Talk:Polish historical regions

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Unreferenced and dubious[edit]

I do not see any inline references, despite that someone is still removing the tag. As for global template, I do have strong suspicions, that Prussia is not widely recognised as Polish region, the same applies to Žemaitija, Aukštaitija and Latvia.--Lokyz (talk) 04:39, 22 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ah. That, of course, merits a tag, albeit a bit different than the one you added. I will do you a favor and add the appropriate one.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 17:46, 22 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well, if one means mentioning of Saisonstaat as a reference, it's ok with me. And by the way, Davies calls Volhyna - Ukraine, And Žemaitija and Aukštaitija Lithuanian ethnic lands. Could you please add the information according to the reference? Thank you in andvance.--Lokyz (talk) 17:59, 22 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
As soon as I will have my copy of Davies with me (which will be around XMAS), I will try to add inline refs to that article.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 18:00, 22 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
May I suggest you to get English version of the book, to get English terms, not Polish translations.--Lokyz (talk) 18:04, 22 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If my time permits, I will try to do so.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 18:26, 22 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strange enough, despite claims not having English edition of the book one is referencing the article as owning it. Are the let me cite the XMAS already here?--Lokyz (talk) 22:33, 22 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ask Matthead, he is the one who referenced the English edition.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 23:30, 22 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Are you sure? [1], the XMAS issue is rather resolved.--Lokyz (talk) 23:54, 22 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I have no idea what you mean.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 00:17, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am removing the irredentist section in toto. The article is about regions of Poland. Volyn or Samogitia are not regions of Poland. Period. There are articles about the evolution of Polish borders for such material. Feel free to move it there. --Irpen 00:30, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This article is also about historical regions, and this has been clearly stated.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 03:39, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well, you can start an article about Polish historic regions but this is out of place in the Regions of Poland article. --Irpen 03:44, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Until we get enough material to create such an article, it is perfectly appropriate to discuss historical regions here, just as Davies discusses past and present regions in one chapter of his book.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 03:52, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please quote where Davies calls Volhynia and Samogitia as "Regions of Poland". Of course he does not. He sees the same maps as we do. --Irpen 03:58, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

At the beginning of the chapter, he lists Polish regions/provinces/etc. He starts with Wielkopolska, devoting a paragraph to each such province, and finishes with Polesie, Wołyń, Ukraine, Białoruś, Żmudź and so on. Of course, he gives the same disclaimers that we added into our text regarding the Polishness of some of those regions. Yet they were regions of Poland, just as at one time Vistula Country was a region in Russia.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 04:01, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I see that you choose to revert war instead. I had enough. Article tagged per reasons above. --Irpen 04:00, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You do not liking something, despite it being well re fenced, is no grounds for a tag, I am afraid. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 04:03, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The key word here is were, Piotrus. The article is not called "historic", "former", etc. The title says "of Poland". Volhynia is not "of Poland". Neither is Samogitia. And your comparison with Vistula Country is very apt. No editor finds it necessary to include Vistula into any article about the current regions of Russia.

A personal favour, if I may. Please do not use email and gadu-gadu to ask anyone to revert for you. --Irpen 04:08, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion (move to Polish historic regions)[edit]

I see that the link I used above for Polish historic regions turned from red to blue by the redirect creation. As a starting step, I suggest moving this article there. This would be a long way towards a compromise. We can then discuss what non-Polish regions can be called historically "Polish" but at least the content of the article would math its title. Objections? --Irpen 04:54, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

