Talk:Empire Defense Council

Choice of title

In translating the article from the French Conseil de défense de l'Empire, I considered various options for the title, and ended up choosing Empire Defense Council based on article title policy, including especially WP:COMMONNAME. In checking usage in English sources, there were at least six different variants, but three stood out: Empire Defense Council, Council of Defense of the Empire, and Council for the Defense of the Empire. (There were other variations, especially with different placement or presence of prepositions, such as Council of Defense for the French Empire, and others.) There were also a certain number that used the original French name in English sources, italicized. (In tallying results, I counted the AE/BE variants Defence and Defense as separate hits for the same item, so that orthography wouldn't splinter support for what was otherwise the same choice. In addition simple search result counts cannot be used; you have to actually examine the results; otherwise, the French title would win, as nearly all sources explain where the English term comes from, either in running text or in a footnote, but do not call it by the French name.) It was a close call, but Empire Defense Council seemed to be the leader in reliable sources in English. With regard to capitalization, I followed the usage in most reliable sources in English, which use title case. The three most common variants were added as redirects. Mathglot (talk) 01:59, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Rewrite needed

This article started off as a translation of Conseil de défense de l'Empire. The original article was far from perfect, with awkward phraseology, unsupported assertions, and an unclear organization of content, imho. In order not to muddy the waters by translating and altering at the same time, I just did a faithful translation to start out, which means the English article now reflects all the weaknesses of the original. A rewrite would be welcome, with new organizational structure, better narrative, and stricter attention to sourcing with reliable references. I've started on the last point first; the original only has three refs, and we're already up to seven, but more are needed. As more references are added, the priority will start to shift from making sure verifiability is up to snuff, to the other weaknesses; meanwhile, if anyone wants to think about restructuring and rewriting, I'm all for it. Mathglot (talk) 20:36, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

this is my own process as well -- translate first then edit. Elinruby (talk) 19:28, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

things to get to

I don't have time to deep dive just now, though you are right, this parallels some previous work of mine. Putting things that I don't have time to fix here as not to myself or others.

Leadership section

• "naval captain"?? does he have a name?
• ditto, what's up with the general pratitioner? Elinruby (talk) 19:17, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

lede

• "French National Committee" has an untranslated French page. Probably reasonable to link to Free France, for now, but there was an actual entity and French is nothing if not bureaucratic Elinruby (talk) 19:27, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

Colonies

• there is an untild story here. One thing I notice while skimming related articles, is that French India (which I had not realized existed) actually initially considered that the Vichy government was the legitimate one, until the British ambassador explained that this meant that the British would have to invaded. I believe that was in the French India article. But there is also a great deal that happned in African amongst the colonies of the various powers that isn't currently well documented in Wikipedia Elinruby (talk) 20:19, 5 June 2020 (UTC)