Talk:Ragamuffin War

[untitled section]

I've been working on the English a bit. I don't know much about the subject, so I'm trying to be careful about my revisions. Hopefully I've made the writing clearer without losing any of the meaning. Everyking 03:07, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Strange banner they have -- it looks exactly like the modern German flag. --Saforrest 15:22, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

The top color is green - can't tell from that picture, though.--Uac1530 07:32, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Recent Edits (Oct/06)

There has been some recent edits on this article that IMHO, are deviating a well-written and potential good article to a coloquial/unencyclopedic format. I think we should revise these edits. --Pinnecco 08:55, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

War of the Ragamuffins

I have moved the name of this article to "War of the Ragamuffins" (Guerra dos Farrapos) as it is the most used name in English for the rebellion (see: [1]). --Lecen (talk) 00:48, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

This whole attempt of translating the word Farrapos is getting silly. I suggest making a small section explaining the meaning of the word Farrapo, and keeping it the title "War of the Farrapos" --Pinnecco (talk) 09:28, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

"farrapo" means "rag"; "raggamuffin" has a completely different connotation - its Wiktionary entry describes it, basically, as a "poor little sorry thing." Despite having been used by other authors or translators, the word is clearly incompatible with the idea "farrapos" carries. Having the word acquired a meaning of its own when used to refer to this war or some of the people who took part in it, I agree we should leave it as "Farrapos" and I am making the change. --I. N. Keller (talk) 14:49, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

I am not autoconfirmed, so please move this page if you are able to and make "War of the Ragamuffins" redirect to "War of the Farrapos." --I. N. Keller (talk) 15:02, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

I have moved the article back to where it was. Please open a RM discussion before moving it again. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:21, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm reverting Lecen's reversion. It might be common to make that sort of translation in Portuguese, but not in English. We call it "Storming of the Bastille", not "Storming of the Fortress." --I. N. Keller (talk) 00:28, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

I can live with "War of the Rags", but "Ragamuffin" is inconceivable. Wordnet defines it as "a dirty shabbily clothed urchin", and an "urchin" as a "poor and often mischievous city child." How do you make the leap from that to "cattle-raising rural warrior?" --I. N. Keller (talk) 00:43, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

It's not a matter of what you can or not live with. "War of the Ragamuffins", that is, the name in English most used by English sources has 21,100 results on Google books.[2] "War of the Farrapos" has 2,070 results.[3]. --Lecen (talk) 01:25, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

You aren't exactly right. You need to search with quotes because Google is returning every book that containing all four words whether they are related to this or not. Searching for "war of the ragamuffins" with quotes gives us 126 results. Searching for "war of the farrapos" gives us 381 results. AniMate 01:53, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

If it's useful, Britannica calls it "Guerra dos Farrapos" and translates it parenthetically as "war of the ragged ones." See here. Also, JSTOR has 0 hits for "war of the ragamuffins," 4 for "war of the farrapos," and 22 (all in English) for "guerra dos farrapos." This seems to me to say that the article ought to be called "Guerra dos farrapos" since it seems to be the common name in English. Other possibilities are "Farrapos war" (here is the gbooks search on that, restricted to books in English, with 172 hits (although that's misleading, because some of them are for index entries like "Farrapos, war of the." "Farrapos war" gets only 3 hits in JSTOR. Is there a good reason not to use the Portuguese name, since that seems to also be the WP:COMMONNAME?— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 03:55, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

I actually get 31 JSTOR (total) hits for "guerra dos farrapos" but indeed 0 for "war of the ragamuffins". I suspect you only counted those in English-titled publications, but some of the articles in Revista de Historia de América (like Thomas Whigham's) are actually in English, so 22 is probably an under-estimate. Tijfo098 (talk) 06:44, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Some advice from WP:TITLE: On the English Wikipedia, article titles are written using the English language. However, it must be remembered that the English language contains many loan words and phrases taken from other languages. If a word or phrase (originally taken from some other language) is commonly used by English language sources, it can be considered to be an English language word or phrase (example: Coup d'état).— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 04:03, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

It doesn't make sense to call it "Guerra dos Farrapos". This is the Wikipedia in English. The name used on Featured Articles like Empire of Brazil and Luís Alves de Lima e Silva, Duke of Caxias is "War of the Ragamuffins". That's the name widely accepted and I can not understand, even though I'm Brazilian and I'm a native Portuguese speaker, to call this Brazilian rebellion by its Portuguese name. --Lecen (talk) 05:04, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

