Talk:Welsh people/Archive 2

message: This article needs a thourough fact and reference check. There are several citation styles that can be used, I prefer the footnotes method, but if there is a consensus for harvard referencing then I am happy to do that as well. There is much here that needs a proper reference. We cannot assume that things are well known facts and therefore do not need to be referenced. If wikipedia is to gain any sort of credibility, the information contained in it needs to be verified, or it will never be anything more than a collection of the opinions of it's editors, and will remain completelly useless as a reference source in it's own right. Alun 05:05, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I wrote the initial draft of much of the history, as you can see from the top of this talk page. I tried very hard to keep my opinions to the talk page. Are you seriously asking for a citation for every single sentence? Is this to carry through to the details about religion or is it just the history you object to? You have already slapped "this article needs referencing" on about five other articles I watch: do you want sentence-by-sentence citations on those, too? I expect I can provide them for this article, but that paragraph is going to look remarkably ugly, and given those other five articles (thank you), this one is going to take some time. I don't understand why you removed the note about When was Wales? from the references: it is well-known enough to warrant mentioning. (It's also back in the library now, so another reason why it will take some time.) The current favourite referencing style seems to be m:Cite.php: this has the advantage that several facts from the same book can link to the same book reference. This will be very useful for this article. Telsa (talk) 05:59, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Proper referencing

message: Here are some initial sources for much of this but there are almost certain to be better ones; and I think at least a couple of sentences need alteration. Since what I'm suggesting change the overall result quite strongly, I put them here for consideration before adding them to the article. Essentially, I have a lot of quotes agreeing that the Celtic invasion stuff is old hat, and that it was more a process of transfer of culture. Going by the tone of discussion on the talk page up to now, I think we (okay, me, but no-one else fixed it) didn't make that plain enough in the original article.
So that said, are people happy for these references to go in? I have absolutely no qualifications in this topic at all, be warned. On the other hand, if you must chastise me for that, please do include what I should have read instead. Note that I will format them a bit better later: I got fed up of typing in the same ISBNs multiple times, when we only need it for the first mention. 
* The names that the earliest inhabitants of Wales had for themselves is not recorded.: Referring to Celtic tribes across Britain: "Sadly, their names are only known in the Latinized forms which where given them by classical authors of by their later conquerors, and which set a false tone to discussions from the start. Attempts have been made to reconstruct the Celtic forms, but most archaeologists and prehistorians do not even bother." Norman Davies, The Isles, page 55.
* The tribes the Romans encountered in their time in Britain were known to the Romans as Ordovices, the Demetae, the Silures and the Deceangli: Not found a source yet, just a lot of maps with names scribbled in approximate places; but apparently comes from Ptolemy.
:You could use Barry Cunliffe Iron Age communities in Britain' Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987 (2nd ed) ISBN 0-7100-8725-X pp. 115-118 Rhion 21:25, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I only changed it because I didn't really understand what asserting a link meant, would something like claiming cultural continuity be better? Alun 16:52, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes I agree, we don't need the sentence I added, I was just thinking of how different sais and Lloegr are. Removing all the cognate with.. stuff makes sense to me. Alun 16:52, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Fair enough, personally I don't like the word influx, which is why I changed it, but it's no biggie. Alun 17:28, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Great work, and so fast. I usually plod along when trying to find references. Alun 16:52, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: For discussion: references

message: Take your time and read well.
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~gallgaedhil/haplo_r1b_amh_13_29.htm
http://www.geocities.com/littlednaproject/Cavalli.htm
http://www.geocities.com/littlednaproject/Y-MAP.GIF
World Haplogroups Maps (As recent as 2005)
Origins of haplogroup R1b. (Very interesting too)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_R1b_%28Y-DNA%29
http://www.worldfamilies.net/Tools/r1b_ydna_in_europe.htm
http://www.geocities.com/littlednaproject/Maps.htm
HCC
*Again, this information is pointless and the haplogroups arent anywhere characteristics of Iberia or originate in Iberia. Britons obviously are not of Iberian origin. Epf 22:40, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There's a lot of very interesting stuff here - thanks for posting it. However it is important to distinguish between the findings of these studies and the interpretations of those findings. We all need to take care we are not just interpreting them in a way that fits with our own POV on these matters. Rhion 07:39, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Most Britons and Western Europeans are of Iberian Origin. 

