Talk:Slavery

As of 5 November 2023, this article is a good article. (compare to current). This means the community feels it is written well. You may see the discussion that promoted the article here.

Overpopulation and the price of slaves

I simply can't find a citation for the claim that overpopulation has driven the cost of slaves down. This also doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense because many of the countries with the most people aren't the countries where slavery is a problem. I'm going to go ahead and remove the claim for now. Kansan (talk) 06:09, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

That's probably basic economics: In a normal market economy, the price of a good will decrease, if its supply increases, and demand stays the same? - Places to look are probably archives of special punlications (focusing on econmics, or history). If you add "citation needed" to the relevant parts, the search for such publications can begin. --Eptalon (talk) 10:19, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Just to clarify: by "normal market economy" I meant "perfect competition". There are many sellers, and many buyers, and neither the seller nor the buyer can directly influence the market price. --Eptalon (talk) 10:25, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

One of the main characteristics of perfect competition is easy entry and exit into a market, and due to the legal issues involved with modern day slavery, I just don't think it's applicable here. There are too many other factors here (i.e. the legal status of slavery has changed over the years, technology has changed, etc.) to solely consider this in terms of supply. Kansan (talk) 15:32, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

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This may partly be true; however consider that there problably is no clear agreement of what consitutes "slavery"; are those girls who became prostitutes to pay of their (monetary or idelological) debt "slaves", or do we find a different name for their situation? - To speak in economical terms, market entry may not be easy and there may be certain factors that make exiting the market "difficult" or "unattractive" (being prosecuted for human trafficking, for example). Given all these "shades of grey", I still think it is possible to model this "scenario" using market ecocomics; I am not an economist, but I think that if you use a specialized search engine, finding papers about this exact scenario will not be difficult. - Other idea: if market entry/exit is difficult, the number of market players will stay approximately the same; if the demand stays the same, the supply directly influences the price (more supply - less price). --Eptalon (talk) 15:59, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Thralldom

Is slavery really called "Thralldom?" I'm a native English speaker, and I've never heard that word before. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.13.205.130 (talk • contribs)

Hello! It looks like this is some kind of an English word. I just checked the English Wikipedia and they use the word in their article as well. Also does Thralldom redirect to the slavery article over there. -Barras (talk) 14:28, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

From what I can tell, the term "thrall" refers to a specific type of slave in Scandinavia around the 14th century. Kansan ^(talk) 03:02, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

I think "thralldom" is a pretty rare word for most people. I have only heard it used in a different sense, that of a person being so greatly influenced by another person that we come to say "she has him in thrall" or some such. It suggests some kind of magical invisible influence, rather than slavery. Anyway, on grounds of rarity it is not a natural synonym for Simple English readers. Macdonald-ross (talk) 12:09, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Wish I could recall where I got this, decades ago, but the word became rare in medieval English and was revived in the 19th century for mainly metaphorical use. Which is to say, for those who wanted to show highly educated they were. Jim.henderson (talk) 17:23, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Focus of this article?

Hello, we should seriously look at what the focus of this article should be. It is very nice o get a historical overview, and yes, it was officially abolished, in the first half of the 20th century. Since then, it has continued ot exist, and it would probably be good if the article could mention that. Today, it probably takes more of a form of forcing people into prositution, or other forms of forced labor. And of course, the result may no longer be the 'feel-good-we-solved-the-problem' story adapted to schools. --Eptalon (talk) 12:20, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

Merits

Well, I think it's a good page, and it seems a shame that it bears no recognition as "good " or "very good." I would only improve it by more sources, and by some work on how widespread slavery was in Africa before the colonial era. It's quite wrong to think the idea was modern or invented by white men. En wiki does have a page "slavery in Africa".

Needs, of course more sources, but pretty good for our wiki. Macdonald-ross (talk) 15:42, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Six out of ten??

The "six out of every ten boys bled to death" is simply preposterous. Macdonald-ross (talk) 18:34, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

That doesn't sound like a very good source. The website cited says "About six of every 10 boys bled to death during the procedure, according to some sources". Without citing the original sources it seems unreliable. But I suppose it could be true? Maybe they could capture so many people that they didn't care if most of them died. 2607:F140:400:A000:1815:1FA8:7862:B9C7 (talk) 18:37, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Still has to be proved. Not right to use it without a source. Macdonald-ross (talk) 14:49, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Niger. (...) Nigerian

"In Niger, there is also much slavery. A Nigerian study has found that more than 800,000 people are slaves, almost 8% of the population".--Please make sure this is correct (while i try to fix other articles). 2001:2020:319:772E:B12D:76D0:570:69A7 (talk) 15:19, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Not okay, maybe

"This was long after the 1636 edict by Tokguawa Japan had expelled Portuguese people."--Needs an extra word, or so? 2001:2020:309:7C75:79DB:7F1D:B3F6:BFED (talk) 22:01, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

• "An agitation called abolitionism against slavery began in some Christian countries in" ... .--Not simple, maybe. 2001:2020:32F:8A46:39B2:B882:B2C4:754E (talk) 22:24, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Proposed demotion...

