Talk:Origins of the American Civil War/Archive 2

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Contents

Size

I think the changes are excellent. However, at the same time the article itself is still gigantic (more than 80 kilobytes). I'm going to weed through the article; something tells me that there's content somewhere that should (a) be on another page or (b) doesn't really enhance the quality or focus of the page. Please remain patient with my changes. --Alex S 03:21, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

172, Wikipedia is an open encyclopedia. It's not constructive to revert the changes I make and just list the edits as minor edits - I reverted back to before you'd edited. In the future, please discuss changes that are only reversions or at least leave a summary tagline. --Alex S 03:57, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

When you cited the temperance movement as an example of "conservative nostalgia," it gives the impression that you're looking at the era from the standpoint of the values of our own era. But you simply cannot refer to some reformists of the 1830s and 1840s, as "more liberal" than others, given the way in which you're using the terms. You changes seemed to be an example of a very common set of confusions. It may seem paradoxical today that the same people who opposed the oppression of a racial minority also favored discrimination against a religious minority. However, the Puritan-oriented population of much of the North was sympathetic to anti-slavery, temperance, nativism and unsympathetic to the hard-drinking Irish Catholics. Politicians, of course, realized that it might have been possible to join the support of Republican, Know-Nothings, and temperance groups to form a winning political combination. Thus, it happened that nativism and anti-slavery worked in conjunction when the Republican Party was founded in 1854 more often than in opposition. I've reverted some of your changes because you cannot understand the rise of abolitionism without understanding temperance, nativism, and free labor. It's hardly a stretch to say that we're often dealing with flip sides of the same coin. 172 09:21, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I see what you're saying. Here's what I think would be helpful:
  1. Include that information more directly in the article so that the reader can understand that too.
  2. Try to move most of the discussion about the changing aspects of U.S. society to another page, (United States social history) so that you can just link to that page when the concept you're trying to illustrate becomes too involved.
Also, I'm still concerned about the length issue. More than 80 kilobytes is just ridiculous. --Alex S 02:11, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Hm. It seems I have similar issues with this article as well. See Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates#Origins_of_the_American_Civil_War. I agree with Alex and think we should work on expanding the summary on this page and combining that with the timeline to create a proper parent article for the detail. Hopefully the process of creating the 20-30KB summary/timeline article will better inform us as to where the detail should go. For example; I just read every word in this article (it took me over 50 minutes) and saw that many of the "for more detail" links where to stub articles. I imagine that at least some of the detail could go there but much of it will likely have to go to daughter/sub-series articles. --mav 18:54, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)
For starters, I moved the 7kb timeline to a different page - it's a great idea but took up a lot of space. I like the idea of subpages but I'm not exactly sure which subpages are needed and how they would be organized. I think we should also consider parallel pages about U.S. history in general - some of the party and ideological info could be moved to pages about the history of those subjects in the United States in general. 172, what do you think? -Alex S 19:20, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)
This isn't going to work. Actually, the article is light on backgrounding. The stuff you say can go in a "United States social history" article, e.g., is actually central to a lot of the arguments of the various competing interpretations. If this article were split, it would be best to divide it into parts one through X. We have article series split in such a way. 172 23:59, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)
All right then, sounds good to me. Just curious, what articles are split up that way? I'd like an idea of how the format would look. --Alex S 15:28, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Part 1... is a bad idea. The format of New Imperialism and Cold War is less bad. I was going to start on the summary/parent article today, but now think that we should all work together on this. How should we proceed? --mav
I think that Part I etc. would be basically like that structure. After all, the article is already organized into neat topical sections like "The question of slavery in the West," "The reactionary South," etc. --Alex S 19:56, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I think you are right. Should we go ahead and break-up the article along those lines (all the heading 2s get their own page)? That would result in 8 articles - too extreme IMO. A max of four would be better, IMO. But where to cut and what to name those articles is an issue that we need to work out. --mav'

