Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Constitution of May 3, 1791/archive2


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by GrahamColm 09:07, 12 August 2012.

Constitution of May 3, 1791

 * Nominator(s): Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 17:52, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, it has been a while since I've been in the FA corner of the wiki, but I think some of my recent articles are at the modern FA standards. Here's is an old FA (2005 vintage, delisted in 2008) that has been significantly reworked over the past year or so. The subject is one of the oldest constitutions in world's history. Let me know what you think :) PS. Oh, I almost forgot: I am taking part in that WikiCup thingy, if that matters for anything PPS. Got a delegate approval to renominate before two weeks passed (Wikipedia_talk:FAC). The previous nomination failed due to insufficient interest from the reviewers :( Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 17:52, 24 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Note: This is a WikiCup nomination. The following nominators are WikiCup participants: Piotrus. To the nominator: if you do not intend to submit this article at the WikiCup, feel free to remove this notice. UcuchaBot (talk) 00:01, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Addressed comments from Crisco 1492 moved to talk Comments. As always, feel free to revert my copyediting. Please check the edit summaries. - Dank (push to talk)
 * Leaning support - Image check is fine, prose looks okay. No support just yet as I'd like another editor or two to vet the prose (may still be some issues hiding somewhere) — Crisco 1492 (talk) 01:48, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
 * On the points just above: [Note: Crisco moved his points to this FAC's talk page.] I'm fine with Piotr's stands on the notable works and holiday mention. It does seem slightly odd to mention celebrations only in Chicago, but I don't think it's a fatal flaw, and you certainly don't want to spend a lot of time talking about celebrations. OTOH, I think you missed the point, Piotr, on burghers ... you define the term several sentences later ... so how are readers supposed to know what it means when you first mention it? Also, "rights" is a very slippery term in English; were the burghers being protected from excesses of local lawmakers, national lawmakers, or others? On Burke et al., you need something more than just the names; it's a judgment call how much to say, but "nothing" is the wrong judgment. Instead of saying "Bill Moyers wrote" and "Albert Blaustein wrote", I would say "American journalist Bill Moyers wrote in 2009" (the date is important when it's that recent) and "constitutional expert Albert Blaustein wrote". - Dank (push to talk) 21:56, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
 * "Yet, despite the King's capitulation, the Second Partition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (1793), and the 1795 demise of Poland, over the next 123 years of Poland's partition the Constitution of May 3, 1791, was seen as an important step toward the eventual restoration of Poland's sovereignty.": Too much before the main verb. Try: Yet, despite the King's capitulation, the Second Partition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (1793), and the 1795 demise of Poland, the Constitution of May 3, 1791, was seen over the next 123 years as an important step toward the eventual restoration of Poland's sovereignty.
 * "two of its other co-authors": two of its co-authors
 * "Constitution of May 3, 1791", "the May 3 Constitution", "the Constitution": the capitalization on all three says that all three are proper nouns, that is, all three are formal names for it ... and that's probably not true. Some copy editors will say "the May 3 Constitution" and "the Constitution" both have to be lowercased; I won't go that far, but "the May 3 Constitution" has to go. Replace it throughout by "the Constitution".
 * "Already two hundred years before the May 3 Constitution, when the remarkable noble democracy was at its peak": "Already" is more of a German construction (and maybe Polish, I don't know) than an English construction; either omit it, or if emphasis is important, say "As early as ...". And "the remarkable noble democracy" ... ugh. Skimming down, I see a lot of expressions where any native speaker of English would say, "Hm, that doesn't sound right". Don't beat yourself (or me!) up over this ... you're a great writer, and you have many skills that other nominators don't have ... but native speakers know things about what sounds right that you don't. If you can get either a co-nom or a copy editor to go through this fixing the unidiomatic expressions, then I'll be happy to give it another look ... I'd like to support this article, but I can't in its current state, and IMO it's too much for Crisco and me with our current FAC workload. - Dank (push to talk) 22:22, 6 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I'll try to address the above soon, but one quick comment: the article has already been c/e-ed by two native speakers in WPPOLAND who help out with language issues; and that means I have no other c/e's I can call. If their efforts are not good enough, than I am afraid there is little more I can do (I've long ago given on the Guild of Copyeditors or whatever it is called, with it's months-long waiting list). I'd appreciate any suggestion you may have about where to get more assistance, I am out of ideas on that front. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 17:30, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
 * And all of the above should've been addressed. Also, I wanted to say I very much appreciate all the hard work you guys put into fixing the text; I know well that I am quite bad at the c/e side of things. Well, I am looking forward to more of your comments, and in the meantime, off I go to my latest GA project. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 21:57, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
 * My mistake, you did your part and got some good people to copyedit ... I should have checked the history. - Dank (push to talk) 21:25, 7 August 2012 (UTC)


