Talk:Banat of Craiova

Edits to the article

@Dahn To better explain the edits made to the article:

• Images were too large. As per MOS:IMGSIZE: "As a general rule, images should not be set to a larger fixed width than 220px (the initial base width), and if an exception to this general rule is warranted, the resulting image should usually be no more than 400px wide"
• Duplicate links. As per MOS:DL: "Generally, a link should appear only once in an article, but it may be repeated if helpful for readers, such as in infoboxes, tables, image captions, footnotes, hatnotes"
• Red links can stay if you intend to write future articles on them, but right now articles exist on the Romanian wikipedia, so thought why not link to that for now.
• Why not leave the titles of Spătar and Caimacam as they were used in their original forms?
• The Court of Brâncoveni was not a manor, it was a court ("Curte Domnească", roughly translating to "Royal Court"). Royalty: "Any individual monarch". Monarch: "A monarch is a head of state for life or until abdication, and therefore the head of state of a monarchy ... Monarchs, as such, bear a variety of titles – king or queen, prince or princess". And you said it yourself "and one Prince who had since died", so yes, a royal. Changed it to "Princely court" for a more precise name and to match with the Princely Court of Târgoviște. Alin2808 (talk) 12:17, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

@Alin2808:

• In my settings (standard laptop), they are awfully small -- one would have to click on them to actualy see them, which defeats their point as illustrations; most of the images, especially the map and the engraving, look better at 300px or so (and on the mobile settings they do not interfere with anything, because they never go outside the screen. I request your permission to ignore the blind rule and refer to its indicated exception: "if an exception to this general rule is warranted, the resulting image should usually be no more than 400px wide".
• There is nothing prohibiting redlinks (in fact, they are encouraged as a means of developing the encyclopedia, since creating a red article will fill out all references to it that are redlinked -- instead of having editors search for the unlined name across the articles), and ILL is entirely optional (personally, I despise them because they are rather absurd -- if someone can get their info by translating an article in a language they probably dont speak, what is the point of having an English article at all? -- and break legibility).
• It is debatable what the original form of Spătar should be, but I tend to favor the one we have always used as the redirect. Im not opposed to translating it, it just seems a bit pointless (do note that Caimacam was already spelled as such.)
• The sources I quote use conac for that property, rather than either "court" or "castle". This is presumably because it was quite small, in the middle of nowhere, and part of the family estate -- rather than of Prince Constantine. It was never a princely residence, and certainly not during the Austrian intermezzo. Calling it either princely court or castle seems misleading and anachronistic, and the former is especially so: it would imply that the village of Brâncoveni was Wallachias capital -- not even Craiova was a "princely court". The Princely Court of Târgoviște was used by princes from any ruling family, for as long as it was in the actual location of the princely capital. For comparison: do we call Mogoșoaia a princely court? There is of course the term curte boierească, but that is basically the same as a manor. Dahn (talk) 14:34, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

  • Using a laptop myself and the images don't look awfully small. But if you indeed think they are too small, then you can enlarge them, perhaps to 350px, but don't go over 400px as they'd look too big.
  • Sure, but seeing too many red links is kinda distracting. As for IILs, if someone wants more about a subject and those details are on a different language wikipedia then they can access that. Something like Google Translate or DeepL can always be sued and you'll get the basic information from the article. Of course a human translated article is superior, which is why (human translated) English (or other language articles) articles are still needed.
  • I'm rather in favour in using the common local term instead of a translated term. Also since if you search for "Spătar" here, it always redirects to Spatharios#Other occurrences.
  • The work "Brâncoveni: un drum spre trecut, o cale catre viitor" (the preview can be seen here) uses the term "court". Though it does seem that the term palat (palace) was historically used more instead of court. It's also noted there that Brâncoveni was similar to Mogoșoaia and Potlogi. The problem with calling it a "manor" is that it's too large to be a manor, and that it's not a single building, rather it's an ensemble of buildings. So perhaps the term palace can be used instead of court or manor. Alin2808 (talk) 15:33, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

@Alin2808::