How does this sound:

  • The main page of the series will be sections 1 (expanded) and 9
  • Part I - Sections 2 and 3, maybe entitled "Cultural and political background of the Civil War"
  • Part II - Sections 4 and 5 "Slavery in the South and West"
  • Part III - Sections 6 through 8, "The Coming of the Civil War"

That would make Part III considerably larger than the other sections, but I think that it's important to keep the actual events leading up the Civil War in a section together. I also have some questions about historiography, since there's so much of it in this article - should it maybe have its own section? Or it's own section at the bottom of each page? Just musing. Anyway, whadday'all think? --Alex S 20:21, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Sounds good to me - just add "American" before each "Civil War." Part III can be reduced in size, if needed, by moving some of the detial to specific subjects. Not sure what to do with the historiography... I for one don't much care for analysis like that since it reads more like a thesis than encyclopedic prose (I instead prefer to do my own analysis after being presented the facts). Much of it could be condensed - but that can be taken care of later. --mav
Hey Mav - You got it right when you said "I instead prefer..." for a change. If this article isn't your thing, find something else to do. 172 04:56, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)
This article can be his thing even if he'd like to make some changes to it. After all, that's the beauty of Wikipedia. --Alex S 05:05, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Done. Now that this page has been broken down into manageable bites I think it'll be easier to edit as well as read. --Alex S 01:05, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Alex and Mav: Don't get caught off guard, but I'm going to have to revert the article to the version up before all these divisions were taking place. The feedback about the article from everyone else was resoundingly positive. But the recent changes just add to the confusion. This article simply cannot be restructured. As the article proceeds, it relates historians' competing interpretations and the thematic build up to the chronological narrative history. This organization makes the article impossible to restructure, given the build up from the top of the article to the bottom. 172 05:11, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)
The same content is there - it is just divided-up onto different pages (just like a book divides things up - people don't get confused by that). When the summary gets expanded, Alex's format should be restored. I would do this myself now, but I'm house sitting and the computer I'm using does not have a word processor on it. --mav
This "summary" you speak of has to be the one on the History of the United States page; this is the page consisting of the summaries of its component daughter articles. But you seem to be working toward something along the lines of the New Imperialism series. This style of organization will not work for this article - and I'll work against it. BTW, if either of your are losing sleep over the existence of one single, additional article among the countless plethora of articles that take up more than 32 KB, a spit along the lines of the PRC history series (i.e. "Parts 1 through X") is acceptable. 172 11:29, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Just don't name them "Part"-anything (but I see that the PRC articles are not like that). How is that so different from what Alex did anyway? Oh well - that would be OK with me so long as the summary is kept here - it can be expanded later (like when I have access to a word processor). If that is done, then I will withdraw my objection to the FA status of this article and will nominate the series myself. --mav
What do you mean by summary? You mean the executive summary on the History of the United States page, right? You don't mean turning the Origins of the American Civil War page into a parent article consisting of executive summaries of component articles - that is, something along the lines of the New Imperialism page, right? Yesterday it sure looked a New Imperialism style break up to me. BTW, the PRC history section used to be divided by parts; now there's '49- '76 and '76-present. 172 07:12, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Summaries, et al

That executive summary is too short to properly summarize an 80KB article. An intermediate-sized summary is needed. But for now the format of the PRC history page will do as a compromise - at least the technical issues with size will have been addressed. I suggest three such parts. --mav

