Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Belarusian mythology

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:{{la|1=Belarusian mythology}} – (View AfDView log | edits since nomination)

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{{old rfd list|Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 August 23#Belarusian mythology|restore article without prejudice to nomination for AfD}} This article was blanked and redirected by Eckhardt Etheling with the edit summary: {{tq|Not a single source and poorly-written; moreover, it misuses the term "mythology" (i.e. godlore) also including later folk tales. WP:BOLDLY merging into "historical Slavic religion".}} This editor is now blocked, but the rationale is valid; the article has been unreferenced since its creation in 2016. {{pb}} Earlier in 2023, Maksim L. attempted to delete the redirect which lead to an RfD which ended with restoring the article because no suitable redirect target was found and there was no unanimous agreement to delete. {{pb}} Even ignoring the sourcing problem, the article states its intended topic as: {{tq|the system of legends, myths and cosmological presentations in ancient religion that was practiced in Belarus before Christianization in the 10th century}}. There is a glaring problem with this premise in that there was no such thing as "Belarus" or even a "Belarusian language" (see {{slink|Belarusian language|History}}) that long ago. Those ethnic, national, and linguistic distinctions had not yet developed and to present the topic in such terms is anachronistic and very misleading to readers. {{pb}} If any sources which explicitly discuss the topic in terms of "Belarusian mythology" (as opposed to, say, "East Slavic mythology") even exist they are very unlikely to be reliable. This isn't helped by the fact that Slavic Native Faith-adjacent topics like Slavic mythology and folklore are a magnet for misinformation with a nationalist POV, and I suspect that's a factor here because the article includes a link to a nationalist blog in its "External links" section and its the closest thing this article has to a source. – Scyrme (talk)

