Talk:Black market in wartime France

Other countries

Not that I am proposing to do anything about it this instant, but I took a look at Category: Black markets and this seems to be the only article about a black market in a country. There's a passing mention in this article about smuggling food into Belgium, where the prices were even worse, but otherwise? Surely there were black markets in other countries? Piotrus, was there a black market in Poland at the time? Elinruby (talk) 21:02, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

See also: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Categories#Black markets by country. Mathglot (talk) 23:08, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Sure there was. Good idea for an article to do (black market in Poland). There are sources ([1]). Mind you, WWII black market (black market in wartime Poland, source: [2]) would be just a subset of that topic. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:07, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

There were Black markets in every country in Europe including the UK. Nothing in the US as it was land of plenty. scope_creep^Talk 06:04, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

I've stubbed Black market in Poland. Ping User:Volunteer Marek who IIRC is interested in economic history. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:56, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

Assuming not sarcasm, black market in USA "Home Front Illicit Trade and Black Markets in World War II" GraemeLeggett (talk) 11:17, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Source verification going on

Grenard 2008 cites are mostly checking out; picking on that one because the article relies on it quite heavily and we don't have access to it. If a Grenard 2008 has a single page number that means I found what it is citing in the snippet view. Some of the information was overcited anyway in anticipation of this and in that case if I can't find it if snippet view and there's a stack of four there, I am just eliminating the Grenard. This is fiddly and may require a few days as it requires guessing what the original text may have been. If anyone wants to add additional references, that would be fine -- when I say "overcite triage" I mean that I took out a hard-fo-verify Grenard 2008 where there were already multiple other references, that's all. Elinruby (talk) 11:53, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

@Elinruby:, Can you elaborate on this? I notice a lot of the Grenard-2008 cites being removed, and I get it that in most cases, they seem to occur at points where one or two other citations co-occur, so maybe verifiability doesn't suffer, but where's the benefit in removing them? If access is a problem and you feel like going that route, Worldcat locates it in 146 libraries, so you might be able to get it on inter-library loan from your home library. Mathglot (talk) 01:34, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

I just think the French article relies overmuch on that one guy's thesis. I am confident of verifiability to the extent that I have been able to verify quite a few of the page numbers in snippet view, but not all of them. I did change the page range the reference came with to a specific page, where I was able to verify it. But a 20-page range isn't exactly the most precise of references, and look for example at references 115 through 135. That might be over reliance. And yes, I am only removing that one book and only in instances where there are still two other sources. I will stop for a while if you want to discuss this; I don't have strong feelings on the matter, but I have been working on adding different references, because really, we cite Grennard 2008 what, fifty or sixty times? LMK Elinruby (talk) 01:50, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Just wanted to clarify that point, which you have, so thanks, and keep right on going, you're doing a great job. Mathglot (talk) 23:14, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Cépède ref 84

Morning folks!! The Cépède ref page numbers are wrong. For some reason the page numbers seem from the back to the front from 356 to 160. They are definently wrong. scope_creep^Talk 08:48, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

I thought this was about potato beetles, but it's the name of an author. Tthe book exists at least as a page on the publisher's website. It also comes up in Google Books but no preview is available, so I don't see how we could correct the page range. I think I will just delete it unless someone else has a better idea. There is another reference there; I guess I will make sure it covers what it is supposed to. Elinruby (talk) 00:36, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

nm, I found it. It's in the source for the table. Deleting, checking the rest of the references. Elinruby (talk) 01:02, 23 September 2023 (UTC) So reference 85 and the new reference 84 are for numbers inside the table. These references are not available online but seem plausible. Should we leave them there? The table, which is cited at the top (83), can be verified; I just did.. Elinruby (talk)

Removed a tag

It said this article was (gasp) translated from the French article just any old way without regard for MoS. I took it off because 1) yes, so? 2) excuse me but this article was not translated any old way, but with a fair amount of effort from several people 3) I invited the person to discuss any specific issues on the talk page. This has yet to happen so maybe they trolled on elsewhere, but in case this is something we need to think about, I am raising it here. The only thing I could think of was the envar, so I added that notification above. Apart from that, I don't see this as an article that tramples the manual of style. Is there anything that we need to be doing that we aren't? Elinruby (talk) 00:09, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

