Talk:Africa/to do

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This is an "of concern" list to give some hints on what might help. Feel free to add, comment or alter this list. Strike out items that are done to keep track of the progress.

  • References: need to be comprehensive
  • Please expand the lead to comply with WP:LEAD
  • Demographics section: no other continent page gives attention to skin color for its own sake. Possible subtle racism and may just need to be removed. Note that the Talk page contains some valuable comments on this issue already. UPDATE: Section severely cut down and renamed following the movement for the short segment on religion to the appropriate section. Also added comment on significance of skin color. Still an unusual amount of discussion about race for a continent article.
  • History section: this section is pitifully short for the continent that's considered the cradle of civilization. Also, almost nothing is mentioned about the civilizations that called Africa home before the rise of colonialism. There is a separate History of Africa article, but the main article could use at least a little more detail. The fact that the real discussion of Africa's history begins with colonialism (again, utterly neglecting the peoples that had lived there for thousands of years before)seems awfully eurocentric.* Geography section: should discuss such topics as climate, soils, and drainage. An accurate count of countries is needed; already stated numbers vary radically. Should mention major geographic features (sahara desert, great rift valley, mountain ranges)
  • Economic (updating figures and own templates)
    • Articles are unattended and fragmented, consider expanding and re-writing?
  • Flora and fauna: Not discussed in the current article.
  • Culture section: the listed items should be worked into prose and missing sections expanded
  • Religion: basically non-existent and badly in need of help
Basic outline done. Needs both historical and regional specifics.
  • Languages: needs to be fleshed out enough to give a brief overview of the large main article.
    • Examples of well known languages per family
    • Source various estimates of total number of languages in Africa
    • Endangered languages
    • Language politics
    • Afrikaans (Indo-European), Malagasy (Austronesian)
    • Contact phenomena (pidgins & creoles)
  • Politics: fragmented and needs attention
  • External links: need pruning.
  • please pay attention to the offensiveness of 'pigmy' this is not a proper when referencing these people

Last update: Ryan Delaney talk 22:15, 8 December 2006 (UTC)