message: Should the Drudic religion be included in this section of the article as it was a religion that was practiced widely in Wales.--Rhydd Meddwl 16:22, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If it is practised by a large enough percentage of people who classify themselves or who can be objectly classified as Welsh, then sure, it should be. Enzedbrit 01:06, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Religion

message: On the English people page, the user Lord Loxley keeps removing the Welsh from related ethnic groups (among many other biased and POV changes), on the grounds that the Welsh have actually been English since 1536. TharkunColl 17:11, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Stop this revanchism nonsense!  Who the fuck do you call the Tudors?!  I've got many recent Marcher ancestors and there is not one iota a difference between England and Wales as regards their ethnic heritage--language is a different subject!  Lord Loxley 00:10, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If this were true, then the Welsh would all be happy to call themselves English. This is clearly not the case, so it is you who are spouting nonsense I'm afraid. Ethnicity is not about race by the way - perhaps you don't actually know what the word means.TharkunColl 08:20, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: So am I supposed to choose sides and be in self-conflict--like you are about 1066 in this present day?  Your illogical posturings astound no one.  England and Wales is a land and people who both trace roots to Roman Britain and Scandinavia, as well as Gaul/France and the Greeks and Romans.  We have what one would call a cultural fusion; the differences between England and Wales are about as significant as those between London and York.  Please, no paranoid ethnocentric conspiracies!  Lord Loxley 16:24, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Whatever your view, I think there's no need for some of the language used above.  I also think that someone's missing the point in restricting this to the English and the Welsh.  The truth is that even the Irish are much more like the English than many would like to admit.  And then there are the Scots - they think of themselves as an ethnic group, even though they have as much in common with the English as the Welsh (legal issues aside).  And that's not to mention all the Saxon, Viking and Pictish blood in the lowlands competing with the Gaelic blood in the north.  And why stop there?  The Eastern Germans and the Western Slavs have rather a lot in common.  The thing is, the whole concept of ethnic group is problematic - and many people could happily claim to belong to several - so what?  The differences between any two modern Europeans is much smaller than people realise - between any two human beings for that matter.  That doesn't mean we can't keep talking about the Slavs, or the Germans or the English...  How about if there were a page about Yorkshire people that listed Lancashire people and London people as related groups?  What would be the problem with that?  When people in Britain talk about the English nowadays, they don't normally mean the Welsh.  And that's also been the case in British law since 1967.  garik 14:21, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Arbitration assistance requested

message: Eryri has changed the History section to state that the Celts of England were supplanted by Anglo-Saxons.  If anything this is based on a study released in 2002 which has consequently been shown to be wrong or misleading by several other studies since.  The continued reference to this story can only be for one thing: to try to cement a genetic/ethnic difference between the English and Welsh to further the cause of either English or Welsh nationalism.  I do not believe that the Wikipedia forum should promote such agendas.  If something is known to be wrong or false, then it should be shown to be such.  Wikipedia must be impartial. Enzedbrit 23:37, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There have been a number of studies, with somewhat conflicting results (and with rather dodgy sampling techniques in some cases). Very little is reliably "known" about what actually happened as yet, and a great deal more research will be needed. The section needs to be reworded in a way which makes no assumptions about the matter. I would not like this article to become a battleground for POV warriors in the way that English people has. Wikipedia should not be used to further any nationalisms, and that includes British nationalism just as much as English or Welsh. Rhion 06:31, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

text: Yes, that's probably the best thing to do. I've removed the sentence. Rhion 15:53, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Wiping out the Celts of England