Hello,without much further comment, I post what is on the proposed article demotion page below. Comments are by the respective edtor, this is simply a copy--Eptalon (talk) 18:58, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Here are 5 reasons why this article should be demoted.

1. Article structure. This article is structured in dubious and seemingly arbitrary ways. Instead of a single history chapter with six subsections, there are six chapters based on historical slavery. This doesn't really make sense. Another srange thing is that Slavery#Sources is between Slavery#Stopping slavery and Slavery#Famous people who were slaves. Why is this section not at the end of the article? Speaking of which, why is Slavery#Famous people who were slaves even a section? An arbitrary selection of 16 notable individuals in a category without any reliable source to back it up is subject to bias. And that is what has happened here; half of the people on the list are American. This is why we have categories.
2. Incompleteness. According to the requirements for a good article, this article should be fairly complete. Despite this fact, it is not. It provides none of the following: terminology (such as classifications between types of slavery), abolitionism movements, portrayal of slavery in media, characteristics (such as how slavery is defined). These are some general ideas. Of course, the article does not have to be comprehensive, but there should be more included.
3. Sourcing. The article is poorly sourced. Slavery#Early civilizations: Reference 13 is dubiously placed. The part about deuteronomy, the part about slaves being assigned to certain houses or temples, and the part about citizens being protected (also, where in the world did this happen specifically, as an example would be notable information about slavery). is never mentioned in a source in the article. Slavery#Slavery in ancient Rome: Not only does this entire section of text only have a single source, that source is a book that is not available anywhere online for free. This would not be problematic if there was more than one source in the section, but this source cannot be easily accessed. Furthermore, due to the placement of the reference, there is no source of the final paragraph of the section. Slavery#The Arab slave trade: Citation 22 (Atlanta Black Star) is the only source in this section, despite being re-referenced four times in a row. It is also a top 10 article. While Atlanta Black Star is generally a pretty reliable source, and this article may be accurate, articles like these are notorious for having inaccuracies and are not especially reliable. Slavery#Slavery in the United States: Citation 27 is not cited correctly (I am not sure how you would resolve this issue). Slavery#Sources: There is a chance that some of the missing sources' information has come from here. Out of these sources, however, only one of them is available online, and many of these are 700 pages long with no page range listed. These sources have the same amount of purpose as a further reading section. From sourcing alone, it is clear that this article should not be a good article.
4. Improvement templates. There are multiple {{fact}} and {{when}} templates in the article.
5. Redlinks. There are two redlinks directly in the article. As for the "Part of a series on Slavery" template, I understand that not every article included in templates is going to be linked, but linking articles like History of slavery and Slavery and religion is the bare minimum.

This is not a comprehensive or complete list of issues. These are just some issues that I found while checking the article for maybe 20 minutes. I understand that this is not english wiki, and that standards are not the same here as they are there, but there are some glaring issues in the article. I have read that you are not supposed to make major changes to a good article without discussion, and this is many major issues. I have made some minor changes while reading this article that are quick fixes, but this article needs lots of major improvements. This article is very good and the work done so far on this article is great, but I do not think it should be a good article. MrMeAndMrMe_{Let's talk} 02:54, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

I did most of the edits to make this a good article:

• In my opinion, it focuses too much on "classic" Atlanic Slave Trade (Get the Slaves from Africa, move them to the Americas to produce something, and move the produced goods fromn there to Europe. There likely is too little how this worked "inside Africa", in Asia/Oceania, or perhaps even Central/South America (outside of colonialism). Forced labor during wars....
• We do have a Cateogry:Slavery with related articles, for different aspects. There's a Category:Slavery, with currently 20 pages, it has subcategories, where you'll easily find anouther 30-40 pages.
• References do not have to be accessible online.
• I am not studying at university, and spending days in (well-equipped) university libraries is not my favorite pastime. Also, I do not live in the English-speaking world. I am not a historian, or sociologist. I have a technical background.
• Our article currently has a size of 36kb. As a comparison, the EnWP article, has a size of 276kb. Without too much effort, the article could easily double in size
• The idea behind the GA/VGA processes is that the community works together, to create articles that are of higher quality. It is not that one editor does it all.
• You will see that the articles in the Category:Slavery, or its subcategories often are in a very bad state.

