Talk:Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

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Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was a good article nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these are addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Reviewed version: September 5, 2006


[edit] Recent series of edits II

This series of edits is a mixed bag. In some cases there does seem to be some improvement, but in others the effect is to degrade the grammar, introduce inaccuracy, or dumb down the language. Do we need to start sentences with conjunctions like the word "but"? Is the stand alone sentence "The truth, however, lies elsewhere?" a proper paragraph, or ought it not complete the thought of the paragraph above it? Should we really be changing the words in a direct quote from an english language source? Is the sentence structure created by the word "thereby" really too advanced for readers? I am not fond of the use of bullet points in this context either.Werchovsky (talk) 07:55, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree with some of what you say. Quotes, for example, shouldn't be tampered with, and stylistically it's weak in places. That said, however, I see this overall as a good faith attempt to make the article more accessible. That hasn't been entirely successful as the balance – between how it was and how it now is – is not yet quite right. Your example apart, most of the paragraphs are now too short, making the article choppy and staccato. I personally have no particular problem with bullet points, though I tend to use them sparingly myself, if they clarify and speed up the flow of reading of complicated material. The answer is probably a further copy-edit by another uninvolved editor, thus preserving the best of both. It's also very good to see new editors involving themselves in the subject. --ROGER DAVIES talk 08:55, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
On going back and rereading it I have to agree that it is too choppy at this point and I'd probably be inclined to recombine a few of those short paragraphs into somewhat larger ones. I wouldn't be inclined to get them back to anywhere near as large as they were; at least not yet. My opinion might change some more over the next day or two. :-) Loren.wilton (talk) 09:37, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the explanation. --ROGER DAVIES talk 16:38, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
I am certainly open to discussion on various points. It is said that in German you can write a novel in a single sentence and a word can span an entire page of text. English is not that bad, but there were novels written a century ago that had single sentences spanning more than a page. They were very difficult to read at the time with all of the subordinate clauses, and they are essentially completely unreadable today.
A modern "rule of thumb" for English is that a sentence shold not contain more than 15 words. I clearly don't subscribe to this myself; if I turn on grammar checking in Word it will flag virtually every sentence as being too long and having too many clauses, this sentence being a case in point. But while I will use moderately long sentences and multiple clauses of various sorts, I tend to draw the line at sentences where I start having to make tickmarks to divide up the sections, then put in nested parends, and finally join up the main clauses to find out what the very simple sentence actually meant after the extra clauses were removed. And once I've spent 30 seconds diagramming the sentence, I now know what I could have discovered at reading speed if the sentence had been broken up into smaller fragments (or in many cases, the subordinate clauses simply removed).
I did not want to eliminate any information while adjusting things. So in many cases where, in text of my own, I would have wholesale tossed out information, here I carefully kept it. But while keeping the informaiton I still wanted to get the sentence structure to the point that I didn't need to put tickmarks on the page to sort out the clauses. Sometimes I could do this by pulling the last few words up and putting them with the first few, making the main concept, and then put the remaining clauses in subsequent sentences. Sometimes I could do it by putting in the tickmarks permanently in the form of commas. Sometimes I had to use parends or semicolons to try to divide things up when there were already too many commas in second or third-level clauses in the sentences, and I was not happy about doing that. In a very few cases, the only thing I could come up with was the bulleted lists. I don't like them. But I couldn't come up with any other way to both preserve all of the information and make the result moderately clear without repeated re-reading to sort out the clauses.
I strongly considered taking many of the clauses and bracketing them in 'ref' tags to turn them into footnotes. But I didn't want to do that until I had the thing broken up a bit and still in linear order. I think it would be useful to do in a number of places though.
Some of the results I came up with are not as grammatical as I would like, such as those single-sentence paragraphs. However, a paragraph is generally supposed to encompass a single concept, and the single sentences did not fit comfortably with either the preceeding nor following sentences. This could perhaps be fixed by wholesale rearrangement in a few places, or by simply dropping the stub sentence. Again though, I was trying very hard to not rearrange at larger than the single-sentence level, and trying to not remove any information. (In the specific case you mention I tried that sentence both ways, and was unhappy with both. It ended up the way it dod because I couldn't convince myself that it really belonged on the end of the preceeding paragraph. There is at least one other case that suffered the same fate.)
I did in a few cases change a word ot two in either obviously quoted text, or text where there seemed to be several levels of quoting going on, and I could not tell with certainty where the bounds were of the quotation. I had been assuming that these quotations had been transliterated from a middle-European language, and that in some cases the wrong English word had ben chosen for the original-language word. If indeed these were English-language quotations, then my changes to them need to be reverted. Loren.wilton (talk) 09:21, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you for the cleanup; can we compromise in a few places?

