Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Africa

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[edit] List of African countries

Sometime ago i made a sortable list of African countries, which i think would be a more useful than just a plain list of the countries that is currently at List of African countries. It pretty much incorporates List of African countries in order of geographical area, List of African countries by GDP per capita, List of African countries by population into one list. Chris_huhtalk 00:43, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

I think it effectively replaces List of African countries in order of geographical area and List of African countries by population (the "GDP per capita" list could be modified to stand on its own...). Though I don't think there's any question that the list you created is a substantial improvement over the current List of African countries, I was wondering what you would think about making a few changes, such as adding "map", "conventional long form name", and "domestic name" columns (see List of countries in Europe). Black Falcon (Talk) 21:51, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
I like the idea of a map (or location) and other things could be useful, i will try some but too many will make it a bit squashed. I think Conventional long form name, and even domestic name would take less precedent over GDP, language etc if it because too cluttered. Would you think it would be best to simply replace List of African countries with this list. I feel the current one just doesn't have nearly as much info as it could.Chris_huhtalk 16:20, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
The problem of clutter could be ameliorated to some extent by omitting the GDP data (looking over some other lists of countries by GDP per capita, I think that there's enough information to make List of African countries by GDP per capita a stand-alone list). That said, yes, I support replacing the current List of African countries with the list you've developed. In terms of the information contained in each, there is simply no comparison... Black Falcon (Talk) 17:02, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I've added the maps and the Official name in English after the name. As this is designed to be a simple reference page to compare the countries in Africa i think Domestic long name etc is too much information. If someone is interested in that they could go to the country page itself. GDP could go, but i think it is a useful statistic to keep to compare the countries. I think List of African countries by GDP per capita is useful by itself, but GDP fits ok into this page (at least at 1024) and is useful i think. I'm surprised that the other list of continents countries are just the names of the countries. Chris_huhtalk 16:52, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
It looks great! And I think you're right about the GDP data ... if there's enough room in the table, there's really no reason to remove the information. Black Falcon (Talk) 16:56, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
What should we do now? I left a message on the talk page for List of African countries several months ago and got no reply. Should i just switch it over, or can you think of anythign else to add. I also started work on an Asian one too. Also i have just noticed on the current list there are dependancies listed too, i might add them first (and give the row a different bg colour). Chris_huhtalk 17:12, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
I think you should just go ahead and replace the page. I don't think anyone would contest that the change would improve the list of countries and there's been plenty of time for any opposition to be voiced... Black Falcon (Talk) 18:16, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
Done. Chris_huhtalk 14:45, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Great! With some minor tweaking, it seems to me that this could meet the featured list criteria. (I'm not a featured content reviewer, but it seems to match of all of the requirements: "useful, comprehensive, factually accurate, stable, uncontroversial and well-constructed", a "concise lead section", and images.) Black Falcon (Talk) 17:05, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The 153rd episode of "Côte d'Ivoire" vs "Ivory Coast"

Some editor came along, decided it was obviously Ivory Coast not Côte d'Ivoire, and solved this problem in two minutes flat by ignoring the talk page and just moving it. While efficient, it ignores the ENDLESS discussion of this on Talk:Côte d'Ivoire (or somewhere, I don't remember anymore). I folks could weigh in, decide which is right, and form some concensus either way, please do. Thanks. T L Miles (talk) 19:22, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, as per WP:NAME, "Ivory Coast" is the more common name, and probably should be the name used. It's also a lot easier to type, without the diacritical marks. Personally, I'd prefer that option, but that's just one opinion. John Carter (talk) 19:29, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
At the moment, I don't have a strong preference for either "Côte d'Ivoire" or "Ivory Coast" (I'd have to read the previous discussions, look at various sources, etc.), but proposals to rename the article to Ivory Coast failed here and here. Black Falcon (Talk) 19:39, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

The editor has been blocked as a suspected sockpuppet of a banned user. Black Falcon (Talk) 07:16, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

It's one of the few countries that the non-English version is accepted usage, both official and informal, in English. It's not the same thing as naming the article on Warsaw, "Warszawa," because, in this last case, Warszawa is not an accepted foreign name in English. Just do a google search on English language pages, some time, for "Côte d’Ivoire" versus "Ivory Coast." Folks get all tied up when things are irregular--order, they cried out for. It's been that way forever, it must remain. Etc. Fact is, "Côte d’Ivoire" is an accepted name in English for the country once and also known in English as Ivory Coast. It can only have one name on en.Wikipedia, and "Côte d’Ivoire" is accepted English. --Blechnic (talk) 03:51, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The 154th episode

See diff, as User:Proxy User removes citation of name change, and rewrites article to say Ivory Coast is the accepted name. In the background you may hear the sound of my head banging the desk... T L Miles (talk) 17:13, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

And as an aside, I reverted it once, he reverted it back without comment, so someone else can handle it. T L Miles (talk) 17:35, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Reverted, once more. Black Falcon (Talk) 23:45, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Assessment backlog

We currently have two assessment backlogs:

  1. A backlog of ca. 2000 articles (18% of all tagged Africa articles) that need to be evaluated for class (i.e. quality), and
  2. A backlog of ca. 10000 articles (92% of all tagged Africa articles) that need to be evaluated for importance.

