Talk:1945 French constitutional referendum

Merge

This article duplicates one section of the newly created article French Constitution of 27 October 1946. They should probably be merged, although conceivably they could be related parent-child per Summary style. Mathglot (talk) 22:28, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

I think keeping separate articles is appropriate. I was a little surprised by the content of French Constitution of 27 October 1946, as I had expected it to be about the constitution, but a significant chunk of the text (not that added by yourself) is about the referendum. I'd recommend moving that text here, and focussing that article more on the constitution itself. Cheers, Number 57 23:07, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

That's because each article reflects the structure of the original French article. When translating, the first task is not to worry too much about what faults the original French article (or, as in this case, articles) may have, but to just get them ported over, and then bring them up to the standards of English Wikipedia. That said, there's nothing to be gained by expending work translating portions of two articles that have heavy overlap in the original, as is the case here. I raised this section as a kind of reminder to self, to @Elinruby: who has worked on this article as well, and to anyone else who joins in, so that we don't accidentally duplicate work here unnecessarily, just because it is duplicated on the French side. At the outset, it's more important, imho, to just get the content translated and over here someplace, and I'm not too concerned which article it goes into. Once the content is ported, we can unscramble what goes where.

That said, if kept separate, they will nevertheless be strongly intertwined, as the Referendum had no purpose other than to approve the Constitution, and included the text of it, or a summary, as part of the referendum; and the Constitution would have no existence without the referendum. So, their stories by nature are linked. Mathglot (talk) 06:24, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

right. At a very abstract level they are different since one is about the law and the other is about the referendum on the law, as an event. But no, I don't see the need for separate articles. I will at some point take a look at why there is also an article about the preamble to this constitution. It might be because it was retained in the constitution of the Fifth Republic but that doesn't mean we have to follow suit Elinruby (talk) 11:04, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

We almost always have separate articles on constitutions and referendums on their promulgation, as you can see from the category tree Category:Constitutional referendums. The article on the constitution should stick to details about its drafting and what it set out IMO, whereas this article should cover the campaign and the referendum as an event. Number 57 11:38, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

I don't have an objection to that, if that's the convention here. Also, wrt the Preamble, it ended up having special status because of what you say, yes; nevertheless, I don't see a need for a separate article for it, either. It can be included as a subsection here, and have its own redirect, allowing direct wikilinking from other article. Mathglot (talk) 17:15, 8 March 2021 (UTC)