Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Africa/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

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)

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)

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:

• Request that a bot check all pages in Category:Unassessed Africa articles and, if a page contains the banner of another WikiProject that does have a "class=" assessment, to apply the same assessment to {{AfricaProject}}.
• Request that a bot check all pages in Category:Unassessed Africa articles and, if a stub tag appears on the main article, to assess the articles as "class=Stub".

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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.

• Amadou Lamine Ba (new stub) is the ambassador of Senegal to the U.S. APK ^{yada yada} 04:19, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
  • African Diplomatic Corps - related stub. APK ^{yada yada} 05:21, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
    • Embassy of Mali in Washington, D.C. & Abdoulaye Diop - 2 more. APK ^{yada yada} 07:50, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
      • Embassy of Cameroon in Washington, D.C. I was almost finished with the Cameroon ambassador's article until I accidentally closed the window and lost the whole thing. Screw it, I'm not doing it over again right now. APK ^{yada yada} 07:00, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

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)

• African Unification Front (May 2008)
• Holy Cross Convent School (May 2008)
• Andohapatsakana (March 2008)
• Dalola raid (September 2007)
• Amon Bazira (May 2008)
• Ballad Zulu (January 2008)
• Rap dogba (January 2008)
• 9ice (April 2008)
• Bilanga Department (May 2008)
• Tokoin (April 2008)
• Bantusoul (May 2008)

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)

Whites in Zimbabwe GA Sweeps Review: On Hold

As part of the WikiProject Good Articles, we're doing sweeps to go over all of the current GAs and see if they still meet the GA criteria and I'm specifically going over all of the "Culture and Society" articles. I have reviewed Whites in Zimbabwe and believe the article currently meets the majority of the criteria and should remain listed as a Good article. I have left this message at this WikiProject's talk page so that any interested members can assist in helping the article keep its GA status. In reviewing the article, I have found there are a few issues that may need to be addressed, and I'll leave the article on hold for seven days for them to be fixed. I have left messages on the talk pages of the main contributors of the article and other related WikiProjects. Please consider helping address the several points that I listed on the talk page of the article, which shouldn't take too long to fix if multiple editors assist in the workload. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Happy editing! --Nehrams2020 (talk) 06:13, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

I have also reviewed Fair trade and have placed the article on hold. Please consider helping to address the issues raised on the talk page. Happy editing! --Nehrams2020 (talk) 20:51, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Articles flagged for cleanup

Currently, 2384 articles assigned to this project, or 13.0%, are flagged for cleanup of some sort. (Data as of 18 June 2008.) Are you interested in finding out more? I am offering to generate cleanup to-do lists on a project or work group level. See User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings for details. If you want to respond to this canned message, please do so at my user talk page. --B. Wolterding (talk) 11:57, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

C-Class introduced, aparently

A new Assessment class is being rolled out across English Wikipedia C-class. If you assess articles, please look at the new assessment scale at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment. Some Africa Sub-projects already have C-class categories, see Category:C-Class_articles. The current Africa Project Tag does not yet seem to be able to handle this. Folks should follow this process, and we can see when we can begin tagging Africa Project articles. Is there anything us laymen editors can do to help implement this? T L Miles (talk) 03:22, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree that we should add class C assessments to the current template since WikiProject Africa already has Class C in its quality guide. I've created a new template that's the same as the old one except that it supports C-class assessments; it's at User:Merenta/NewAfricaTemplate. I've tested it and am pretty sure it's correct, but (of course) welcome criticism. Should there be a consensus to support class C assessments in our template, feel free to use the one that I've created. Since the template is protected, I can't do this myself; it requires admin action. Cheerio and happy editing! Merenta (talk) 18:23, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Rename proposal for the lists of basic topics

This project's subject has a page in the set of Lists of basic topics.

See the proposal at the Village pump to change the names of all those pages.

The Transhumanist    09:49, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme

As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.

• The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
• The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
• A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.

Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles.

Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot (Disable) 22:25, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Africa/Madeira work group

Hello everyone. Could you please come to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Africa/Madeira work group and participate / help? Thanks! The Ogre (talk) 14:59, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Mustafa Tajouri

An article, albeit a stub at moment, which I created has been put up at Afd. The article being Mustafa Tajouri. Tajouri is the Ambassador of Libya to Russia, and only a few sources can be found on this highest level diplomat from Libya - those sources being in English and Russian. As Tajouri is Libyan, it is likely there are going to be sources for information out there in Arabic, however, not understanding Arabic, I can't find and add these sources to the article. If any of this project members could take a look and see if they can find any info on this ambassador, and add it to the article. There are going to be a heap of ambassador articles on subjects from Africa, and they are forming part of this article I am working on developing. Also if someone could add the name in Arabic to the article, and correct it if incorrect, that would be good too. On a small sidenote, Category:Articles needing Arabic script or text has more article in it which I have created and also need names in Arabic. Ambassadors are high level representatives of their nations, and they have likely had a multitude of credentials for which they were appointed to the position in the first place, it's just finding the info that can be difficult, and it is important to fight systematic bias to have articles on these ambassadors. We need editors help. Thanks. --Россавиа ^Диалог 19:14, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

C-Class Assessment Added to Banner

I have created a new Africa Project banner template (currently at User:Merenta/NewAfricaTemplate) that's the same as the current one, but it also supports C-class assessments (at subproject level as well as at main project level). As discussed in other parts of this page, the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team has created this new class and indeed, there are already C-class articles in some Africa Project subprojects.