 * "noble democracy": I don't know what that means.
 * Okay, I've gone through removing way too many repetitions of the word "constitution", substituting various alternatives. - Dank (push to talk) 15:59, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Linked noble democracy to the best target we have, Golden Liberty. And added translation of the specific Polish article, pl:Demokracja szlachecka, to my ~100 or so "to do" list in translation of articles :> --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 00:24, 9 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Much better, thanks. - Dank (push to talk) 16:50, 9 August 2012 (UTC)


 * "Polish–Lithuanian": FWIW, I prefer a hyphen here. You had it both ways in this article; I've standardized to the dash, since the relevant article titles have dashes. - Dank (push to talk) 13:56, 10 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Continuing.
 * Sigh. I finished copyediting about half of it, down to Constitution_of_May_3,_1791, but things get worse at that point, and I'm not going to be able to finish up. FAC and A-class aren't mandatory, of course; lots of wikiprojects get by without them just fine ... but if they're important to you, then please find someone who's reasonably familiar with either copy editing in general or FAC in particular; I'm willing to do a lot of the work myself, as long as there's someone who's taking responsibility for learning this stuff and doing their share of the work. As things stand ... well, in the first paragraph of the section where I stopped, there are problems with every sentence:
 * "the "Four-Year" or "Great Sejm" of 1788–92": The quotation marks are nonparallel. Use "the "Four-Year" or "Great" Sejm of 1788–92", or "the "Four-Year Sejm" or "Great Sejm" of 1788–92". This isn't a minor stylistic point; what you wrote implies that people called it the "Four-Year", instead of the "Four-Year Sejm".
 * "so as to avoid": I don't personally have a problem with this, but other FAC copy editors prefer "to avoid", so that's my recommendation.
 * "October 6, 1788": October 6, 1788,. See WP:Checklist. I know, it's an annoying little comma rule that's in the process of changing rapidly, so this advice may not be useful in ten years ... but current style guides still recommend the second comma here, so as a copy editor, I'm stuck with it, which means (at FAC) you're stuck with it.
 * "In the words of the May 3 Constitution's preamble – from 1790 it met "in dual number" when": comma instead of dash. Also: why are the particular words important? The phrase isn't repeated here, and it's usually better just to translate into clear prose.
 * "Current world events appeared to were opportune for the reformers." ?
 * "Poland's neighbors were occupied with wars and unable to intervene forcibly in Polish affairs.": "occupied" has a specific meaning in the context of warfare ... the "with" helps a bit, but I'd prefer "engaged in". Readers generally read quickly, and sometimes misunderstand when given the chance.
 * "Russia and Austria were engaged in hostilities with the Ottoman Empire (the Russo-Turkish War, 1787-1792 and the Austro-Turkish War (1787–1791)), the Russians also found themselves simultaneously fighting Sweden).": Where do I start. One hyphen should be a dash. Sweden is an WP:EGG problem. You need "and" to avoid the comma splice, in this sentence and also the following sentence. Avoid "))", and watch for second commas. And there's a redundancy here that is better avoided; I'd probably go with: "The Austro-Turkish War (1787–1791), Russo-Turkish War (1787–1792) and Russo-Swedish War (1788–1790) were keeping two of Poland's neighbors busy."
 * Oppose on prose per standard disclaimer. I hope you can find some help, and I sympathize that help seems to be harder to find on Wikipedia than it used to be. I'd be very happy to see you and your wikiproject succeed here. - Dank (push to talk) 16:23, 10 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Comments
 * Missing words, or something:
 * "They spent lavishly on banquets, drinking bouts and other amusements, while the peasants languished in abysmal conditions and the towns; many towns were wholly within the private property of a magnate who feared the rise of an independent middle class and were kept in a state of ruin" - while we're on it nobody has anything good to say about the Polish magnates of the period, but could not pretty much the same be said of the vast majority of countries in the vast majority of periods, even today? The Durants are too over-simplified and outdated to be useful references at FA, and this volume of The Story of Civilization was first published in 1967 - both were long dead by the 1992 reprint.
 * Hmmm, you are right that was not really useful. Removed. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 20:13, 10 August 2012 (UTC)
 * "The constitution was a milestone in both legal the democratic history."
 * I got both of these, John. I went with "The constitution was a milestone in the history of both law and the rise of democracy." - Dank (push to talk) 14:23, 10 August 2012 (UTC)


