Talk:Great power/GA1

GA Review

I am currently reviewing "Great power" for "Good article" status. Axl (talk) 17:23, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The second sentence in the lead section: "Great powers characteristically possess economic, military, diplomatic, and cultural strength, which may cause other, smaller nations to consider the opinions of great powers before taking actions of their own." Cultural strength? What does this mean? Does this really influence smaller nations? Axl (talk) 17:34, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

From the "History" section: "The Congress of Vienna consisted of five main powers: the United Kingdom, Habsburg Austria, Prussia, France, and Russia." "Habsburg Austria" links to "Austrian Empire". Which is the correct title? Axl (talk) 17:40, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

From the "History" section: "Others, such as Russia and Austria-Hungary, slowly ossified." I know what "ossified" means, but it is unnecessarily colourful. Axl (talk) 17:43, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Axl, I think I can help explain some of your own questions.

Cultural strength would generally equate with soft power. Culture could be attractive to other states. For instance, Americans value democracy, freedom and human rights. These are all attractive to other people and states. States with similar cultures, such as Western countries are more inclined to work with each other.
Is that really "strength"? It seems to me that cultural similarity allows better diplomatic relations, hence greater power. Axl (talk) 18:09, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I suppose that Habsburg Austria and Austrian Empire are interchangable.
My concern was that the linked page ("Austrian Empire") does not describe "Habsburg Austria" as a synonym. If you have no objection, please change "Habsburg Austria" to "Austrian Empire", to be consistent with the linked article. Axl (talk) 18:11, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I see your point, we can remove, but wouldn't you consider the global spread of English a byproduct of the cultural strength of the British Empire and the U.S. --Hobie (talk) 18:21, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, good point. Axl (talk) 18:29, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ossified can easily be replaced with declined in power or stagnated. --Hobie (talk) 17:58, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. Please change it. Axl (talk) 18:12, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

From "Characteristics": "Largely the question has been treated as 'an empirical one, and common sense can answer it'.[13]" This appears to be a quotation. However I have to look at the reference to find out whose quote it is. There doesn't seem to be anything particularly special about this quote. Perhaps change it to to paraphrase the author: "These characteristics have often been treated as empirical, obvious to the assessor."? Axl (talk) 18:20, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Done. --Hobie (talk) 18:31, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I'm shortly going off-line (overnight) but if you have some more time (Hobie), perhaps you could expand on the significance of nuclear power? It has barely a single sentence in the article. Axl (talk) 18:36, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There are several quotations in the "Characteristics" section. These should use the same format, preferably the quote template that I added to the "History" section. Axl (talk) 07:33, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The second half of the "Status dimension" section contains no in-line citations. Axl (talk) 07:36, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The status of "Great power" correlates with the degree of technological advancement, most notably military technology. The development of steam power, industrialization and Industrial Revolution are particularly relevant to the early 19th century. In the 20th century with the World Wars, there has been a greater focus on new military technologies: fighter planes, submarines, tanks, rockets, etc.. The great powers show a greater investment into these technological developments, hence consolidating their position. This leads to arms race as other countries/states try to compete. In the modern era, nuclear technology and nuclear weapons have become one of the most prominent aspects of "Great power" status. Rival countries may attempt to outperform each other in this field to show superiority, e.g. India & Pakistan. These aspects need to added to the article, and in quite some depth. Axl (talk) 11:58, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Feel free to implement all those changes yourself. I'm going to busy for a little while. Some other regular editors should be able to help. --Hobie (talk) 15:49, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, let me get this straight, this is the to-do list?

