Reverted etymologies

I'm going to guess that it's *halōną. But I don't quite see how the meaning went from the Germanic meaning to the Finnish one.

A poetic or archaic meaning for the Finnish verb halata is to want. Halōną can mean to fetch, get. Maybe I fetch became I want. That's just speculation off the top of my head.

So, is Algu a valid source? Does Wiktionary not use χ, and if so, what are the actual spelling conventions in Wiktionary?

The spelling conventions for reconstructed languages are usually detailed on pages named Wiktionary:About (languages), so Wiktionary:About Proto-Germanic.

I'll be sure to run every word through that, then.

You also reverted the etymology for laittaa, meaning "to put, set, place", because it "seems like nonsense", even though its Germanic counterpart has almost the exact same meaning. Algu lists three sources that say the word is borrowed from the Proto-Germanic lagjaną:

1. Heikkilä, Mikko 2011: Huomioita kantasaamen ajoittamisesta ja paikantamisesta sekä germaanisia etymologioita saamelais-suomalaisille sanoille

2. Kylstra, Hahmo et al. 1996: Lexikon der älteren germanischen Lehnwörter in den ostseefinnischen Sprachen

3. Itkonen, Ulonen et al. 1995: Suomen sanojen alkuperä 1-3 Etymologinen sanakirja

Why exactly does it seem like nonsense?

laittaa has -tt- in it, while there is no sign of a dental consonant in Proto-Germanic. Moreover, why is there no trace of the g?

-tt- was probably added there to conform with the Proto-Finnish verb-forming system. And as to g, I was able to find an online copy of the first source where Heikkilä says this:

...tuolloin germaanisen /g/:n ja /g_/:n ainoa äännevastine kantasuomessa oli /k/. Hyviä esimerkkisanoja ovat suomen väkä (< vkgerm. *wǣg_ā vipu ) ja laittaa (< ksm. *laγittatak < kgerm. *lagjana asettaa ).

Rough translaton:

...at that time the only equivalent to the Germanic /g/ and /g_/ in Proto-Finnish was /k/. Some good examples are väkä (< pgerm. *wǣg_ā) and laittaa (< pfin. *laγittatak < pgerm. *lagjana)

Even if it is not immediately obvious that two words are related, are we not to trust sources that have actually researched it and say they are related?

If I continue to add etymologies from Algu, will you revert them also?

I recommend you talk to User:Tropylium, who knows much more about Finnish etymology.

Concerning laittaa, that explanation works if the g appears in the Finnic languages that preserve g: Livonian and Veps. Veps has a verb lagitada, but it seems to mean "appear", which does not match the Finnish meaning.

I did not realize it was the job of Wiktionary editors to do original research. There are three different scholarly sources that say the word comes from the Proto-Germanic counterpart, and so I added this as the etymology. Is this not the ideal way to go about things? Who are we to reject at a glance something that has been actually researched?

Yes, Wiktionary editors are expected to scrutinise sources and not just blindly copy things over. As for "who are we", the answer is very simple: we're the people responsible for the content of Wiktionary, so we get to decide whether we support the claims made by others or not.

Any editor could have a differing opinion, and an uninformed one at that. Why use subjective opinons when actual linguistic research has been done? It would be different if the sources themselves didn't agree, or if there were an alternate theory. But that's different from rejecting something because it doesn't seem right, while actual linguists specialising in that very area do think it's right, and thinking that the specialists could have missed some very basic thing.

Anyway, that's off-topic so I'll leave this whole conversation at that.

As a bit of background, the editor community here has previous experience with very clever trolls. So newcomers adding unfamiliar material immediately sets off alarm bells among those of us who have had to perform clean-up duty in the past. CodeCat is one of the more active editors here, and she's done a fair amount of clean-up.

This has less to do with whether the material you've added is itself researched, and more to do with whether we (broadly speaking) recognize you and the material you're adding. Unfamiliar editor + unfamiliar material == a high likelihood of another editor reverting or reworking those edits. Also, one thing to recognize is that Wiktionary has much fewer editors than Wikipedia -- so editors are much more likely to revert suspicious new content, simply because we're stretched much thinner and have less bandwidth for vetting and formatting new content. If you stick around, and the Wiktionary editing community can verify that you're working in good faith, and working from solid sources, you'll see much less reverting and reworking.