I am indenting your replies, so that as necessary I can thread mine underneath and they do not get lost in the mass of text. Loren.wilton (talk) 04:02, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you Werchovsky for reducing the chop in my last series of edits and removing the errors I had unintentionally introduced. I feel that the article is now better than it was after my edits, and also before my edits. In general paragraphs seem to be of reasonable length and not choppy, and the sentences are mostly of reasonable length too.

There are a few places that I would like to see changed to somewhat of a compromise between what I had done and what you have there now. Rather than changing them I want to list them here and see if I can get your agreement. I will include reasons why I want them changed.

In the opening section, I would like to split the lead paragraph at "The political objective". If that were done, the first paragraph would describe WHAT was done, the second would describe WHY it was done, and the final paragraph of course describes the result of the actions.

In a theoretical way I agree with what you are saying. I think we need to add some additional sentences to flesh out each of these three proposed paragraphs. The opening was left short in part because this is a controversial topic. Let me give this some serious thought.Werchovsky (talk) 17:35, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
I agree that a little more text would be desirable, but I think only a little. The lead should concisely describe what the article is about, and leave the details for the article itself. But I still think splitting the existing paragraph, even without more text, would be worthwhile. Loren.wilton (talk) 04:02, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

The sentence "The attackers threw the corpses of King Alexander Obrenović and Queen Draga, out of a palace window ending any threat that loyalists would mount a counter attack." I believe should be changed to "The attackers threw the corpses of King Alexander Obrenović and Queen Draga out of a palace window, ending any threat that loyalists would mount a counter attack." There is no reason for a comma before the 'and'. There are really two complete thoughts in this sentence: "The attackers threw them out the window", and "doing so ended the threat". Those ideas could be two sentences, but if they are one, I believe there should be a comma to break the flow between the separate parts.

I agree that the comma deletion and addition.Werchovsky (talk) 17:35, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
I made this edit. Loren.wilton (talk) 02:43, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

I am still really unhappy with the clause (and its subclause): "the Bosnian crisis of 1908 where Serbia assumed an attitude of protest over Austria-Hungary's annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina ending in a Serbian climb-down in March 1909". This is long enough to be a sentence by itself, and the subclause makes it quite difficult reading, since there is yet another clause following this at this same level. Could we either simplify the wording "assumed an attitude of protest over" into "protested", or eliminate the actually completely irrelevent subclause of "ending in a Serbian climb-down in March 1909"? I would favor the later change over the former. But either of them would greatly improve the readability here. (And in the last sentence of the paragraph, I believe there should be a comma after 'Kosovo'.)

On reflection, now that we have a good link for the Bosnian crisis, I think we can delete "ending in a Serbian climb-down in March 1909" but we should change to "the Bosnian crisis of 1908-1909...." I don't think this sentence structure is too complicated for college level reading, but the detail is no longer required because of the link. Yes, the comma you mention is needed.Werchovsky (talk) 17:35, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
I agree with your changes. As a side thought: American newspapers were traditionally targeted at an 8th-grade (pre-highschool) reading level, so that they would be accessable to the largest reasonable set of probable readers. Wikipedia is commonly used as a reference these days in schoolwork for both upper gradeschool and highschool. I contend therefore that we really should be targeting a highschool reading level and not a college reading level. (Besides, most Americans no longer have a college reading level, even when entering college.) Loren.wilton (talk) 04:02, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
I made this edit, I think as you suggest -- please check. Loren.wilton (talk) 02:43, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