~~References that need to be fixed (e.g. current references 25, 28)~~
ISBN numbers for sources
~~Create quote consistency~~
~~Add citations to second half of status dimension section~~

I already trimmed out the redundant wikilinks. Once again, feel free to fix some of this yourselves. I can't do it on my own. --Hobie (talk) 19:36, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I just made all the quotes consistent. --Hobie (talk) 20:11, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I fixed reference 25 --Hobie (talk) 18:52, 13 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What's wrong with reference 28 that we need to fix. --Hobie (talk) 18:17, 14 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Reference 28 was bumped to reference 29 by the addition of the UNSC reference. It's missing a URL, probably the most important part of a web citation. Emw2012 (talk) 19:58, 14 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Can't we just delete the faulty reference? It's in German and has two other references. --Hobie (talk) 20:23, 14 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

There are still a few unaddressed concerns from the recent peer review, namely

References that need to be fixed (e.g. current references 25, 28)
ISBN numbers for sources
~~Redundant wikilinks (see PR)~~

The quote formatting needs to be made consistent. I would suggest the format used for Lord Castlereagh's quote in the 'History' section. And if quotation marks are used, they should be consistently either single quotation marks (') or double quotation marks (") throughout the article. Emw2012 (talk) 18:40, 12 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Since membership on the UN Security Council is "a hallmark of contemporary great power status", shouldn't that be included in the 'Characteristics' section? I understand the section to be (although not entirely concrete) a set of criteria for great power status. Emw2012 (talk) 05:50, 14 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There needed to be an image at the top of the page, and since it is one of the most important qualifiers for great power status I think it belongs. I added a reference for the caption. --Hobie (talk) 12:55, 14 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And I agree that it belongs there; but some variation of that caption should also be included in the 'Characteristics' section. Emw2012 (talk) 14:45, 14 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I added a sentence about the UNSC permanent membership in the Characteristics section. I will try to look up the ISBN numbers but they are not necessary for GA. Anything else? Nirvana888 (talk) 21:01, 15 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't think so. I looked it up and ISBN numbers aren't even necessary for citations. We've done a lot, this should be enough to qualify for good article status. --Hobie (talk) 22:01, 15 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hobie, thank you for improving the article. However I still think that it should include a section on how countries/states attempt to outmaneuver each other in order to gain "Great power" status. Also, there should be a section on how the recognized Great powers have changed over time. Therefore I'm going to submit the article for a second opinion. If another reviewer considers the article ready for GA status, then so be it. Axl (talk) 14:40, 17 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We can try to add a section on arms races and the like. However, I'd like to point out that we already have an article depicting your second request, historical powers. --Hobie (talk) 15:04, 17 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. "Historical powers" refers mostly to Empires that existed prior to the Congress of Vienna, although some of these persisted beyond 1815 (Prussia, British Empire, etc.). What about the power shifts in the later 19th & 20th centuries? Axl (talk) 15:25, 17 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

They're already included in the article it describes and I quote,

"Ever since the term was first academically used in 1815, numerous powers have rotated between the status of great power, middle power and superpower. These are listed below. Major power shifts occurred in the aftermath of the First and Second World Wars. Austria-Hungary, the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire all collapsed after World War I; after World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as the only two superpowers.
After World War II, the European powers of the United Kingdom, France, and Germany managed to rebuild their economies, and China had built up to great power status during the post-war period, with large growths in economic and military power.

There are other sections of text that describe the history of great powers, such as the whole first section. --Hobie (talk) 16:23, 17 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, you're quite right. Sorry, I should have explained better. What I meant is: what are the causes of the changes in power? The World Wars clearly did so. The collapse of the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire are in the section "Current great powers". This discussion would be better in a separate section, perhaps entitled "Change of great powers", including a mention of which specific factors led to the change in power. Axl (talk) 17:23, 17 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think we should add a whole other section, at least not when the article is under a microscope. I added a sentence in the current great powers section exlaining that and I quote, " Austria-Hungary, the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire all collapsed after World War I. The Ottoman and Austria-Hungarian empires were divided into new, less powerful states; the Russian Empire fell to a communist revolt." that should suffice. --Hobie (talk) 15:18, 19 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, thanks Hobie. I have renamed that section "Change of great powers". We have achieved a fair compromise. The article qualifies as a "Good article". For future improvement, the article would benefit from a longer discussion about the factors that lead to change in great power status. Axl (talk) 17:07, 19 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah! Thank you very much. When you were talking about creating a different section, I was a bit skeptical, but I think it's much better now. It flows more nicely and the paragraph above is better suited as a paragraph about change than a foreword for the current great powers. Once again, thank you! --Hobie (talk) 18:00, 19 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]