Discussion
Can we have a little talk about how Wikipedia “user” are changing our language and shared ancestry history, it wasn’t like this for years
Slowly they are removing anything related to Kurds, the first picture was the source that has been like that for years before kurdish being removed as a related language to median language, they can remove kurdish when there isn’t evidence to say that kurdish (a northwestern language) is not “as related” to median language, Medes are the main reason why kurdish language is iranic after their empire, the main reason of why native zagros farmer speaking iranic language that we today call kurdish, spread of median empire and Zoroastrian language caused significant change and language and grammar of zagros farmer for centuries
Some Kurdish words are more related to median than Tati and telysh tho
a random user does not have the power to ban you on wikipedia. the last edit on that page was on aug 4. and the last comment on talk was on nov 2024. so you havent even tried to edit the page, before you came and complained about the erasure of history on reddit. both sites are free and both allow any user to make contributions.
as any other user, if you are passionate about an article and you notice incorrect information, the world relies on YOU, to keep that information correct.
based on histroical accounts and linguistics, kurdish having established itself as the dominant language in kurdistan seems to post date the the median empire, if such ever even existed, meaning that kurdish cant be an ancestor language of a or the median language. hewrami seems most likely.
kurmanji, sorani, southern kurdish (kelhuri etc.) and laki are kurdish languages. hewrami and zazaki are independent languages, with hewrami most likely being a direct descendent of a or the language of the medes.
A proper Wikipedia administrator has no right to block you as long as you are not doing vandalism and propaganda or using AI to write your articles for you, and other users don't have the ability to block each other from editing.
Also, if you provide more than 3 citations, it'll be better, and everyone can edit Wikipedia, but very few users can be trusted, which depends on the citations, you also need to provide uncertainty and citations for the uncertain cases.
The majority of Kurdish Wikipedia, like the majority of Arabic Wikipedia, provides very few citations, when you read them, it looks like you're hearing someone from a bazaar sharing their opinion rather than an encyclopedic article, you can open up a talk page when you are having troubles, and administrators can help, and every article on wikipedia is a piece of a collaboration and can be protected, unless it's your own user page, which you may ask for locking.
As for the English Wikipedia, it's the same thing, but it's more strict because people around the globe, everyone from different backgrounds, will try to edit an article, and if you provide more citations, meaning sources, your case will be fine. That user you have mentioned has provided 1 source, or 2 sources, for each claim; you can provide more than 3 sources. This can somehow protect what's considered to be (kinda true) vs. (kinda untrue); if you cannot find so many citations, basically it means they are right.
If you also repeatedly revert others when they have provided better citations than yours, by this I mean more citations when editing, you'll be banned. Also, the same thing happens when you misbehave, harass, and do personal attacks; it's all written in the Wikipolicies.
One problem with English Wikipedia, and others too, is that people make up citations. Sometimes such a source doesn't exist at all, or exists but the cited page and no other pages for that matter makes the the claim and no one has the time and resources to check all sources of tens of thousands of edits daily.
There was once I saw a claim that Kurds had massacred Christians in a specific event. I checked the only citation and Kurds weren't mentioned at all until five pages after the cited page.
Yes, that's right; it's mostly either an AI-hallucinated thing or a fabricated "source" or just from another site/source that is publishing propaganda/vandalism on a topic.
Yes, I understand what you're talking about; that's why, in those cases they are like mostly requested to be protected. Once the Halabja genocide section 3 was mentioning that it was done by Khoumeni/Khamenei's regime and the Iranian army, without providing any citations or even mentioning Ba'ath, it was just a certain claim with no sources on English Wikipedia. I was sometimes thinking, why has every latina I have talked with thought that the Halabja genocide was done by Iran and Russia, lol? Even though some of the weapons were Russian, etc., the same thing once happened in the Sardasht genocide article on the English wikipedia, though it's deleted; radicals or like Baathists have somehow tried to remove the uncertainties and just provide 1 claim, tho, I am not really sure whether they were only radicals and Baathists or other people of ideological purposes, and the English wikipedia lacks so much on Kurdish topics/cases, and most articles are too certain without providing better sources or mentioning the uncertainties there.
Wikipedia basically like any other internet corner, can be easily used as a psy-op for, like, vandalism and stuff because, like, most people think that libraries suck or most are busy to search for pages, or to check sources, though it may sometimes differ on ethics and individuals, and that's why Wikipedia needs trusted administrators, etc.
The reason that some people still edit Wikipedia is because of their own choices and preferences in life even if we say this "loses time," but it differs on what we mean by losing time because what is fed to Wikipedia will be fed back to people by AI companies, except for Grokipedia, which depends on itself and a few citations, and this will create huge problems for how people who don't research something themselves think about the world or a topic, and some think that Wikipedia can preserve information somehow for future gens.
Edit 1: as for how to trust a citation after reading it, it would be better if the citation itself were from an international trusted institution or like, an international organization, a valid university, or someone's speech by themselves, their own citations, and similar things as long as they are not AI, hallucinated, fabricated, propaganda, etc.
