Talk:Polish Biographical Dictionary

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was no consensus, leaning on move. —Nightstallion (?) 13:20, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

Polish Biographical Dictionary → Polski Słownik Biograficzny – Rationale: 'Polski Słownik Biograficzny' was the original title of the article. This work has never been translated into English and it's current name is unofficial, original research. It is also confusing as there is, in fact, a different English publication with almost the same title (The Polish Biographical Dictionary). Note also that almost all references to this publication on Wikipedia use the Polish title, thus in effect over 90% of the links to the article in the current version go through redirects. Please share your opinion at Talk:Polish Biographical Dictionary. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 03:05, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Survey

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~

• Oppose, per wikipedia:naming conventions (books)#Title translations - also I get the creepy feeling this is a test case for the Polish Cabal how far they can go in bending wikipedia their way. Note that Piotrus' argument regarding the dictionary resumes to: look how successful we've been thus far in replacing Polish Biographical Dictionary by Polski Słownik Biograficzny on many wikipedia articles (which is an unacceptable self-reference argument). It has been amply demonstrated by me that the English version "Polish Biographical Dictionary" is commonly used in *external sources* to refer to this multivolume dictionary, and not to the other one (see talk in archive). --Francis Schonken 08:27, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose. This attempt at renaming is yet another effort by Polish nationals on Wikipedia to change as many article names as they can to Polish spelling. The name "Polish Biographical Dictionary" is the most commonly-used English name for this work. To change the article to a Polish spelling would make the article less understandable, would make it more difficult to link to (because of the use of Polish diacritics and difficult Polish spelling), and would make it harder to find in Wikipedia category indexes, since to most English-speakers, the term "Polski Slownik Biograficzny" is not intuitively clear as to what it means. --Elonka 15:36, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
• Support as nominator.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 15:37, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
• Support. I'm English and can't grok Polish (though I'd like to learn the pronounciation some day...). Personally, I don't see a Polish conspiracy in this, and probably the most important thing here is that we don't fall out about it: redirects make this at most a fairly minor issue. Having said that, for me, regardless of the language, I prefer to see the original language as the title, or a transcription of it, for proper names, rather than a translation, unless there is a well-established English name for the same. Moreover, I'm not convinced that "Polish Biographical Dictionary" is an actual English name for this topic, as opposed to a translation. To address, in particular, a couple of Elonka's points: linking and searching is no more difficult as redirects solve that problem, and the translation would appear on the first line, so the article would be no less understandable. I agree, though, that category entries would be less understandable. — Matt Crypto 17:05, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose per Francis Schonken. --mav 20:21, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose. Per WP naming conventions, why not re-title the articles Polish Biographical Dictionary (Polish) and The Polish Biographical Dictionary (English) or something like? This would make the difference clear in the title of the article and links to it, which I believe is the issue here. Also, this is the English Wikipedia, after all, and I wouldn't know what Polski Slownik Biograficzny was if I ran across it in a list or category. Her Pegship 19:00, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

• Support - Cannot find evidence that PBD is a term commonly used in English for this compendium (most links point towards the Sokol book). ~ trialsanderrors 19:38, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

• Support. As I have noted before, this Polish reference work simply does not have an "English name". The title pages have the Polish title, and that's it. In the catalogues of the British Library and the Library of Congress (and any other electronic catalogue I have checked), it can only be found under the Polish title, nothing else. It is not up to Wikipedia to invent English titles for publications which have never been published under one. Tupsharru 20:40, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

• Support per Tupsharru. Kusma (討論) 20:55, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

• Support Per Piotrus--Molobo 20:58, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