But 30 hits on google scholar for "Guerra dos Farrapos" in English language articles and only one for "War of the Ragamuffins." This really does seem to be what it's called in English. Compare Cinco de Mayo, Revolta da Armada, and so on.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 05:38, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I'm sorry but what other Wikipedia articles call it is irrelevant. They are not WP:RS. The arguments by Animate and Alf.laylah.wa.laylah above are compelling that the current title is not following policy because it's clearly less common than several alternatives in WP:RS. I'm not sure just yet which of those variations should be adopted, but the one thing that is clear is that "farrapos" should appear in it, not "ragamuffins". Tijfo098 (talk) 05:44, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

How about Cabanada, Balaiada, Intentona de Yauco?— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 06:03, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Even "Farroupilha Revolt" has more exact GB hits (254) than the current title (123). But it's not really common on JSTOR (only 4 hits). Tijfo098 (talk) 06:13, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

By the way, did anyone notice that the number of estimated and actual GB hits, even for the exact phrase, varies dramatically? If I click on the 2nd page for "War of the Ragamuffins" in GB, it turns out there are only 14 hits in total instead of hundreds. So the 1st page estimate in GB seems to be very misleading, although comparisons still seem valid as long as the estimate is used uniformly, e.g. "Farroupilha Revolt" returns 20 real hits. In contrast "Guerra dos Farrapos" goes on for 10 pages (I thing GB stops after that) so there are at least 100 real hits; granted, some of those are not in English. Tijfo098 (talk) 06:26, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

I've also searched Google Scholar. "War of the Farrapos" has 22 hits while "War of the Ragamuffins" only 1. "Farroupilha Revolt" has 44 hits in GS however! Tijfo098 (talk) 07:09, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

In my opinion it should be called 'War of the Farrapos'. The body of the text can explain the definition of the word farrapos as 1. 'tatters' and 2. ragamufins. In fact I was the one who started this article originally and decided to named it 'War of Tatters'. In hindsight I wouldn't try to translate the title. It was a STUPID idea, and I was young :) --Pinnecco (talk) 10:38, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your input. To me, it doesn't matter at all whether some writers or translators call it "Ragamuffins" (and it seems now very few do). The word is completely incompatible with the idea expressed by "Farrapos" and I believe that's an editorial decision we can make together. Wikipedia is not simply a copy-and-paste from the sources. The infamous "The Beatles vs. the Beatles" brouhaha is a good example of how the number of occurrences in other sources is not necessarily relevant. It's even less so in this case since the overwhelming majority of books dealing with the subject are written in Portuguese and its translations (as well as the translating skills of English-speaking authors themselves) are of unknown quality. Anyone who's familiar with translations knows bad ones are very common. I've read some widely read translations of Marx to Portuguese that I can only describe as excruciating. I see no reason why Wikipedia should borrow shabbiness just because it's available in printed form.

You are also ignoring that many sources might use more than one variant. They might use "Guerra dos Farrapos" in the title but refer to the "Farrapos War" in the text. Authors of history books like a little variety and there are also fluency and brevity issues to take into account. For that and many technical reasons, those search engine statistics are meaningless. --I. N. Keller (talk) 16:31, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

It might not matter to you what anyone calls it, but if you want to get the name changed it's going to matter. Page titles are based on the most common name in English and search engines and uses in reliable sources are how we figure out what that is. Your point about variants is well taken, though. Does someone want to make a proposal for what the name should be and we can support or oppose it?— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 16:49, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Proposals for name

Two terms are used interchangeably to refer to the war in Portuguese: "Guerra dos Farrapos" and "Revolução Farroupilha". Both seem to be equally common, but when mentioning the holiday and the weeklong commemoration people talk about the "feriado da Revolução Farroupilha (holiday of the 'Farroupilhan' Revolution)" and the "Semana Farroupilha ('Farroupilhan' Week)". In the American Revolution article, "revolution" is used to refer to the political movement and "war" to refer to the military event, but we would need to expand the article in order to split this one that way.

