Talk:£sd

Breaking out the origins section

Most of the origins section is historical detail about the Carolingian monetary reform of and its subsequent development in Europe from the 8th to the 19th century when the continent decimalised. It was the level of coverage and detail of Carolingian monetary systems in this section and the lede that led me to change the article title. However, since the title has been restored, the article's focus should be on the British £sd system and its derivatives.

So my proposal is to move the bulk of the origins section to the new article as suggested above and reduce the section here to an overview except where the historical detail relates to the £sd system itself. The section will be headed by the usual main article hatnote. This would also enable the lede to be reduced, addressing one of the tasks in the "multiple issues" hatnote. I am entirely happy for other editors to undertake the work here if anyone wishes to offer to do that. Bermicourt (talk) 16:39, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

I don't understand where you're getting this fantasy that they're different systems. They're the same system. I do regret writing that historical section though, to see you so confused and misusing it like you have. Walrasiad (talk) 08:38, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

This article has been a mess for some time judging by the discussions above and the hatnote about its "multiple issues". And curiously, despite joining the clamour of objections to my recent renaming it to Carolingian monetary system, you yourself suggested in 2011 that it could be called the Carolingian accounting system (see above). Whatever you call them, it's quite clear that there are two topics here worthy of an article: one is the overarching one that covers the history of all instantiations of the Carolingian monetary system and the other is a British and Commonwealth focussed article on what editors are insisting we call £sd, although reliable sources seem to prefer "LSD system". Of course, one is a subset of the other, but such a large subset that it merits a separate article. Much of your excellent historical section is at Carolingian monetary system, allowing both topics to be developed without one dominating the other. So please don't throw out accusations of fantasy, confusion or misuse. Instead, why not improve this article and resolve its multiple issues. I'm willing to help providing that can be done constructively and without personal attacks. Bermicourt (talk) 15:33, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

In case you haven't noticed, I am semi-retired. That means, I have stopped contributing content to Wikipedia. Indeed, I have not contributed content of substance for many years. I learned, after much pain, that in topics of history, it just takes a petty nationalist with only a weak fraction of knowledge and a chip on his shoulder to twist my words to make traps for fools. I kept running into that on Wikipedia, wasting a lot of time and effort dueling stubborn nationalists, so I vowed not to contribute content of substance to Wikipedia again and went into semi-retirement. I breached my self-imposed exile to add a brief historical section here, because the original historical intro was simply very wrong and my corrective comment had sat in this talk page for nearly a decade and nobody took action on it. In retrospect, I regret it. It's obviously not well-written, otherwise it wouldn't have caused such confusion in you. I suppose I could revamp it - content is easy (got plenty of it), but it's simply not worth the drama or disappointment, if even just the basics are not being conveyed or understood. Walrasiad (talk) 05:08, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

I share your frustration with small bands of determined editors with an agenda, but limited understanding. Sometimes that agenda is nationalist, sometimes its enforcing their regional spelling conventions on others, having skewed the rules in their favour. Either way I've felt like you. In this case, though, I simply came across an article with an excellent historical lead-in about the whole breadth of Carolingian monetary systems which then fizzled out into focussing on only one of its numerous examples: the British and Commonwealth coinage system. In my view, the former deserves its own space. I'm not an expert in this field, but I can contribute German translations skills hence the numerous articles on German coinage I've recently created. If this is your area of expertise, I'd be grateful for an eye on those to ensure the translations make correct use of English terminology. Bermicourt (talk) 08:02, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

This is about the monetary accounting system. This is the parent page. There does not need to be another. There's not really anything more to say on the topic than isn't already contained here.

That you insist on inventing some sort of differentiation between "Carolingian" and "British" tells me you have a very poor grasp of the topic, which I blame myself for. That there are £1 = 20s = 240d is not a national thing, it is not different. It is the same. That was the point of the introduction. Obviously that didn't make it across.

Evidently that point didn't make it across during the RM either. You are now trying to fabricate a different parent page, when it already exists here. You are trying to construct a WP:POVFORK.

£sd is the Carolingian monetary system.

This point seems to continue to elude you. It is one and the same thing. "Carolingian monetary system" should re-direct to this page, not some other. That we opted to use "£sd" in the title rather than "Carolingian monetary system" was for recognizability. Do you still not get it? Walrasiad (talk) 16:01, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

Please refrain from continual personal attacks; they add nothing to your argument. I completely understand that, for you, "Carolingian monetary system" = "£sd monetary system". I disagree however that this article is the last word on the topic - otherwise it wouldn't have the hatnote implying that it's a pretty poor piece of work. Even if we assume that there is only one topic, then the article was completely unbalanced because it is clear as crystal that 1:20:240 monetary systems cover every monetary system in the world using that ratio from the time of Charlemagne to now. And yet the bulk of the article is focussed on the British and Commonwealth versions of it. So much so that editors in the discussion above appeared not to know there was anything else. Of course, we could create a better balance by expanding the history and adding subsections for every other monetary system of the type, but that would result in an enormous article. So yes, there is a differentiation between the Carolingian system and the British system; the latter is a subset of the former. As was the French system. And the Italian system. And so on.

