Talk:New Imperialism

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User talk:New Imperialism/archive 1
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This entry is WAY too long. - erzengel 15 Apr 2003 1133 UTC

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I’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’m sure that there’s room for improvement, a brief offhand criticism on the basis of length will do little to enhance the readability of the article.

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• 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

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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’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’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’t have to be so dense.

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