Talk:History of South America

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I have made a considerable number of edits on this article and am not finished yet. I've expanded the existing sections and have added a lot of new references.

However, it is another user's opinion that this article should be 'nuked' and started again.

I disagree with this opinion and believe that with more editors collaborating on the article, it could be very good.

I realise that it WP:TNT is not practical here, but substantial rewriting can be done.still needs a lot of work, but by repeatedly stating 'nuke the article' ([1], [2], [3], [4] & [5]) other editors could be dissuaded from contributing.

(Previous discussion: I have already given some explanations to this article's criticisms on my talk page.)

For this reason I am inviting comments. How do we go forward?

Kind regards -- Marek.69 ^talk 02:11, 1 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Clarification to some of the other text in this RfC: I'm going to try to roll back for now from the current version [6] to the latest pre-expansion version [7] pending consensus for change, so any comments before April 11 may be talking about a completely different version of the article than the current one. Rolf H Nelson (talk) 05:27, 12 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I plan to soon start writing a new article altogether for this subject, but I am not against attempts at making this current giant into a readable one. At this point, I doubt this article can leave a reader with anything other than an impression of the grand magnitude of South American history. While that in and of itself is not wrong, it is not the point of an encyclopedic article that seeks to make the information easy to process for anyone. Simply put, I consider that Wikipedia should not only be "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit," but rather also (and most importantly) "the encyclopedia that anyone can read."

There really is nothing tricky about creating a good history article of South America. As Maunus pointed out, the Cambridge History of Latin America already has taken that challenge and done a good job at it. We really only need to follow their format, in a less specialized manner, directing readers in the right direction if they want to learn more about a particular subject (instead of jamming it down their throat like, for example, the present emphasis on indigenous Pre-Columbian civilizations).

I hope this helps. Thank you for doing your best in improving this article.--MarshalN20 ^Talk 02:38, 1 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• 3O request Marek, I noticed you posted a third opinion request. That process actually applies only to disputes with two editors, where no other dispute resolution process is current, neither of which is true here; but since you have begun an RfC, here's my thoughts on that.

• After skimming this article, I do not believe that WP:TNT applies here. The article is far too large, poorly structured, and frequently poorly sourced; but there is enough decent stuff here worth saving. The section on European diseases seems useful, as does some of the prehistory section. It seems like everybody on this page is in agreement that the article is too long; surely you could discuss what should be trimmed, and focus on that? The sections on indigenous people are clearly too long, and the sections on wars of independence too, possibly. Regards, Vanamonde93 (talk) 03:35, 1 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• I agree with Vanamonde93 above. WP:TNT is too much work and for no good reason. Think of all the people that edited the article for all these years, all of that would go to waste. Let's focus on what needs to be done. I'd love to help. Best, FoCuS contribs; talk to me! 22:35, 3 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment: WP:TNT is not practical here, but substantial rewriting can be done. I find that it's generally best to do this in a sandbox page (e.g. Talk:History of South America/sandbox), and to keep track of intervening edits and integrate them during the process, then propose replacing the original with the redrafted page (again keeping new constructive material in the interim). It can be extremely challenging to redraft a complex article "live", because if every intermediate step in the process is not itself an obvious improvement, it's apt to be reverted. That said, the sandbox process can also fail, if one attempts to remove sourced material, introduce a PoV, or otherwise not actually improve the original. If you elect to take the in situ approach, I find that the best strategy is to restructure/re-outline the material with as few content changes as possible, implement the new structure, then start improving it section-by-section in as orderly a fashion as possible. Hope that helps, and good luck. :-) And, yes, for an article of this scope rely heavily on WP:SUMMARY and WP:SPINOFF. This article should not attempt to be a history book on South America in every detail from the dawn of time, but a kind of "portal" page to our whole collection of more specific articles on south America, woven into an overview summary, a general timeline.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  08:44, 6 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  PS: Reverting to before the expansion, and starting with that to compress any material from mid-March earlier that was also just copy-paste dumping, so it's a WP:SUMMARY treatment instead of duplication is probably the way to go, and then see what needs to be covered that isn't.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  14:30, 14 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Strongly against Marek's expansion. There's nothing that violates Wikipedia policy in Marek's added text (pending added citations), but IMHO organizationally the text doesn't belong in this article. IMHO the topic is too naturally diffuse for Marek's level of detail, and should instead follow the other "History of continent X" articles. I think some of the other commenters here might not realize the expansion never got WP:CONSENSUS, and so the onus is on anyone who wants to keep the expansion to establish that it's a good idea. Rolf H Nelson (talk) 05:27, 12 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment - I'm not sure what consensus has to do with whether or not someone should expand things. This article needed expanding from what I looked at, and in comparing it to the Africa, Asia, and Europe articles, etc... But the expansion was not done well either and that's why we find ourselves here. The article was just reverted back to it's original woeful state from an expanded woeful state. I like SMcCandlish's idea of moving a copy of the article to Talk:History of South America/sandbox and working on it from there. We need to look at the other continent history articles to see what framework works best and decide on all or most of the headings. Get those sections nailed down and work on it section by section. The more people editing, the more sections can be done at the same time. But as an individual editor, try and stay focused on getting one section done well. If that section gets a thumbs up, then add it to the main article. If another country article tells it well and in detail, then summarize, link, and move on. But source source source. Other than the lead, if you see three sentences in row with no outside sources, warning lights should be going off. Anyways, just a comment. Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:45, 14 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Starting over from scratch would be the best way to improve the article since most of the content is both poorly written and off-topic, and badly organized. However probably noone is going to do that, because it would take a lot of reading and a lot of writing. The question then is whether it would be better to have a stub article with almost no content or to have the article in its current state. I think a stub would be better, because by its sheer length people will be discouraged from trying to substantially improving it - both because the length makes it look like it is well-developed and because most people will simply be copyediting the problematic text instead of starting with the larger content problems. This to me is why this is one of the cases where a sloppy expansion is actually worse than no work at all.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 11:30, 14 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• I don't believe WP:TNT would be a good way to proceed here. The article is too long (way too long), sure, but it's not something a bit of trimming by an interested, dedicated editor can't fix. There is plenty of good material in the text; it would be a waste to discard everything and start over, especially with an article covering such a significant subject. Replacing everything with a stub is simply counter-productive; for one, I'd imagine our readers would rather sift through redundant material than be left with a meaningless stub, and then there is a question of subsequent expansion. What's to prevent that stub to grow into an even worse mess than it is perceived to be today?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 14, 2016; 13:35 (UTC)

