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Refusal of US to Ratify the Treaty Feels Hidden Behind Easy-to-Miss Note in the Lead, Buried in Text, Despite Being Important Fact and Part of Article[edit]
I was reading this article and was very surprised to find that there was no explicit mention in the lead of the fact that the US failed to ratify the treaty and negotiated a separate treaty with Hungary.
Instead, this major fact is relegated to a minuscule superscripted note, which most users will quickly gloss over as just one of several references on the page (given the identical styling, if they are not intimately familiar with the quirks and stylings of Wikipedia). I would think this fact at least deserves a sentence in the lead, such as "It formally ended World War I between most of the Allies of World War I and the Kingdom of Hungary. Despite its important role in fighting and negotiating an end to the war, the United States ultimately failed to ratify the treaty, instead negotiating the U.S.–Hungarian Peace Treaty (1921) separately.", or if not a full sentence, than just extracting the note out into a simple clause following that sentence, something like "It formally ended World War I between most of the Allies of World War I and the Kingdom of Hungary, with the notable exception of the United States, which negotiated the U.S.–Hungarian Peace Treaty separately."—with the appropriate terms linked, obviously.
This fact is then only mentioned in the very last sentence of section 1.3, buried in the main text of the article.
Unearthing this important fact about the treaty from its current buried position would clear up what may seem like a mystery to readers unfamiliar with the subject, and provide an opportunity to place a cross link to a closely related treaty directly in the lead of the article, facilitating ease of navigation and discovery/learning.
Edit: Just to add to this, one reason I feel it is important to bring out this fact in the lead is because the US, and organizations in the US, were actually quite involved in how the Treaty of Trianon developed, so it is therefore notable that the country itself failed to ratify the treaty. For more on what I mean, see:
My understanding is that the US were actively involved in the Treaty of Trianon, a party to it and a signatory [1]. However, for domestic reasons, they were unable to ratify it (relating I think to the League of Nations stuff in the treaty, an organisation that the US never joined) and came back with a modified version of it, with the offending stuff removed. Probably we ought to have something more prominent about the non-ratification, as long we make it clear that they we're an active party to this treaty, otherwise we might go the other way, making people think that the US had little or nothing to do with the Treaty of Trianon. Nigej (talk) 12:04, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Dear Nigej! The use and inclusion of a well-known Hungarian term for a Hungarian historical event may not fall under WP:NPOV. At least it has a place in the comments section. It is interesting, by the way, when a completely new editor comes and completely upsets the established balance in a sensitive article, and then this is supported by an experienced author. I hope this is not a case of canvassing. Norden1990 (talk) 10:33, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The truth is that it is not "the established balance in a sensitive article,". It was added last year, 2023. See this version [2] where it is absent. I think the note approach is much more suitable. It was a treaty and putting the term "dictate" on an equal footing with "treaty" is clearly inappropriate. Is "dictate" even the correct word? Surely it's diktat "A diktat ... is a statute, harsh penalty or settlement imposed upon a defeated party by the victor,." "Dictate" is presumably some strange Hungarian translation. The use of so many references (7) looks to me like a case of Wikipedia:Citation overkill ". Nigej (talk) 14:34, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
See diktátum and békediktátum at Wiktionary. The latter says "(politics, derogatory) diktat, a harsh peace treaty, (specifically) the Treaty of Trianon" which is interesting in two ways: 1. it says the term is derogatory, so likely fails NPOV and 2. Gives the English translation as diktat. Nigej (talk) 15:39, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You don't have to decide this (please, read WP:OR) since the term "Dictate" also appears in Hungarian-related English literature. WP:POV has no role here, as it is an existing term in a smaller part of Hungarian historiography. Just look at the Six-Day War article: many names appear there, including an-Naksah, lit. 'The Setback', the widespread term in Arab world, which is definitely POV by nature. The Treaty of Trianon is primarily a significant part of Hungarian history, together with its Central and Eastern European influences. It is natural that the primary source material for Hungarian history is Hungarian historiography, whose terminology deserves at least one mention. --Norden1990 (talk) 19:46, 17 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, this treaty is about Hungary. This is the standard name of this treaty in Hungary, as it is clearly mentioned that it is “in Hungary”. You can see many academic sources testify this. OrionNimrod (talk) 07:09, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Per MOS:LEADLANG, relevant foreign-language names are encouraged, which doesn't mean we should spam the lead section with either foreign names or their literal translations. If the average English reader did not even see this until last year, it's not worth four reverts in a single day. @Norden1990 this article is a designated contentious topic and casually breaking WP:3RR like this is below the expected standard of behavior. --Joy (talk) 08:16, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, in the future I will also revert the massive deletions of rookie editors who do all this without any commentary or edit summary. I didn't necessarily need to know when the "dictation" was included in the lead. --Norden1990 (talk) 19:42, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Norden1990 No, for crying out loud, I just told you not to revert in the future like this, because that's no better than those anonymous edits. If you're actually promising to continue with the edit-warring behavior, the only available recourse will be to block you. --Joy (talk) 07:18, 19 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Joy If you look at my contributions going back years, I don't think your concern is warranted. It is much more worrying that a completely new editor, who is apparently fully aware of editing and WP:Rules, drastically changes the article and upsets the existing status quo, a phenomenon that regularly occurs with sensitive Eastern European topics, then disappears forever into obscurity in the same place from which (s)he came. It is very interesting, what could be the cause of this phenomenon? --Norden1990 (talk) 08:09, 19 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Even when people are obviously trolling, it's our responsibility to uphold our own rules. It's not a problem that you engaged with the troll, it's a problem if you maintain the anti-troll mentality of quick reverts when engaging with known user Nigej above (who is in good standing, AFAICT). --Joy (talk) 08:20, 19 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