I propose that this new banner template replace the current one. If there are any objections to this, please reply on this page. If there are no objections after a period of at least three days, or if consensus has been reached following objections, I will request that an administrator move the template. Cheerio and happy editing! Merenta (talk) 14:49, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like a plan. The banner looks good, and we can use the C-class functionality. Thanks for doing this. T L Miles (talk) 15:45, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

 Done Thanks for your efforts, PeterSymonds (talk) 17:22, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Divider line in {{AfricaProject}}

{{editprotected}}

Could the ---- near the end of the {{AfricaProject}} template be removed or put inside some noinclude tags as it's adding ad extra dividing line between talk banners when there is more than one one on a page.

Also the [[Category:WikiProject Africa templates]] at the end should also be removed as it's included in the documentation page and at the moment it's including every page using this template in that category.

Thanks. -- WOSlinker (talk) 09:51, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Done. Although in the future the editprotected template should be placed at the talk page of the page to be edited - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 16:49, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I would have put it on the proper talk page, but that talk page redirect here! -- WOSlinker (talk) 20:13, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

African Protected Areas task force

Hi there. I 've made a suggestion to several editors who edit national park articles in Africa that is would a good idea to set up a task force to specifically improve coverage in coordination with WikiProject Protected areas. If you are interested in joining please sign your name and leave a note if possible.

Interested wikipedians

• ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 16:22, 30 July 2008 (UTC) - I have created many of the navigation templates and will be expanding some of the stubs from time to time.
• --Blechnic (talk) 03:49, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
• –Black Falcon ^(Talk) 15:36, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Featured content update - 6 August 2008

Last update (25 May 2008)

Featured articles

• The article Saint-Sylvestre coup d’état was promoted to featured article status on 13 June 2008.
• The article Libya was removed from featured article status on 28 June 2008.
• The article Chrysiridia rhipheus was promoted to featured article status on 4 July 2008.

There are currently 34 Africa-related featured articles.

Featured lists

• List of heads of state of the Central African Republic and Central African Empire was promoted to featured list status on 22 June 2008.
• List of Sultans of Zanzibar was promoted to featured list status on 1 July 2008.
• List of heads of government of the Central African Republic and Central African Empire was promoted to featured list status on 4 July 2008.

There are currently 4 Africa-related featured lists.

Featured pictures

• Image:Fisherman on Lake Tanganyika.jpg was delisted from featured picture status on 30 May 2008.
• Image:Soweto township.jpg was promoted to featured picture status on 13 June 2008.
• Image:Jackson's Chameleon 2 edit1.jpg was promoted to featured picture status on 7 July 2008.

There are currently 25 Africa-related featured pictures which are included in the "Featured picture" queue for Portal:Africa.

–Black Falcon ^(Talk) 19:07, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Ratings changes for African country articles

Last update (2 April 2008)

In the past four months, there have been three changes in the "class" ratings of African country articles:

• Gabon: Start-Class to C-Class
• Mali: B-Class to GA-Class
• Libya: FA-Class to B-Class

See Portal talk:Africa/Countries/Selected country for a full listing of African country ratings. –Black Falcon ^(Talk) 19:21, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

FL-Class categories in Template:AfricaProject

While compiling the information in the section above, I noticed that WikiProject Africa did not have a category for featured lists (I have now created Category:FL-Class Africa articles). I was bold and added categories for the "FL" parameter in Template:AfricaProject (see diff). –Black Falcon ^(Talk) 19:49, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

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:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Algeria - {{WikiProject Algeria}} (~ 970 transclusions)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Chad - {{WikiProject Chad}} (~ 430 transclusions)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Egypt - {{WikiProject Egypt}} (no consensus for consolidation)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Equatorial Guinea - {{WikiProject Equatorial Guinea}} (all transclusions replaced)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Eritrea - {{Eritrea}} (not used)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Ethiopia - {{WikiProject Ethiopia}} (~ 1780 transclusions)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Ghana - {{WikiProject Ghana}} (not used)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Morocco - {{WikiProject Morocco}} (~ 670 transclusions)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Nigeria - {{WikiProject Nigeria}} (~ 1030 transclusions)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Sierra Leone - {{WikiProject Sierra Leone}} (not used)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject South Africa - {{WikiProject South Africa}} (~ 380 transclusions) (all transclusions replaced)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Sudan - {{WikiProject Sudan}} (all transclusions replaced)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Togo - {{WikiProject Togo}} (not used)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Tunisia - {{WikiProject Tunisia}} (all transclusions replaced)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Western Sahara - {{WikiProject Western Sahara}} (not used)
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Zimbabwe - {{WikiProject Zimbabwe}} (~ 1070 transclusions)