message: Shouldn't the pictures of 4 representatives of Welsh people be changed? The big problem is that I don't know any of them. The second problem is that it looks very disorganized, it should be one image not unlike the scottish and the german. Now as to who should be the representatives, I am not sure... I'm not welsh. Maybe Tom Jones and Bertrand Russell for starters.
--mahlered 23:28, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Are you seriously claiming not to know who David Lloyd George is? Alfred Russell Wallace is a reasonable inclusion (though possibly not a must), as he is usually credited as having developed his own theory of natural selection in the 1850s, Darwin had a more developed theory but had procrastinated over publication, Wallace and Darwin cooperated on their theories. Indeed Darwin and Wallace presented papers simultaneously on the subject see On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection. And fron the evolution article: The modern understanding of evolution is based on the theory of natural selection, which was first set out in a joint 1858 paper by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace and popularized in Darwin's 1859 book The Origin of Species. I think Lloyd George is a must, the others are more a question of subjectivity, I don't have a problem with Tom Jones, but according to Bertrand Russell's article he was English (but born in Wales). What about a sportsman? Colin Jackson, Simon Jones, Ryan Giggs etc, I'm sure there are more out there. Alun 05:01, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually thinking again I would suggest these four people: David Lloyd George, Alfred Russell Wallace, Gareth Edwards and Tom Jones. Any better offers?. Alun 05:19, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  
 Are you seriously claiming not to know who David Lloyd George is? 
Sadly, I've met a good number of people who really don't know who Lloyd George was.  But their lamentable ignorance is no reason to change the page.  Still, I support having a mix of old and new faces. garik 17:55, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  pictures 

message: We could do with some refs for this, it seems strange but it is not so easy to find this online. I did find a bibliography giving a list of references for articles about emmigration from Wales, one of which is C G Pooley, Welsh Migration to England in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, Journal of Historical Geography, vol. 9 (1983). Looks like a University of Swansea website, unfortunatelt it's a 1983 work and so not available online and I have no idea what the paper might contain with regards to a supporting reference. Alun 17:58, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Alun, why did you remove my reference?  I thought it was good, I found it and I posted it.  You have removed it with not consideration on the talk page or edit summary. I think that would be the least courtesy, don't you? Enzedbrit 02:20, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I haven't removed your reference, I have moved it to support a claim for Welsh migration to New Zeland. I did this because it doesn't really support the assertion in the article that hundreds of thousands of Welsh people migrated internally to the big cities of England and Scotland or to work in the coal mines of the north of England. As a result, much of the British population today have ancestory from Wales. Although it does claim that Welsh people migrated to England, it makes no reference to hundreds of thousands of migrants. Indeed it implies the opposite, that Welsh migration was rather small Population pressure was never acute in Wales, and when the Welsh did move it was to other parts of Wales or to England rather than overseas. Some English-born immigrants to New Zealand had Welsh parents, reflecting Welsh emigration to the coal-mining and industrial regions of England, and to London, from about the middle of the 19th century. This claim of relatively small levels of Welsh emigration is also supported by this citation from Lamperter The Welsh have always been reluctant emigrants. Much nineteenth century Welsh migration was internal, or was directed across Offa's Dyke into England by the prospect of employment. The total Welsh population has always been small, with no more than 0.5 million before the late eighteenth century and a little over 1.5 million by 1881. It is also true that much migration in the 19th century was the other way, many English people migrated to Wales because of the jobs available in heavy industry and mining in Wales. If anything Wales was short of manpower in this century. The difference between the Welsh population in the 1801 census (587,128) and the censuses of 1851 (1,162,139) and 1911 (2,420,921) reflect migration into Wales during this period and don't support the contention that hundreds of thousands of people moved out of Wales. Indeed such a large level of emigration would have represented a very large proportion of the population moving out of Wales (100,000 would have been about 10% of the population in 1851). Welsh migration to England certainly did occur, but I don't think we can claim that it was in large numbers unless we can get a source that specifically states this, both of our sources at present claim the opposite. It might be worth looking for information about movements during the Great depression, when there may have been considerably more pressure on Welsh people to migrate. If we want to use these cites to support an assertion for Welsh migration to England then we need to rephrase the article to better reflect what the sources are claiming. I appologise for not explaining my reasoning on the talk page when I made the change, I was adding many citations at this time and  spent a lot of time searching for citations to add and formatting the text etc. I'll try to be more diligent in explaining myself on the talk page in future. Alun 05:50, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There is some discussion of Welsh emigration to England in John Davies History of Wales. However he suggests that the bulk of this emigration was during the Great Depression, not during the Industrial Revolution, so it would not provide a citation to support what is currently written in the article. Rhion 06:33, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Refs for migration to England