Revolução Farroupilha cannot be translated as "Farroupilha Revolution", only as "Farroupilhan Revolution", which is really weird (a good enough reason not to do it, in my view). So I suggest we use "Revolução Farroupilha", in the same fashion as "Cinco de Mayo". Since we don't have separate articles for the politics and the armed conflict, I believe we should go with the most encompassing one, and that is one that refers to the revolution. --I. N. Keller (talk) 17:54, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

This is very reasonable. On the other hand "Revolução Farroupilha" doesn't seem to be used as much in English as "Guerra dos Farrapos" does; e.g. 3 hits on JSTOR and 9 on google scholar, of which only two are actually using the phrase in the English text as opposed to in citations. I think in terms of the common name in English we'd be better off with "Guerra dos Farrapos".— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 18:09, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm fine with either. I note the Portuguese Wikipedia also uses "Guerra dos Farrapos". I'll now wait for the other opinions. --I. N. Keller (talk) 18:33, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

I think "War of the Farrapos" makes the most sense for the English Wikipedia. It appears to be used the most in English sources. AniMate 21:10, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

(I found this debate via user talk pages) Just making a comment. We should use the most frequent name in English-language sources. If those sources use a Portuguese name, then we should use the Portuguese name and not a translation of the name. --Enric Naval (talk) 14:06, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

The name "Farroupilha Revolt" seems to be more common in English-language sources. Kanguole 10:32, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Common Sense, Please

From Wikipedia:Article_titles:

(...) the ideal article title resembles titles for similar articles, precisely identifies the subject, and is short, natural, and recognizable.

The current article title is neither recognizable nor natural. People familiar with the topic would be clueless upon hearing it, and no one would likely search for it. It is also, obviously, not precise.

The most common name for a subject,[3] as determined by its prevalence in reliable English-language sources, is often used as a title because it is recognizable and natural. Editors should also consider the criteria outlined above. Ambiguous[4] or inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined in reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources.

This speaks to my point about how, in this case, the name most commonly used in English-language sources is not necessarily relevant (and is not the current one, either way). The article also warns that: "Search engine results are subject to certain biases and technical limitations; for detailed advice on the use of search engines and the interpretation of their results, see Wikipedia:Search engine test."

When there is no single obvious term that is obviously the most frequently used for the topic, as used by a significant majority of reliable English language sources, editors should reach a consensus as to which title is best by considering the criteria listed above. (...) If there are too few reliable English-language sources to constitute an established usage, follow the conventions of the language appropriate to the subject (German for German politicians, Portuguese for Brazilian towns, and so on).

Again, this is what I have argued from the beginning; namely, that we, the editors, should reach a consensus. The most frequently used term is not obvious. I think we have also established that there are few reliable English-language sources, not to mention the research into those was inconclusive and some of the results inadequate.

If there is no established English-language treatment for a name, translate it if this can be done without loss of accuracy and with greater understanding for the English-speaking reader.

"Rafamuffin" is far from established English-language treatment. In fact, it is not even the correct translation of "farrapos" (rags, tatters). User Kudpung correctly pointed out on his talk page that the best translation for "ragamuffin" would be "maltrapilho". We are not talking about mischievous city infants or street dwellers, we are talking about rural warriors who took part in a (failed) revolution. Therefore, the current title is a misinformation to English-speaking readers; it is not only plainly wrong, but also misleading.

And now to the final and most important guideline:

Any potentially controversial proposal to change a title should be advertised at Wikipedia:Requested moves, and consensus reached before any change is made. Debating controversial titles is often unproductive, and there are many other ways to help improve Wikipedia." (...) "While titles for articles are subject to consensus, do not invent names as a means of compromising between opposing points of view. Wikipedia describes current usage but cannot prescribe a particular usage or invent new names.

User Lecen has changed the title at his whim, without discussion. In fact, he ignored attempts to discuss it - that was the reason I entered the edit war he started (I know all about why you hate them, and I did it on purpose). Instead of discussing it, he started an edit war, and reported me to the Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents when, if any reporting were to be done, it should have been to the conflict resolution pages.