You mean, the tag added in this edit of 21:11, 19 September 2023, by an editor with no other edits except for a couple of typo/grammar edits that day amounting to 11 bytes, and no commentary on the Talk page? I'd say that qualifies as a WP:HIT&RUNTAG and you're safe to remove it. Which isn't to say it's perfect, but then, no article is, and WP:SOFIXIT applies to them as well. Mathglot (talk) 00:40, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Yeah I took it at the time as probably related to the guy who keeps leaving me mournful messages about how non-contentious material (like Russian invasion of Ukraine haha) is only supposed (!) to be cited at the end of the paragraph and somebody needs to talk to me about that. But I am also talking to a bunch of people who are very invested in nothing being wrong with their articles and I thought I would check to see if I was being That Editor. This has been that check.

While we are here though, as best I can tell the thing that is keeping the black market article from B status, as far as I can tell, is ironically enough a couple of my own tags. I knocked some of them out the other day; I think what is left is some stuff like the name of the producer of the second movie made from the short story, and a statement that I know is true and know I have read, but haven't yet located in Grenard. If worst comes to worst I guess I can call it a truism but I would rather not. (The statement=In the black market, upstream wholesalers made more money than retail sellers)

I unwisely got involved in the question of exactly how ridiculous it is to still be using casualty figures from April 2022 in the lede of the Russian invasion article and if, as I suspect, the talk page is fatally deadlocked on the subject, I am going to give it up as not worth the litigation. I have the first three chapters of Grenard 2008 thanks to Scope creep and recently added in some cites from King of Nazi Paris. I want to do the same with Countesses of the Gestapo, as this article is still light on the Russian expats. I gave up on sourcing the quote from the prefet of Nord; it really isn't much of a quote anyway and Grenard probably got it from the actual reports. That quote simply isn't worth another deep dive into the archives of the economic planning agency, assuming it's even online in the first place. I want to work on fleshing out that section a bit more though, as the image of "thousands" of city people descending on villages to buy food is quite arresting, if you ask me. I will probably be mostly offline for the next couple of days though, due to RL stuff. Elinruby (talk) 15:38, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

@Elinruby: @Mathglot: How goes it? Its been a 2-3 weeks and thought I would revisit it. Still on my monthly sojourn. Re above: Definently a drive-by editor as well. And I posted a thank-you for some of the work they did, as well. If I'd known I wouldn't have bothered, considering the huge amount of work that has gone into it. On other aspect on clarifications: spent about 6 hours last week trying to fix that "tract" clarification, at ref 145. The dates are definently correct as the Moure organises the book exactly in the same three periods as this. After the beginning of 1943, the resistance began to favour the black market, instead of attacking it. We really need to determine what the tracts are. Its either got to be leaflets or pamphlets or underground newspapers, from the communist resistance, or the other resistance (non communist). Perhaps replace that small block. The other clarification on the Bank of France: I couldn't impact. Looking at it again, I think it is more to do with the word: dissimulate. I don't think the editor who posted the clarify, knew what it means, "to disguise or conceal". I think that can be removed. scope_creep^Talk 02:47, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

hi. Need to do something about Mariupol, then may be back here tonight. Elinruby (talk) 02:58, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

'Tract' ⟶ 'leaflet', and redid the translation of the leaflet text. 'dissimuler' ⟶ 'conceal' is fine; I used 'cover up' because it seemed to work better in the spirit of that sentence; 'conceal' sounds a bit stiff, or off, in a context of people lying about everything economic, and 'cover up' just seems more like it. Mathglot (talk) 03:31, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

about Bank of France I think that all in all the quote is more confusing than not. Most likely it is genuine ans Grenard is quoting a primary source, which would be fine, except that it is there in the French, I believe, to show the atmosphere of absolutely everyone gaming the system in some way. I think that this would be a good thing to describe but maybe that is not the quote to show it. Also I agree that tract is a leaflet, likely a political leaflet. I haven't seen dissimulate yet, Doing some copyedits to unFrench the language a little.Elinruby (talk) 09:32, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

for the caloric restrictions from rationing

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19393380/#article-details in case anyone doubts that people starved Elinruby (talk) 04:57, 12 November 2023 (UTC)