I don't think there's any easy way to reduce the "importance" backlog, as importance is something that requires evaluation of context and judgment. (Probably the only easy way to reduce that backlog is to remove the "importance" parameter from Template:AfricaProject - see relevant discussions here, here, here, and here - but it does seem to have some usefulness.) However, there are some things we can do about the "class" backlog. For instance, we could:

Is there support for one or both of these actions? If so, we could file a bot request to have this done.

Before we submit a bot request (assuming there is adequate support), we may also wish to consider the title of Template:AfricaProject - see, for instance, the comment left here, in the section titled {{AfricaProject}}. I suppose that, ultimately, it doesn't matter too much what the template is called, but it may be something worth considering before we ask a bot operator to tag up to 2000 talk pages (again, assuming there is support for automatic assessment). – Black Falcon (Talk) 07:41, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

These both seem like very good ideas. I've been trying off an on to do this manually, and while most of these unassessed articles are stubs, there are a few starts and even "b"s in there, mostly assessed by other projects. As for the name, I have no strong feelings: the ones who'll have to do the graft of changing things should have the final say. T L Miles (talk) 16:50, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
(2 days later...) Great! I'll post the request shortly. Black Falcon (Talk) 19:07, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Done. Black Falcon (Talk) 19:09, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Is this a good idea, assigning the importance of a topic to one area to another? For example, major plant pathogens may be improtant to plant articles, but even if they impact an economic crop of Nigeria, they might not be of top importance to Wiki Project Africa. stub is good, though. What is the assessment scale, anyway? --Blechnic (talk) 03:06, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

My understanding is that the bot will assign a Quality assessment based on other current assessments of the article (assuming these is no AfricaProject assessment), not an importance assessment. Importance will have to be done manually, for the reasons you quite rightly point out.T L Miles (talk) 03:53, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I see, I misunderstood. Thank you for clearing it up. I changed a couple of your assessments, or maybe only one, the Rap dogba one to Low rather than Mid. --Blechnic (talk) 03:56, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

User:John_Bot appears to be doing this job, but it (from a quick look) MAY be breaking the assessments. The bot appears to be "preparing" the assessments by removing previous assessments. In some case thais happens AFTER the same bot has auto placed stub assessments (I assume following topic stub tags). The upshot it that the bot is removing AP assessmements and leaving previously assessed articles unassessed. see this and this as recent examples. I left a note on the operators talk page, but an admin probably should take a look at the logs and stop the bot if needed. T L Miles (talk) 13:45, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, it's screwing up. look at this diff. It takes Talk:Anglo-Zulu War, rated Start class by Wikipedia:WikiProject_Military_history, but no AfricaProject assessment (blank AP tag). The bot rates it B class (for some reason), with the description "m (Bot: Assessing article (b))". Then it replaces the tag it updated with "AfricaProject|class=|importance=| class=" and the description "m (Bot: Fixing template for easy assessment)". It's clearing the tag AFTER it rates it, so it should be stopped ASAP. I left a message of the owners talk page, but I can't force a stop, though any admin can. T L Miles (talk) 01:17, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
A bit similar thing here [1] too, but the bot didn't clear tag afterwards. BTW, John Bot is an AWB bot, so it should stop when somebody edits its talk page. Never tried that myself, though. Cheers, – Sadalmelik (talk) 17:51, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
The bot owner recognized the error, stopped the Bot the night of May 1, and says he'll fix it before he resumes. We should probably catalog those tags which were wiped, though. I'll try to fix what I can manually. T L Miles (talk) 19:26, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

It seems there has been a change of bots, and Betacommand (& BetacommandBot) will take care of this job now. – Sadalmelik ☎ 06:10, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Consolidation of African country WikiProject banners

Template:AfricaProject was recently revised, and now contains parameters for all African countries. For the sake of consistency, completeness, and efficiency (to avoid redundant tagging and reduce the number of templates involved), I propose that all uses of the individual African country WikiProject banners be replaced with {{AfricaProject}}. Any thoughts? (If there is consensus for this change, a bot would be able to do most of the work...)