The first sentence of the next paragraph is also problematic. There are enough separate clauses here for several sentences. The full and complete meaning of this sentence is given in the first two clauses: "Serbia's military successes and Serbian outrage over the Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina emboldened nationalistic elements." Next we have a description of where these nationalistic elements lived: "in Serbia and in Austria-Hungary." Next we discover that these aren't merely "nationalistic" Serbs, but they are "nationalistic Serbs who chafed under Magyar rule." But wait, there's more! Not only do they chafe under Magyar rule, but their "sentiments were stirred by Serbian "cultural" organizations." There HAS to be a better way of conveying this information than piling it all into one sentence, clause upon clause until you wonder if they will ever stop coming. If I had my choice, I would toss out everything except the first part of the sentence. Knowing that these elements are nationalistic Serbs is really sufficient for the understanding of what follows. If that is not deemed sufficient, then perhaps the concepts could be introduced front to back rather than back to front:

I had this sentence checked by a professor of history who has written several scholarly history books and whose grammar is excellent. The sentence has already been modified to what he recommended. We can't have the sentence just end with "emboldened nationalistic elements." with the reader left to guess whether these are Austrian, Magyar, Croatian, Serbian, or Austro-Hungarian Serbs. As it stands, the sub-clauses are simply enough arranged.Werchovsky (talk) 17:35, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
I will still contend that this sentence is overly complex, and would be marked down by the English instructor if this showed up in student work in the US, even in a college English course. (And even more difficult for a highschool reader who has been given an assignment on this topic.) There should be a concise way to introduce the same information. Please think if there is any other way this same information could be conveyed. Loren.wilton (talk) 04:02, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

There were Serbian nationalistic elements living in both Serbia and Austria-Hungary who chafed under Magyar rule. Their nationalistic sentiments had been aroused by various Serbian "cultural" organizations that operated for this purpose. The Serbian military successes, and outrage over the Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina emboldened these groups.

This won't do at all. Serbs in Serbia were not under Magyar rule.Werchovsky (talk) 17:35, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Also in the same paragraph, it is my belief that an em dash should have spaces before and after, not be attached to the words on either side of it.

This is the first time I used em dashes. I just tried to copy what Roger Davies had done at another point in the article. Perhaps he can asnwer this question.Werchovsky (talk) 17:35, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
Dashes are explained in WP:MOSDASH, the section of the Manual of Style pertaining to dashes. The choice is spaced endashes or unspaced emdashes. I prefer the former but occasionally use the latter. Hope this helps, --ROGER DAVIES talk 19:32, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

In the section "Franz Ferdinand chosen", the opening sentence of the first paragraph: "Mehmedbašić was delayed" makes little sense by itself. I think it is logically part of the preceeding paragraph; but it also needs to be here. If you are simply scanning the article looking down by section headings, you read this sentence, and the first thought is "Delayed? Delayed at what? Why does it matter that he was delayed? How long was this delay?" It rases more questions than it answers. To clear this up we need to show "delayed at doing what?" This requires duplicating a little information from the preceeding paragraph to make this new "entry point into the story" stand on its own.

I see what you are saying. The section headings were inserted after much of the article was written. The right way to go might be to add something about the nature of the delay. What happened was that, on his way to Bosnia-Herzegovina from France, police searched his train for a thief. Thinking the police might be after him, Mehmedbašić threw his weapons (a dagger and a bottle of poison) out the train window. Once he arrived in Bosnia-Herzegovina he set about looking for weapons. He may have eventually got hold of a revolver in Stolac, but before he could act against Potiorek he received new orders from Ilic. This is really quite a side track from the main story, so I am not sure what to do. Let's each give it some thought.Werchovsky (talk) 17:35, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
I might suggest something along the lines of "Mehmedbašić was delayed on his trip from France to Serbia when he was forced to throw his weapons from the train, and later lost time acquiring new ones." Your whole explanation is quite interesting, and I might be inclined to include it as a paragraph by itself in place of the existing sentence, or I might be inclined to include it as a footnote with something like the sentence I suggest above. You could object that the sentence as I have worded it is misleading; and in detail it is. But as you point out, it is irrelevent detail, and it is not actually incorrect in its statements, merely incomplete. Loren.wilton (talk) 04:02, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
I have added a paragraph to the end of the previous section describing the trip and loss of weapons basically as you describe it above. I then reworded the first couple sentences of the lead paragraph here to both flow from the preceeding paragraph, and to an extent stand on its own if the reader starts at the section heading. Please check this and see if it meets your approval. Loren.wilton (talk) 02:43, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

