Talk:New Imperialism/Archive 5B

This entry is WAY too long. - erzengel 15 Apr 2003 1133 UTC

I&#8217;m sorry that the entry on New Imperialism was a bit lengthy, but this was a very complex era of history and very much a global phenomenon that cannot be explained by easy answers. The language is already dense and succinct as well. A shorter version would be left laden with reductionisms, sweeping generalizations, and over-simplifications (a twice-banned user tried that, and the results were horrendous). Or it would just be a basic chronology of myriad disparate events, trends, and developments that would not seem, to any lay reader, interconnected with each other or even related to the subject matter of New Imperialism. Or it would just give an overview of what happened without illuminating why it happened or giving readers prerequisite background and context needed to be able to judge for themselves why this epoch of history unfolded the way it did. While I&#8217;m sure that there&#8217;s room for improvement, a brief offhand criticism on the basis of length will do little to enhance the readability of the article.

172


 * I understand your reservations. But I'm sure it would be possible to split the article (as opposed to dumbing it down). Sorry if the comment above sounded a bit n00bic. erzengel 15 Apr 2003 1533 UTC

--- That would be far too drastic. As it is, each section of the article builds on the previous section. If you spit the article up you&#8217;d end up having much more content. Some development explained at the beginning of the page would have to be re-explained in a new article not containing that content. For instance, references the "breakdown of the concert for Europe" or the "breakdown of Pax Britannica" would have to be explained over and over again in many separate articles that would make references to these developments. I&#8217;m sympathetic to your cause, but it would be a far better idea to focus on readability rather than length.

Sadly, the article would probably be more readable if it were longer, which would mean that the prose wouldn&#8217;t have to be so dense.

172

User:172 threatened me after I linked some words to various articles. I thought this was a bit extreme... He apparently thinks Im some other user who removed text (apparently several users have tried to edit this page) and, since the page most definitely is too large (50+k) I think its hightime somebody remove some of 172s text. Pizza Puzzle


 * This article certainly needs to be split, as it is at such a size that some users will not be able to edit it. There's no need to remove material, however - if there is no better way, it can simply be broken down the middle into New Imperialism part 1 and New Imperialism part 2 (as done with British Penny part 1 through British Penny part 4). --Camembert

Examining the edit history it seems that a user:Vera Cruze, some time ago created theories of imperialism and he moved text there (the latter half of this article greatly consists of the various theories of various individuals) as well as to imperialism. Then he just gave up...I can't blame him seeing the trouble I ran into just trying to  some words. Pizza Puzzle

- Lir/Vera/Pizza Puzzle: If you start butchering this article once again, the only thing that’s going to be removed is you. I'll protect this page; the content will be restored; and you'll be banned. New Imperialism got Vera Cruz banned. It's only a matter of time before it gets you banned. 172


 * 172, I am also advocating splitting the page into smaller parts, please don't turn this into an "us versus them" argument. This article needs to be split up in some way, as it is too big for some users to edit - once an article gets larger than 32KB, some users have trouble saving it after an edit - the end of the article gets chopped off. This is why the length of this article has to be reduced. You are probably more knowledgable than others on the subject of the article (certainly more knowledgable than me), so could you break it up in a way that makes sense? If you don't want to, then that's fine, I'll do it, but I probably won't do it as well. It does need to be done by somebody, however, or certain people aren't going to be able to edit it at all. --Camembert

--- Camembert:

Thanks for your concern. I will break this up into a series. In fact, I've done that to a number of long articles, such as the History of the US and USSR. I plan to do this for Cold War and Great Depression as well. And I'm working on a series for the history of Brazil. See History of Russia for an example of the charts for the series that I've been adding. But it's been like this for months and it's not urgent.

Vera Cruz/Pizza Puzzle, however, cannot be involved. The last time he (Vera Cruz=Pizza Puzzle) tried to hijack this article he started off by pretending to be polite and constructive, but the results are disastrous. See the mailing list and the talk page history for evidence of this. Or ask Jtdril or Tannin why I would be so mortified that PP has an expressed an interest in 'removing some of 172's text.' Tannin, in particular, remembers the Vera Cruz/New Imperialism disaster vividly. 172