• Errr... Oh my God, now I'm really puzzled. The secret masters of our Polish World-Wide Wiki Conspiracy™ have obliged me to vote per the Secret Polish Cabal, but my heart says otherwise... what shall I do oh what shall I do..? Weak oppose, English titles are fine for films, why not for books? Even if the Polish title is in use by the LoC, it is not because the book is called by its Polish title in English, but rather because libraries list books by the titles printed on the title page. At the same time we're not preparing a library register here, we write encyclopaedia. We're not here to make the life easier to those who would like to find the book on a bookshelf, but to those who would like to know what is the Polish biographical dictionary. Redirects do all the rest. //Halibutt 21:49, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose: use English, please. That's policy. Jonathunder 02:54, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

• Support, per every right-thinking editor above, most especially the ever-gracious Tupsharru. KonradWallenrod 03:16, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

• Support and agree with Tupsharru. Olessi 17:46, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

• Support. The original title should be used. --Mig11 14:59, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

• Support. As above. Anatopism 15:09, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose -- keep titles in English translation. Thumbelina 17:46, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

• Support, per Prokonsul Piotrus and Tupsharru, above and below. logologist|Talk 14:42, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose. I prefer words that are actually understandable to those who use English. Shilkanni 15:15, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

• Support.^[1] Are we next going to be "translating" L'Humanité into English as Humanity? Or American Heritage into Polish as Dziedzictwo amerykańsie? or National Geographic as Narodowe geograficzne?

  Will we be "translating" "pan Kowalski" into English as "Mr. Smith"?

  Let us use authentic names of persons, and authentic titles of books and magazines (as do the professional librarians and bibliographers). Appropriate links will assist the Polish-language-challenged. Mattergy 19:12, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

  • L'Humanité - irrelevant, per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (books)#Scope and definitions: "This guideline does not contain specific information on how to name wikipedia articles on periodicals", further Wikipedia:Naming conventions (books)#Periodicals has been listing examples of periodicals with foreign names as long as the guideline exists. I've explicited that, and added "[...] for periodicals that have no specific English edition, the title is usually not translated (example: Pravda, not The Truth)".
  • Dziedzictwo amerykańsie - irrelevant, the rules for Polish wikipedia are made at Polish wikipedia
  • Narodowe geograficzne - irrelevant, the rules for Polish wikipedia are made at Polish wikipedia
  • "pan Kowalski" - irrelevant, there's no pan Kowalski article at en:wikipedia. There isn't even one at Polish wikipedia [2] - I've no idea what you're talking about. Further, if "pan Kowalski" would be a person the naming conventions for naming that article would be wikipedia:naming conventions (people), and not Wikipedia:Naming conventions (books). If you hadn't noticed before (while unaware of naming conventions), the people naming conventions are quite different from the books naming conventions, which makes giving examples of people here quite useless.
  • We're not "professional librarians and bibliographers", while we're encyclopedia writers. If you'd like any type of professional approach to writing an encyclopedia like wikipedia, I'd recommend you to start with getting acquainted with the rules we have, maybe take a start at wikipedia:naming conventions. --Francis Schonken 09:26, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Francis Schonken, your comments demonstrate your innocence of the concepts of precedent and equity, and illustrate the Iron law of oligarchy. Mattergy 09:56, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

On the contrary, *precedent* has been one of my most important motives when contributing to guidelines & policies. And I voted against the *oligarchic* approach of the Wikipedia:Editing policy pages proposal recently. Please, feel free to contribute to guidelines, policies & proposals as much as you like (see Wikipedia:How to create policy for more info about such proceedings). --Francis Schonken 10:19, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

notes

1. ^ Less than 50 edits in wikipedia at the time this vote began [1]

[edit] Discussion

Add any additional comments

I find it amusing that one of the main arguments against the move is that it is some sinister plan by a Polish cabal. But unfortunately I find there are also some disturbing arguments, ones that certainly merit further discussion. I'd ask Francis to provide proof for the following statements:

that I or other members of the Polish cabal (who are we, by the way) have been going over articles and replacing Polish Biographical Dictionary with Polski Słownik Biograficzny on many wikipedia articles. Such a statement, putting in doubt others integrity of editors, and between the lines accusing them of preparing evidence to create a false argument to influence the vote, is a serious accusation and should be referenced, or apologized for if it is found untrue.