message: 1) There was massive immigration into Wales at this time, this is what the source claims, it also states that English people represented the majority of people to migrate to Wales. You are quite right that the source does not claim massive English immigration, it 's good that these cites are checked by people as everyone can misinterpret sources. Maybe we should state that there was massive immigration to Wales at this time, a large proportion of which was by English people, what do you think?Alun 05:43, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have had a go at rephrasing the paragraph on immigration into Wales during the Industrial Revolution. Rhion 06:42, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  It seems I'm a vandal now. Oh well, sod it then.Rhion 13:06, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, nice rewrite. Alun 15:32, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Changes by 69.157.126.241

message: I'd like to remove this section from the infobox. It's remained unverified for a long time, and these sections seem to be almost impossible to verify. I'm not convinced of the merits of this section, it is always a question of opinion, and then many editors want to make it a question of race or history rather than how modern Welsh people identify. There's also some info in the text of the article that is more enlightening about Welsh people seeing themselves as modern Celts, I think this provides better info. Would anyone object to removal of the section? Alun 05:11, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I wouldn't, and have not claimed to. I am seeking verifiability. This is a wikipedia policy.Alun 07:01, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

text: This is exactly why we seek verifiable reliable sources, without such sources all wikipedia is is a bunch of personal opinion. What we seek in neutrality by including the all of the main points of view from reliable sources. No reliable sources are cited for this section, so it is, as you say just someone's opinion. I am asking to remove this personal opinion untill such time as we can get verifiability. Alun 07:01, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

text: What you believe is irrelevant. Wikipedia doesn't recognise facts, only human knowledge, remember the basis for inclusion in wikipedia is verifiability not truth. See WP:V.
One of the keys to writing good encyclopedia articles is to understand that they must refer only to facts, assertions, theories, ideas, claims, opinions, and arguments that have already been published by reputable publishers. The goal of Wikipedia is to become a complete and reliable encyclopedia. Editors should cite reliable sources so that their edits may be verified by readers and other editors. "Verifiability" in this context does not mean that editors are expected to verify whether, for example, the contents of a New York Times article are true. In fact, editors are strongly discouraged from conducting this kind of research, because original research may not be published in Wikipedia. Articles should contain only material that has been published by reliable sources, regardless of whether individual editors view that material as true or false. The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is thus verifiability, not truth. From verifiability policy. Alun 07:01, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

text: No I don't, I have never said that at all and I have no idea if they are right or wrong, it has nothing to do with my feelings and I have never stated that it has. You will observe that I did not remove the box from this article because there was no consensus for it. On the English people there was a clear consensus against the box. I have said that they should be removed because they are unverified. I also think that they do not reflect proper academic ideas, if they did they would be easy to verify I suspect. Please understand, this si about making Wikipedia neutral and reliable, at present the ethnic groups are just the opinions of some editors, they lack any neutrality (no alternative is given), verifiability (they lack supporting citations) and constitute original research (justifications for inclusion often constitute original thought). Alun 05:10, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Related ethnic groups

message: The claim has also been made that Indo-European languages may have been introduced to the British and Irish Isles as early as the early neolithic (or even earlier), with Goidelic and Brythonic languages possibly developing indigenously. Moreover, some genetic research seems to support the idea that the Y-chromosomes of people Alun 09:24, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Revet as of 12:17, 20 August 2006