Please forget about an intermediate-sized summary. Instead, work on the summary in the History of the United States page and think of suggestions for the overview in the Origins of the American Civil War article. Meanwhile, I'll continually reiterate that creating a New Imperialism-style series is futile without adding substantially more content. If we created a satisfactory series along these lines, the sum of the KB taken up by the component daughter articles would be likely well over 80 KB. Since I'm the one well versed in all the contending schools of thought on the subject, I'll probably have to be the main author of a series that meets NPOV standards. However, this would completely go against your original intentions of shortening the content. Right now, a single article (or a single article divided into parts) works in favor of brevity since it poses little need for reiteration; it establishes and builds on facts and themes as the article proceeds.
Firstly, thanks for producing such a magnificent article. I am greatly pleased by its generosity of (multiple) contexts. Secondly, I agree that for a "NI-style" summary to work, much more content is needed -- and I hope that someday that content appears. (Once there are >200kb of content on the origins of the Civil War, something better than 10 long sequential pages will be necessary just to make sense of it all!) For now, 3 or 4 sequential pages - for purely technical reasons - sounds like an acceptable idea (NB: it's possible to have a 30-page document with one title; that is impossible on this wiki, alas). I'm going to go ahead and take a stab at breaking it up, just as an exercise in being bold, and b/c I want to get this off the 'featured status disputed' list; I won't object if one of you reverts me and tries a different division. +sj+ 05:29, 2004 Mar 27 (UTC)
Alright, instead of replacing the current article, I've split it into four pieces, starting here. Feedback appreciated. I was pleased to find that the first para on each page made (to my eyes) a natural pre-heading intro paragraph, in addition to fitting nicely below the headings in the single-page version. +sj+ 08:25, 2004 Mar 27 (UTC)
(There's another note on Talk:Origins of the American Civil War.) This is by far the best division of a long article that I've seen since discovering WP a year and a half ago. It makes the dividing lines very clear and reader friendly. It's also a relief to get some backing on opposing a NI-style summary; I totally concur with your assessment above. BTW, since the division template doesn't pose any technical problems (passing users only see the first article in the set of pages), perhaps it renders all long articles obsolete. Should we start applying it to the otherWikipedia:Longpages right now? 172 21:29, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)


And, finally, changes implemented. Perhaps 4/4 should have the intro paragraph above the TOC? Or, better yet, an extra 2 sentences... +sj+ 21:24, 2004 Mar 27 (UTC)
Great idea. Thanks again! 172 21:30, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)
IMHO, this article ought to be on the bottom of the list of our priorities in the History of the United States series. Both the executive summary and the main body of the text (of the origins article) perhaps come closest to a finished product in the US history series. The world's not coming to a crashing end if there's one additional long article, so why not work on filling the gaps in the other articles for now? 172 08:28, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Can you go ahead and split this article up someway so that we can begin to resolve the FA issue with the size? How about leaving the first 20-30KB here (as-is) and creating two additional 20-30KB articles to make a series. At the bottom of the first page there would be a "Continued at ..." link. You could also create a seriesbox to further bind the articles together. If you do that, then I will withdraw my objection. I would do it myself but 1) I don't want to do work that is just going to get reverted and 2) I think you should get correct credit for the two new articles since you wrote most of it. Is this a good compromise? --mav 06:04, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I don't care about credit, which belongs to the historians being referenced, not to any of the people with user accounts on Wikipedia. The credit also goes to the site owner, Jimbo Wales. I'm just afraid that you'll turn around and call for my de-adminship next time I disagree with you, which will be quite easy if you use the same set of reasoning that you seem to be using with respect to the featured articles. Anyway, enough with this nonsense. I've always been willing to talk about splitting up the article. But hopefully you've given up the idea of an intermediate executive summary article along the lines of the New Imperialism series, right? 172 08:44, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)
On what grounds would I seek your de-adminship? Your fear of me trying to take away your status is not warrented since I have not seen you abuse any sysop powers. I have not given up on the idea for a long summary but am willing to accept, as a truce, to put that off the table for now so that the technical issues concerned with article size are taken care of. Would you revert me if I broke this article up along the lines that I put forward? Or do we need to work out the details on the split first? --mav
So that we're both on the same page, that was a silly hypothetical argument. Perhaps it bordered on hyperbole, but I was just trying to illustrate the consequences of your reasoning if they were applied somewhere else. In all seriousness, I never expected you to call for my de-adminship. Regarding the "categorization" of this article (finally - we get to talk about it directly!), it's probably best to come to an agreement before we act. Since we're both online regularly, this seems easier than letting it turn into a revert war. While we're doing this, I can be less of a roadblock if I'm assured that you're willing to give up the idea an intermediate executive summary page. 172 10:35, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I'm sorry if you've already said this, but can you explain exactly what your problem is with a medium-sized executive page? --Alex S 13:45, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I've already explained this on a number of pages. They should be easy to find if you retrace the steps of either Mav or me. Creating a New Imperialism-style series would be a really unnecessary headache. 172 15:20, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Again 172 - will you or will you not revert me if I divide up this page as I proposed. We can deal with the summary issue later (perhpas much later). But I will *not* create such a summary as part of the spilt-up process. --mav
172 - I retraced your and Mav's conversation, and you said several times that you didn't want the article to be broken up in a New Imperialism style... but never why. If you could explain that (or point me to where you already explained it) maybe it would be easier to come up with a solution acceptable for everyone. --Alex S 00:13, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)
On an unrelated note, but Cottonfieldpanorama.jpg, the image of the slaves picking cotton, all of a sudden became huge. Can anyone fix this? 172 05:27, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)
This has been fixed. 172 13:34, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The titles of the four pages this article got split over

