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Archive 1


Root of international debt

Hello folks. It is known in Brazil that international debt has first started from the compensations that had to be paid to the portuguese and english crowns towards recognition of independance. If that is the case for the spanish speaking countries as well, maybe we should move the note about international debt problems from the "modern history" to "independence"? I'm not familiar with the spanish speaking countries' history, though, so would anyone care to comment? Claus Aranha 06:09, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Pre Colombian Amazon

For later adition to the "amazon" subtopic

At first, it was believed that the Amazon forest was sparsely populated by hunter-gatherer tribes in the pre-colombian age. Archeologist Betty J. Meggers is a defender of this idea, with her book Amazonia: Man and Culture in a Counterfeit Paradise.
However, recent archeological findings have raised support for the idea that the region was actually densely populated.
The Terra Preta (black earth), which can be found in large areas in the amazon forest, is a kind of soil which is very fertile for agriculture. It is believed that this soil was a creation of natives living in the amazon, in order to be able to perform agriculture in the hostile environment.
Also, In the region of the Xinguanos tribe, remaints of large settlements in the middle of the Amazon forest were found in 2003 by Michael Heckenberger, of the University of Florida, and colleages. Among those were evidence of roads, bridges and large plazas.

Claus Aranha 09:38, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

South American Community of Nations

Should this organization of all South American states, modeled after the EU andplanned to start operations in the next few years, be added to recent events?

I don't see why not. Feel free to add a paragraph.-gadfium 02:06, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Either wrong year or wrong king, I don't know which

The article states that "In 1604, King Louis XIV of France sent a large number of people to settle in Guyana." I find this rather hard to believe seeing as he was born 34 years after this. Alakazam (talk) 20:00, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Orphaned references in History of South America

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of History of South America's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "bbc":

  • From Pink tide: [1] BBC News: South America's leftward sweep
  • From Amazon rainforest: "Unnatural Histories - Amazon". BBC Four. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  • From Fernando de la Rúa: BBC News
  • From History of Argentina: BBC news
  • From Venezuela: "Venezuela: Energy overview". BBC. 16 February 2006. Retrieved 10 July 2007.

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 13:08, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Recent edits: suggestion to nuke the article and start from scratch

I dont think the recent edits by User:Marek69 have consituted a major improvement of the article. Marek69 has proceeded by copypasting large amounts of material from other articles (daughter articles to this one) into specific sections. This has made some sections much too long, relative to the weight they are warranted. This article is supposed to be the general overview article of the topic of the entire history of South America. This means that one has to be extremely focused on concision and using Summary style and links to daughter articles, and to not give undue weight to topics that are relatively minor within the general literature on the topic (such as for example genetics and illegal drug trade, topics that merit at most one or two paragraphs). I think the article would benefit from being Nuked back to nothing and rewritten from scratch.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 18:33, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

I disagree. I am still working on the article and intend to trim it and get it in order. -- Marek.69 talk 18:58, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
I think your way of working is a problem for several reasons, first of all it doesnt respect the copyright policy that requires attribution for copypasted content form other articles, secondly it creates a lopsided development of the article that is totally unnecessary since each section needs to be summary style and not a huge swath of irrelevant material from other articles that then needs to be removed. I think that if you need to work like this you should do it in your sandbox and only copypaste it once it has been "trimmed" (trimming is a gross understatement in my opinion, because you basically need to remove 90% of what you are pasting). You are creating more problems with your current approach than you are fixing.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 19:04, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
@Maunus: I agree. While I consider that Market's edits have been done in good faith, the problem with this article is the large size and random focus on certain areas. I think it would help to begin by simply dividing the article by four major eras (Pre-Columbian, Colonial, Revolutionary, National Period), following summary guidelines and avoiding placing too much emphasis on the present. I think it is best for this article to err on the side of conciseness rather than to be the unreadable giant it is at present. I can begin working on a sandbox, but it will probably take me a few months to complete it.--MarshalN20 Talk 18:59, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
I think that type of structure and way of working would be ideal.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 19:04, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

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Inclusion of Central American countries

