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Talk:1917 Łódź City Council election

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Did you know nomination

[edit]

Campaign poster for the 1917 Łódź City Council election
Campaign poster for the 1917 Łódź City Council election
  • ... that whilst socialists got 31% of the votes in the 1917 Łódź City Council election (campaign poster pictured), they only won five seats due to a curiae system implemented by the German authorities?
  • Source: Telma Tadeusz. Pierwsze wybory do Rady Miejskiej m. Łodzi, in Rocznik Łódzki, Vol. 11 (14). Państwowe Wydawnictwu Naukowe, 1966. pp. 134, 138-146, Antoni Goerne. Wybory do Rady Miejskiej w Lodzi w styczniu 1917, in Informator m Lodzi z kalendarzem na rok 1919. pp. 76-83
Moved to mainspace by Soman (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 396 past nominations.

Soman (talk) 11:08, 6 September 2024 (UTC).[reply]

  • I'm not taking on the review, but just leaving a comment, as I'm puzzled. Without context, this may not be hook-notable I believe. The question left unaddressed is five seats out of how many. If it is five seats out of 15, this would seen rather non-notable. 2603:7000:2101:AA00:F804:C954:1D4C:5D11 (talk) 03:51, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • I went back and forth on the wording of the sentence, but with the 200 characters cap it is difficult to get all nuances and factoids included. For me "only five" implies that it is less than proportional, but a rewording could be to replace "five seats" with "8%". --Soman (talk) 10:37, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

General eligibility:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems

Hook eligibility:

Image eligibility:

  • Freely licensed: No - The licensing is incorrect, at issue is not the photograph copyright but the poster itself ({{PD-1923}} in the United States, not sure about Poland)—then you can use {{PD-scan}}
  • Used in article: Yes
  • Clear at 100px: No - all you can see is a number 5
QPQ: Done.

Overall: The article looks mostly fine, but I'm not sure about the hook. Non-proportional electoral systems are typical outside of continental Europe, where proportional representation based systems are more common. First past the post can cause equal amount of distortion. (t · c) buidhe 04:06, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But the hook states that the reasons for the disproportionality is the curiae system, which is arguably something different from FPTP dynamics. The curia system would be very weird present-day, to explicitly discriminate in favour of the wealthiest. There are some alternate takes on the on the hook, like ALT1 "... that while 55% of the voters in the 1917 Łódź City Council election (poster pictured) were working class, they only got 10 out of 60 seats due to a curiae system implemented by the German authorities?" or ALT2 ... that the curiae-based electoral system used by German occupation authorities in the 1917 Łódź City Council election (poster pictured) disproportionally favoured the non-socialist Jewish parties? Now ALT2 would require a bit of a rewrite in article and need another image though. --Soman (talk) 19:23, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding the clarity of image, I selected precisely because it had symbolism that was readable even at 100px. I don't think we'd expect people to read the fine print, but in 100px the number 5 is clearly visible (5 times) and the largest text is readable ('vote for our list'). The designer of the poster wanted that a reader catch the number 5 clearly even from a distance. --Soman (talk) 19:28, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My point is that many electoral systems intentionally or not result in disproportionate seats for certain parties at the expense of others, thus it cannot really be a surprising fact that this particular electoral system has that result. (t · c) buidhe 19:19, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Again, this is not comparable to the issues from FPTP or STV electoral systems. Here was a case where an electoral system was explicitly designed to give a absolute majority to the wealthiest sections of society, with the explicit and publicly stated goal of ensuring a stable conservative majority. Now at the time the principle 1 citizen 1 vote was not universal by any means, but for present-day readers this is certainly something that would raise eyebrows. --Soman (talk) 21:50, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I know a bit about how pre-German Revolution electoral systems worked in Germany (and as you've written here, applied to occupied territories), but the average reader doesn't. So I think if you are going to take that angle, it needs to be more clear in the hook. (t · c) buidhe 22:53, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]