None IF you gain consensus for a move of all the articles from here.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 05:00, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Let's wait for a couple of days and see whether anyone would object. --Irpen 05:05, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Please notify appropriate WikiProjects.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 05:15, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I've moved the article as it clearly discusses historic context. For present day regions, see Administrative division of Poland. -- Matthead  Discuß   08:06, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There is no consensus for the move, it has been reverted. If you disagree, you are welcome to follow the proper procedure for controversial moves.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 16:19, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In any case, we need to consider the fact that both regions of Poland and Polish historical regions deserve a main article. Perhaps studying the following categories: Category:Regions of Poland and Category:Polish historical regions can help.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 16:53, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to share my thoughts with the move war raging these days. I disagree with Piotrus in the issue of article name. The article in its current form is only a short and poor list of former historical Polish regions. I propose creating two articles. One called Regions of Poland for regions (also traditional) of nowadays' Poland, it should also mention the history of administrative divisions. This format would be in line with other "Regions of" articles of European countries. "Polish historical regions" article should be expanded and referenced and deal with former historical regions. I believe this "issue" could be easily resolved by that. Just calm down guys. I know there is an intense heat outside these days which affects all of us. :) - Darwinek (talk) 17:04, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Looking around the articles in Template:Regions of Europe is interesting and a little disheartening. This "set" of articles has no coherent common defining concept - most articles are there just by the happenstance that the areas they describe are sometimes translated as "region" in English. We have a mixture of historical and ethnographical regions (Lithuania - which also includes territories outside current national boundaries, Croatia and Latvia), national-level Governmental subdivisions (Bulgaria, Finland), EU-level Governmental regions (England), non-governmental NUTS statistical regions (Republic of Ireland, Hungary) and "regions" of completely unknown origin (Netherlands). It's a largely unreferenced mess - putting them in one template gives a facade of academic consistency that just doesn't exist, and the usefulness of that template should be questioned.(Note: which I just have, here, Knpf)
This shows that there is no uniform consensus on what is expected of a Region of xxx article in en.wp - the word "region"'s wide remit of use in translation flows down to the fluffy ill-defined nature of the articles. Personally I would expect historical/ethnographical/"traditional" (whatever that means)/cultural regions to either be in a separate article "Historical Regions of xxx" but if there is insufficient material for that, I see no harm for such information to be included in a "Regions of xxx" article as long as it is clearly demarcated from modern-day material, with explicit reference to the timeframe and borders in question for that definition of region.
"Region" is used to translate many concepts into English; some have stricter definition than others, but we will serve the reader best if we try and cover all uses of the word that the reader may come across in reading - the first job should be to characterise all these different uses. In writing referring to Finland (see above), the word "region" will nearly always refer to the current administrative subdivisions - with other countries the case is not so clear-cut however. With explicit reference to Poland, region is occasionally used to loosely translate województwo, eg [2] - that usage should be covered too. And if Norman Davies uses the word region in a certain way, we should cover that too - a lot of English speaking en.wp readers will be coming to articles based on his popular works. It will be hard work to accurately characterise all these definitions of region, but then again noone said writing an encyclopedia was easy. Knepflerle (talk) 17:08, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That's why i did ask for inline references, because well, while the chapter is named Poland/Polish Davies explicitly calls Samogitia and Aukštaitija Lithuanian ethnic lands, and does not refer to them as Polish. The same applies to Volhyn, that is referred as territory of Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and Later Ukraine. This article is a WP:SYN at the largest, not to mention {{onesource}}.--Lokyz (talk) 21:29, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
They can be both Polish and ethnically Lithuanian, it's not a contradiction (Polish administration, Lithuanian inhabitants (with polonized nobility, but that's a different issue)...).--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 22:35, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Surely Wołyń Voivodeship (1921–1939) is justification for the inclusion of Volhynia, no matter if it does not fall in Davies' definition in this case? Due to this, English readers may come across texts describing it as a region of Poland e.g. [3] (it again highlights the importance of including full dates and details of when these terms may apply though). Anyway, until we get the explicit citations we should tag just the queried items as a reminder for us and the reader to get sources. The bigger problem with the article is to make it cover exhaustively all uses of "region of Poland" that are encountered in English texts.
On a side-note, those interested in the PLC might also want to look at the Region of Lithuania article too, which I tagged as unsourced yesterday and which could do with similar clarification as to the dates for which these historical regions refer. Knepflerle (talk) 09:09, 24 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Title and content[edit]

The title of this article is not clear. The ongoing dispute seems to be about the use of the word "Polish", and indeed that may need a clarification on the background that the territories of former Polish states and the ethnic distribution of Poles did not match in history. "Polish" may refer to both "administered (once) by Poles" (even if only formal, partial etc) and "settled by ethnic Poles" (how many Poles make an area Polish?), the range we get from that is that every region may be called Polish that once had some relation to a Polish authority or population.