My guess is thatfixing this will need 3-5 people (who coordinate their work); working on this article for several weekends. I would stipulate though, that in the end, the article should not be more than triple the size it is now. I am committed to helping, but before starting, I want to see committment from at least two other people. This likley is a major overhaul.

Thoe are of course just my views. Note also: copying the EnWP article and simplifiying that shuldn't be the main goal. We want articles written for our community; the EnWp crowd is different. Eptalon (talk) 09:15, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

So, just a note, the first part about the structure is valid, but very easily solved (I've done most of it, I have no opinions on if it should be a single section on the history or not. The main issue will be the sourcing, and any missing info. If we are missing sources and large amount of info about the subject (I don't know much myself) it's probably a lot of work to fix. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 11:33, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

If you think you have a workable solution please implement it. As to sections: we should avoid sections of 4-5 sentences as it disrupts reading flow. Eptalon (talk) 11:42, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

What do you mean by avoiding sections of 4-5 sentences? Should they be longer than that?

Also, just to mention, you make good points in your bullet points, and I would be committed to helping. MrMeAndMrMe_{Let's talk} 14:31, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

I mean: having a titled section of 5 sentences, and then having another titled section disrupts reading flow and these should be paragraphs instead. Eptalon (talk) 14:44, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

I've made some changes to the article layout mostly, I think this is more coherent. The big issue is the citation needed tags. Will need to do some work for finding the sourcing. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 16:28, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

I am not sure that these layout changes really make sense, specifically with "around the world". Around the world implies that these are current examples of slavery around the world, yet the only sections in this are historical examples of slavery. Also, wouldn't Roman slavery also count as around the world? MrMeAndMrMe_{Let's talk} 16:34, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

I want to add: I believe that the article does not talk enough about today's sexual slavery (forced marriages, prostitution and porn), especially when it happens to children and teenagers. Dream Indigo 16:08, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

I dunno, I think that's probably out of scope, would maybe have a section on it that scopes out to our other articles. We already have articles for forced marriage, for example. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 16:12, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

I feel like sexual slavery is a bit too different from the "hard labour" types of slavery that is generally thought of when slavery is brought up.- FusionSub (Talk page) (Contributions) 16:44, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Slavery covers all types of slavery, including sexual slavery. Lee Vilenski brings up a good point, that we do have articles such as forced marriage, prostitution, etc. However, I feel like there are ways that we can incorporate another paragraph or two more in about this type of slavery, because it is a major type of both modern and historical slavery. MrMeAndMrMe_{Let's talk} 17:16, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

We can add a section it, I think it is one of the main forms of 'modern-day slavery'. Remember Wikipedia isn't censored, and I would at least expect a short mention, though in modern times identifying a slave has become more difficult. Eptalon (talk) 18:34, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

A brief mention is what is already in the article. MrMeAndMrMe_{Let's talk} 19:29, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

The thing is always to find halfway reliable secondary sources for this; depending on what you search for this can be non-trivial, to near-impossible. Prostitutes being lured into a country, and then being exploited by a pimp is likely pretty normal. What would be interesting (but likely its difficult to find numbers: In what way did internet technologies (such as live streaming) change the way prostitution (and likely: slavery) work? - sex tourism might be worth mentioning, if it isn't already. If wanted, needs in-depth discussion on the resp. article talkpage. Eptalon (talk) 21:09, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Should discussion about article improvement be moved to the talk page, or is it fine here? MrMeAndMrMe_{Let's talk} 23:39, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

If we agree that we spend some time (likely 2-3 weekends) fixing/improving and that we are at least three people to do this, then we can discuss details on the article talk page. Note: When I started to prepare slavery for GA, I brought over quite a few articles, so we do have them. Problem is that they may be stubs or in a bad state. So for all these suggestions it will likely come down to a paragraph or two in the slavery article, and a link to another article where details can be found. And as always: we need reliable sources for claims made. Eptalon (talk) 05:35, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

I have fixed all of the red links, and created a corresponding article. This includes slavery and religion, Berghahn Books, and the Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery. I was not able to spend large quantities of time working on the articles, so in their current forms, they are pretty much stubs. I have also made History of slavery. I made the article, and then learned from the wikidata page that apparently we already had an article about the history of slavery, at Slave trade. However, this article was treated as though it was the article History of slavery, and so I merged the two articles and redirected the Slave trade article. MrMeAndMrMe_Talk 13:19, 6 June 2024 (UTC)