To clarify what I mean, let me provide an example. Under this proposal,

{{WikiProject Algeria |class=Stub |importance=Low}}

would be replaced with

{{AfricaProject |class=Stub |importance= |Algeria=yes |Algeria-importance=Low}}

This change would not affect how the article is categorised for WikiProject Algeria, but would add the article to Category:Stub-Class Africa articles. In addition, it would allow standardisation of the WikiProject banners and the phasing out of the individual country banners. Black Falcon (Talk) 00:29, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

This sounds like a very good thing, assuming Nigeria Project, Chad Project, etc are cool with it. I'm always worried about changing these to africa tags with the national modifier, but I've not yet gotten a complaint from doing so. It would be a pretty simple bot job to do as well. T L Miles (talk) 14:38, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
I could post notifications to the affected projects, if you think that would be a good idea. Most already use {{AfricaProject}}, but the following have individual project templates:
Black Falcon (Talk) 15:07, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
I must admit, I thought that had already been done. Definitely a good idea, with the blessing of the members of those projects, of course.--BelovedFreak 17:09, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
I have sent out notifications to all 15 WikiProjects. Black Falcon (Talk) 23:31, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose per previous discussion. To reiterate part of what was said, if the concern is to reduce banner clutter, then it would make more sense to eliminate the Africa WikiProject Banner not those of the countries. We don't do this for any other continent; for example, China, France and Mexico don't have Asia, Europe or North America project banners at all. Otherwise, a banner shell will do the trick. — Zerida ☥ 01:52, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Support Africa isn't any other continent, so I'm not sure why it matters what other continents it's done for. It's been very handy for me to find stubs in either Africa, general, or by the various West African countries I'm interested in. Is banner clutter a concern? Why have two, when one serves the same purpose? --Blechnic (talk) 02:08, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • It would seem reasonable to me that well supported national projects wouldn't wish to consolidate their assessments. Most African projects, sadly, are not well supported. If the active editors for WikiProject_Egypt would like for us to keep our mitts off their banner, we should. But for Egyptian articles with Africa wide importance, we should place nested AP tags as well. If other projects feel the same, I think that's why we asked first. Please keep us updated on what WikiProject_Egypt decides and what the response on other projects is. T L Miles (talk) 02:24, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
I think this is the only to go for those projects, like WP:EGYPT, that have no consensus for a consolidation of their templates. The banner shell in any event is a neat way of organizing talk pages irrespective of the number of banners used. — Zerida ☥ 21:21, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
  • I have already replaced the articles that had the Wikiproject Sierra Leone banner on with the Wikiproject Africa banner. There were only a couple as the project had only just started tagging articles before the seperate importance parameters on the Africa banner were sorted out. Does the Sierra Leone banner need deleting as its not being used anymore? --Kaly99 (talk) 19:54, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • It could be deleted, to guarantee that it is not reused and to avoid confusion that could arise due to the existence of two templates. Black Falcon (Talk) 20:15, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Support This seems like a good idea to me- I've been tagging articles for WP Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea recently, and the tag bloat at the top of the discussion pages for some article is getting to be too much. My only concern is that the articles still be categorized as being part of the respective country project, and from the looks of things in the Sierra Leone project where they've already converted, that requirement is met. I understand concerns about countries not being lumped together into "Africa", but this change only affects the tag, not the individual groups themselves. Rjhatl (talk) 22:27, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Question Does this template support multiple projects? In other words would, say
{{AfricaProject |class=Start |importance= |Eritrea=yes |Ethiopia=yes |Eritrea-importance=Low|Ethiopia-importance=Low}}
be a legitimate combination? -- llywrch (talk) 04:55, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
Sure. The tag shows the general "importance" on the talk page, and on and they show up with the project specific importance. These (and only these) will show up as the importance rank at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Eritrea. There are not Eritrea specific importance rankings yet, so I just added "Eritrea-importance=Top" to Talk:Eritrea. When the assessments updat, you should see it. T L Miles (talk) 15:43, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Any thoughts about how to proceed? While I think it's fair to say that consolidation shouldn't occur for a template such as {{WikiProject Egypt}}, which is associated with an active and well-supported WikiProject, shall we move ahead on (some of) the other ones? –Black Falcon (Talk) 03:10, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I would wholeheartedly support going ahead with this. It's been more than a month that notice has been given, and those projects which wish to opt out will remain untouched. All changes will be reversible if people object at a later date, and I've even seen folks from the Chad project changing their tags manually already. I think, barring new opposition from dormant projects between now and when the bot is ready, we're good! Thanks for taking this on, Mister Falcon... T L Miles (talk) 13:41, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
I just did the conversion for {{WikiProject Equatorial Guinea}} (diff), and it seems that the consolidation can be done relatively quickly using AutoWikiBrowser. (It takes a bit of tinkering at the start, but it becomes rather easy once all the replacement commands are set up.) What should be done with the templates that are orphaned? I'm leaning toward speedy deletion under criterion G6 (housekeeping) since the templates are, after all, just tools for project maintenance, but I don't want to be too bold. –Black Falcon (Talk) 17:09, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
Great work, I think orphaned templates should be deleted under the housekeeping criteria as they are no longer needed. Do any of the individual project pages need their assessment sections updating to indicate the use of the Africa rather than individual banners? If people think it's needed I can replicate and customise the information I added to Sierra Leone assessments for the other projects.--Kaly99 (talk) 18:22, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
I'll update any incoming links from assessment sections (and elsewhere) as I do the replacements; however, detailed instructions (which are missing in some cases) may be useful. –Black Falcon (Talk) 15:29, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] FA update: Cyclone Elita