The length is not the problem. The problem is that the content (before the recent reversion) was mostly unorganized off-topic copypaste dump from other articles. "it might get even worse next time" is a really poor argument for not removing problematic content.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 13:57, 14 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
 

(edit conflict) Which is why you develop a replacement in a sandbox. There's not need to start the live page at the stub state.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  14:28, 14 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• @Marek69: asked me about this on my user page ... I'm not sure why, since I don't think I've edited this and don't know much about it. I glanced briefly over both versions and see that they both are packed with information, but both have kind of a random structure. I think the root of problems with revising and splitting articles is almost always in bad structure, and the key here is to come up with a top level design. My feeling is that when you start off with pre-Columbian tribes, you're already on the wrong foot when you don't stratify them by date. Because then there's no flow. The tribes also seem treated like they're ancient history, even as we have lots of photos of very living people. So what you should do, I think, is go through the major events in history from before colonization in chronological order, and continue that after colonization. Say when cultures rose and fell, using their rise as a chance to explain a little bit (not too much) about them - deferring any leftover content to the more relevant article. Then go through the European contact the same way, explaining plagues, attacks, and other events in chronological order also. In the end, apart from "necessary background", this should feel a bit like a timeline. And that way the large amount of content can be split out conservatively by having separate articles about pieces of the timeline that are summarized here. Wnt (talk) 04:14, 15 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• (Also pinged on my talk page) I agree with SMcCandlish, in general. A broad "history of" article like this ought to be so pared-down it's effectively an index rather than an article, and consist of very brief summaries and heavy use of the {{main}} template, otherwise it becomes unmanageably large. Remember, a lot of people are reading these things on four-inch phone screens. ‑ Iridescent 12:00, 16 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• (Also pinged on my talk page for no reason that is clear to me) Overall, I think Marek's expansion is good. The article was woefully short, Marek's expanded version does not look too long to me. If there are NPOV issues or some content is removed without explanation, we can discuss the specific sections, but the argument that the new (Marek's) article is too long or badly structured doesn't hold much water with me - looking at [8] it seems to me better (more comprehensive, about as organized and not too long) compared to [9]. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:39, 17 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Piotrus, thank you for the feedback. To be fair, both articles (mainspace and sandbox) have been edited and changed considerably since this RfC discussion started. The reason I pinged numerous users was that there wasn't much response from the original Legobot RfC notification, so I notified people who had expressed opinions on RfC's before, those registered on Wikipedia:Feedback request service and persons who had edited this article historically. I deliberately chose a selection of random active Wikipedia editors, rather than constructing a list from people I know, or know to have similar opinions to me, which would not have been useful here at all. My only interest is improving this article, I have no POV or agenda to push. Kind regards -- Marek.69 ^talk 14:41, 17 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

All is cool, I was mildly curious why I was chosen, but I think it was a good choice - as in, the two of us have no close ties, and I am interested in history and in helping with such discussions. Good luck with the expansion. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:01, 18 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.