It’s essentially what the collective thinks/wants to be true. If most people using it says water is red, then wiki will allow it. I think now wiki is trying to do fact checking, but even then it’s still what the collective think/want to be true.
I had a whole college assignment on the topic for Wikipedia. It’s just not really reliable for science, history, or anything that can be divisive/bias.
Anyone that debates using Wikipedia is ill informed.
Interesting, but the majority of people who read it do not have Ph.D.s either, so they can easily and only clock what is written there when sources are provided, and as you said, maybe it has more to do with a collective than wikipedia as a platform itself, as for lacking the citations sometimes, yes, that's true; however, the majority of English Wikipedia is source-provided because the administrators basically don't allow specific things.
The Stanford Encyclopedia, or the World History Encyclopedia, needs contributors that are experts, with citations; maybe it would be better if OP used that.
For people who are really passionate about getting more information and deepening their understanding of some stuff, they need to look everywhere, not only wikipedia.
And Wikipedia does not use itself as a source; it uses other platforms, books and pdfs as citations.
As you may know, the platform is not a peer-reviewed thing; it gives rights to everyone, but with caveats - it makes the article an open project that is more collaboration between hundreds of people than just 2 arbitrary people.
Most readers only look at the article; they don't open one page of the references or even check them, maybe the problem is the reader and the specific collective, as you said, to verify what's counted as "true" and "not true".
Anyone that debates using Wikipedia is ill informed.
I see your point and I don’t think Wikipedia is an inherently bad thing, but it should never be used for historical truth, sciences, and anything divisive. A lot of articles that are used are also not the best. I went on an article on Wikipedia once that was clearly wrong in what it was saying. My biggest issue is the collective aspect of it.
I think Wikipedia is a good thing for surface level general knowledge on stuff, but shouldn’t be taken seriously. Now if you use Wikipedia to find more reliable sources that’s different than actually using Wikipedia as a source.
I get you, and as for Grokipedia, it's like an AI-powered encyclopedic thing (if you name it this way), made by Elon, as an alternative to, like, Wikipedia, because he thought Wikipedia is (woke), so it's better to have an (AI) to tell us things while providing us 2 sources/citations or less, maybe 3 sometimes.
Some people who criticize Wikipedia glorify Grokipedia.
Interestingly, other AIs & agents use WIkipedia and open-source articles written by humans to answer humans' questions, and AI companies make money through these answers while criticizing the same information democracy - except for Grok (Who uses Grokipedia as a source, made by Elon, but their group still criticizes info democracy as well, and tbh they do it harshly).
Iran, China, and North Korea, and for some pages/articles Russia, do not allow Wikipedia, basically because it's not state-surveilled/monitored.
So while I get your frustration, most people who (hate) Wikipedia do not really hate it because they want to find (truth), whatever it means; but they do hate it because of politics.
Grokpedia sounds really dumb to me. Al should be sued as a tool, and we are way to early in this stage of ai to give it the ability to tell people “facts.” Open ai and similar models at the moment are also apparently under performing and lack efficient at the moment then what they use to be able to do. ChatGPT has taken a huge noise dive.
The only thing I liked about grok on X was the fact checking did seem unbiased.
Open sources like Wikipedia are just not reliable for politics. Many people will use it against people and a lot of the time the info is wrong or mis understood.
Kurdish is not a descendant of the Median language*. The word comparison list you posted is 1) highly cherry-picked, 2) in many instances the words are simply incorrect, 3) these words are very similar in other Iranian languages anyway.
The first screenshot does not claim that Kurdish descends from Median, but rather that the languages are related. In the second screenshot, they got rid of that entire section and replaced it with something that talks about possible descendants of the language. It's a perfectly normal and appropriate thing to do.
Windfuhr identified Kurdish dialects as Parthian, albeit with a Median substratum. Windfuhr and Frye assume an eastern origin for Kurdish and consider it as related to eastern and central Iranian dialects.
This is the reason why mine and relatives DNA haplogroups is R-Z2125 and R-Z2123 and other R1a. These haplogroups have not been found in ancient West Iran but have been found alot in ancient Central Asia. What is another way you can explain this?
O what’s the origin? I mean what the ancestor language of the Kurds that shaped kurdish language and its dialect today we know, what branch it belongs to?
The ruling class of the Parthian empire did, but the vast majority of Parthians, and the Parthian language, did not. Kurdish either came with the Parni tribe to Kurdistan, or it is a Parthian language, but it can not be both.
I also think it came with Parni tribe. They are related to Scythians. That is why Kurdish has some similarity to East Iranian languages like Windfuhr say.
But if Kurdish came with the Parni tribe and so has eastern origins, then it can not be a "Parthian" language. Parthian did not come from Eastern Iran, with the Parni tribe or anyone else. It is a language local to Northwestern Iran that the Parni tribe adopted when they came to rule over the region it was spoken in.
