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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Constitution of May 3, 1791/archive4

< Wikipedia:Featured article candidates | Constitution of May 3, 1791
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 Graham Colm (talk) 08:46, 15 June 2014 (diff).

Constitution of May 3, 1791

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Nominator(s): Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 00:24, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Let's try this again. A major even in the history of Poland. Last nom stalled without a single support or oppose. Since then the article has been subject to another copyediting, because we can't have enough. It would be nice to see someone take some interest in this, this time... Ping primary contributors: @Nihil novi, Orczar, Logologist, Baffle gab1978, Ceoil, Gabbe, and Crisco 1492: @Mathiasrex, Volunteer Marek, and Malik Shabazz:. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 00:24, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Squeamish Ossifrage

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Well, I'm back to FAC from an unexpected Wikibreak. This is far from my usual review topic, but might as well jump in, right? As my usual, sourcing and reference formatting are my main concerns:The Convocation Sejm of 1764 was controlled by

  • Date formats need standardized throughout the referencing. I see mmm dd, yyyy; dd mmm yyyy; and dd-mm-yyyy.
  • Print materials typically do not require retrieval dates. The idea is that web content is likely to change, but print is, well, print, even if mirrored online. I think someone in a previous FAC said you should do this though, so feel free to ignore me here. MOS-wise, it's probably up to editor preference.
  • Authors in the reference section should ideally only be linked at their first appearance.
  • Publication locations are optional, but they're all or nothing. I see Gierowski's work with a publication location, but not much (any?) else.
  • The Jacek Jędruch source (ref #5 at the moment) lacks an ISBN number. I believe it should be 978-0-8191-2508-8. But also...
    • There are references to Constitutions, elections, and legislatures of Poland, 1493–1977: a guide to their history, published in 1982 by University Press of America but also to the same title published in 1998 by EJJ books. I presume the latter is a second edition or update or something of that nature; regardless, if you're sourcing this material from physical copies, as is ideal, it would probably be preferable to avoid citing multiple editions of the same work, unless the source changes make that necessary.
    • Standardized; I used only one copy. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 04:59, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Wow. This article cites two pages of George Sanford's work 26 times? His Wikipedia article isn't very informative as to whether that might represent undue weight. Regardless, I guess those are some information-dense pages?
  • The "Lietuvos TSR istorija" reference doesn't seem to be properly formatted, and so I can't make much sense of it. It's also pretty clearly in Lithuanian, which needs to be noted. This is the sort of source where an OCLC number is ideal (since there's presumably no ISBN assigned).
  • Not sure what's going on with the large untranslated quote in the Maria Konopka-Wichrowska reference. Hmm, actually, it looks like you're citing this source merely for its quote from Bogusława Leśnodorskiego. If so, can you cite Leśnodorskiego?
  • The Google Books link to the Jeremy Black source is broken, at least for me.
  • Is the Carl Bucki source a reliable source? The site identifies it as the "[t]ext of a presentation made at the Polish Arts Club of Buffalo on the occasion of the celebrations of Poland's Constitution Day on May 3, 1996." And I don't see any particular qualifications for the speaker? I'm open to being convinced otherwise, though. In any case, he shouldn't be cited with the Hon(orable) prefix if the source is retained.
  • Is the publication date for Reddaway correct? I can't find anything that matches that entry. An OCLC identifier would be vastly preferable to Google's internal identifier, also.
  • The Machnikowski reference is missing his first name (it's Piotr).
  • Okay, I'm sorry for this, because template mismatching is one of those awful things that's no fun to pick on and a pain to fix, but the Rafał Kowalczyk and Łukasz Kamiński doesn't have the same templating as your other references. For example, the language tag is formatted entirely differently from the other non-English sources, and it has a comma after the author names instead of a period. There's probably another template available to help match styles, or else there's always the hard way of manual formatting.
  • The Kramnick reference is not formatted correctly. "Introduction" should be quoted rather than italicized, and you need to make some reference to the original publication date, even if you're working from the Penguin edition. James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay were certainly not submitting new work in 1987. Kramnick's introduction doesn't make him the author of the actual work there, either. And there are some other formatting problems with this entry, too.
  • And actually, it looks like there are a few more sources that use the same templating as the Kowalczyk and Kamiński entry. But that still doesn't match the rest.
  • Why is Polonia Music a reliable source?
  • The Carrington source gives the author in last, first order instead of the first last order used elsewhere. Looks like there's a stray character after the volume number, too.
  • On the Michalski source, I'm fairly certain that he's the author of the cited article, but not the entire work, which means we need more bibliographical information for the work itself (author or editor, specifically). Is this a reprint of an older source or an actual 2011 publication? If the latter, it almost certainly has an ISBN. If the former, again, an OCLC would be ideal, but I'm having a hard time figuring out what work you're citing here from the WorldCat entries.
    • Chapter title added. Here's the Worldcat entry: [1]. How to chose the correct ISBN? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 04:59, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • Let me try to figure this one out. I'm seeing 2011 as the publication date just for volume 47, and 2002 (I think) for volume 41, and that's making it sort of challenging for me to determine what the right identifiers are here. I'll try to get back to you, but I don't suppose you've got this physically on hand to just look? I can hope, right? Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 15:33, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        • Sadly, no. I only took scans of the pages with text, not of the title page. If it helps, the work is Polish Biographical Dictionary. Year 2002 for that volume is confirmed by their official page at [2]. The reason for multiple ISBN may be this: A new tome of PSB is first published over few years as a series of smaller issues, then collected into the big full volume. An educated guess would be that those ISBNs are the collected ISBNs for the issues plus the final collected volume one. I was using the collected volume, but I won't be able to check the book until summer time. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 08:55, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not an extremely big fan of Further Reading sections. Especially when these have retrieval dates and basically look like they're just references that got cut from use. If they have something to say that's germane to the article, cite it. If not, why do we need them?
  • The Original Prints section is nonstandard. I'm entirely on board with supporting a link that lets readers see the original document in question, but that belongs in External Links, not a custom section.
  • The External Links need to be contextualized better. Some of these are pretty much bare links, and that's not okay. And at least a couple of them seem redundant to referenced works. Surely, with how much the article cites him already, Jacek Jędruch's work doesn't need to be an EL also?

