Talk:Mali

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This article has been nominated for good article reassessment to determine whether or not it meets the good article criteria and so can be listed as a good article. Please add comments to the article reassessment page.
Mali is included in the 2007 Wikipedia for Schools, or is a candidate for inclusion in future versions. Please maintain high quality standards, and make an extra effort to include free images, because non-free images cannot be used on the CDs.
Good articles Mali has been listed as a Geography and places good article under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do, and if it no longer meets these criteria, it can be delisted or reassessed.

Review: June 12, 2008.
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This article is supported by WikiProject Mali. See also The Mali Portal.
Assessment comments
Peer review This Geography article has been selected for Version 0.5 and subsequent release versions of Wikipedia. It has been rated GA-Class on the assessment scale (comments).
This article is supported by the WikiProject on Countries, which collaborates on nations and related subjects on Wikipedia. Please participate by editing the article Mali, or visit the project page for more details.
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This article is part of the Africa related regional notice board project. The notice board serves primarly to improve Africa related articles. It also serves as a to-do list and an announcement board for everything new about Africa in Wikipedia. Please participate to improve Africa related articles.

French Sudan originally a department of France? Was French Sudan originally a "Department" of France (like Algeria was)? I added this but I'm not sure this is true. Badagnani 00:48, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

suggestion: PRONUNCIATION GUIDE FOR "MALI" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.80.66.119 (talk) 17:52, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Economy section: NPOV

I have reviewed the "Economy" section in all country articles on Wikipedia; unfortunately, many of them have NPOV issues, and by my reading, this article is one of them.

Common issues with this section include:

  • verbatim quotes from the CIA world factbook
  • describing a country's economic policy as "sound", "unsound", "imprudent", etc.
  • assuming a link between economic health and low inflation
  • using expressions like "the GDP improved" (should be increased), "beneficial levels of inflation" (should be low levels of inflation), etc.
  • postulating cause-effect relationships that seem controversial.

Issues in this specific article are:

  • pro-IMF POV (this is also unsourced)

This note will stay up for a week before I'll make any further changes. Please feel free to be bold and fix the article yourself, though! I'll also be monitoring this discussion page, and will try answering any concerns.

If you want to discuss the entire project, you can do so on my talk page or at the talk page for this specific prject.

(Note: this is only the second country page I'm trying this on, and I haven't gotten any comments so far, so please let me know what you think about the idea.)

RandomP 16:43, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Changed the daylight savings time information -- Mali does not use DST. Chris 11:43, 28 June 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Wrong Motto in English

On the English page on the right hand side it says, 'Un peuple, un goal, une equipe' translated as 'One people, one goal, one faith'. Equipe in French means team, not faith, and "goal" is not a French word. Then I saw on the French page, the motto is said to be, "Un peuple, un but, une foi." This needs to be corrected on the English page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.80.38.19 (talk) 00:53, 6 December 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Percentage of Christians?

On the main page it says 5%. On the demografic page it says about 1%. Any one an idea which figure is correct?HichamVanborm 15:08, 23 October 2006 (UTC)mali is the bomdigidia

[edit] Section about Songhai

I made some minor changes to the grammar, but it appears as if the entire section has written in another language and was run through an online translator. I cannot understand the basic premise enough to fix it so that it is beneficial to the article. If someone else could that would be great. --Cdank (talk) 17:38, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] history

how does the Bambara Empire fit in the history section? It is not currently mentioned. I don't know enough about the subject to merge it in. phoebe 04:00, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Amazigh language?

I do not believe the Amazigh name for Mali is required for the top of the article. The lingua franca of Mali is Bambara, not Amazigh -- I think English and French are the only two necessary. Any thoughts as to whether or not I should remove it?


reply: don't remove it. a person who is Amazigh might read.

     from: Fver

I still disagree that the Amazigh name should be displayed; I can think of numerous languages that are more widely-spoken and recognizably Malian than Amazigh. Why don't we put those there? N'ko, Malinke, Arabic etc. Chris 18:49, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:CEN-SAD-emblem.png

Image:CEN-SAD-emblem.png is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.BetacommandBot 06:13, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Music!

This article doesn't include any link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malian_music —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.2.115.44 (talk) 14:47, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Africa/Mali work group

Please note the addition of the WikiProject Africa/Mali work group. Anyone willing to coordinate Malian topics can add lists/suggestions there, as well as well at Wikipedia:WikiProject Africa T L Miles (talk) 06:27, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Malinese - Malian

The article mentions Malian as the Demonym for Mali, I have also heard the word Malinese used, probably first from playing Civilization, used with the Mali Empire. Malinese does not appear very frequently on a Google search compared to Malian and does not appear in my dictionary either. Does anyone know where the word Malinese came from, if it is incorrect or an archaic term. Should it be mentioned somewhere in the article?

Carlwev (talk) 17:37, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

A quick check of google seems to indicate that this computer game uses Malinese, and that it is also the Dutch / Flemish language term for people from Mali, and some translations into English of articles from these sources incorrectly render the term Malian as Malinese. I've never heard a West African use the term, or even read it before. My opinion is that it is incorrect, and if anything, you should write a letter to the makers of that video game. T L Miles (talk) 16:20, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Mali/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

This article is not yet ready for GA status. Please review the comments below.

  • Much of the article seems to be compiled from very few resources, but what's worse is that I have found entire sections of text taken directly from the source material. For example, the first sentence in the history section "Mali was once part of three famed West African empires which controlled trans-Saharan trade in gold, salt, and other precious commodities" is taken directly from the Library of Congress source text without indicating so. While it is not a violation of copyright (because works of the U.S. government do not have copyright protection), it is by all definitions plagiarism; please correct any instances of such behavior. If entire sections of the work are from another publication, then it may not even be worth completely duplicating it in Wikipedia but rather just linking to the article instead. Please make sure that information and text from the sources is not lifted directly but instead used to create new prose in the article.
  • Even though more citations are better than too few, it is not always necessary to cite each sentence. If a group of facts come from the same source, then that source need only be cited once.
  • Sections of the article are rather slim as well. They could definitely be fleshed out to meet GA standards... not too long, but a little bit more than a few sentences per section.

When issues with sourcing are taken care of please renominate for good article status. Best, Epicadam (talk) 03:11, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I am reversing my review as Wikipedia's policy at Wikipedia:Copyright problems#Plagiarism that does not infringe copyright does not require quotations of public domain material. As that was my primary reason for the GA fail, I would instead like to add the article to GA. Best, Epicadam (talk) 13:18, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. miranda 18:21, 12 June 2008 (UTC)