message: I changed the wording of the sentence because the wording made it sound as if the genetic research the link was referring to was fully conclusive, reliable and repeatedy tested, which it isnt (as is population genetics as whole). Few studies have been carried out, each with controversial "conclusions" on the subject matter. In any case, the findings in this link do not add any more or less weight to the cultural diffusionist theory of some academics (the cultural diffuionist theory itself notably under increased crticism of late). I explained this in an earlier discourse above which points out why this test (largely based on MtDNA and Y-chrom., with some limited autosomal testing*) does not help differ between older paleolithic and neolithic age migrations and later bronze age, iron age, etc. migrations. Epf 05:48, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's good to make the wording as neutral as possible. You are quite right, the distribution of genetic markers throughout the Isles is heterogeneous. In this work they were bunched together as it covered a geographically large area, the whole of Europe. I used the term British and Irish Isles because some time ago there was a detailed discussion over at Talk:British Isles, and it appears that for many inhabitants of the Republic of Ireland the term British Isles is offensive, they prefer British and Irish Isles or Anglo-Celtic Isles for the whole archipelago. It is still standard usage to use British Isles, but be aware that to the majority of people British Isles still includes the whole Island of Ireland, and changing it from British and Irish Isles might serve little more than to offend Irish people. Alun 06:17, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Also 

message: In addition to the many studies that have been previously done pointing in the same direction, like the following one published by Oxford University Press, in which surprising genetic similarities can be seen between Britons and Spaniards (Spain is IberiaS) , in a genetic piece of research that takes into account up to 8 genetic loci, including mitocondrial, autosomal and Y-Chromosome DNA. See: 
http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/21/7/1361/T03
Now we have another Oxford study whose reference has been just published two days ago in which the origins of most Britons seem to be getting clearer and clearer and astonishingly very different from what it was previously thought (really, who would have thought that they come from the Spanish!.
It is also interesting in relation to the similarities between the Celtic areas of Britain and England.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article1621766.ece
I cannot open the entire article from here, but it continues like this:
A team from Oxford University has discovered that the Celts, Britain's indigenous people, are descended from a tribe of Iberian fishermen who crossed the Bay of Biscay 6,000 years ago. DNA analysis reveals they have an almost identical genetic "fingerprint" to the inhabitants of coastal regions of Spain, whose own ancestors migrated north between 4,000 and 5,000BC.
The discovery, by Bryan Sykes, professor of human genetics at Oxford University, will herald a change in scientific understanding of Britishness.
People of Celtic ancestry were thought to have descended from tribes of central Europe. Professor Sykes, who is soon to publish the first DNA map of the British Isles, said: "About 6,000 years ago Iberians developed ocean-going boats that enabled them to push up the Channel. Before they arrived, there were some human inhabitants of Britain but only a few thousand in number. These people were later subsumed into a larger Celtic tribe... The majority of people in the British Isles are actually descended from the Spanish."
Professor Sykes spent five years taking DNA samples from 10,000 volunteers in Britain and Ireland, in an effort to produce a map of our genetic roots.
Research on their "Y" chromosome, which subjects inherit from their fathers, revealed that all but a tiny percentage of the volunteers were originally descended from one of six clans who arrived in the UK in several waves of immigration prior to the Norman conquest.
The most common genetic fingerprint belongs to the Celtic clan, which Professor Sykes has called "Oisin". After that, the next most widespread originally belonged to tribes of Danish and Norse Vikings. Small numbers of today's Britons are also descended from north African, Middle Eastern and Roman clans.
These DNA "fingerprints" have enabled Professor Sykes to create the first genetic maps of the British Isles, which are analysed in Blood of the Isles, a book published this week. The maps show that Celts are most dominant in areas of Ireland, Scotland and Wales. But, contrary to popular myth, the Celtic clan is also strongly represented elsewhere in the British Isles.
"Although Celtic countries have previously thought of themselves as being genetically different from the English, this is emphatically not the case," Professor Sykes said.
It seems that here we have very interesting new information for the article.
Veritas et Severitas 02:07, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This doesn't look like new research. It looks like a popular science book explaining current scientific thinking. Most of this stuff is already in wikipedia. Alun 05:10, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:   Breaking news about the Origins of the Welsh and the British.   