I understand that there were reasons for splitting this page up, but I must say that seeing articles with "two of four" in the title made me reflexively want to splice them all back together again just to get rid of that. I feel that arbitrarily chopped-up articles are worse than too-long articles; IMO an article should be reasonably self-contained and have as descriptive a title as possible. So, how about we come up with descriptive titles for the pieces of the article, things like "Slavery and the American Civil War", and move/retitle appropriately? Since this is a featured article as well as one that's undergoing active editing, I am reluctant to be so bold as to just start doing it unilaterally by myself. Bryan 00:43, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

Good idea. But that will probably require a good deal of re-org. --mav 05:58, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
Weekend is upon us, I'll read the articles tomorrow in detail and perhaps do just that. :) Bryan 05:53, 15 May 2004 (UTC)
Hold it, please. Click and go on to read the next page. That makes more sense than trying to undo something that has already been done just for the sake of reorganizing it. 172 12:23, 15 May 2004 (UTC)
I have no idea what you mean, here. I wouldn't be doing this simply because I have fun shuffling text around pointlessly, I would be doing it to group the text under more meaningful titles and in a better-organized way. This would allow for improvements in future searching for information, linking to information, and future additions and editing. Bryan 20:15, 15 May 2004 (UTC)
Refer to the archived discussions pertaining to this article. I made my stance clear against a reorganization (barring a total rewrite with certain sections expanded significantly) earlier. The users voting for featured status didn't seem to mind my reasoning either. If you review these prior conversations, we can be on the same page with each other and avoid a meaningless revert war. 172 20:47, 15 May 2004 (UTC)
Could you direct me to the relevant archives? I have just come to this article afresh and I haven't found anything in a cursory search aside from what's already on this talk page. Also, I would appreciate if you don't threaten a "meaningless revert war" before I even start working out the details of what I intend to do here. Bryan 21:09, 15 May 2004 (UTC)
Some of those conversations can be found in pages related to the featured status nomination process. I posted those comments FYI. I was informing you that you might be resurrecting matters that were already resolved, and likely to encounter the same type of opposition. What you seem to be describing is turning this article into a New Imperialism-style series, which I will oppose. 172 22:07, 15 May 2004 (UTC)
See below (taken from this page, btw):
Firstly, thanks for producing such a magnificent article. I am greatly pleased by its generosity of (multiple) contexts. Secondly, I agree that for a "NI-style" summary to work, much more content is needed -- and I hope that someday that content appears. (Once there are >200kb of content on the origins of the Civil War, something better than 10 long sequential pages will be necessary just to make sense of it all!) For now, 3 or 4 sequential pages - for purely technical reasons - sounds like an acceptable idea (NB: it's possible to have a 30-page document with one title; that is impossible on this wiki, alas). I'm going to go ahead and take a stab at breaking it up, just as an exercise in being bold, and b/c I want to get this off the 'featured status disputed' list; I won't object if one of you reverts me and tries a different division. +sj+ 05:29, 2004 Mar 27 (UTC)