Can we now finally name it either "Revolução Farroupilha" or "Farroupilha Revolution" (the only sensible titles) with "Guerra dos Farrapos" and "War of the Farrapos" redirecting here and anything with "ragamuffin" in it being sent to the limbo? Or do we have to wait for more edit wars and vandalism with multiple accounts and proxies?I. N. Keller (talk) 06:07, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

I don't agree that English language sources provide inadequate guidance. There is substantial usage of "Farroupilha Revolution" ([4][5]), "Farroupilha Revolt" ([6][7]) and "War of the Farrapos" ([8][9]). Any of those would be suitable. Kanguole 07:48, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

I see no reason to use "revolt" when the most accurate translation is "revolution"; you're not likely to hear anyone talk about the "Revolta Farroupilha." We use the term "revolta" (revolt) to refer some events in Brazilian history, and the term "revolution" to refer others. The latter is the case here.

Most of the results of your searches come from abstracts in English of academic papers written in Portuguese. I am familiar with Brazilian academic papers and I can assure you the foreign language abstracts are most often of very low quality.

Concerning "War of the Farrapos", most of the results don't actually contain it and, if you look in the second page of results, you'll see that in one instance "Revolução Farroupilha" is used and "War of the Farrapos" appears in parenthesis next to it.

I appreciate your input, and I don't want to be rude to you, but it's disappointing that you chose to ignore all the points I made above and bring back the numbers at the top of a search engine's results page without even bothering to go through the actual results - had you done that, you would have realised that most of the results aren't actually English-language sources, but mere abstracts, and I even suspect some are automatic translations.I. N. Keller (talk) 08:41, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

It's true that most of the Scholar links are translated abstracts, so I've struck them, but the Books links do seem to be English language sources that use these terms. Kanguole 08:53, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

It is great to see that you are all having fun guessing what is the most appropriate name for this article. I only wish someone would have interest to actually improve this article, instead of wasting time with nonsense. Having said that, I'd like to remember that "War of the Ragamuffins" is the etablished name, used on several Featured Articles about the Brazilian imperial era, such as Empire of Brazil and Luís Alves de Lima e Silva, Duke of Caxias. There is a group of editors who share the itnerest on this subject who are gathered at the Empire of Brazil task force. Thus, I'd like to warn you all that I will oppose any change of name and the others will do the same. You should be trying to improve the article, not discussing the name. Be useful for a change. --Lecen (talk) 11:28, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Do I need to remind you who changed the name of the article to begin with? "War of the Ragamuffins" is *not* the established name, and repeating that indefinitely is not going to make it true. Not *one* of the people who bothered to come here and take part in the discussion agrees with you. Where are all those people you talk about? Why aren't they discussing the article title as the Wikipedia guidelines demand?I. N. Keller (talk) 00:02, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

U haz gnu {{minnow}}. Kindly stop being a disruptive littlun. Br'er Rabbit (talk) 09:12, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Who is being disruptive? The article owner above coined a term and insists it is the most widely used one, even though it has been shown not to be. And speak English, please, we're not 5 year-olds.I. N. Keller (talk) 20:54, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

eye iz only twelve years old. /sorry/. Br'er Rabbit (talk) 21:21, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Screw this, you win. Keep your pathetic article title. Fits well with the rest of Wikipedia. Bye. I. N. Keller (talk) 21:03, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Buh-bye. Br'er Rabbit (talk) 21:21, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Whatever this article ends up being called, it's *not* going to be "War of the Ragamuffins." No English language sources call it that. Br'er Rabbit, you may be right that the move wasn't noncontroversial, but there is *clearly* consensus on this page that "War of the Ragamuffins" is the wrong title. Comparing people to characters out of Lord of the Flies is not helpful. It's too bad you didn't use some of your admin juju to figure out what consensus on the page is instead of getting yourself mindlessly entangled without even looking into extracting a consensus from the serious discussion on this page. @Lecen: Can you not see that NO ONE agrees with you about your title? Whatever the title ends up being it's not going to be "War of the Ragamuffins." And whining about how no one's improving the article is silly. People can edit how they want to edit.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 21:14, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

"Whatever this article ends up being called, it's *not* going to be "'War of the Ragamuffins.'" I have two questions to alf laylah wa laylah: 1) What do you know of Brazilian history? 2) What is your interest here? All you want is to change the name of the article and move on or will you actually improve it? I've seen here I. N. Keller claiming that "Ragamuffin" is not a name used by English speaking authors. Meanwhile, alf laylah wa laylah claimed that "No English language sources call it that". Then you should both start reading about the history of my country, Brazil. Here are a few examples:

