Talk:Basque people

Population figures

Right, I've been bold and removed all unreferenced population figures and replaced them with the word uncertain. That part of the infobox was getting silly, some carried a "ref needed" tag from 2009!!! If you are going to put numbers back, please find a bona fide reference first, otherwise those numbers are just guesswork. Akerbeltz (talk) 10:45, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi Akerbeltz, I totally agree, tagged contents can't be there for ever. Iñaki LL (talk) 03:49, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Neutrality - Entire population of Navarre (Spain) considered Basque

Since Navarra is not officially/from an Administration point of view Basque, and the majority of its inhabitants do not consider themselves Basque, how come the entire population of Navarre is considered Basque in the Infobox? This is obviously NOT neutral.

The source in the article comes from a public agency of the neighbouring region (Euskadi - Basque Country) at a time whose government was controlled by the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), whose ultimate goal is to create an independent state with all the lands that they consider to be Basque. Obviously their source is going to say that Navarrese people are Basque... --Tocacojines (talk) 17:02, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

The details of that rather complicated issue are covered further down in the article. I think the inclusion of the figure is justified, the way I read it the question of Navarrese vs Basque identity is heavily politicized but from a historical/linguistic angle, the "Vasconic" origin/heritage of both cannot rationally be denied. If the article were called "Vasconic people" we probably wouldn't be having this discussion but unfortunately that's just not what English people call people from that corner of the world.

Or, turning it the other way round, the population figures for Spain include Catalonia, the BAC, Navarre and Galicia, yet we all know that a sizable percentage of people refute any Spanish-ness. Should be therefore deduct them from the total? Akerbeltz (talk) 18:12, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Actuallly, you're wrong, I just checked. The 1996 Sociolinguistic Survey included a question on identity and the overall figure for Navarre to the question "Do you consider yourself Basque (Euskal Herritar)" 41% said no, 45% yes, 10% "to some degree". [1] For some reason the question wasn't included in 2006. I'll see if I can find a more recent figure but I doubt the No camp has increased. Akerbeltz (talk) 18:20, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

It looks anyway that the tag is calling into question the whole article out of hand. If there is an issue, it should go to where the controversy is, so take it to the demographics or the regions infobox maybe, but I think that if anywhere this belongs to population, main cities and languages section if that remains the contentious point. A sentence can be added there objecting or asserting that fuzzy reality, preferably backed up by a reliable reference and that's your job, Tocacojines. Regards Iñaki LL (talk) 06:36, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Proceed to delete POV tag, no reply added to discussion.Iñaki LL (talk) 23:21, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Disputed numbers and website

The numbers for Basques people outside the region are backed from the website Euskonews.com. That is hardly an objective source. The POV tag should be re-introduced until the issue is resolved. Politis (talk) 18:08, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Hi, this infobox is not alright definitely. The data are about genealogy, not about actual Basques of course. That's even not POV, it's just a wrong statement, the Euskonews data refer not to Basques, but to some kind of Basque link by surname or family or bond. I wonder how many other references in the Wikipedia were to be deleted if Euskonews were considered POV, a vast amount no doubt. Iñaki LL (talk) 00:15, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Neutrality: Navarrese as Basque

Dear all: the POV tag was removed with no changes whatsoever. Hence, I removed myself numbers in the infobox considering the Navarrese population as Basque. References were left within the text, to explain that some Basques do see the Navarrese as Basque, and that some Navarrese do see themselves as Basque, but their main ruling party does not. I believe this is far more neutral than the previous version. --Tocacojines (talk) 16:36, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

You're factually wrong. The most recent surveys show that the majority of Navarrese people identify as Basque. So, until you can find bona fide references which state the opposite, it would seem you're pushing some personal agenda. Akerbeltz (talk) 16:39, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

I have tried to check facts, to do this I followed the source given for (one of the) contentious issues, that is the number of Basque people in Navarre, which is 508,900 according to the infobox. The source given is "IV. Inkesta Soziolinguistikoa Gobierno Vasco, Servicio Central de Publicaciones del Gobierno Vasco 2008", I hope this might be this document online : [2]. I opened it, it is in Basque -a language I can alas not read- but I easily found the number 508.900 on page numbered 139 in an array with the legend "16 urte edo gehiagoko biztanleria lurraldearen eta adinaren arabera. Nafarroa, 2006" - I used Google Translate (wow they know Basque) and obtained the following English translation, whose accuracy I can hardly judge : "Population aged 16 and over age group and province. Navarre, 2006". It does not seem to have much in common with the infobox topic (nothing about Basqueness in this array).