172 22:11, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, that New Imperialism thing looks like the general sort of idea I was proposing. If not that, then what would you propose as an alternative to having "(2/4)" in article titles? Leaving this "series" as it is now is something that I will oppose, I think it is not at all reasonable to have articles whose titles do not reflect their contents. I'd rather see it all stitched back together into one long article than leave it at that, since section editing overcomes some of the worst obstacles such long articles would otherwise present. Bryan 22:48, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

I just unprotected this page, BTW, since discussion is ongoing and I can't see any good reason to protect it. I assume it must have been a result of a finger slip or something. Bryan

Pages (2/4), (3/4), (4/4) do not link to pages outside this series. Only Origins of the American Civil War is built into other pages. There's one table of contents for all four pages too. This has already been taken care of. 172 23:08, 15 May 2004 (UTC)
The current table of contents is just a stopgap hack, as far as I can tell; it has to be manually updated if the sections of the other articles get fiddled with. I don't see this as a good long-term solution. Bryan 23:13, 15 May 2004 (UTC)
Changing that would entail creating a New Imperialism series. I totally concur with Sj, who, as mentioned, already laid out the all the work required for such a sweeping reorganization: "Secondly, I agree that for a "NI-style" summary to work, much more content is needed -- and I hope that someday that content appears. (Once there are >200kb of content on the origins of the Civil War, something better than 10 long sequential pages will be necessary just to make sense of it all!) For now, 3 or 4 sequential pages - for purely technical reasons - sounds like an acceptable idea (NB: it's possible to have a 30-page document with one title; that is impossible on this wiki, alas)." That's a hell of a lot more work than merely having to manually change the contents box every now and then. 172 23:20, 15 May 2004 (UTC)
If there's so little content here, then why not merge it all back into one article? There are other articles this big on Wikipedia, Plant hormones or John F. Kennedy assassination for example, and they don't seem to be suffering excessively from their size. Bryan 23:56, 15 May 2004 (UTC)
Actually, I agree with that. But Mav wouldn't get off my case until the article was split. We both agreed to Sj's divisions as a compromise, which IMHO worked out quite nicely. 172 13:12, 16 May 2004 (UTC)
Perhaps as a stopgap interim measure, but I don't think it makes for a reasonable 'end state' for an article of this size. There are identifiable sub-topics in here the article can be split along, IMO, the ability to insert meaningful section headers proves it. Much better to divide the article along the lines of subtopics than simply on the basis of length. Bryan 05:13, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
See, e.g., this posting (taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:172&action=edit&section=9):
I put a sample division of the page here; please take a look and tell me what you think (on the categorization talk page). Note that right now no other parts of WP link to this set of 4 pages; passing users will still see the current single article. +sj+ 08:19, 2004 Mar 27 (UTC)

