Talk:St. Mary of Czestochowa Parish (Middletown, Connecticut)

issues

The AFD on this article was closed as Keep, though I still believe that notability has not been established and that a notability tag on the article is still appropriate, because that tag displays "The topic of this article may not meet the general notability guideline. Please help establish notability by adding reliable, secondary sources...." which is still appropriate.

I think that the addition of several pretty useless references added as padding by one or more Keep supporters might have swayed some editors' opinions. At this point, I am inclined to remove those references, where they merely attest to fact of meetings occurring, or are otherwise non-encyclopedic. This will have the effect, perhaps, of making the non-notability of the organization more apparent again, but my point is simply to remove the rubbish. I won't myself renominate this for deletion. If i do remove a passage on basis of it being non-encyclopedic, and you disagree, please do discuss here rather than merely communicating by edit warring.

Also, another editor has gone back and forth in edits with me about how to mention a local organization whose formal, official name was apparently "Saint Kazimierz Society of Polish Lancers", according to this source. The other editor repeatedly removes the formal name, which seems inappropriate to me. The article currently includes:

The Saint Kazimierz order of Polish Lancers (an organization which took its name and traditions from the Polish Uhlans) was a local organization that was founded in 1902 ....

This seems inferior for including no statement of the official name, for including two links (Polish Lancers and Polish Uhlans) to the same article, and for seeming to imply that Polish Lancers is an organization of perhaps national or international scope. The wording i would prefer is:

The Saint Kazimierz Society of Polish Lancers (an organization which took its name from Saint Kazimierz and traditions from the Polish Lancers was a local organization that was founded in 1902....

which seems clearer that the organization discussed is just a local organization, and that it is this local organization which was based upon historic Polish Lancers/Uhlans traditions. Could anyone else please comment, and/or intervene with a different more constructive edit? --doncram 20:19, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Doncram,

Re: notability -- it's a keep. Twice. So I'm forced to refer you to Wp:get over it. This result stands. You simply can't keep re-tagging the same article as having questionable notability against consensus. As for rubbish -- most of the content of this article was added after you called for the first deletion. So I and other editors would rightfully take offense at that term.

Re: Polish Lancers -- I keep proposing the simplest stylistic sentance to convey the point of the citations (have you read them? Are you aware that you're taking the non-historical "news synopsis" article over the historical one? This must be a first!). Anyway, on with a short history lesson of Polonia. There were other orders of Polish Lancers, most of whom (if not all) have merged over time with the Polish Falcons, the largest Polish ethnic organization. The formal name is in Polish, and all you're fighting over is the word "Society", which is a conceit of the newsperson whom wrote the article. In Polish, there are (as in English) multiple ways to call a body, and "Ułani Sv. Kazimierz" (nb: NOT definitive!) could be translated as "Lancers of Saint Kazimierz" "Saint Kazimierz's Uhlans" or in several other ways including "St. Kazimierz order of Polish Lancers". But to insist on "Society" makes little sense, as the word would certainly not be used in 1902 in reference to the group. Think of them like a Polish Knights of Columbus, but with an ethnic twist. Please keep in mind that this was an age of adroit patriotism, and as there *was* no Poland groups like these were considered (ceremonially at least) as vestiges of a Polish Army. Hence the uniforms, sabres, etc. No, it's not really clear cut, but frankly I'm surprised that they are even mentioned on the Internet when so many other institutions from that age are not.

Re: The two links... go to different parts of the same article -- as is Wikipedia standard since the reader may not know what an Uhlan is, and then may not know what a Polish Uhlan is. Making a passage more vague is of no real value in my estimation. Personally, I'm really surprised that you have no problem red-linking in this article (and in many, many others), yet are quibbling here about this. Best, Markvs88 (talk) 21:43, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Um, i did not re-add a notability tag, and I said i would not renominate it. I would support anyone else doing either, though.

Discussion about rubbish and my having "no problem red-linking in this article" etc. is probably going off-topic; I'll ask you a question at your Talk page instead.