No data is better than inaccurate data, especially inaccurate data where a source is betrayed. I have no political agenda, you can write that there are 10000 Basque people in Navarre, that there are 100000 or that there are 500000 but whatever number you choose, it should be sourced by a reliable document. The issues raised by both persons speaking in this dialogue are irrelevant - we are not speaking about what people in Navarre think, but about what reliable sources think. It should probably mean giving an interval, with a low number with a source and a higher number with a source. As far as I see, the only source produced until now is off topic : it separates very young Navarrese dwellers from older Navarrese people, not Basque Navarrese people from non-Basque Navarrese dwellers. French Tourist (talk) 19:59, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

We've been through this before time and again, and again. Anyway. The most accurate answer I'm aware of is from the 1995/96 sociolinguistic survey [3]. You want page 29, the table at the top, the question asked is Do you consider yourself Basque (Euskalduna) to which the answers are Yes, Somewhat, No and Don't know/Didn't answer. 45% yes, 10% Somewhat and 41% No. That makes the No camp a minority. As to how many people in absolute terms are "Basque" or "Navarrese" (which from an English-speaking point of view is splitting hairs anyway) is unknown and probably impossible to ascertain. Obviously less than the total number but I thought we had a perfectly good footnote explaining that somewhere. Akerbeltz (talk) 22:00, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

"As to how many people in absolute terms are "Basque" (...) is unknown and probably impossible to ascertain". Indeed this is likely ; if there are no data available, there should be no data in the infobox - if some of the entries of the Template:Infobox ethnic group cannot be filled, they should not appear, or appear as empty. (But I am not so pessimistic as you are, I guess there might exist more or less approximate estimates, which could be used to insert an interval in the article, as is done in Kurdish people for instance - incidentally I am amazed never to see anywhere an estimate of the number of Basque in France outside the Basque country, or in Spain outside the Basque country and Navarre, I supppose they are not negligible). French Tourist (talk) 07:04, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

The problem is, it all hinges on the definition of X. Taking a different example, how many Scots in Scotland? Is that all people living there, people who identify in the census as Scots, people born in Scotland or something else? Scottish people for example doesn't give exact figures either (nor are they referenced to the hilt in all cases) but takes a bit of a common sense approach. I think the same should be taken here, no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater, because NOT giving any idea as to the population of Basques in Navarre is just as silly as claiming that all of the are not Basque or that all are Basque. We could use the 1991 % and therefore say that the number of Basques is somewhere between the low of x% and the high of y% (all people in Navarre). Akerbeltz (talk) 10:58, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

"a bit of a common sense approach". Certainly not ! We are not here to write according to "common sense" but according to reliable sources. What some editor will deem as "common sense" will be considered as WP:Original Research by another. On hot topics, "common sens" is a very poor guide. French Tourist (talk) 11:52, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Bah, then explain to me why we get people breezing through who remove stuff based on their own view of the world without a shred of reliable sources and then it's left to the rest of us to scratch our heads and come up with reliable sources. If Wikipedia did NOT employ a common sense approach, then a great many articles would not exist or have to be deleted very quickly. Toca has not brought a single source to the debate, just his/her own views. Great. I fail to see why that means I need to tie myself in knots. Akerbeltz (talk) 12:40, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

And incidentally, you might want to look at WP:Use common sense. Apparently, the concept does exist on Wikipedia. Akerbeltz (talk) 12:42, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Agree with Akerbeltz. Most of the times there is a threshold, a blur area, on which so many Wikipedia articles fall without references, which doesn´t mean they are invalid out of hand. Actually, most of them remain unaltered because they are either acceptable or move in that blur debatable threshold (and it would take a long discussion!). As for the POV tag, goes without saying, I waited long enough for him to make his case but seemed to quit. Iñaki LL (talk) 06:41, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