that "It has been amply demonstrated by [Francis] that the English version "Polish Biographical Dictionary" is commonly used in *external sources* to refer to this multivolume dictionary". Francis directs us here to the archieve. I have looked through it again and I can find only two posts by him, none of which presents any claims other then this sentence: "Note that I found external references referring to this multi-volume dictionary by the English name according to the present page name. 'The "English name"". If this is what Francis means by It has been amply demonstrated..." then I wonder if this is supposed to be some kind of a joke?

As for Elonka, I'd like to as her too to back her statement that " The name "Polish Biographical Dictionary" is the most commonly-used English name for this work", keeping in mind that we should weed out search results for The Polish Biographical Dictionary, and as I demonstrated in the begining of the discussion in the archive, PSB has 170 hits on english pages, PSD (including both publications) has just 30 more. In the middle of the 'RfC: Request for Comment' section in archive I have also demonstrated that the Polish term PSB is more popular in books (Google Print) then the English PSD.

If not for the existence of The Polish Biographical Dictionary, I might have agreed with your second argument. However, as the existance of this book means that under current title the books are likely to be confused, a move to the Polish name would lessen the confusion, not increase it.

--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 15:51, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

While I am still waiting for an apology, there is a related discussion at Village Pump (policy)..--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 17:52, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

• On WP:ASR -- Note that self-references are entirely acceptable on talk pages. ~ trialsanderrors 20:32, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Examples of places where the English name is used

For reference, these are a few notable ones that I have found. I would particularly point out that at the English-language webpage of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences (one of the organizations which publishes the work), they too offer the English version of their title, "Polish Biographical Dictionary".[3] --Elonka 04:56, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

• Vladek Sheybal's biography: [4]
• Biography of Janusz Kurtyka, chairman of one of the branches of the History Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences [5]
• English-language newsletter by the Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History (PDF)
• English-language page of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences, Krakow. [6]
• English-language brochure by the National Bank of Poland. (PDF)
• English-language biography of Father Stanislaus (17th century) Papczynski (2 MB PDF)
• In the Shadows of Poland and Russia (7MB PDF)

In the link to the academy which publishes it[7], the use of "Polish Biographical Dictionary" is clearly used as a translation: it's in brackets after the Polish name. — Matt Crypto 05:45, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. I find that very persuasive as to its "official" nature. --Elonka 18:12, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't think we're agreeing. To me, it's only showing that it's what the academy thinks is a good translation of the title, and not that it's the English name. If they thought that "Polish Biographical Dictionary" was the best title to use in English, then they would have used that, and put the Polish title in brackets. — Matt Crypto 18:34, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Search hits in Google Books and JSTOR

• Google Books gives 203 hits for "polski slownik biograficzny". In contrast it has only 24 hits for "Polish biographical dictionary" (when a hit to Sokol's one-volume English-language work is discounted). Looking closer at these 24, all except one book also give the Polish title, with the English used only has a translation or clarification of what type of publication is referred to. No less than nine of the English-language hits actually come from a single book, Nation And History (ed. Peter Brock, John Stanley, Piotr J Wrobel, University of Toronto Press, 2006). But I also think it is significant to note that those texts using the English-language translation of the title tend mostly to use it in a looser way, when speaking of the undertaking of producing a Polish biographical dictionary, rather than in specific bibliographic references.
• In JSTOR, "Polski slownik biograficzny". gives 23 hits, and "Polish biographical dictionary" 5 hits. Of the five search hits for "Polish biographical dictionary", one is a translaton immediately after the Polish title. For the rest, the same observation made above is valid: they tend to use it in a looser sense, never in a direct reference to an article in the dictionary and mostly in reference to the biographical dictionary as a project. A typical example:

Independent Poland created new conditions for the development of historical scholarship: five universities, new research institutes, initiation of the basic Polish biographical dictionary, publication of sources, and participation in international conferences. (Piotr S. Wandycz, "Historiography of the countries of Eastern Europe: Poland", The American Historical Review, 1992, p. 1017)

Tupsharru 07:12, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for this great analysis. I think that we can safely conclude now that 'Polski Słownik Biograficzny' is the most common English name for the book.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 15:09, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Amen. KonradWallenrod 15:38, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Piotrus, this is an example of what I was talking about, regarding inappropriate admin behavior. You started the poll, it's not even finished yet, and yet here you are already saying, "We can safely conclude" something for which there is clearly not yet a consensus. It is an example of a conflict of interest on your part. --Elonka 21:33, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Last I checked he hasn't acted as the administrator. ~ trialsanderrors 21:42, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps my choice of words was less then fortunate, but why do you attribute to me behaviours based on your interpretation of my words? Have I moved the page? Have I protected the page? Have I stated that the voting ends now and here? I have just stated that I think that Tupsharru has given an excellent argument and I see almost no way it can be debunked, so for me the debate has mostly ended; I don't see how you can counter his argument. But I have done nothing to prevent you from doing so, neither have I done anything to the RM vote or anything related to this page. The vote will be closed in a few days by an WP:RM caretakers, as is the custom. I will not touch this page unless the RM vote indicates there is a majority for doing so. Yet why do you assume bad faith on my part?--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 21:44, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

As per above: if he had indulged in "inappropriate admin behaviour", Piotrus would have had to have performed admin actions first (what's with those verbs -- is that even grammatical?) — Matt Crypto 16:35, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I am referring to other actions taken on Polish articles, especially those dealing with Polish monarchs. For example, one case where Piotrus moved a page to a Polish title, in violation of consensus on that article's talk page. He didn't even participate in the discussion[8], just moved the page at the request of one of the other Polish Wikipedians[9][10]. After I complained to him about it, he moved it back to the consensus name. I would also point out that as part of my attempt to talk to him about not name-calling, he justified that it was okay to call other people "Newbies" regardless of whether or not they were, because they were doing things like "moving pages without participating in the discussion on that page."[11] And yet that's exactly what he was doing, at the same time. Other examples of conflicts can be found at Talk:List of Polish monarchs. --Elonka 16:52, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

So you cite one example when I assumed good faith and moved a page per request of other user without doublechecking if what he said was true, and when it was pointed out there was no consensus I moved it back and apologized. I have been also known to use in one case the terribly POVed and antagonizing inective 'newbie' in relation to some new users who moved dozens of articles creating a double redirect mess. I feel like I have terribly abused my admin powers, yes. Plese don't stop at two at those two 'examples', I am sure you can dig more dirt if you look hard enough through my 2+ years at wiki.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 17:21, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Tupsharru's alleged search results are unreliable 

This is what I found:

• Polski Słownik Biograficzny: zero results at Google Books [12] (note that the proposal is to move to this name and not to "polski slownik biograficzny")

• polski slownik biograficzny yields 187 results at Google Books ([13]), an overwhelming part of which are links to texts in Polish (e.g. [14]). Since Google books has no functionality to separate "English" search results from search results in the Polish language, such search results should be rejected (unless sorted manually, which didn't happen).

Looking at the first page of finds, I get 6 English, 1 German, 3 Polish. 2nd page: 9 English, 1 French, 3rd page: 7 English, 3 Polish. 4th page: 1 German, 9 Polish. 5th page: Mostly Polish. 6th page: Latin!, Italian, Russian, French, rest Polish, 7th page: 4 English, 6 Polish. 8th page: 7 English, rest mix. 9th page: 4 more English. 10th page: 3 Polish, 2 German. That's 37 English books of a total of 95 unique listings. ~ trialsanderrors 18:07, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Note however that Tupsharru's search supports that at Google Books in 96% of the cases "Polish Biographical Dictionary" refers to the multi-volume dictionary, and not to Sokol's one-volume dictionary.