 * "British historian Norman Davies describes the document as "the first constitution of its type in Europe"; other historians call it the world's second oldest after the U.S. Constitution, which had come into effect in 1789." Misleading as it stands; you could fill book-cases with stuff on the British Constitution before 1791. At the least needs "written" inserted (as Sanford has), or the formulation of that well-known expect on Polish constitutional history Bill Moyers, quoted below: "Europe's first codified national constitution (and the second oldest in the world)." The issue is handled better below, but note a should be adjusted too. The Lapointe etc ref is not worth having, here or elsewhere, given you have better specialist references.
 * The problem is that some scholars quality the second with various adjectives, some don't - like Davies (who is, notabene, one of the experts on Polish history). But if you think you could improve this, could I ask you to edit this to the form you think is better, and I will review it? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 20:13, 10 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't think anybody is arguing that no European country had a constitution before 1791, including Poland, whose earlier constitution has not exactly escaped the attention of historians! Not sure what your point is here, but I will have a go at a ce. Johnbod (talk) 22:44, 11 August 2012 (UTC)
 * The long taxi-ranks of references generally are a problem, & as it stands the article is an excellent illustration of the disadvantages of this system. The paragraph beginning "Prawo o sejmikach,..." in the Features section is especially bad, with the 2nd & 3rd sentences both having the same 5 citations each, of which a total of 4 relate to a passage of 4 pages in Jedruch. Altogether the short paragraph has, by my count, 11 citations to a stretch of less than 10 pages in Jedruch.  but other passages are similar.  Meanwhile there is no collected list of references.
 * I am not sure how to improve it. I strongly believe in referencing every sentence. That said, you are right, we hardly needed that chain for those sentences. I've verified it with the sources, and removed refs that were not necessary. I have also dealt with two more chains I've noticed. Not sure by what you mean as for a "collected list of references". Is it something required by MoS? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 20:13, 10 August 2012 (UTC)
 * By "collected list of references" I just mean the usual set-up, as seen in the next nom SMS König Albert, of a "Notes" section (or whatever title) with the number, author, page # etc, and then a "References" (or whatever) section listing the full titles etc of the books, once. But I don't think this is required by MOS. Johnbod (talk) 22:44, 11 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Still on references: "Joseph Kasparek-Obst" - note 94, 98 etc, currently returns a 404 error. I doubt "88. John Holmes Agnew; Walter Hilliard Bidwell (1851). Eclectic magazine: foreign literature. Leavitt, Throw and Co. p. 55. Retrieved January 10, 2012." is an RS 160 years on. Are "85 a b Richard C. Frucht (2005). Eastern Europe: an introduction to the people, lands, and culture. ABC-CLIO. p. 16. ISBN 978-1-57607-800-6. Retrieved January 10, 2012" really necessary? I think we deprecate links that are just to google books pages about the book, with no text (this may be a location issue - the US might be able to see text where the UK can't).  Sanford is an RS (and his description of the constitution as "a most evocative part of Poland's political consciousness" could usefully be quoted) but it is a bit alarming that his few hundred words on the constitution in a book on modern Polish politics are cited at 29 different places.  If piled on refs are going to be used like this, which in itself is no bad thing, a simpler style of eg "Smith, p.66; Brown, p. 123-132; Davis, p. 99" is better, with a single collection of the sources, and not referencing every single sentence.
 * More later, probably. Johnbod (talk) 13:15, 10 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Removed unreliable sources, fixed GBooks link. I prefer to keep them, as readers even if the get no preview, can get other useful GBooks links (reviews, where to buy, find closest library). Regarding ref format, I tried to standardize everything to cite templates. If somebody wishes to reform that, go ahead, but I'd prefer not to spent my time on playing with optional styles, if this is good enough for MoS. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 20:13, 10 August 2012 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.