I am sorry to disagree. Common sense is promoted as a way to find compromises and not to become a slave of unsuitable rules, not as a way to insert content into articles - we are here to synthetise good quality documents, not to give an echo of common knowledge with all its flaws but with no hint of its flaws. See WP:Common knowledge, which gives some examples of informations which can remain unsourced due to their obvious accuracy : "There are seven days in a week.", "A tall spire sits atop the Empire State Building", "January comes before February in the Gregorian calendar". This obviously does not apply to "Total population : 2.6 million in Spain and France". Note that I am not interested to know whether writing this is a POV problem or not, just that it should not be in an article without a precise attribution. French Tourist (talk) 19:48, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

NOT giving even a rough population figure would be even worse. This is really silly. Even with the best of data on population, we know damn well the figure isn't right. For one thing, census data doesn't count illegal immigrants, yet no one argues about the very precise figure of 58,789,194 in the United Kingdom article when the figure may be out by as much as a million people. Using the 45% "not Basque" figure, we're quibbling over plus/minus 225,000 people at the most. So it's between 2.6 and 2.4 million Basques in France and Spain. Shocking difference. Honestly.

I've stuck approx. in front of the number. Now, can we lay this to rest cause it's really not adding anything to the article? Akerbeltz (talk) 22:28, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

In your example about United Kingdom, the very precise figure is not supposed to be the UK population but, as the legend in the infobox reads the result of the "2001 census". This is an accurate information : the result of the 2001 census was 58,789,194, and there is a footnote linking to a documenet which emanates from the "Office for National Statistics". When you replace "2.6 million in Spain and France" by "approx. 2.6 million in Spain and France", you replace an unsourced information by another unsourced information ; this is hardly an improvement (but is not worse either). NOT giving even rough estimates happens on articles about aggregates of people which would be very hard to count ; sourced intervals are more common. I have made a few tests : architect and proletariat do not give any number estimate, Sunnite (redirects to "Sunni Islam") gives a very broad interval from over 75% to 90% of all Muslims., with academic sources ; bisexuality gives results of surveys, but only for the United States ; Hmong people gives a quite broad interval ("4 to 5 million"), with an academic source. Removing unsourced informations is not the common way to proceed (an I have simply added a "reference welcomed" tagged) but would probably be a better choice that leaving an information which is certainly not common-sensical. French Tourist (talk) 13:12, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

The figure of 58,789,194 is in the Population box next to 2001 Census. A reader of that page will therefore generally assume that this was the population of the UK in 2001. Unless we speak two different kinds of English that is... And population figures of ethnicities are hardly the same as those for architects or proletarians... the comparison is awkward at best, rather insulting at worst. And I'm not sure if I understood the last sentence. I'm out, this is a waste of time. Akerbeltz (talk) 15:23, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

OK let's close this debate -at least if nobody relaunches it. I don't see what is "insulting" in comparing Basque people with articles on other sets of people, with their similarities and differences (your comparison with an article about a European kingdom does not seem more relevant to me, in good faith). The last sentence means what it means : were I free to do at will on Wikipedia pages, I would have completely removed the controversial unsourced information, since I know WP is a collaborative experiment, I have simply added the "citation needed" tag. French Tourist (talk) 07:46, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Basque categories

The introduction states, 'ethnic Basques'. IMO the discussion above seems to indicate different types of Basque people. Is there a list of different Basques people? Is the term in common use? I am just asking if there is a need for clarification in the article, I am not not in a position to suggest any edits. Politis (talk) 10:39, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

It's confusing. It does something like this: There's a region where historically ethnicity X has shared language (Basque) and customs. Roughly coincides with the concept of Basque Country (greater region) in terms of historical geography. Now for various reasons, there is a three way political split (Spain/France, 3 administrative regions (Autonomous Community, French Basque Country (not an administrative region in the official sense), Navarre. There's the expected double identity issues around Basque and/or Spanish/French. On the Spanish side, there's been a tug of war for a long time over whether the people in Navarre are Basque, Navarrese, Basque and Navarrese and/or Spanish. Note that in Lower Navarre, historically part of Navarre itself, this debate is not raging. There are various arguments put forward on either side of the Basque vs Navarrese debate, I won't go into them.

The upshot is, from an outsiders point of view, both in large parts of the Autonomous Community, Navarre and the French Basque country do people point at a house and call it etxea and there are numerous people running around with surnames like Etxeberria in all 3 areas, you will find bertsolari who come from all 3 regions and so on. So from this angle, they all seem to share ethnicity X. Except politically, they can't agree what X is called. Akerbeltz (talk) 15:49, 6 March 2012 (UTC)