Talk:French Penal Code of 1791

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

No consensus to move. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:11, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

French Penal Code of 1791 → Penal Code (1791, France) – A single editor has been moving this page around wildly; enough of this, let us have a discussion:

Now the names of our articles on legislation follow a clear pattern: They use the short title, capitalized; they disambiguate by year. They do not specify country (the ones listed are French, English, American, and Australian).
 * Code of Offences and Penalties
 * Reform Act 1832
 * Homestead Act
 * National Consumer Credit Protection Act

Our policy on article names says: "Precision – How precise is the title under discussion? Consensus titles usually use names and terms that are precise (see below), but only as precise as necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously." This is why we use year for the Reform Act, but not country: year is sufficient to distinguish the first Reform Act from the other five.

Nevertheless, some of the moves by this determined individual have insisted that this article, unlike all other articles on laws, be marked as an article on France; this is contrary to our general naming policy, which prefers to limit disambiguation: '' For example, it would be inappropriate to title an article "United States Apollo program (1961–75)" over Apollo program (given that the year range refers to the whole of the program, not a portion of it); or "Queen (London, England rock band)" over Queen (band). Remember that concise titles are preferred.''

But I am prepared to compromise, and include France in the disambiguator; consensus will tell us if it is unnecessary.

Survey

 * Support as nom; will accept Penal Code (1791); with more reluctance, I would accept Penal Code 1791, which is not idiom. JCScaliger (talk) 16:14, 13 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Oppose. The present title appears to conform with all provisions of WP:TITLE; most importantly, it meets the informational needs of readers at least as well as any of the proposed alternatives without being awkwardly long. Whether it is capitalised according to Wikipedia's style guidelines is a separate matter; but since no change in capitalisation is proposed here, there is nothing directly relevant to say about that right now. I note that the proposer has been competing with another editor over the title, and has chosen to issue this RM with this edit just 39 minutes after moving it to his or her preferred version with capitals, in this edit. I am not confident that this accords with acceptable procedure. Is there "gaming of the system" here? Perhaps this RM ought to determined first, for the wording; and then a separate RM started to determine the use or avoidance of capitals. Or is there another way out of the mess? I for one would not want this RM to include a judgement on the separate issue, given the actions that preceded it. The RM was not duly advertised to the community as concerned with capitalisation. With all that in mind, I prescind from further points concerning capitalisation. This may have to be referred elsewhere for a determination of the procedural issues. I await further comments with interest. N oetica Tea? 08:51, 14 October 2011 (UTC)


 * J'accuse – This recent version had multiple linked refs using lower-case French penal code of 1791, before you removed them. My move there was not wild, but in accord with the usual WP policy of using lower-case except for proper names.  Now you're variously claiming that maybe "French Penal Code" or maybe "Penal Code" is the unique name of this set of laws?  Dicklyon (talk) 15:00, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I removed the partial statements, to replace them with more complete statements from generally more reliable sources. I am genuinely interested in the history of the French Revolution, not in typography; the Penal Code was generally influenced by the whole Enlightenment, not just by Beccaria; and if I were rewriting the article from scratch, as I may yet do, it would include Rousseau.
 * No, I am claiming that "Penal Code" is the short title, and hence the proper name, of this single law. If I were not spending my time on this discussion, I would add that there was a companion law for misdemeanors; but that is a tangential fact, related to the subject of this article but not part of it. JCScaliger (talk) 20:06, 14 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I Don't see the need for this move. National codes already have names like "Spanish Civil Code" or "Civil Code of Spain". With sources already using these names, there is no need to force "Civil Code (Spain)". --Enric Naval (talk) 23:13, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Discussion

 * When there are so many poorly named articles, why are we wasting time debating a perfectly good one that is smoother and more elegant than the proposed one? Tony   (talk)  09:06, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Reversions
This reversion replaces sources which support the claims actually made with sources that don't (that's how I chose my sources; they say more, and are more academic; that they also use the more prevalent spelling  is only to be expected - most sources do). It also removes the mandatory comma after Le Peletier's name. This slow revert war really should cease. JCScaliger (talk) 14:30, 23 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I have no objections to you saying more, but removing sources seems like a bad idea. When I added them, they helped support what I attached them to; incompleteness is not a reason to remove them.   And while you're at it, stop putting the misspelling and odd bolding in the lead sentence. Dicklyon (talk) 22:00, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I have several times replaced an inadequate source, which does not support the text. Please stop adding it. Now that you mention the first sentence, I'll take a look at it. JCScaliger (talk) 22:26, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Revolutionary
This has several meanings; it may well have been intended to mean "during the Revolution," which is redundant.

But it can also mean "done by violence," which is pretty much what the men of 1791 would have meant by it ("The government of France shall be revolutionary until the peace"). That's not the case.

It can also mean "spectacular", which is an opinion.

In short, let's not. JCScaliger (talk) 22:38, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Cite templates
What is the point of this edit? I would have left it alone, but it was intertwined with the existing dispute.

Have cite templates become mandatory? Where?

As it is, all one does is to replace the existing formatting with 1000 bytes of function calls, which reproduce the formatting as it was. I have no objection if editors uncertain how to format use cite instead of learning where to use italics; but why this? JCScaliger (talk) 22:45, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on French Penal Code of 1791. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20051031022318/http://userwww.sfsu.edu:80/%7Esclavier/research/frenchpenalsystem.doc to http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~sclavier/research/frenchpenalsystem.doc

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 17:47, 23 January 2016 (UTC)