• 400 looks okay enough.
• I dont find it distracting at all, and consensus endorses by Jimbo Wales is that redlinks are "invaluable". As for the ILL: I wont object if you were to add some or all, but again: if readers can just as well be expected to read any other languages, why even have wikipedia in any language but one?
• I find links to sections absurd (one changes the title of a section, and rearranges the text there, and the links will point to the article -- in this case, the article we couldve linked in the first place; whats more, why wouldnt readers be expect to fund the exact reference were thinking of simply by reading the target article, instead of being parachuted to a random area of it?). Anyway, I do not object to this change, it isnt a big deal for me.
• The references I used generally have conac or curte boierească , meaning that it is the traditional description. Your source actually uses ansamblul boieresc or ansamblul civil, and quotes the Austrians calling it a Lusthaus (~"vacation home"); it refers to it being called a "palace" in quotes, as it appears in some sources which, the authors suggest, actually exaggerated its scale. So we can either call it a boyar court, if you insist, or a manor, which is definitely more appropriate than "palace". (See your source for details on how may buildings were actually in use, or usable, when the Austrians took over.) Dahn (talk) 16:39, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

• Looks a bit too big but it's ok.
• That's the thing, readers aren't expected to read other languages but should know that an article exists in another language wikipedia and if they want, they can use an online translating app to read it, or if they know the language they can translate it and make an English wikipedia article.
• I don't, especially when it's just a specific part of the linked article that's referred to. Don't think many people like to scroll through large articles just to get to the referenced part (not the case here, but you get the point).
• It says that Lusthaus refers to the "foișor in the north-east of the enclosure". Though the quoted text from Johann Weiss calls it das Schloss Brankovan, and I guess schloss can be used to refer to a manor as well. Alin2808 (talk) 18:08, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

@Alin2808::

• Still looks a bit small in my display, but I think this is a decent compromise.
• Either way, the ILL is removed when an article is actually created.
• Any article, especially large ones, are actually not served by link on the section. Again, if one changes the link for the section, the link in another article is not updated automatically, giving us another pointless chore. And also consider the user experience for those who have no idea what the topic is, but are curious to learn more, and are thrown directly into the narrative, having to scroll up just to see what the generic topic is.
• If I read it right, it says above that tidbit that Lusthaus originally referred to the building itself. Dahn (talk) 20:26, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

  • About the interlanguage links, yes, that's what I think as well. Keep the ILLs and when someone is going to create an English article about it then it's time to remove them. Also as @Super Dromaeosaurus said below.
  • It depends. Sometimes a discussion from an article is linked to a single section of another article, so why not link directly to that section to make the connection? If the reader wants more then they can read the full article after seeing what that connection was. In this case however, it's better to have the link to the full Spatharios article because there's not much about the Spătar. If there was a section of that article specifically written about the use of this title in Wallachia and Moldavia (which is not the same as its use in the Byzantine Empire) then the link from here should link to that section.
  • Actually it says that it's assumed to be a representative building, then after Weiss' quote it says that he mentions the term Lusthaus as being only the foișor. So if I understand that correctly, it never says that's how the entire complex was called, only that a certain building was called that and in the later work of Weiss, the term was specifically used for the foișor. But again, I think the way it's used now in the article is fine (using manor with the addition of (court) in the description of the image), just so the reader would know that it's not just a single building. Alin2808 (talk) 21:43, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

• • No objection to that, Alin2808 (talk · contribs). Last I checked, ILLs were automatically removed if/once the redlink was blueified. Dahn (talk) 22:00, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

    Alright, I will go ahead and re-add the ILLs. Alin2808 (talk) 22:13, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

    Edit: ok, added the ILLs. Also corrected some problems with duplicate text in a piped link and the Rheingulden which already redirects to the Florin. Alin2808 (talk) 22:44, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

• Comment I won't say much about the other issues, but I believe red interlanguage links can be very valuable. I've lately been editing topics related to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and I could safely connect the creation of 10-20 pages thanks to ILL links. Obviously the situation is not the same with this article as the invasion is a topic with far more views and traffic but I still think we can ease article creation through them. If red links are being left here exactly to promote this, why not keep the ILL which further contribute to it? Super Ψ Dro 20:18, 21 June 2022 (UTC)