Talk:African time

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This article was nominated for deletion on 18 February 2008. The result of the discussion was keep.

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the African time article.
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Contents 1 Comments 2 Discussion 3 Tags

[edit] Comments

This is a controversial topic that may be under dispute. Please read this page and discuss substantial changes here before making them. Make sure to supply full citations when adding information and consider tagging or removing uncited/unciteable information.

(WikiProject Time banner removed for now: see "Tags" below. —Yamara ✉ 02:49, 12 February 2008 (UTC))

[edit] Discussion

Here's some background for this article:

• I've observed this phenomenon first-hand
• I've noticed through the years (at least in Norway) that others associate the following with Africa: an attitude where one's present in the moment, without worrying about the clock or the next appointment on the schedule
• -And I noticed there were other people around the world who's noticed the same phenomenon (ref the examples in the article)
• Originally I tried to find a reference that I could link to to describe Africa time without doing it in the original context - it's when I didn't find any one good reference (in or out of wikipedia) that I created this article.
• This is not an explanation of a word (as in dictionary), but a real cultural phenomenon, even if the only documentation I could find was some personal observations.

I see that the article was tagged for deletion for a while, and now marked as needing a rewrite. I took a look at the help info and can agree that the formatting and context could be better - I've tried to better those now. However, I definitely think that this phenomenon merits a wikipedia article.

A question: after trying to rewrite an article, like I did here, should I or could I remove the rewrite tag myself? Also, if this article is too short or lacking in content, maybe the tag Africa-stub is appropriate?

Ingvald 21:52, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

African time has received some international press today so I've removed the blog links and comments and, in their place, included some information from the Reuters article about events and comments in Abidjan.

AmbassadorShras 18:55, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

The negative view (ref "tardiness") absolutely has it's place - but I think the blog links and comments should be considered in addition to what's there now, since they go to the positive aspect of Africa time. After all, blogs are documented first or second hand experiences, and thus legitimate parts of documentation for a Wikipedia article, I think.

Ingvald (talk) 11:34, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tags

I work with Africans on a regular basis, and I'm suspicious of any "positive" aspects of this phrase. There are genuine cultural aspects to the understanding of time, unfortunately one of them is good old fashioned racial prejudice; this doesn't mean the phrase isn't used, or can't be the subject of article, but it has to have more depth than an Encyclopedia Dramatica entry.

So far, this neologism is used as slang in travel blogs and in one news article about one moment in a local political campaign. No other Wikipedia article links to it. So I'm slapping on some harsh tags.

Also, Zginder, I'm removing the WikiProject Time banner you placed, for now, if you don't mind. You're being superdiligent in finding time-related articles, but I feel it remains to be seen if this one is truly relevant. —Yamara ✉ 02:49, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to argue that this phenomenon is real. My inspiration for this article was my own experiences; I have lived in Eastern Africa for several years. However, when I looked around for some reference that had an explanation on this experience, I found nothing on Wikipedia, only other first hand accounts from other parts of Africa (via some blog posts initially referenced in the article). That's what I tried to do - explain a phenomenon. Also, I see that the article now has several news references.

While I can understand your concern about prejudice, Yamara, I'd also like to argue that this phenomenon can be used neutrally and that it's not an attack on any culture by itself. The phenomenon might have a more negative connotation in the business world - I don't know personally, but on the personal level, as I have experienced it, it's more positive. It's about being in the moment with your full attention, not looking at the watch, not stressing. The blog posts mentioned above were also mostly positive, focusing on the personal side of Africa time. (I understand that blog posts are for the most part not reference material in a wikipedia article, but even so, they demonstrate a positive use of the term.)

(BTW, I have modified the opening sentence in the article to be neutral, as I see it, followed by short descriptions of the negative and positive sides in separate sentences after that.)

In short, I think a more relaxed attitude to time, sometimes a good thing, sometimes a not-so-good thing, is a real phenomenon worthy of a wikipedia article. And while it might not be unique to (cultures in several countries in) Africa, there seems to be enough association there to justify the name. Ingvald (talk) 19:52, 18 February 2008 (UTC)