• "Later in 1835 the most serious revolt of all began — the Farroupilha, or War of the Ragamuffins, in Rio Grande do Sul." Page 43 of Loveman, Brian (1999). For La Patria: Politics and the Armed Forces in Latin America.
• "So-called War of the Ragamuffins in Rio Grande do Sul, 1835-1845." Page 490 of Conrad, Robert Edgar (1994). Children of God's Fire: A Documentary History of Black Slavery in Brazil.
• "A few months before the beginning of the Ragamuffin War." Page 184 of Leitman, Spencer Lewis (1972). Socio-economic roots of the Ragamuffin War: a chapter in early Brazilian history.
• "The inability of the government to conquer the farrapos (ragamuffins), as the rebels were known, was the decisive factor in undermining..." page 187 of Barman, Roderick J. (1988). Brazil: The Forging of a Nation, 1798–1852. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-1437-2
• "More serious was a republican and separatist revolt in the extreme south, in Rio Grande do Sul, the Revolução Farroupilha (Revolution of the Ragamuffins). It began with the seizure of the capital, Porto Alegre, in September 1835..." page 47 of Haring, Clarence H. (1969). Empire in Brazil: a New World Experiment with Monarchy. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. OCLC 310545470

The name "War of the Ragamuffins" is also used in Featured Articles such as Empire of Brazil, Luís Alves de Lima e Silva, Duke of Caxias and a FAC Manuel Marques de Sousa, Count of Porto Alegre. Lastly: "And whining about how no one's improving the article is silly". Alf laylah wa laylah, if you want to be taken serious and be respected in here you should learn manners and hear what the people who actually contribute on these articles have to say, --Lecen (talk) 02:36, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

arbitrary break

First of all, what's used in featured articles is irrelevant. Wikipedia is not a reliable source. Second, of the examples you quote, only two use the word "ragamuffins" in a primary way; the rest use Portuguese along with "ragamuffins" in parentheses. Those hardly support your thesis. As for my motives, they're irrelevant to the discussion. Instead of questioning my motives, why don't you just stick to the topic, which is the title of the article. Finally, what I know about the history of your country is not relevant to the discussion, just as your knowledge of English usage, which favors the adoption of foreign words rather than using surreally misconnotative translations such as "ragamuffins", is not relevant. The only things that are relevant are the opinions of editors as to what the article should be called based on the relevant policies and guidelines of Wikipedia. As you can see up above I've supported my position with large numbers of sources. That's how article titles are decided here.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 03:26, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a reliable source. Then you shouldn't be here. Second, of the examples you quote, only two use the word "ragamuffins" in a primary way; Duh. All books about the history of my country show the name of something in Portuguese (Assembleia Geral, Poder Moderador, Farrapos, etc...) followed by its translation. It's quite obvious that when they mention the Ragamuffin rebellion, they will mention its Portuguese name. Duh. Finally, what I know about the history of your country is not relevant to the discussion. Actually, it is. I don't want to waste time with someone whose knowledge of the subject under dicussion consists solely of taking a quick look at Google books and saying "Oh, my! That's it!" As you can see up above I've supported my position with large numbers of sources. If you want to be taken serious here, you shouldn't rely on q quick search on Google. Now I see that I'm wasting time. Goodbye. --Lecen (talk) 10:39, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

I didn't see this.[10] --Lecen (talk) 11:53, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Regarding the reliability of Wikipedia: Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a reliable source. I don't how you can think that what other articles do matters for this one. Those ones could be wrong too, but in any case, the question of the name of the article relies on different criteria. Also, the Mexican Revolution is called the Mexican Revolution in English. Never Revolucion Mexicana (Mexican Revolution). If they use the Portuguese outside of parens and ragamuffins inside parens, then ragamuffins isn't in the real name. Also, look at my sources. I didn't look in google, I looked in JSTOR, google scholar, google books, Galegroup, and other databases. I eliminated false positives and duplicates. If you want to be taken seriously here, you should stop asserting the fact that you know more than other editors and stop dismissing their arguments based on your presumptions about their knowledge. No one knows whether you know anything or not about anything and the same is true with me.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 15:49, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Requested move

War of the Ragamuffins → Farroupilha Revolution – Per the discussion at the previous sections Cambalachero (talk) 16:02, 16 September 2012 (UTC)