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)

I started replacing a few transclusions of Template:WikiProject South Africa today, but I just noticed this discussion here. Is this template now deprecated or not? --- RockMFR 21:01, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

It is. The Africa Project banner provides separate assessment functions for South Africa, and, as several articles deal with subjects that cross current borders, it kinda makes sense to use the one banner and reduce the total number of banners on a given talk page. John Carter (talk) 21:33, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

(Posting a comment so that the section is not archived) –Black Falcon ^(Talk) 02:34, 8 August 2008 (UTC) P.S. I will be resuming (I was on break during June and July) this task with AWB in the coming days. Also, I checked the talk pages of the notified projects and there still have been no objections between the time the notices were posted and now.)

• {{WikiProject South Africa}} - all remaining transclusions replaced and template deleted. –Black Falcon ^(Talk) 06:34, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Comment wanted.

Please comment on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Arathi. Is Arathi as mentioned in Githieya's, "The Formation and Development of the Arathi," The Freedom of the Spirit: African Indigenous Churches in Kenya, related to Aarti? This request is cross posted into WikiProject:religionTaemyr (talk) 14:26, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Africa/Protected areas task force

A new task force has been created The Bald One ^{White cat} 15:52, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

LANG template

Please be aware of {{lang}}, for marking up non-English words or phrases. Thank you. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 18:16, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Africa

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 22:48, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

African cinema task force

An African cinema task force has been proposed at WikiProject Films. Interested editors are encouraged to sign up - if there is enough interest, then the task force will be created! Many thanks, Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 03:14, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

African Nationalism Article

I just took a look at this, a glance. It has four tags on it, but when I read the first sentence of the definition of African Nationalism there, I figured it needed another one, a humour tag.Gallador (talk) 17:24, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Featured article review of Zambezi

I have nominated Zambezi for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Tom B (talk) 16:44, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Kingdom of Futa

Ayuba Suleiman Diallo says that "he grew up with Sambo the heir to the Kingdom of Futa."
We don't have an article for Kingdom of Futa. Futa is a disamb page that does not mention any African kingdom. We do have articles at Kingdom of Fouta Djallon, Kingdom of Fouta Tooro, Fouta Djallon, and Futa Tooro.
(A) Can we make the appropriate redirect for Kingdom of Futa?
(B) It seems likely that some of the existing articles should be merged.
(C) We should add the appropriate articles to the disamb page Futa.
-- 201.37.230.43 (talk) 13:37, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Hi. I don't think Kingdom of Futa would be useful except as a disambiguation page. When used in English it usually refers to Fouta Djallon and the people living there ("Futanke"). But it may also refer to the Tekrur/Tukolor state in the Senegal valley, Futa Tooro. In this case, the person (in by brief skim of the article) is in fact from Bondu, on the Faleme River, south of Tekrur and north of the Futa Djallon highlands. Michael A. Gomez. Pragmatism in the Age of Jihad: The Precolonial State of Bundu is the best on this: there's a discussion of terminology for us non Pulaar/Fulfulde speakers to which I've previously referred. In this case, I think we're a victim of British archaic usage, and probably is a reference to Fouta Djallon, especially since I remember a Sambo as in line to be Almami. Futa should mention both states. My 2 cents T L Miles (talk) 16:59, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree with T L Miles, and would add that Futa/Fouta reflects English vs. French orthography in rendering African names into Latin alphabet form -- A former professor of mine once pointed out that Felix Houphouet-Boigny's name would have been rendered Ufwe Bwanyi if he'd lived under British rule. Chris Lowe (talk) 09:12, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

How is a stub upgrade handled re tags?

Just now I've done some work on an article that I moved to Oorlam (ethnic group) from "Orlam Hottentots". There may be more to be done on it, but I think it is now beyond the stub stage. On the actual page I just removed the stub tags and also a "no references" tag since I provided references. However that leaves me with several questions.

1) Would someone take a look and see if I'm right in thinking it's now at least a bit more than a stub? If not, stub tags should be replaced. If that happens comment on Talk page would be helpful.

2) Is there some "next level up" tag that should go in?

3) On the Talk page, there is a WikiProject Africa tag that labels it as a stub and has a quality assessment box with no comments. If it is beyond a stub now, is there a different WikiProject Africa tag that should go in? Also, if anyone wants to do a quality evaluation of my upgrade, that might be good.

Comments about any of this on my talk page would be welcome.

I have intermittently worked on bits and pieces of Wikipedia stuff, mostly relating to southern Africa & particularly Swaziland, as that was the general and specific focus area of my graduate studies and Ph.D. work, but also on Bantu in its putative ethnic sense. However, I have been reluctant to put my name on either the project list or the Africa-related regional notice board list because I'm not very regular about it. I have to say that I find some of the project priorities opaque, probably because I am not much of a Wikipedian yet, and need to become more familiar with some of the formal and technical desiderata.

Chris Lowe (talk) 09:32, 9 January 2009 (UTC)