It also turns up only 13 unique finds, not 25 as the first page claims. ~ trialsanderrors 18:07, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Tupsharru's alleged search results are irrelevant 

For books not published in English, and for which the title would usually not be understood by English speakers Wikipedia:Naming conventions (books) is clear that the title should be translated. In other words, if for such books the common names principle and the "Use English" principle would lead to different results (which isn't even proven in this case), Wikipedia:Naming conventions (books) gives precedence to the translated title.

Piotrus apparently sanctioned something he hadn't checked 

"I think that we can safely conclude now that 'Polski Słownik Biograficzny' is the most common English name for the book" [15]... is a nonsensical allegation, while at this point not supported by solid evidence. --Francis Schonken 07:32, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Anyone is welcome to check the Google Books results for themselves. As for the number of hits, I obviously wouldn't claim that I got 203 hits if I didn't actually get 203 hits. When I looked at those 203 hits yesterday, it actually came down to 94 different publications (books or journal issues), of which thirty-something were in English. Thirty-two, I think, but trialsanderrors counts thirty-seven, see above. Today I get 228 hits in 103 publications. Why the results vary is beyond me.

Focus should obviously be on the English-language publications., and the fact remains that of those English-language publications which do use a translation of the title, an overwhelming majority use it as a translation in brackets or parantheses, together with the Polish name. (Yesterday) I found thirty-two English-language books referring to the PSB under its original title. Nine publications use an English translation of the title, but of those nine, seven use the Polish title, with the English translation added just to explain what kind of a publication this is. One uses the Polish title once together with the translation, then refers to the dictionary in English a number of times. Only one book uses the English translation on its own without mentioning the Polish title.

As for these results being "irrelevant" because of the existing guideline Wikipedia:Naming conventions (books), Francis Schonken has it backwards. Guidelines not supported by consensus are irrelevant. As I have already pointed out, this guideline is mostly written by Francis Schonken as late as January this year. He wrote it at about the same time we had this discussion last time over exactly the same article (during which Elonka moved it from the original Polish title twice, despite resistence from others and with no attempt to first gain consensus for that move). I think it should have been clear to Francis Schonken when he composed the guideline that there was no consensus on this issue. This very discussion shows that there is no consensus now either. Francis Schonken can dismiss other people's conclusions and views as "irrelevant" as much as he wants, but if the guideline isn't supported by consensus (nor, in this case by common sense or the normal bibliographic practice to refer to publications by their real titles, not loose translations), the guideline needs to be changed. Tupsharru 08:14, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Oh, that explains some of what's going on here. Fwiw, those guidelines are pretty poor even for WP standards. I think I counted six unexplained examples of names left in their original language before the section on translations. The passage on Saramago is invitation for original research. The not easily be recognised by the majority of English speakers completely ignores that a good number of entries, including this one, are of interest only to a small fraction of English speakers, etc., etc. I would say that absent a community endorsement those guidelines are best ignored. ~ trialsanderrors 20:16, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Tupsharru, to say that I moved the article twice without consensus, is not an accurate representation of what happened. My first move was because I believed that I did have consensus. The second move was in response to a move by someone else who had moved the page to a Polish title without consensus, and I moved it back to the English title, so that discussions could continue. If the clear consensus opinion is to move this article to the Polish title, I may personally disagree with it, but I'll respect the community's decision, as long as it's a decision that's clearly from a cross-section of the Wikipedia community, and not just "ballot-stuffing" by the Polish-speaking members. But if a non-involved (preferably non-Polish) admin determines consensus and moves the article accordingly, I will respect that.

Anyone interested in reviewing the archives for themselves, is welcome to do so, at Talk:Polish Biographical Dictionary/Archive_1. I would particularly point them to other incorrect arguments Tupsharru has made, such as accusing me of "inventing" the title "Polish Biographical Dictionary". --Elonka 19:11, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.