As for any fundamental distinction between "Carolingian monetary system" and "£sd monetary system", my reading of the sources is that the former is always used for the whole gamut of systems and never to refer solely to the British system; whereas the latter is frequently used with reference to the British system only, albeit some sources do use it generically as well. Either way, the former is way more common in the sources which means if we are equating them, the former should be the title at this page per WP:COMMONNAME. However, that debate has been had and editors have gone with the familiar instead.

I think we'll have to agree to differ and pull stumps on this one for now. Bermicourt (talk) 18:31, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

You're insisting on the same stubborn error. It is evident either your sources are poor, or you're just not understanding them.

This article is about a specific system of monetary measurement, known popularly as "£sd" - libra, solidus, denarius. It is not British. It was the universal system of measures in western Europe in the pre-modern era. There is no "gamut of systems". It is only one system. There are no national or regional varieties of it. It was universal - the ratio is £1 = 20s = 240d everywhere.

There is no version in "France" or "Italy" or whatever other nationalist nonsense you're imagining. It is the same system across countries. Sure, different languages may use different terms. French-speakers will use the term "livre" - but that is not a specific reference to French crown currency but the French language term used to refer to all pound units - to English pounds, Milanese pounds, Bavarian pounds, etc. All are pounds, all of them are referred to in French texts as "livres". An Englishman writing in French would also call the English pound a "livre", if he was writing in German he'd write "pfund". It's the same thing. It's not a different system, it's just a translation of the same term in another language. (Indeed the modern English pound is still translated today as "livre" and "pfund", e.g. French wiki, German wiki).

The simple observation that different languages used different terms for the same units does not require a separate article. It requires a mere sentence in this article. Or a little table like I wrote above.

There is not much depth to the "history" of this system beyond the introductory paragraphs. It did not evolve, it did not change. it was 1:20:240 at the start, and remained 1:20:240 through to the end, a thousand years later. There's not much else to say about it.

This is the article about this system. This is the "£sd" system. There is no other. And there doesn't need to be another. Your WP:POVFORK has no content that isn't already here, and will add nothing to it. Your aversion to the term "£sd" is simply petulance, and has no basis. Your misguided attempt at moving the page was reversed by RM, and now you're trying to do it by other means.

That 75% of the article is dedicated to Britain is because that system persisted in British Commonwealth until the late 20th Century. So that is how most people are familiar with this accounting system, and there is a lot of material referring to it. That is all.

Yes, this article merits improvement and organization. But certainly not the way you did it, not by imposing the unfamiliar "Carolingian" on the title instead of the more familiar "£sd", and certainly not now with your fabricated false differentiation between "British" and "other systems". It is the same one system.

The current historical introduction is sufficient. It explains the origins of a currency measurement system which many modern people mistakenly assume was parochially British. But this article is not about "British system", it is about the accounting system period, of which Britain happens to be the most notable and persistent example, the one most recent, which people are most familiar with and associate with it. It consequently takes the lion's share of the article. As it should.

"£sd" is and should remain the parent article. There's no reason for a WP:POVFORK. There is nothing more to add about the pre-modern accounting system in Ancien Regime Europe that isn't already contained in the historical introduction. Links to "Carolingian monetary system" should redirect here.

If giving the British example such a large share of the parent article annoys petty nationalist sentiments, so be it. Walrasiad (talk) 23:57, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

The basic 1:20:240 ratio is an accounting fact, but it does not seem right to describe it as a "monetary system". Or as the article current does: pre-decimal currencies once common throughout Europe. There were plenty of coins minted off these ratios and many times when no coin corresponding to the shilling or pound even existed. To me, "Carolingian monetary system" can only refer to the monetary system prevailing in the Carolingian kingdoms. Its use as a term for the £sd system inherited from the Carolingians is not terribly common in English. I think two articles is fine, so long as the new one keeps to its lane: stick to the Carolingians, go beyond Charlemagne. One thing that would help immensely would be to define the £sd system as "currency measurement system" or "monetary accounting system" as you have done on the talk page rather than as a set of currencies (which does not seem correct to me). Srnec (talk) 23:10, 4 July 2022 (UTC)