Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth title conventions [solved]

While there are guidelines in place to make the coin entries as uniformly as possible throughout the catalog, there are still some unique quirks in single issuers (i.e. referees). I don't mind most of them. Some are a bit unnecessary in my opinion, like all older Hungarian coins having the reign range of the ruler in the title. (Example where it doesn't even match the database range to the right).

But one thing really bothered me a long time and I want to challenge that finally. And that are the titles of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth coins. I think you can only understand the denomination when you can speak Polish. I mean, what is this title?

Every time I look into these coins, I have to sort them by denomination and look at the weight of the coin to know how many Ducats they are (and sometimes still have to do a Polish crash course). While I know that the Ducat amount is listed in the value section on the coin page, I still don't know why the title can't just be "5 Ducats" (in this instance for example).

Can someone explain that to me?

Ah the Kopicki guy ... good luck!

Have you tried editing them? At least then if your edit was refused the referee would have to give a reason which you can then publicize.

I added some coins over time and tried to replicate the quirk a bit. I don't remember if I ever just wrote 6 when I didn't want to see what it's called in Polish.
But the name always got "corrected" slightly to fit the current scheme.

As far as I can tell, the current "scheme" is not covered by the guidelines so the referee needs to be put right. Any chance one of the admins will take this on?

A referee for PLC coins made quite a great job to structure the catalog in a way as it is. Yes, it differs from the other countries, but I don't think the referee will agree with an approach that standardization is more important.... Does the topic starter want to take his position?
We've already lost the Referee for Russian coins because of disagreements with some initiatives.... I don't think that the situation shall be repeated because somebody wants to make everything standard

Quote: "Grinya"​A referee for PLC coins made quite a great job to structure the catalog in a way as it is. Yes, it differs from the other countries, but I don't think the referee will agree with an approach that standardization is more important.... Does the topic starter want to take his position?
​We've already lost the Referee for Russian coins because of disagreements with some initiatives.... I don't think that the situation shall be repeated because somebody wants to make everything standard

​As I said, I can see above a lot of quirks of some referees. But I want stuff to be clear and understandable.
And you can't convince me that "Półportugał litewski / Pięciodukat litewski" is a reasonable denomination. It doesn't make clear what kind of coin that is. Maybe when this would be a polish website, but it isn't.
I don't know why Cyrillius left the referee position, but I can't imagine it was about something that banal.

Counter question: You think people should be able to do whatever they want on here (as stupid is it might be), as long as they did a great job in the past?

We must strive for clarity. Therefore, we use numerals rather than words. In this case, "½ Portugał / 5 Dukat" is the proper title. If the referee doesn't understand that, they need to move on. Just creating lots of pages is no good if only a handful of members can understand them. This isn't about standardization, it's about making a website that's useful to the whole collecting community.

As a frequent user of the PLC section who does not speak Polish or any other similar language ...
1. Above all, I want to reinforce @grinya's comment on the overall quality of this section, which in my opinion, too, is one of the best we have in Numista in terms of completeness, and quality of the individual listings. I have seen some comments that the extent of die varieties is a bit over the top, but in my opinion it is better to have more info than less info.

2. As for the titles, yes, we should strive to follow the guidelines, so I tend to agree this specific listing could have been titled 1/2 Portugeiser / 5 Ducats especially since these are foreign (rather than Polish) denominations to begin with (and also so it would make it easier for all of us who have one of these to find it and add it to our collections ). But does this mean we should likewise go into Italy and change the various gold "Ongaros" to "Hungarians"? That would be consistent, but it seems strange to me.

3. Would it help to add a line that relates the denominations to each other as we have for many other issuers? 1 grosz = 2 półgrosz = 3 szelag = 6 ternars = 18 denars = 1/24 thaler. And so on? Rather than go in and edit 900 titles?

@Trooper8, to reply to your counter question - I think that in case people could create such full and great country catalog like Polish in a way differ from the standards approved later, there is no need to do everything uniface but worse.

I agree that possibly Półportugał is too much, but in case you collect such coins, you shall operate with the names like Tympf, Boratinka, Trojak (not 3 Grosze:)) Portugal etc. In case you have Półportugał in your collection you shall understand this name.... Ok, maybe Półportugał / 5 Dukat would be better, but not 5 Dukats only...

Pół means a half, so we should use ½. Not because it complies to a standard but because then far more people will understand it. You can't assume that everyone who is interested in these coins has sufficient knowledge of Polish. A catalogue must be accessible to as wide an audience as possible.

If I put Poland 1/2 grosz into acsearch, I get 310 hits.
If I put Poland polgrosz into acsearch, I get 1,750 hits.
This would make me think a bit about messing with this denomination.

On the other hand, if I go to the larger end of the denomination spectrum, I see that most of the orts in our catalog (14 of 24) are already titled "Ort ... / 18 groszy." We also have some orts in German states with no numerical part of the title.

On PLC szostak types, we are at a lower level, with 15 out of 33 dually titled as Szostak ... / 6 groszy

Seems to me there could be a solution that involves more systematically doing this on some denominations, while honoring that some of the most common denominations are left as is.

For me, this section of the catalogue needs a lot of work, not just in the titles. Just here as an example, a list of catalogue numbers that are not helpful at all + the odd translation of the mint names:
https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces97104.html

I believe that if the Numista guidelines were used, this section would be much easier to navigate. Nicknames can be specified in "" (example):
½ Grosz "Polgrosz"

This would be clear enough for everyone

"...a list of catalogue numbers that are not helpful at all..."
I think this was structured in this manner to allow posting of images for the various catalog numbers, as in this listing: https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces126824.html

When it is a rarer type, I guess the empty list is the result

Quote: "stratocaster"​
​I believe that if the Numista guidelines were used, this section would be much easier to navigate. Nicknames can be specified in "" (example):
​½ Grosz "Polgrosz"
​
​This would be clear enough for everyone

​This is what needs to be done.