I did read the references, but I am not familiar with these Polish groups at all. And I don't know what an "order" is, at all. You use the term like you know what you mean. The multiple links to the Uhlan article seem unhelpful, when it does not discuss any organizations operating in the U.S. Maybe the Polish Falcons article should be developed to mention predecessor organizations it absorbed, and that could be linked in one or more places instead.

About naming the organization, I just want to refer specifically to the actual name of the local organization. The one source gives a proper noun name, "Saint Kazimierz Society of Polish Lancers", which i believed because it is the only proper noun name stated. If it's more complicated, and there was a local Middletown chapter (order?) of some larger organization, and you can give a specific name for that (like Chapter #21 of Whatever Lancers), then do so, in specific terms. Do you know that the specific name given in the one source is wrong? If it appears valid, and it is sourced, I would think the specific name of the organization should be used.

If you want to say that "Saint Kazimierz Society of Polish Lancers" is a later translation, and not how the Middletown group called themselves, in Polish, then please tell me what was their actual name in Polish was, and then that specific name should be used.

There are several failures of communication here. --doncram 00:41, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I would suppose you won't, but that you would. Sure, that's fine on my talk. But you deny adding "notability|date=February 2011" on 20:16, 14 February 2011 ?

Yep, i re-added that, as notability was actively being disputed in the ongoing AFD. The AFD was still live. You shouldn't have been removing that tag. I did not re-add it after the AFD was closed. Am accepting a consensus decision to Keep this article.

And I took it out after the 1st AFD was closed, as the article's topic's notability has been established, and again after the 2nd AFD was closed. See a pattern?

I'm not suprised that you're not familiar with the topic, as this is stuff that's from a bygone era. However, you are (I assume?) passingly familiar with Freemasons & Knights of Columbus. Consider a group like that, blend with Order (honour), throw in Catholicism, and add Polish Ethnic nationalism. If you've ever seen the Godfather III, the group Michael Corelone has the ceremony with in the beginning of the film is supposedly a similar Italian group, the "Order of St. Sebastian" though I do not know if this is a real group per se or a plot device of the film.

I am very unclear on whether an "Order" is meant to imply a local chapter or other local group, or whether it means an entire world-wide society. I believe the info in sources here is talking about a local, Middletown-only group. And its name given in one source is a proper noun name that I believed to be the proper noun name of the local group/society, while I believe you've been replacing it by generic language that would refer to no specific local group but might apply to a nation-wide or world-wide society.

And that's the sticky point -- we don't know, nor even if it was a local group if they would have been a part of a larger "brotherhood of lancers" (for lack of a better term) or of like groups. It's not like they had Internet in 1902. Heck, check out http://www.polishfalcons.org/. Not much of an Internet presence for a 120 year old national group. I have no idea if there were (for example) Lancer groups in New Britain, Hartford, Willimantic, etc. I only know that there is only two unique mention of this particular group on the Internet.

Again, the whole point is that it links to the Uhlan article, then the Polish section of the article directly. Not everyone that views pages is an editor/knowledgeable about wikipedia and (just like I add in References sections to pages without them to make it easier on novice editors) this is the sort of thing that makes it easier on novices readers.

I'm not from the Middletown area, I'm from the Bridgeport area, (and I'm not *that* old!) so my knowledge about this particular group's history is far from encyclopedic other than understanding how Polish-American organizations (White Eagles & Falcons especially) function, and about a few predecessor groups in my own area.

I'm saying that putting "society" in instead of "order" is kind of like saying "The United States and Commonwealths of America" -- is it a true statement? Well, yes. But is it a name that's ever used? No. (There are, after all, 46 states and 4 commonwealths, not 50 states.)

As for what their "real" name in Polish was, I would have no way to know that -- though I did scrounge a few search engines. Perhaps user:WlaKom would be of help here, but my *best* guess would be "Ułani Sv. Kazimierz", but there are a few other possibilities. This is when someone with access to the local library or historical society would really help. Best, Markvs88 (talk) 15:30, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Then it seems we should rely upon the source which says what the name of the local organization is. --doncram 18:01, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, which I've been pointing out is this one. Best, Markvs88 (talk) 18:43, 17 February 2011 (UTC)