Talk:Manuel de Araújo Porto-Alegre, Baron of Santo Ângelo

Removal of biographical background and works

Anonymous from the 21st century, I do not completely agree with your changes, though I recognize you made some few that improved the article (e.g. adding the gallery section, inclusion of coat of arms below the external links); however, I disagree with the excessive removal of information. I don't want to incur in an edit war by retrieving the information you removed and then you go back to remove it again. But check the difference between the amount of information removed: [1] vs [2].

According to your comment saying the article "was very confusing and heavy" it would have been a better approach to improve the article by editing or rewriting the sentences and paragraphs and/or changing the order of them to make it flow better and not by removing much of the biographical information. To other people the bio info removed provides further information about the works and more detailed information about the activities they carried throughout their lives. The sections you removed on Porto-alegre's biography or works can even be further expanded as more information becomes available.

Some of the critical changes, actually removals, you implemented are as follows:

• Removal of educational background.
• Removal of section mentioning his multiple pen names and typical errors on misspelling of his name.
• Removal of statement about the publishing of the poem considered the start of romantic literary movement, along with its reference.
• Removal of section of the years Porto-alegre spent in the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts. Remember back then the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes had a different name!
• Removal of statement about first satiric lithographs done in Brazil.
• Removal of commissioned paintings and decorations. Actually, you left the article mentioning nothing about this type of works.
• Complete removal of section with different type of artistic activities: no mention about his journalist and art criticism activities.
• Complete removal of architectural works (you deleted a brief section that talked about this type of works that may have been expanded to a section of its own).
• Reduced literary works; removal of a large number of his writings. No translation into English is provided. Remember that many readers don't understand Portuguese and, thus, they may need a literal translation or the title name used in translated publications into English.
• References deleted: you provided no references and even removed the ones already included in the article. This is an important section every article should have, even more important than external links section.

Finally, just a comment, though not as critical, it seems like you gave priority to the title of baron by inserting a large image of the coat of arms on the page and writing in bold next to his name, which in my opinion is not as important as his contributions (such as images of paintings or architectural works) or portraits of himself or family. Remember his contributions are more transcendental than the title of baron that was of no benefit to him (at least, in Porto-alegre's specific case, being a baron did not make him rich or gave him any power).

As the article grows, newer pages can be created for sections that become lengthier. This usually happens for the list of works, but still little background is provided about his literary or other artistic works. I would suggest recovering the information and starting editing from there by relocating paragraphs into other or newer sections that can make the article more readable. It is going to be easier to do that rather than rewriting the sections again. Let’s try upgrading the article instead of downgrading it back to a "stub". Any comments and improvements by anyone else will be more than welcome. I can help looking and including references. Ctirado (talk) 20:14, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Having a look at both versions, I agree that a lot seems to have been lost in the editing, although I agree that the earlier version needed a good copy edit and some more references. If someone else can do the references, I can probably help with the paragraph editing (I'm not as good as some, but I've done some other copyediting on Portugese related articles, e.g. the Platine War). I'd reiterate the utility of English translations of Portugese titles for this wiki. Hchc2009 (talk) 07:09, 7 April 2010 (UTC)