• {{small|{{reply|Maksim L.|Duckmather|Mzajac|Alalch E.|Hobit|Paul_012|Bernanke's Crossbow}} This 'reply' is to notify participants of the past RfD. Feel free to ignore this if you are no longer interested now that the RfD has been closed. – Scyrme (talk) 19:11, 9 September 2023 (UTC)}}
• Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Mythology and Belarus. Shellwood (talk) 20:01, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
• Delete. Wanted to nominate myself, was doing some research, and didn't come up with anything. Got nothing to add to the nominator's statement.—Alalch E. 19:16, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
• Automated comment: This AfD was not correctly transcluded to the log (step 3). I have transcluded it to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2023 September 9. —^{cyberbot I}_{Talk to my owner:Online} 19:25, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
• Delete. "Nationalist blog", luxurious cliché. There was a link to an article by a reputable historian. But his article was called “Pagan Religion”, and pagan religion has nothing to do with Belarusian mythology. Now the wiki-article mixes pagan religion and Belarusian mythology. If we do not have enough qualifications to separate the concepts and leave only Belarusian mythology in the wiki-article, we should delete. In this form, the article is simply nonsense. --Maksim L. (talk) 19:49, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
• :On closer inspection of page (now only accessible through web.archive.org), the website did attribute the article to {{tooltip|{{ill|Georgy V. Shtykhov|be|Георгій Васілевіч Штыхаў}}|It was easier to find information in English using the romanisation of the Russian spelling, Shtykhov, rather than the Belarusian spelling, Shtykhau.}} who evidently is a reputable historian, although to be honest I don't know much about him. However, the blog on which the article was posted was very clearly nationalist in character. Besides its overt national focus it included a page titled "friends" ({{lang|be|сябры}}) linked prominently on the site which featured a list of links promoting the BPF Youth and the {{ill|National Alliance (Ukraine)|uk|Національний Альянс|pl|Sojusz Narodowy (Ukraina)}}.
• :Regardless of the website's affiliations, you're right that the article didn't even mention "mythology" ({{lang|be|міфалогія}}); the relevance of the article to its stated topic is entirely in the imagination of the author.
• :I don't think it's unreasonable to think that the author may have had a nationalist bias given the nature of the website they chose to share and the nature of the Wikipedia article itself, the premise of which depends on asserting a distinctly Belarusian national claim to aspects of East Slavic mythology and folklore dating to before the 10th century, and stretching the history of Belarus to over a millenium. – Scyrme (talk) 21:18, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
• ::You cannot evaluate the authority of a source through the fictitious ideological beliefs of the hosting owners. This does not comply with Wikipedia's rules or the general methodology for criticizing sources. You cannot attribute ideological beliefs to anyone at your own discretion and use this as an argument. This is wrong and vicious. Shtykhov’s text was published long ago in the six-volume academic publication “History of Belarus”. The site contained a reprint of a well-known text, without the approval of the author. There was no need for approval. But that's beside the point. The content of the wiki-article under discussion does not correspond to its title. There is nothing in the content about Belarusian mythology, there are no sources on this topic. The wiki-article contains only a lapidary description of some pre-Christian beliefs that are not Belarusian mythology. The article should be deleted and not left as a redirect. There is no redirect target on Wikipedia. Maybe later someone will write a new article actually about Belarusian mythology. -- Maksim L. (talk) 17:31, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
• :::I already conceded that the text was attributed to "{{tq|a reputable historian}}" and wasn't criticising the text itself or Shtykhov on the basis of the host site. I apologise if that wasn't clear. You yourself have noted that the "{{tq|article is simply nonsense}}" in its current state; my point was only that this apparent nonsense makes sense from a particular point of view which plausibly may have been a factor in its creation. All I intended was to suggest a context in which this article makes sense and that finding reliable sources would be difficult because of that POV. That's all. If you don't agree with this interpretation, fine, but I don't see what's "{{tq|wrong and vicious}}" about it. – Scyrme (talk) 18:41, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
• Comment ru.wikipedia appears to have a large number of sources on its version of the page; I imagine nationalist editors would prefer to stuff their work in be.wikipedia. Perhaps an {{template|expand Russian}} is in order? {{small|(I don't know (Byelo)Russian and Google Translate and DeepL are annoying to access while my computer is repaired. My suppositions regarding the article's contents may be very wrong.)}} Bernanke's Crossbow (talk) 07:59, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
• :The Russian article is more developed but much of it is also unreferenced. The Belarusian Wikipedia article seems somewhat more developed, if the empty sections are ignored, although much of it is likewise unreferenced. The author of the Belarusian article appears to be the same as that of the English article, but looking at their revisions there I no longer nationalism was a likely factor. Both have a similar structure, and neither article limits itself to myths in pre-Christianisation pagan religion, so the scope and topic aren't an exact match to the English article.
• :The Belarusian lead section opens by differentiating between 3 different topics covered in the article: Baltic paganism (since Baltic peoples lived in the region until the Middle Ages), Slavic paganism, and post-Christian folklore and Folk Orthodoxy. It also immediately lists two caveats: firstly, there are few if any written primary sources, and, secondly, there much misinformation in secondary sources due to the fabrications and dubious theories of 19th and 20th century folklorists, particularly {{ill|Pavel M. Shpilevsky|ru|Шпилевский, Павел Михайлович}} who is criticised for similar reasons here on the English Wikipedia at {{slink|Pseudo-mythology#Belarus}}. The Russian article has a similar scope, although it lacks the coverage of Baltic peoples in the region.
• :It seems both these articles also struggle with reliable sourcing and differentiating mythology and folklore. It's possible that some of the unreferenced material actually is sourced but merely lacks adequate footnotes, since both have works listed in "Literature" sections. This would make verification difficult so translation probably isn't a good idea unless the translator is very selective or is very familiar with the sources.
• :I suppose a better article could be written which summarises the histories of different mythologies within the region, similar to Mythology in France, which is what the Russian and Belarusian articles appear to be aiming for. However, doing so would be substantially revising the scope, content, and sources. At that point, it seems easier to start over with proper referencing to begin with. (WP:TNT) A better title for an article with that broader scope might be "Mythology in Belarus".
• :Even ignoring the lack of sourcing, the material at the present article at Belarusian mythology is very vague and nonspecific to Belarus (besides using the modern Belarusian names for things such as deities which are otherwise common to the East Slavs broadly); I'm not convinced there's much if any that would be helpful to the hypothetical improved article.
• :tl;dr - Even considering translation, this seems like a case of WP:TNT. Translation may help with writing a new article if the translator is able to verify the sources to provide adequate footnotes and exclude unsourced material. – Scyrme (talk) 00:38, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

{{clear}}

: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.