Suzukaze-c◇◇ 18:37, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

  Regarding to the templates, {{R:tut-pro:SDM}} is beneficial. Although it is better not to accept them as entries, introducing the existence of the hypothesis itself is acceptable.--荒巻モロゾフ (talk) 13:52, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

  If the language is banned, the code should be deleted. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:23, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

  Agreed. This vote was for a ban, not restricted allowance. --{{victar|talk}} 17:54, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

• What are we doing with this: {{R:tut:SDM}}? Is it still an acceptable source? Most likely the reconstructions of the child families have been massaged to conform to their Proto-Altaic reconstructions. @Vahagn Petrosyan --{{victar|talk}} 18:57, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

  @Victar, in my experience, SDM's lists of Turkic cognates within the Turkic branch are accurate and well-sourced. I don't know about the reconstructed proto-forms, though. I use their lists to find cognates and references. --Vahag (talk) 07:05, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

  @Vahagn Petrosyan: I'm not concerned with proposed cognates, but rather the reconstructed proto forms. I think all cases of that should be wiped from the project. --{{victar|talk}} 17:54, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

• Here is a list of entries with tut-pro etymology templates, like {{der}} and {{cog}}. — surjection ⟨?⟩ 19:36, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

  Also see Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2019/February#Deprecating Altaic. — surjection ⟨?⟩ 21:38, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

  @Surjection Does this mean that all Altaic etymologies, even those saying "according to the controversial Altaic hypothesis" etc. such as in Turkish er, should be removed? GabeMoore (talk) 18:20, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

  As far as my understanding goes, those should be removed, but Altaic etymologies could still be mentioned in some cases. However, at least any template referring to tut-pro should be removed, and I personally think mentions of Proto-Altaic should be removed from almost if not all Turkish etymology sections. — surjection ⟨?⟩ 19:04, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

  Are we going to wait for a bot to do that or should we declare "open season" on those etymologies with our keyboards? GabeMoore (talk) 14:05, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

  I will eventually use a bot to remove all the templates, but before that it's probably a good idea to remove the references to Altaic in general for most entries at least. More questionable cases could be put in WT:ES. — surjection ⟨?⟩ 15:27, 27 February 2019 (UTC)