Instead of clarifying the title, the lead brings in additional options to include regions into the "Polish historical regions" article, as it states that regions that "are within present day Poland without being identified in its administrative division" are included, leading to the inclusion of a lot of former German regions. In addition, most of the lead is a general definition of ethnographic regions, yet despite being listed somewhere in the article, those are not marked as such.

I do not think it makes sense to have an article Regions that once were or currently are related to some Polish administration or population; or are or were ethnographic regions of modern Poland; or were within the area of modern Poland even if there was no link to Poland in their time being. That would in fact be the correct title of the current article.

I think we should choose a clear and precise title such as Historical regions in Poland to sum the historical regions in Poland. The modern geography ("in Poland") does not leave room for disputes, as it can not be in either ways interpreted like "of Poland" or current "Polish". For regions east of the Curzon line, we already have the Kresy-related articles and History of Poland/PLC-related articles which all could be linked to this article. Skäpperöd (talk) 08:50, 24 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Our article should contain what reliable sources call Polish regions, even if those regions were part of say, Congress Poland but lie outside the modern boundaries. Not only is that the spirit of WP:V, but we should not deny readers information because of limitations that we put on our article scope that are not reflected in the literature they are reading. The relation of these regions to current borders and their ethnographic history should be detailed however to make it clear when and to what extent these areas are Polish. It will be hard work, but there are an unusually high number of editors active in this area. Knepflerle (talk) 09:19, 24 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well this "high activity" (rather disputes, confusion and POVs) is caused by the disambiguous title. Someone (me) who is active on historical regions of Pomerania pretty soon comes into trouble when he stumbles in this article with the intention of including e.g. Farther Pomerania here, that cannot really be attributed as "Polish", yet is a historical region within modern Poland's borders and therefore certainly belongs here. I also understand that it is difficult for e.g. Lithuanian editors feeling the term "Polish" does not apply, to come up with sources that call the disputed regions "not a Polish historical region" in contrast to cited Norman Davis (who as far as I saw here did not even explicitely use "Polish historical regions"). As for your concerns: The reader would not be denied information if the corresponding articles (regions of the PLC etc east of the Curzon line) are linked here, maybe in form of an extra section containing the links to the articles and an outline.
If the article is left as it is now, it will only become another backwater with some editors attributing nearly all Eastern European regions as Polish while others revert. Skäpperöd (talk) 10:47, 24 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
We focus our articles for the benefit of readers, not for editing convenience or the avoidance of edit wars. The problem at the moment is that it is not explicitly clear who says these regions are Polish and in exactly what sense they are Polish. With citing and re-writing this is possible however. If Farther Pomerania is sometimes referred to as a region of Poland*, cannot really be attributed as Polish* but lies within modern Poland's borders*, and have a source for each of the three points where there is an * then that is exactly what you should be including. Basically if something, somewhere is referred to as a Region of Poland in any sense, we should include it (with source) and then include all the caveats and extra information about ethnicity/governance/linguistics/... alongside (with sources). We are not the ones to do decide what regions are or are not Polish - WP:V says we record what reliable sources say are Polish regions, then give the supplementary background. Knepflerle (talk) 11:02, 24 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I understood non-"Polish" historical regions in Poland are not wanted here and created Historical regions in Poland for that. Now that Piotrus merged that back here (section Other), I am even more confused about the intention, the title, the proposed and actual content of this article. If one looks at the [Category:Polish historical regions], one finds stuff like White Croatia. Knepflerle, good luck with firmly editing every entry with the sourced causes that let reliable sources adress it as Polish, the way you anounced this article ought to be handled. Skäpperöd (talk) 15:24, 25 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Now user:Knepflerle did a good job creating section headlines that finally match the respective contents (while the former Polish state section might still contain disputed areas as it might be challenged how "Polish" the PLC was). Sections now are:

  1. section 1: Modern regions of the current Polish state
  2. section 2: Historical regions of former Polish states outside current Polish borders
  3. section 3: Historical regions inside the borders of the current Polish state

The current title Polish historical regions does not match

  1. section 1, as it is about Polish, but not about historical regions
  2. section 2, as it is about historical regions, but some are disputed to have been Polish
  3. section 3, as it is about historical regions, but some (most ?) were (undisputed) not Polish

So we still got a title that does not even match one of the article's sections. That has got to be changed. I see only two alternatives to do so:

  1. Either we create up to three seperate articles out of the sections (as I did but that immediately got merged back in here by user:Piotrus)
  2. or someone comes up with a title and a lead that matches all three sections of the article.

Any suggestions? Or better abandon and delete? Skäpperöd (talk) 08:36, 3 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that those section headings are useful. Perhaps we could create a table where we could indicate all of that info, but regions usually belong to more than one category. I.e. all "Modern regions of the current Polish state" are also historical, and some "Historical regions inside the borders of the current Polish state" are also modern regions.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 17:27, 3 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Moving and salting[edit]

While Piotrus demands from others not to move to a new name without a WP:RM, he himself often moves articles, and then salts the old name to prevent regular users from reverting, as with Michelauer Land/Michałowo Land. On the other hand, he uses his admin powers to pave his way. -- Matthead  Discuß   10:19, 24 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, I'm not the only one who had noticed that [4]. -- Matthead  Discuß   09:26, 25 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Huh? Yes, I used my admin powers to move Polish historic regions to more grammatically correct Polish historical regions. Feel free to raise this at ANI.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 18:12, 24 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Somebody already felt free to raise this. -- Matthead  Discuß   09:26, 25 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see how Piotrus erred here. Disagreeing with Matthead's earlier move, Piotrus moved the article from Regions of Poland to Polish historic regions. He then rejected his own move by moving it to another "historic(al)" title, Polish historical regions. The naming merits of Michelauer Land vs. Michałowo Land notwithstanding, categorizing redirects is valid. These do not seem to have been done to intentionally block further moves. Olessi (talk) 19:46, 24 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Of course Piotrus never would intentionally block further moves, it's just a side effect of an edit to a redirect. I had noticed this over a year ago, e.g. after multiple moves [5] [6] [7], several names were blocked. Categorizing a redirect after a move, even though "Most redirects should not be categorized", has the same side effect. Surely Piotrus did not know that while thoroughly and dutifully Categorizing a redirect after a move. See also WP:Salting, which only covers new articles. -- Matthead  Discuß   09:26, 25 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
WP:RM allows you to legitimately revert me. The problem is, of course, that your move proposals rarely gain consensus... --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 13:10, 25 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Piotrus, like we know him. Always cooperative, respectful, and reminding that he has a number of friends. -- Matthead  Discuß   13:36, 25 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Why not Bohemian and Austrian historic region[edit]

Several of the regions listed as German have much longer history of being part of Bohemia and Austria then Germany. Yet this is not listed. Perhaps we should live the details in articles about them or detail them in full? --Molobo (talk) 19:44, 1 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You mistake German for post-1871 Germany. Also, Silesia is not "several regions". Skäpperöd (talk) 08:21, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Then why were links added for article about 1871 Germany. Also are you claiming those regions were always German and weren't also Czech and Polish ? Besides nationality of course they were also part of Austria and Kingdom of Bohemia far longer then part of German state. Why then is this not mentioned in favour of shorter German history ?--Molobo (talk) 21:47, 6 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Following that logic there should be also an article about Lithuanian historical regions including White Ruthenia, Black Ruthenia, Red Ruthenia and a large part of nowadays Ukraine, that were conquered by Lithuanian monarchs - starting with King Mindaugas and rulers of House of Gediminas. Are you really into this?--Lokyz (talk) 00:20, 7 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
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