Please, spare us from the series concept. Nobody reads all the way through them anyway, so it's just a waste of effort. It's a mark of skill to be able to summarize key issues succinctly, and to provide cross-references to logically connected articles. This article would easily break up into "overview", multiple "history", and multiple "theories" articles. For instance, there should be a Scramble for Africa that is readily accessible to readers interested in Africa, but also gainfully employed and without the spare time to ponder World systems theory and the other dubious theories, plus which it will be a more relevant link than New Imperialism. If for instance I'm a stamp collector interested in understanding British Central Africa, I'm much more likely to link to Scramble for Africa than New Imperialism; the latter title positively screams "Marxist revisionist history" with lots of big hard-to-understand words. :-) But this is all just a suggestion; I don't want to deal with 172 trying to get me banned for disagreeing with him, so I'm not going to touch this article myself, not even to fix the obvious mistakes. Stan 00:59 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Stan I reccomend that text go to imperialism and theories of imperialism with stuff on Cecil Rhodes going there and stuff on the Congo Free State going there...etc etc Pizza Puzzle

- Well, we historians take the past seriously, as well as the contributions of the theorists of political science, economics, sociology, and so forth. I'm sorry that we're concerned with things other than postage stamps. I suggest that you start an article on the history of stamps and leave me alone for not writing about stamps in such an article as this one. 172


 * That wasn't how I read Stan's message - I think he just meant that for somebody writing about, say, British Central Africa, a link to an article specifically on the Scramble for Africa is more pertinent than a link to a more general article on New Imperialism, and that for the non-specialist a series of short articles is easier to take in than a single long one. --Camembert

--- 50 KB! Please learn how to summarize events - this is an encyclopedia. The detail should be spun off into daughter articles and the main points summarized here. The "series" idea is just a technical hack that leaves a useless list of links on the main page (such as at History of the United States - I'm tempted to restore a much older version to serve as a summary of US history that fits on one sub-30KB page). I just hope large chucks of text in this article not duplicated is a half dozen other articles - you've done that before 172 and it is very annoying. That is what hyperlinks and the ability to summarize are for.--mav 02:21 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

- Mav:

Thanks to Lir/Vera this has turned into an attack 172 free-for-all, hasn't it? I'm tempted to just say to hell with it all and leave this site for good. Long before I created the series for the History of the United States, there were series for German and Russian history. People have even suggested that such a series be created for the history of China. Some people have respect for history. Others don't. Some users think that history is relevant. Others want a few facts for trivia. I'm not the only one who has praised the idea of historical series. So far, you and Stan are the only two of whom I'm aware who have such a contempt for the series. Perhaps, it's personal, since I'm involved with the US one. 172


 * Oh stop it with the strawmen please, 172. I didn't take issue with the content but the unusable length and organization (that is, "everything in one page" organization). And History of Germany is a very good example of splitting up content - that is not comparable to History of the United States (which is just a list of links). History of Russia is, IMO, just as bad as the American counterpart - it has no content on the main page. History of Germany does. That is the whole point. When you said "series" the History of the United States article came to mind. And it is a bit insulting to say that that is wanting "trivia" over real history or that I don't have "respect" for history. It is valid complaint about an unmanageably long article - that's all. --mav


 * I didn't mean you, Mav. You'd be one of the last people for whom that would be true. You are extremely knowledgeable and well-rounded, well-versed in a huge array of subjects: history, politics, humanities, natural science, etc. Next to you, I'm just a narrow specialist. I'm just talking about people with that mentality in general. I wrote this statement, over-reacting to being criticized by three people on a single talk-page, misunderstanding your point about the series. Now that I know that you have the history of Germany page in mind as a model, I realize that our positions are exactly the same. Sorry for the misunderstandings. 172


 * WikiHug. I'm sorry too. --mav

Just for the record: I personally am not very bothered about how this article gets split up, so long as it is split up. My only concern is that, as it stands, the article is uneditable for some users. --Camembert

Neither am I. Look at the History of Germany series, a model for those interested in in-depth, scholarly, and complete surveys of history. 172


 * Indeed the Germany history is a good example of how to partition usefully. I mentioned postage stamps because many collectors are curious about the history behind their little pieces of paper, and Wikipedia has the potential to connect the hobby interest to the historical context. In particular, 19th century imperialism drove the development of postal systems worldwide, and the stamps in collectors' albums today are mute but concrete evidences of that process. Stan 05:47 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

theories of imperialism has duplicate text from this page. Pizza Puzzle

--- For everyone's information, theories of imperialism was an article that Pizza Puzzle created under the banned user name, Vera Cruz. It's a useless article that hasn't been edited by a single user, not linked to a single page. I favor deleting it. 172

I don't have a clue why 172 thinks I am some other user. Pizza Puzzle

Why does 172 keep removing the text here? Much of this was just posted yesterday, and the comments by erzengel (back in April) are certainly relevant. Pizza Puzzle

I'm placing it in this archive, not removing it. 172