message: As regards the roll back by me: 
*http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:86.129.80.183&diff=77578344&oldid=77577178 --Bhadani 19:10, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Roll back

message: This discussion page is currently 56kb long and almost impossible to edit sensibly. And it is all about genetics and how to interpret genetic studies. Is that all there is to people?  All that seems to happen on this discussion page is two or three people discussing studies (or press releases and/or press articles about said studies). At length. And no-one seems to be getting any near consensus. There is another 74kb of archive, over half of which is the same stuff. The history piece of the article is full of "citeneeded" on comments from history books and full of links to genetic studies. I regret ever adding the comment that there are people in Wales who assert a link with previous Celtic ancestors. My intended point at the time was not whether such a link exists, but that there is something of a self-image of Celts, from Celtica (attraction near Machynlleth now defunct) to Celtic Warriors (rugby team now.. urr.. defunct. Um). I realise that this is tricky stuff to describe with a neutral point of view, but tons has been written on self-image and self-identity and there was plenty of scope for expansion there. And now even that has now been turned into stuff about what that might mean genetically: "The consensus in Wales today is that they regard themselves as Celtic, claiming a heritage back to the Iron Age tribes, which themselves, based on modern genetic analysis, would appear to have had a predominantly paleolithic and neolithic indigenous ancestry". 
You know, if I went down to the pub and asked "where do we come from?" (doubtless to be followed by "I mean, really, when you get down to it" and "what's it all about, hmm?"), I really doubt that most people would say "well, although the common shorthand is Celtic, in fact there is a traceable line back to the Iron Age, which itself can be shown to be derived from a predominantly stone age indigenous ancestry". I strongly query that the latest press releases on genetic research are the stuff of national identity. Except when the Western Mail has a slow news day. 
But every time I check my watchlist, people (mostly the same few) are editing and re-editing the article and the discussion, changing stuff in their old posts (which makes it really difficult to follow, btw), disputing interpretations of data, and creating a 56kb (57 now, I expect, sorry!) page. And the genetics stuff is all over other "some adjective People" pages too. Not that I care too much about that, because I don't read them, but can't you settle on one location to hash it all out in? If it must be on this article, how about a subpage of the discussion? 
Sorry to be so plaintive. But I just lose all heart to edit the rest of this article when there is a constant low-grade set of reversions along the lines of some/many, claimed/proven, tis/tisn't on one single aspect. Reading the history of the article in 250-edit chunks is depressing, because "tis/tisn't" sums up a lot of it. 
Telsa (talk) 16:51, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You make a good point. There has been some thought of starting an article specifically about genetic research and the biological origins of British people, this would probably be a good solution, it would focus thee debate better and a small section from it could be included here. Alun 04:46, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

text: I've been thinking a bit about this. My thoughts are as follows: We could split the article Immigration to the United Kingdom in two, a pre 1066 article called something like Prehisorical migration to Great Britain, and another article Historical migration to Great Britain (the UK part of the article is wrong as much of the article covers immigration that precedes the formation of the UK anyway). In the Prehistorical migration article we could cover all points of view regarding movements of people, from the mass migratory theories of Gilds/Bede and the Victorians through to modern archaeologists who doubt mass migrations and recent evidence from genetic research. Because this article would be about the movements of people, rather than about ethnic groups or nations we wouldn't have to concern ourselves with the endless speculation as to whether biological descent is the main component of ethnic identity. It leaves the people pages free to concentrate of culture, history, society etc, all we need do is include a short section outlining the basic theories regarding biological origin, with a more information redirect to the main article about movements of people. It would also help to shorten and focus the immigration article, which currently has a huge scope and covers things as diverse as Neolithic migrations to modern day immigration law (including discussion of things like illegal immigrants and asylum seekers. Of course such a big change would require a consensus from the editors of several pages, but I thought I'd mention it here first as Telsa has queried the necessity for so much attention to this topic on so many pages. This has been extensively debated on Anglo-Saxons, Briton, English people and Irish people as well as here (and probably on other pages as well. I think my solution could rationalise this quite a bit. What's the consensus on this page? Alun 18:05, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Bollocks to it then. Alun 06:04, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Replied to that on your talk page.Telsa (talk) 14:47, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