No prose review at this time. Most of the above bits are formatting tweaks and similar "light" work, but I'm frankly concerned that this just isn't a systematic review of the literature. A small number of sources provide an immense share of the referencing, and a cursory search revealed a substantial body of literature not addressed by the article, especially in scholarly journals. See: here (although you do cite Lukowski quite heavily already), here, here, here. The Hillar source is particularly one that I think warrants examination, at the least. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 16:55, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    • I think that addresses most points. I'll review those sources, but I doubt they can add much than trivia. Is there any particular aspect you think we are lacking with regard to being comprehensive? We cannot cite each and every work on the subject, particularly when it is major enough to have spawned numerous books and articles on the subject. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 04:59, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • Well, obviously, a comprehensive review of literature doesn't mean "cite everything ever". But it does mean there's a need to ensure that the broadest range of reliable sources and positions are covered, and that authors' voices are given due weight. This article owes a lot to Sanford and Jędruch, and is fairly light on scholarly journal sources, despite there being quite a few available. That may or may not be an objection, and I haven't really had the time to look, but I'm merely raising it as a concern. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 15:33, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • 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, 8 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I am reviewing the other sources added:

  • [3] mentions this constitution in a passing sentence and as such as irrelevant here;
  • Lukowski (2009) has been incorporated in those diffs: [4]. Most of what he discusses seems either already covered or too detailed, although I used his introduction to add a sentence on some major academic works on the topic. I will provide comments on the remaining two articles over the next few days.
  • Brzezinski provides some useful historical overview and was incorporated thus: [5]. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 09:36, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Update: Unfortunately JSTOR free access doesn't seem to work for me anymore (I have the three articles added to my JSTOR shelf, but when I try to access them it shows me as logged out - I tried Firefox, Chrome and IE, no lucl). So unless someone can send me copies of those articles, I am afraid I am unable to review them. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 09:13, 18 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Squeamish Ossifrage: I've finished reviewing all relevant papers. You can find my notes at User:Piotrus/Sandbox/Notes/3maj#articles, and you can see the changes and expansions to the article in the recent diffs. I hope you are now satisfied the treatment is comprehensive. (Please note that while I could've added citations to the said academic articles throughout our discussed article, I didn't feel the need to reference many sentences with numerous refs when the existing ones are sufficient. While we could replace some existing refs with the journal ones to make it look less reliant on the current sources, it would be a purely cosmetic change that I doubt would be helpful). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 09:20, 27 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