Since this article is the history of South America, the Central American countries here are somewhat out-of-place, especially since the article starts with a couple of maps that don't include Central America (which is usually included with North America). I've yet to meet a Central American that considers themselves to be a South American. I would suggest culling all the Central American countries from this article, with the possible exception of Panama, due to its historical links with Colombia. Simon Burchell (talk) 14:27, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi Simon, I have been removing Central American countries. If any remain now please could you point them out. Marek.69 talk 22:17, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
I removed a lot more, including A huge section on Costa Rica, a small one on the Maya and a gigantic embedded list of names of extinct people which was entirely outside of what is meaningful to include in this article.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 22:26, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
Thanks - Belize escaped the net, and I've taken it out. I've also trimmed other bits and pieces relating to Central American nations. Simon Burchell (talk) 08:49, 31 March 2016 (UTC)


Target size of article

What is the target size for this article? Wikipedia:Article size says:

Readable prose size What to do
> 100 kB Almost certainly should be divided
> 60 kB Probably should be divided (although the scope of a topic can sometimes justify the added reading material)
> 50 kB May need to be divided (likelihood goes up with size)
< 40 kB Length alone does not justify division
< 1 kB If an article or list has remained this size for over a couple of months, consider combining it with a related page. Alternatively, the article could be expanded, see Wikipedia:Stub.
Leutha (talk) 19:11, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
Quoting basic policy like that is not really necessary, I am sure we all are aware of the length guidlines. Clearly an article of this scope merits length and can easily be in the 100kb class. But the weight needs to be well distributed, which it currently is not.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 19:23, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
Well, at over 185kb it is well over the 100kb mark. For ease of readability and to facilitate download, I do not see any reason to go over the 100kb mark. What I am suggesting is that if we can agree a more manageable size to aim for, this might help us outline how the weight can be readily distributed and how the deeper information can be made more accessible.Leutha (talk) 22:02, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
MArek69 says he has plans to "trim it" down to size again. It is an awful lot of trimming of course to remove half of the articles readable prose. But I think the better plan is to nuke the article and recreate it from scratch writing one period at a time and using broad generalist sources on the topic, such as for example Cambridge's History of Latin America, to decide relative weight of subtopics.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 22:26, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
I have trimmed about 25% off the article, and will continue until I get it to a reasonable size. -- Marek.69 talk 08:18, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
At 08:20 UTC 28-03-2016 the stats were: Prose size (text only): 106 kB (17026 words) "readable prose size" Marek.69 talk 08:22, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
As of 12:30 UTC 31-03-2016 the stats were: Prose size (text only): 94 kB (14941 words) "readable prose size" Marek.69 talk 12:34, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
Quite apart from the size (not unreasonable in my view, given the scope of the topic), there is far too much detail, country by country, of indiginous population groups and statistics, which I would argue are not within the scope of the article. If I come here, I would expect to see a general history of the continent, perhaps a timeline summary, and a country-by-country breakdown of important historical events. Simon Burchell (talk) 15:02, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
Thank you Simon for your comments. I am very happy to address that issue. I will give some thought to an alternative format of presenting the history of indigenous peoples. Any suggestions of format/layout will be much appreciated. Best -- Marek.69 talk

Reverting to mid-March version for now

Hi guys, per WP:BRD and WP:CONSENSUS I hope it's not out of line that I'm going to take the initiative to roll back to the mid-March version until if and when we get consensus on User:Marek.69's major expansions. It's fairly clear there hasn't yet been WP:CONSENSUS on the changes yet, since the changes started on 21 March and the pushback started as early as March 27. If the RfC decides to approve an expansion (or if there's strong evidence the RfC is heading in that direction, and currently the evidence looks the opposite so far) I'm fine with putting back Marek's changes. Rolf H Nelson (talk) 05:14, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Intentions were definitely good. No question about that - the article as it was did need improvement and expansion. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 14:43, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
I'm not sure when this article was last assessed, but I've demoted it from B-Class to Start. It's not nearly well enough referenced to be B-Class. -©2016 Compassionate727(Talk)(Contributions) 20:47, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
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