The article about Cyclone Elita, a tropical cyclone that affected Madagascar in January–February 2004, was promoted to featured article status on 9 April 2008, bringing the total number of Africa-related featured articles to 33 (plus at least one featured list). – Black Falcon (Talk) 00:28, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Template

This template should not default to alphabetical order, or there should be some way to over-ride it. For example, the article on Dagara people should list Ghana first, so I listed Ghana=yes, then Burkina Faso=yes, but it shows Burkina Faso first. This should be removed, or be an option. Some pages will be far more important to one country than the next, and the most important country should be listed first on the template. --Blechnic (talk) 03:04, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that the ordering of flags should be taken as an indicator of relative importance to one country or another. The template merely identifies that the article is supported by both country-specific WikiProjects. Black Falcon (Talk) 04:08, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Unfortunately it is not whether or not you or I take it as such, but in general, when things of a like kind are ordered in a list, the most important thing is listed first. This is the impression the reader of the article will get, that one is more important than another if only two are listed. Sometimes it will matter, sometimes it will not. But why default to alphabetical anyhow? --Blechnic (talk) 04:15, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
The alphabetical order comes from the order of #ifeq-statements on Template:AfricaProject. I don't it's possible to modify the templete to do what you suggested, at least without modifying all the 10,000+ talk pages where it is currently transcluded. Also I think the size and complexity of the template is already close to the limits set by the software (see Wikipedia:Template limits), so increasing the complexity of the template is not an option. It is already one of the most complex (if not the most complex) of wikiproject banners. So in the end changing the order is a huge job for little or no practical gain, and may not be possible at all. – Sadalmelik ☎ 18:47, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Featured content update: AIDS, Image:Rose Geranium.jpg

The article AIDS was demoted from featured article status on 18 May 2008. There are currently 32 Africa-related featured articles and 1 Africa-related featured list.

Image:Rose Geranium.jpg, a high resolution photograph of Pelargonium graveolens—a plant species indigenous to various parts of southern Africa—was promoted to featured picture status on 13 May 2008. There are currently 24 Africa-related featured pictures which are included in the "Featured picture" queue for Portal:Africa.

–Black Falcon (Talk) 06:20, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Draft Guidelines for Lists of companies by country - Feedback Requested

Within WikiProject Companies I am trying to establish guidelines for all Lists of companies by country, the implementation of which would hopefully ensure a minimum quality standard and level of consistency across all of these related but currently disparate articles. The ultimate goal is the improvement of these articles to Featured List status. As a WikiProject that currently has one of these lists within your scope, I would really appreciate your feedback! You can find the draft guidelines here. Thanks for your help as we look to build consensus and improve Wikipedia! - Richc80 (talk) 19:04, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] U.S. embassies

I'm not sure where to list new articles/stubs for this project, so I thought I'd add it here. Embassy of Senegal in Washington, D.C.. I have several more coming later this week.

[edit] Articles of unclear notability as of 24 May 2008

There has been another database update and this time there are 11 Africa-related articles that are tagged as having unclear notability. For more details, see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Notability#Feedback on per-project listings. I've copied the list below. –Black Falcon (Talk) 16:54, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Architecture of Africa - Does it need splitting?

There has been a persistent vandal that has been trying to split the Architecture of Africa article into two, one based on North African architecture, and another on Sub-Saharan architecture. Her argument being that the two are distinctly different and unrelated, with North African bearing traits of South Mediterranean architecture and Sub-Saharan with not much. I personally don't see much issue with keeping both in a single article, as the article itself is not very long in the first place, and there is plenty of space to point out the division in style from North and Sub-Saharan within the article itself without having to split it. Only problem is her insistence on splitting it is mostly on grounds that bunching both together robs Mediterranean people of their achievements and benefits Black Africans. No idea what that's about though. Anyone want to chime in on this? Chan Yin Keen | Talk 21:45, 3 June 2008 (UTC)