Comments by Coemgenus

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  • Lede:
    • You call Poland-Lithuania "a dualistic state". Wouldn't dual monarchy work just as well?
  • Background:
    • "The system, of whose primary beneficiaries was the Polish nobility (szlachta)..." There's something wrong here. Maybe "The system, whose primary beneficiary was the Polish nobility (szlachta)..." might work better?
    • "The Constitution was a response to the increasingly perilous situation in Poland, or more precisely, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth..." could probably be shortened up. "The Constitution was a response to the increasingly perilous situation in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth..."
    • Similarly here: "...had condemned the individual and collective weaknesses of the Commonwealth." Why not just "had condemned the weaknesses of the Commonwealth"?
    • Passive voice problem here: "As their warnings failed to be heeded and sufficient reforms failed to be implemented..." Who failed to heed their warnings? It makes the sentence more informative to say.
    • You say that foreign interests promoted use of the liberum veto, but then say foreign interests promoted the confederated sejm to get around it. Which foreign interests? The same ones, or different ones?
  • More comments to follow. --Coemgenus (talk) 12:51, 8 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Coemgenus: Fixed most. Regarding the warnings, I hope that shortening the sentence did the trick (who failed? the government, the political elites in general...). Regarding the confederated part, the foreign interests kept the system dysfunctional unless they needed some law passed, in which case they tried to make this particular session immune to disruption (which otherwise they encouraged). I am not sure how to make this more clear - perhaps you could c/e it in such a way that you'd like? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 01:27, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Early reform:
    • "The Convocation Sejm of 1764 was controlled by the Czartoryski family's reformist Familia party and was backed up by Russian military forces, which the Czartoryskis invited." The Russians favored reform? That seems to contradict the earlier part about how Russia liked the liberum veto. Did they change their policy?
    • I made some copyedits to this section. Please revert if I've inadvertently changed the meaning.
    • The paragraph beginning with "During the 1768 Sejm..." I'm not sure this adds much to the story of the Constitution. The whole "early reform" section is kind of long, considering it's meant only as background to the main subject of the article.
    • "The Bar Confederation had a patriotic focus on limiting the influence of foreigners in Commonwealth affairs, but was conservative and restrictive with regards to religious tolerance." Could probably be more succinct. Perhaps "The Bar Confederation focused on limiting the influence of foreigners in Commonwealth affairs, and did not promote religious tolerance."
    • "This was justified on grounds of anarchy in the Commonwealth and its refusal to cooperate with its neighbors' efforts to restore order." There's a lot of passive voice in the article. This sentence, for example, might be made stronger my saying who justified it. E.g., "The three powers justified their annexation, citing anarchy in the Commonwealth and its refusal to cooperate with its neighbors' efforts to restore order."
    • The paragraph with all the redlinks is kind of jarring. Don't get me wrong, I like redlinks where they might encourage the creation of articles on those topics, but unless you plan to write them, I'd eliminate the ones that link to things those people wrote. Most individual books or pamphlets never get articles about them.
  • Features
    • "King Poniatowski" I've never heard a King referred to by his last name. Why not "King Stanisław"?
      • If you search on Google Books (or Google Scholar), you'll see this is not an uncommon practice for Polish kings, particularly of the period of elected kings. King Stanisław is problematic, as there were more than one, and they didn't use numerals, so a common variant is to use both first and last name. That said, all other references to him in the article where either King Stanisław August or King Stanisław August Poniatowski. We should probably standardize them to one; I think the full one would be better. Would you agree? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:25, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        • That sounds fine to me.
    • "Personal security (neminem captivabimus, the Polish habeas corpus act) was extended to and empowered the townspeople (including the Jews), who also gained the right to acquire landed property and became eligible for military officers' commissions and public offices—such as reserved seats in the Sejm itself and seats in the executive commissions of the Treasury, the Police and the Judiciary." This sentence is long and confusing. I'm a lawyer, and I can't figure it out.
    • "With half the nobility disenfranchised..." Was this explained before? It kind of took me by surprise. Why and how did this happen?
    • You could probably just have footnote "c" once.
    • "It would take the Second Partition and Kościuszko's Proclamation of Połaniec to deal the matter." might be better as "Not until Kościuszko's Proclamation of Połaniec in 1794 would the Polish government begin to abolish serfdom." Or something like that.
    • "Prawo o sejmikach, the act on regional assemblies (sejmiks), passed earlier on March 24, 1791 (Article VI), was similarly recognized." I'm not sure what you mean here. Did the new constitution incorporate the act on regional assemblies?
    • "Active voting rights were also taken from nobles who held property granted them by magnates or the king, to remove the temptation to vote so as to please their benefactors." OK, now I see you're explaining the disenfranchisement I mentioned above, but it's still unclear. How do these magnates differ from those who were not disenfranchised. Did other magnates have a different land tenure or something?
      • It reads clear to me, let me explain: previously, all nobles could vote. Now only those who held property could, but not all property was eligible. I believe this sentence refers to nobles who rented land, or held it on non-hereditary leases, but as I don't have access to source, I've just removed this sentence. It was too much detail anyway. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:25, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • "A common practice at that time, voting was limited to males of at least 18 years of age." You could lose the first clause here.
    • "The eligible voters would elect deputies to local powiats, or county sejmiks, which elected deputies to the General Sejm." So voting for the legislature was indirect? It seems out of place here, maybe move it to the next paragraph?
    • "In 1807, however, Napoleon persuaded Frederic Augustus to become the king of the Duchy of Warsaw established by the French Emperor." I'd cut this or move it to a note.
    • I'll return with more later. --Coemgenus (talk) 12:48, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Fall and aftermath
    • The title could probably be just "Aftermath".
    • "Magnates who had opposed the constitution draft from the start, Franciszek Ksawery Branicki, Stanisław Szczęsny Potocki, Seweryn Rzewuski, and Szymon and Józef Kossakowski, asked Tsarina Catherine to intervene and restore their privileges—the Cardinal Laws abolished under the new statute." I'd trim this a bit. Maybe "Magnates who had opposed the constitution from the start asked Tsarina Catherine to intervene and restore their privileges."
    • "The Confederates aligned with Catherine and asked her for military intervention." I'd lose this whole sentence. It's kind of repetitive.
    • "self-exile" sounds like exile from the self. I'd say either "exile" or "self-imposed exile".
    • I'd tighten this up:

      To their own surprise (they thought they had a deal worked out with Catherine II), the Second Partition of Poland ensued.[70][113] With new deputies bribed or intimidated by the Russian troops, the Grodno Sejm took place.[70][119] On November 23, 1793, it concluded its deliberations under duress, annulling the constitution and acceding to the Second Partition.[120][121]

Instead, maybe something like:

To their surprise, the Grodno Sejm, bribed or intimidated by the Russian troops, enacted the Second Partition of Poland.[70][113][119][120][121]

  • Legacy
    • "May 3 was declared an official Polish holiday" could probably lose the "official".

Comments by Dank

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A few copyediting comments, not a complete review. (Note that I'm just copying text without links.) This is my imperfect understanding of what reviewers are looking for at FAC. I started at Adoption, since that's where Coemgenus's last comments come from. All this stuff is from that section:

Comments by Ian Rose

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Recusing myself from delegate duties, I must reluctantly (because I can see a great deal of work has gone into this) oppose promotion on prose grounds, at least for the moment. I was hoping to simply pick up from Dan and take care of any minor issues but the lead and first few paragraphs of the main body don't give me much confidence in the remainder. Based on what I've seen and altered so far, I think it really could do with a copyeditor of the calibre of a John or Eric to get it to FA-quality. I know Dan would do it if he had the chance, I may be able to do more at a later stage if it remains open longer but I'll have to leave it to Graham to adjudicate on that. On last thing, in the first two paragraphs of End of the Golden Age, you use/link Russia and Russian Empire but the terms -- regardless of the piping -- seem interchangeable in the context. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 00:25, 1 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Ian Rose: Look, Ian, I've been begging copyeditors to work on this for years know. And this was reviewed by several ones, including User:Coemgenus and User:Dank. Prior to this nom, User:Baffle gab1978 worked on this as per my old request at Guild of Copyeditors (backlogged for many months; this was supposed to happen prior to FA3 :>). It received several reads-through by User:Nihil novi. That's four copyeditors, at least. Is their work not good enough? How many copyeditors have to check off on this before people are satisfied? I am a bit frustrated as I simply cannot help with that, and I find it somewhat unfair when some copyeditors say the article's is ready, others disagree, and sometimes they even start complaining about one's another changes (as in - some content that I was asked to correct was already read, approved by or fixed for a prior copyeditor). :( --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 04:33, 1 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I can well understand the frustration, Piotr, and it may be a case of 'too many cooks' as far as copyediting goes. Were it simply a matter of preference for certain phrasing then I wouldn't be registering an oppose but, as I think my edits demonstrated, some of the grammar is still not up to scratch and that's a concern at this stage of the article's review. This is why I think that if anyone is to make a further pass at it then it should be someone experienced at FAC but relatively new to this article. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 06:05, 1 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I appreciate the compliment of being asked. I have had an initial look and I can see what needs to be done. I am a little busy at the moment, both in real life and on the project, but I should be able to look within the next few days. --John (talk) 18:05, 1 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comment from hamiltonstone.

  • Features section: the liberality of its provisions, "fell somewhere below [those of] the French, above the Canadian, and left the Prussian far behind", but did not equal the American Constitution" This has either one too many quote marks, or one too few. hamiltonstone (talk) 08:06, 15 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note - as there is no consensus after more than two months, I have decided to archive this nomination.

Comment by Madalibi

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