The sentence "On the morning of May 30 Prvanović's revenue sergeants assembled and Sergeant Budivoj Grbić accepted the task and led Princip and Grabež with the weapons by foot to Isaković’s Island, a small island in the middle of the Drina River that separated Serbia from Bosnia, on May 31." should not start and end in dates. We have two dates and many actions between them. Which actions happened on which day? We can only guess or rest in confusion. This could perhaps be refactored into:

On the morning of May 30 Prvanović's revenue sergeants assembled and Sergeant Budivoj Grbić accepted the task of leading Princip and Grabež into Serbia. On May 31 Grbić led them, with their weapons, by foot to Isaković’s Island, a small island in the middle of the Drina River that separated Serbia from Bosnia.

Instead, let's break the sentence up with a period after Bosnia, and then "They reached the island on May 31."Werchovsky (talk) 17:35, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
Done. Loren.wilton (talk) 02:43, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

At "Cubrilović stated to the court", could we turn the ensuing quote (which I think is the remainder of the paragraph) into a block quote? If it is not the full paragraph, then there seems to be at least one missing quotation mark, as I can not tell where "If you know..." ends.

I just went ahead and fixed this. I need to double check against Owings though, and make sure the transcript used quotation marks. I might have to change this again, but at least now it makes sense.Werchovsky (talk) 17:35, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
Thank you. Loren.wilton (talk) 04:02, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Something should be done with "Cabrinović though began placing some blame on people in Serbia and". A comma after Serbia, perhaps. Or two sentences?

Thanks for catching this. I went ahead and broke up the sentence. Splicing these two thoughts together was an especially bad idea as the causal relationship is not that firm. Its better to just use the juxtaposition to imply partial causality.Werchovsky (talk) 17:35, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for considering the above. Loren.wilton (talk) 06:32, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

This was very helpful. As you may have already concluded, this article is very dear to me and I have put much effort into researching, writing, and footnoting it. I appreciate your help. Let me make an additional explanation. Details of the assassination were and continues to be highly controversial and the witnesses to the events often lied. The authors with the most access to the primary documents tend to be biased. For these reasons, in many places, it was not possible to write the article in as straight forward a manner as I would have liked (if you read this section in Albertini, for example regarding the newspaper clipping, you will find he was a bit roundabout too), and this sometimes led to complicated prose.Werchovsky (talk) 17:35, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
This is very interesting information. As you have probably deduced, this is not an area where I have any great familiarity, merely an interest. So I am not inherently aware of details like this, and they are important. I think I would be inclined to use this as an introductory paragraph very early in the article. If you had not written this, I was going to suggest that many places in the article could be simplified by changing "According to Xxx, Joe then had lunch" to simply "Joe had lunch" on the basis that after 100 years none of this could be contentious, and exactly where the information came from is uninteresting. It appears though that that may not be the case. Knowing that details are contentious and why they are contentious is I think a very important part of the story, and makes much of the rest of the article style much more understandable. Loren.wilton (talk) 04:02, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Image removed

From the patch history: Deleted image removed:

Image:Sarajevo l Monument to Gavrilo Princip l 1986.JPG
The old original plaque of the location of the assassination. The city government removed it after the Bosnian War

It looks like someone removed the image of the original plaque, and then the bot removed the dead link. I don't know if this was another 'fair use' thing or some random vandal removed the image, but it did contribute to the article. Maybe the origial uploader can figure out what happened. Loren.wilton (talk) 17:38, 12 March 2008 (UTC)