Talk:Szlachta#Please avoid using obsolete sources

The following sentence is incomprehensible:

:In the year 1244, Bolesław, Duke of Masovia, identified members of the knights' clan as members of a genealogia:

• what is 'genealogia
• what is the knights' clan
• what is "identified.

And the rest of the section is a haphazard mix of terminologies cited from various authors from various centuries.

I looked into this page because the following inept [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Szlachta&curid=29050&diff=1285762906&oldid=1284044552 "improvenent"] popped up in my watchlist and was about to fix it, but then I noticed that the whole article is a mess. I made a number of quick fixes for issues that caught my unarmed eye during a quick scan, but a more thorough reworking. Major issues: haphazard structure and chaotic use of foreign terminolory, probably borrowed from foreign authors, who used native terms for whatever reason. One example: section "Privileges" used the French term "Levée en masse". If you click it, you will learn nothing useful, not to say it was accompanied with false "explanation". I replaced it with "pospolite ruszenie", which I strongly suspect was meant.

{{ping|Piotrus}} {{ping|Nihil novi}} {{ping|Merangs}} It seems that nobody seriously worked on the article for several years; in the page history I see nobody but wikignomes and occasional vandals. Ruszamy się pospołu do pracy uczciwej, nie? --Altenmann >talk 19:20, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

:{{ping|Altenmann}} – Hi, thank you for observing this and pinging me. In general, this article, if you can call it as such, requires some serious copy editing and trimming. The amount of nonsense I've read or seen here added by new users or IPs in the past was overwhelming for me. Perhaps it was added in good faith, poorly translated or just outright vandalism/test edits. I suggest that we proceed with deleting any dubious content. What's your take on this? Merangs (talk) 19:34, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

::For comparison, :pl:Szlachta w Polsce is much smaller. A przecież wiemy, że Polak Potrafi :-), so there must be reason. Maybe not everything must be squeezed into one page. For example we have Nobility privileges in Poland which virtually has no overlap with :pl:Przywileje szlacheckie. On the other hand, :pl:Możnowładztwo is missing in enwiki, while :pl:Ziemiaństwo says plenty of Polish point of view, while our Polish landed gentry again, mixes Polish and English concepts. So my global suggestions:

::*Split per WP:Summary style

::*Larger poorly written or underrefenced pieces may be moved here, in talk page, for closer inspection and further processing, --Altenmann >talk 20:19, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

::::Fine for me. Regarding the nobles' privileges, I would leave about two to three sentences in this article under a heading as a summary and simply add a 'main page' template after the heading acting as a link to the 'Nobility privileges in Poland' page. Merangs (talk) 20:22, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

:::The article certainly needs work. Some content might warrant a split. I am happy to help a bit - I'll try to read and c/e this in the near future, but as usual, so much to do, so little time... if anyone wants my input on something specific, or provide a peer review for any level, do say. pl:Możnowładztwo should exist in en, probably; that said, pl wiki article has no references, so it needs a TNT approach, likely. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 23:30, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

::::re:Możnowładztwo : I didnt look into the text when I was mentioning it, but it seems that możnowładca is just a contemporary word for "magnate", e.g, Polish magnates. Quick loook into books reveals that możnowładzce were even in ancient Greece. :-) - At least that's what 19th century Polish books say. :-) --Altenmann >talk 00:46, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

:::::@Altenmann According to the wiki articles on pl, magnate is a term used for modern era, whereas możnowładctwo is used for Middle Ages. Would require digging more into sources, and it's always possible Polish (Slavic?) terms are simply different from English. Recently, for example, I've been looking at literature, and it seems Polish concept of a :pl:Nowela (I improved that article in pl) is quite different from :en:Novella (ru wiki article is meh, but from what I can see it seems to suggest similar conceptualization to Polish, not English; ie. based on characteristics, not lenght). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:04, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

::::::That's what I wrote, only sloppily didn't I? In the past [https://sjp.pwn.pl/doroszewski/moznowladca;5453241.html możnowładca was a generic term] for wealthy influential people. The term "Magnat" in poland acquired a specialized meaning. YOu are right, one has to dig into real sources, because in the internets there is lots of garbage, and when I started looking into plwiki, it suffers from the lack of serious sources. Since I am but a layman, rewriting serious topics is beyond my skills; my modus operandi is to stumble upon something useful in good sources and bring it into Wikipedia, for experts to expand (sometimes I hit the nerve: "Heraldic clan", but more often not :-( Nagana szlachectwa, Owińska Palace, Songs about Vladimir Putin The Viper (Sapkowski), When Shlemiel Went to Warsaw. Even the Wise Men of Chelm were of no interest to nobody, not to say about Five and a Half Love Stories in a Vilnius Apartment - who cares?. --Altenmann >talk 04:27, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

:::::::@Altenmann I care :) But yep, lots of bad stuff out there (and AI won't help - creating stuff, I mean; it's getting decent in finding sources, actually, although still a lot of hit and miss, and everything needs double checking... anyway, I digress). I used to write about history, these days I mostly focus on Polish literature (fantastyka), however. Just finished :pl:Agent Dołu (apparently it got a Russian translation too, long ago...). How about you? _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:06, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

::::::::{{ping|Piotrus}}. What about me? If you want to know about me, I will tell you about me, and what I will tell is that for years I am writing articles nobody reads, and when I will die of cancer, nobody will write about me. --Altenmann >talk 05:28, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

:The sentence quoted at the top, which appears as the second sentence in the "Szlachta" article's "Military caste and aristocracy" section, uses the expression "knights' clan" in the sense of "coat-of-arms".

:Historically an individual who used a given Polish coat-of-arms was simply described as "herbu ["of coat-of-arms": insert the name of the coat-of-arms]".

:Applying a term such as "clan" collectively to all individuals bearing the same coat-of-arms only creates confusion.

:This is but one of the infelicities that have messed up what was once a reasonably satisfactory article.

:Nihil novi (talk) 06:03, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

:: you don't have to explain it to me because I did write (the first take of) "heraldic clan" article myself; I was worried about a poor unsuspecting reader. Still even with your explanation the sentence remains incomprehensible and by the way, your explanation may be inexact: I checked the sources and see that here the word "clan" was used to translate the Polish term ":pl:ród", which may or may not mean ród herbowy. If the latter is true, then here we have a possible tautology/circular reference, because from the context it seems that the wikipedian appear to explain the emergence of heraldic clans. This is an example of the situation I mentioned above as a grave problem: non-Poles try to squeeze Polish terms into non-Polish concepts, and you never know what was in mind. Another common example is what the heck is "Polish gentry" (don't answer, it was a rhetorical question. --Altenmann >talk 07:38, 16 April 2025 (UTC)