Talk:History of South America

RfC: The immediate future of this article

 * 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' (,, , & ) 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)


 * Clarification to some of the other text in this RfC: I'm going to try to roll back for now from the current version to the latest pre-expansion version  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)


 * 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 T al k 02:38, 1 April 2016 (UTC)


 * 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)
 * I agree with 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)

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 ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  14:30, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
 * 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 ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:44, 6 April 2016 (UTC)


 * 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)
 * 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)
 * 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)
 * 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)


 * Which is why you develop a replacement in a sandbox. There's not need to start the live page at the stub state.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  14:28, 14 April 2016 (UTC)


 * 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)


 * (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. &#8209; Iridescent 12:00, 16 April 2016 (UTC)
 * (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 it seems to me better (more comprehensive, about as organized and not too long) compared to . --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here  03:39, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
 * 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 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)
 * 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&#124; reply here 05:01, 18 April 2016 (UTC)


 * 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.

Suggestions on what should be trimmed
I am still trimming/improving this article. Its current size (text only) is 92 kB (14738 words) "readable prose size" (calculated by User:Dr pda/prosesize.js)

Please list constructive suggestions on where this article needs to be trimmed and I shall endeavour to do so -- Marek . 69    talk  04:45, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

I've taken your advice and created Talk:History of South America/sandbox. Maybe editors could make trims/edits there. -- Marek . 69    talk  20:54, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
 * The more I look at it, the more it looks like so much detail can be merged to other, more specific articles. This is also true of History of Europe (180 K) and History of Africa (171 K). History of North America is 37 K, and much more readable, though it only covers three modern countries.  The approach taken at History of Asia (aside from someone replacing the map image with something random) is probably the right model for all of these; it is 61 K, but covers the world's largest, most populous, and most country-divided continent.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:25, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Except that after the Medieval period the article only covers Chinese history. That would be equivalent to reducing the post colonial history of Latin America to only the history of Brazil.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 14:03, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, so it might end up 70K or so.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  14:23, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Really the bitsize is irrelevant, the article clearly has scope to be as large as our largest articles. But this is only the case if someone actually write the article with an eye to how different aspects of content should be weighted and not simply builds it as a patchwork of copypaste scraps from random articles about South America. The problem is the quality. If quality is low we dont want a lot of it. If quality is high then we want more.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 14:30, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I removed a few parts that did not pertain to South America. I would suggest that the prehistory should be reduced/split and that the native South American Peoples section be split off.  The historical material may warrant duplication, but a lot of it is contemporary.
 * AS the comment in the lead says, several articles have here been merged, perhaps not appropriately.
 * All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 11:59, 9 April 2016 (UTC).


 * Content cant be merged or split to those articles because almost all of the content is directly copypasted from those articles in the first place.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 14:01, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Which is no way to summarize. I agree with the big revert below.  The article should be expanded in coverage properly per WP:SUMMARY style, which means densely abstracting, not duplicating.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  14:25, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Yep.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 14:35, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

My first observations, on reading through both the March edit that is the current version, and Marek's sandbox:

(1) Most of the 'Native American people' section should go: it's better split into general areas (Andean highlands, Amazon basin, etc.) and to concentrate on where the people lived, and their agriculture, customs and archaeology. Splitting it into countries which didn't exist at the time doesn't make a lot of sense, especially as many of the cultures were spread over more than one modern-day country, and anyway a lot of what is contained in each section is statistics on current population numbers and percentage of the overall population... that isn't history and is better off staying in the relevant 'Demographics of (country)' articles.

(2) Likewise, the independence section should be a general overview of the conditions that led to revolution rather than a country by country basis – again, as many of the countries didn't exist before independence it doesn't make sense to write about it on a country by country basis... for example, it would be better to talk about Simón Bolívar and the independence battles in the north-west of the continent and the eventual creation of Nueva Granada/Gran Colombia, rather than Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Panama separately. By the way, Marek, you have duplicated the paragraph on the independence of Colombia for the independence of Peru as well... I assume that was just a copy and paste error.

(3) Various sections concentrate on Brazil at the expense of the rest of the continent, e.g. slavery, which obviously was not confined to the Portuguese colonisers. I understand that it may be easier to find sources regarding Brazil's slavery issues than other countries, but then this section should be shortened and generalised, with Brazil as an example.

(4) The short 'Politics' section' at the end is superfluous: most of it is already covered in the previous two paragraphs 'A turn to the left' and 'The "pink tide"', and it could easily be merged. Richard3120 (talk) 16:15, 14 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Hi, thank you for the feedback. I have further trimmed the article (in the sandbox), which now stands at:
 * Prose size (text only): 64 kB (10156 words) "readable prose size" (according to User:Dr_pda/prosesize.js, as of 00:50 UTC 16 April 2016)
 * Kind regards -- Marek . 69    talk  23:57, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

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Map legend error
The map of South American partition in 1700 has a mistake in the legend - the UK is listed, and it did not exist until 1801. Simon Burchell (talk) 08:27, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

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 * ✅ Richard3120 (talk) 21:12, 10 July 2017 (UTC)