text: I don't doubt this is what people would say at all. You may not get these exact words, but you'd get something like, Welsh people were here first sort of answer, which is the same thing. Indeed it is one of the main sources of pride for most Welsh people that they see themselves as direct descendants of the original inhabitants of Great Britain, IMHO. Anyway this is an encyclopaedia, is it supposed to reflect what people down the pub think, or is it supposed to reflect current academic thought? Alun 06:04, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have heard far more reference to "Celt" than to anything earlier, but shrug. I don't think I am making my point clearly, so I shall stop trying to. As for current academic thought, I lack any background to assess whether these genetic studies are in fact mainstream solid science or just cherry-picked from a field that is very young, and to be honest, I am not that interested. Your ideas about new articles look fine to me. There are (or certainly were) history groups who specialised in population studies, but about all I know about them is that they existed: they may be a useful place to look for information. Given my clear inability to express what I mean (and it's not the first time on the talk page to this article), I think I shall not get involved there, and rather leave this article and any new ones to other people. Telsa (talk) 14:47, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Is genetics all there is here?

message: Note the term "Welsh" is generally not always a good word to name our people, because some of us "Welsh" people in Wales object to the term in times, was used to offend and insult others in Great Britain (like "to Welsh them up" or "Welshing them") had violent meanings to promote ethnic and regional tensions against the "Welsh". Many of us preferably self-named ourselves Cymry, Cimries or Camries from an earlier source in our language (consult the Wikipedia article on Welsh people). I'm not suggesting do away with the term, but in a political correct world we live in (Wikipedia has focused on what may accidentally offend or disparage groups of people), the terminology of "Welsh" send horrifying mental images of some historic level of prejudice and discrimination against us Cymries for over hundreds of years. The major reason why many Cymries left Wales in the 18th and 19th centuries to North America, Australia and South Africa (even into Northern France, where thousands of older local residents has family in Wales) was to preserve our language and culture. The issue was when the culture was endangered by an approaching British conformity, anything "Welsh" was treated an unfavourable act and legal penalties were inflicted by English authorities for anyone who did "Welsh" cultural behaviours. I knew in the mid 1800s, Wales school houses punished students for openly speaking the language around instructors or teachers, and were rigourously disciplined for doing so. The children set at the corner or by the chalkboard had wore an embarrassing sign "Welsh Not" for English speaking children to observe how "those bad unpatriotic Welsh kids" are having a different culture. The Argentine-Welsh community struggles to preserve their cultural integrity in the year 2006, but the anti-British and nationalist mood during the Falkland Islands war (1982) made several thousand of people from the region emigrate to Canada and/or Chile. I never heard of the Argentine people adopted the term for reasons as a pejorative, but be in mind in part of ethnic sensitivity on the usage of "Welsh". 63.3.14.1 14:51, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd never heard of Cimries or Camries, and a Google search confirms this. Cimries have no meaningful results and Camries are either cars or misspellings of 'carries'. Gareth 16:03, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Should "Some people in Wales of Welsh extraction object to the term "Welsh" and instead self-title themselves Cymry" really be in the lead? I don't know of anybody who objects to the term "Welsh" - I certainly don't (though I reserve the right to knock out the teeth of the next person who puts "fucking" in front of it and "bastard" behind). We use "Cymry" when speaking Welsh, "Welsh when speaking English. Rhion 14:39, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Important: Not all of us Cymries like to be called "Welsh"