True, parni was not the same as Parthian, they assimilated themselves to the local after invading Parthian empire, it’s also northwestern after all not eastern
How is Kurdish not related to if it’s northwestern language like talysh and Tati? About the comparison, some of those words are not found in other iranic language, who says zerya and agir except Kurds? The rest call it otêş/atêş, it’s related since it’s iranic family, but you do not explain how kurdish is not related tho
I should clarify, when I first said that Kurdish and Median aren't related, I meant it as in that Median isn't an ancestor language to Kurdish. I have corrected it.
In the first screenshot, it is said that these languages are related because they're both classified as Northwestern Iranian languages, but there is no connection between these languages beyond that. The word 'zerya' is a neologism, based on the Persian 'زِراه' and 'دریا'. 'Agir' and 'agni' are unrelated, they just happen to look similar.
So would you call kurdish a northwestern or south western language? And yk the Kurdish language did not just spawn out of nowhere, do you know what caused the today kurdish language to exist? What their ancestor language?
Personally, I would label Kurdish as southwestern Iranian, or somewhere between northwestern and southwestern Iranian. While it is clearly different from Persian, it also lacks the defining characteristics of northwestern Iranian languages.
The current theory is that the earliest Kurdish speakers originated from the rural areas around Isfahan in Iran. The language shares common roots with Persian but has also been influenced by northwestern Iranian languages.
Well Kurds are native to zagros, who lived as a nomadic people across west and northwest zagros region, how come or what the core reason for the language to be adopted by them? From Isfahan to zagros? It’s not like we came from today Isfahan region
Kurdish originates from nomadic tribes who probably lived around Isfahan in the beginning, but eventually moved to Kurdistan and mixed with the local population. The Kurds of today are the result of that migration and mixing.
It's similar to how most people in modern-day Iraq speak Arabic, even though the language originated elsewhere.
I do not believe that kurdish is more related to Persian tho, I speak behdinan kurdish and my mom knows Persian deo because of bat’th displacement that made them move to iran for a period, but I do not find them as closest, however there must be a valid reason for the language to be adopted, local moving to zagros and mixing does not necessarily mean they adopted the language we know today, for example even when Medes empire came and Persian empire came afterward, not everyone adopted Zoroastrian religion, some nomads were noted that they were still worshiping a hurrian goddess around 67 b.c, showing how hard it is for local to adopt something new, so how can a tribe moving to a different region without having any authority over it or anything to make the local of zagros to adopt and shift the language overtime that we know as kurdish today, I think it sounds complicated but we don’t really know as much as we think we know
I think all Iranian languages are distinct enough from each other that most people wouldn't obviously recognise how close their language is to another, but others can hear it. For example, I find it difficult to distinguish between Persian and many varieties of Kurdish. Meanwhile several Başuris have told me before that Zazaki sounds Turkish, but I really don't hear it.
The reason the local Zagrosians adopted Kurdish was partly due to intermixing, but also because it had a high reputation. This was because, when Kurdish tribes entered the Zagros region, they conquered it and established their own kingdoms and principalities. Turkish spread in a similar way in Anatolia. When your Mîr and his government speak a particular language, you will be encouraged to learn and speak it too.
We see this among Kurds too, by the way. Most of today's Sorani-speaking regions in Başur and Rojhilat spoke Hewrami/Gorani 200, 300 years ago. These people adopted Sorani, because their rulers spoke Sorani and Sorani had quickly become the language of cities and of trade.
No when I said a valid reason I meant what empire or sovereign authority cause the language to exist among those people, kurdish tribes did not have that much control to make the local follow them by your logic, the dynasties and kingdom you mentioned are after Islamic spread, the Kurdish language obviously did not just Accor after Islam, so there must be a ancestor language in pre Islamic time that shaped the local zagros people to shift or adopt the language and mix it or use it with their current one at that period, the Medes one made much more sense as it both kurdish and median are northwestern, the median language was known to be still spoken by locals in zagros region where ppl adopted their religion as well, even in Achaemenid Empire
Time the Medes language was spoken in east of Armenian satrapy, and spoken in zagros region in media satrapy, and it was adopted by magis of the region of today amedyia in Duhok province, this is the reason I believe that has caused the today kurdish language to exist, the Medes long authority and religion, according to historian the median language was still active in Achaemenid Empire
In zagros region from satrapy of Assyria and Armenia and media, not saying it’s our direct ancestor, but related or part of the reason in my believe
First of all what do you mean by Kurdish language? There is nothing called Kurdish language to compare with. There is Kurmanji, Kelhuri, Hawrami, Zazai and so on and all belongs to Kurdish umbrella. Kurdish language doesn't exist. Secondly, Median empire have left zero script for us to study it. Any nonsense philosophers trys to become a smartarse and connect to others is just waste of time and energy. Median are of Kurdish ancestors because we know it through archaeological findings
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u/Bubbly-Desk-4479 Aug 25 '26
You are welcome to edit any wikipedia page, and try to resolve any conflicts within talk