172 23:11, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're talking about here. I'm not surprised that no other articles link to the later pages in this article, since they've got such nonintuitive and uninformative titles; that's kind of my point. Bryan 23:18, 15 May 2004 (UTC)
That doesn't matter. The only people going on the the second page, e.g., will only be getting there after having read the first article. BTW, what's the big deal about turning from one page to the next? 172 23:22, 15 May 2004 (UTC)
It's ugly. It's fragile, requiring manual maintenance to keep the tables of contents accurate, which makes it harder to make changes to the article itself. It doesn't take advantage of Wikipedia's abilities to keep such things organized and cross-linked, and a page that is only intended to be linked to from one other page in a rigidly pre-defined way doesn't fit well with the wiki style. It's against Wikipedia's naming conventions (heirarchy, precision). Conversely, what's wrong with giving the subpages descriptive titles, as in the New Imperialism case? Or, as a different approach, putting brief summaries of the various topics there and linking to more detailed articles on those topics (as is done with Earth for example)? Or some other alternative in which all the article titles involved actually describe what their contents are about? Bryan 23:52, 15 May 2004 (UTC)
The article is coherently organized and integrated with the rest of the encyclopedia, and it is consistent with Wikipedia policies. It does take advantage of Wikipedia's abilities to keep such things organized and cross-linked; the first page, Origins of the American Civil War, is cross-linked to related entries. Article (2/4),' e.g., just means 'Page 2 of 4.' The same is the case for MSN Encarta's article on the Civil War (see Page 1 of 10 here; and Encarta online does utilize hyperlinks, but nevertheless their article cannot fit in a single page either. We may have three pages only intended to be linked to from one other page, but these **aren't self-standing articles**. And it's not against Wikipedia's naming conventions (heirarchy, precision); the same technology may be used to post pages 2-4, but, once again, these aren't self standing articles. There is only one article title for this four-page article: Origins of the American Civil War. 172 12:43, 16 May 2004 (UTC)
I can think of one minor improvement to address the rest of your concerns. We can add a centered "Page X of 4" on page X of the article toward the bottom of the page. Other online encyclopedias do this in articles consisting of multiple pages. 172 12:47, 16 May 2004 (UTC)

All Bryan wants to do is add a lead section to the top of each page in this series, better organize the text, and create better page titles. The article in its current state is a temporary hack that is inflexible and hard to maintain. --mav 03:33, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

Well, that's going to provoke an edit war. This is one single, four page article. This is one article, with one lead section, with one overview; and the organization corresponds to a single table of contents box - the contents box on the first page. 172 16:21, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
Quite. Wikipedia is not paper; there shouldn't be any need for the concept of "turning pages" when reading this article. I'd like to see that these pages become reasonably self-contained, or at least focused on one particular topic each, so that they can be given titles that describe what their contents are. Adding a more obvious "X of 4" header would just make the situation worse, as far as I'm concerned. Bryan 05:09, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

Bryan and Mav,

A belated apology- sorry if I've been coming across as a curmudgeon on this page. Just so that you know what I'm up to, I'm very fond of the way Sj broke up article, so I'm very interested in maintaining it. I should've made it clearer earlier that I appreciate your constructive intentions, though I disagree with the specific steps that you have been discussing. 172 10:33, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure what good this apology does, frankly. I sighed, threw up my hands, and wandered off to do other things when you indicated you'd start an edit war over this; I've seen you fight them with others on other articles and I just didn't want to get into the hassle. So as a result an editor who honestly wanted to improve an article was thwarted by an edit warrior's threat rather than by being convinced otherwise, and I didn't even complain about it. I've been feeling kind of bad about that. Thanks to the categorization craze I've just happened to wander back, however, and I'm feeling more willing to endure hassle this time. I'm going to start tinkering with these articles in coming days, do you still intend to revert me or are you willing you discuss the specifics of how to make these articles more self-contained? Bryan 00:08, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Well, shoot, my timing sucks. I just read on the mailing list that 172 is quitting Wikipedia. I don't want it to seem like I'm being opportunistic bringing this back up right at the same time when he's leaving; I just happened to have been moving some articles from category:United States history into category:United States wars and this was on the list. I guess I'll continue in a few days and see if anyone else objects or 172 comes back. (edit on Jun 8: after the long Wikipedia downtime and the discussions on the mailing list, I'll be waiting a few more days yet to see how things develop before getting to work here) Bryan 01:48, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Been a week now and it looks like the various off-Wikipedia discussions have ceased. I'll now resume discussion of how I hope to reorganize these pages over on the main talk: namespace, since this is an archive subpage. Bryan 01:04, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

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