Wikipedia talk:WikiProject South Africa/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

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Archive 4

Archive 5

ATKV

Hi,

I have started a ATKV page here, now we can work on it a bit before publishing it.

Marno Rossouw (talk) 15:27, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

You should use the full name as the article title, not the acronym - Afrikaanse Taal en Kultuur Vereninging. Roger (talk) 13:02, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) would suggest we should call it "Afrikaans Language and Culture Society Afrikaans Language and Cultural Association"[1], but that does seem a little silly. Wikipedia:Article titles#Common names says we should use "the name which is most commonly used to refer to the subject of the article in English-language reliable sources." In this context, considering SA English sources, I suspect that this might actually be just "ATKV". Thoughts? - htonl (talk) 14:26, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

An old move debate at Talk:Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging#Requested_move could be useful to help decide this issue as the arguments put forward there seem to be applicable here too. Roger (talk) 16:50, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I have noticed numerous articles with redlinks to Afrikaanse Taal en Kultuur Vereniging. — Gk sa (talk) 21:16, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Can you please let me know if you think this article is ready for publishing. Marno Rossouw (talk) 11:16, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Afrikaans/English translation needed – Utrecht, KwaZulu-Natal

In copyediting this article, I came across a longish Afrikaans quote from the Transvaal Archive and listed it on the translation page. After doing that, though, I realized it might be done faster if I made a request here too. Thanks! --Wi2g (talk) 19:08, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

User:NJR ZA is a native Afrikaans speaker, so he may be able to help.

On a side note, I wish I could find speakers of Xhosa and Zulu as I have wanted translations in those languages too

Thanks,

WhisperToMe (talk) 17:45, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I have added a translation to Talk:Utrecht, KwaZulu-Natal, but would strongly suggest that someone verify my translation before it is added to the article --NJR_ZA (talk) 18:03, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Done. --Another Type of Zombie ^talk 09:02, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

request photo of poison leaf plant, COME ON, you Afrikaners!

Please...I need a photo uploaded that shows the poison leaf plant. We have no photo of it. But I want to show it in the Fluorine article which is being worked up for FA. It would also grace the article for the plant itself as well as the article for fluoroacetate. So high impact. If someone does not upload it for me...I...I will be very sad...and go watch Endless Summer where they find the perfect wave in J-bay.  :( TCO (talk) 20:08, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

PLEASE! Come on, help the FA! TCO (talk) 20:08, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

I found this [2] on Flickr, unfortunately the author of the image has reserved his right for it to be reused, even non-commercially. If he still maintains an active Flickr account you could contact him and ask him if he would be willing to extend the license to permit non-commercial usage under the Creative Commons or a similar license. I really wish I could be of more help but I live nowhere near the plant (probably a good thing). I tried doing a filtered search on Google Images to see if there was a license which allowed for re-usage of the image, but to no avail. Perhaps you could vary the search terms and you might find what you are looking for. Best of luck. --User:DiscipleOfKnowledge (talk) 21:55, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

I sent him a note. I really like the look of a drawing (for variety), but also have some worry that the Russian snapped a picture from some book...and the illo in the book is copyrighted.TCO (talk) 22:32, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

ROFL. Glad to be of service. Let's hope the Russian proves to be helpful... If worse comes to worst, I could visit the botany department of the university I live close to and see if they have anything. Btw, do you live in or have you visited South Africa, TCO? I was just wondering, because we are not all Afrikaners: my Afrikaans is hardly any good (shock-horror) :O --User:DiscipleOfKnowledge (talk) 23:28, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

I saw the District 9 movie, a couple summers ago. And Breaker Morant as a kid. That should cover it, no?TCO (talk) 00:22, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

There is no question of your intelligence! I don't identify with the Afrikaner community, that's all. Except for Jack Parow. But I digress! The picture... I am going to see what the botany department holds and I will get back to you in the next few days. Hopefully the Russian will help us before then :) --User:DiscipleOfKnowledge (talk) 00:37, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks man. Just trying to get some attention and get some help...TCO (talk) 00:45, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Here are some pages with photos of the plant: [3]. You could try emailing the author C.J. Botha at [email protected] to see if he'll send you higher resolution images and release them under CC-BY-SA.
More photos. I don't see any way to contact the guy who posted it, so try contacting the site, South African National Parks, through [4]. I expect the university and the South African National Park will respond readily. Goodvac (talk) 01:19, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

I send an email to Botha, and then registered at that forum and left a message there.TCO (talk) 17:38, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

SANBS

South African National Blood Service now has an article, but honestly, I've never set foot in Africa so it might be a good idea to have someone with a little more of a local clue have a look at it. SDY (talk) 02:33, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

I have taken a look at the article and it looks good, well done! I will add an infobox and a logo soon with some more info perhaps if you don't beat me to it. --User:DiscipleOfKnowledge (talk) 14:51, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

South African English / date formatting

Dear colleagues, when I visited this page last it was a ghost town. ZA-related articles are sorely needed on the en.WP. I've noticed a few nominations at WP:DYK, in which I've queried the variety of English. Please confirm: -ise- is preferred to -ize-, I'd have thought. And the date format is more commonly day-month-year than the US-based month-day-year? Thanks. PS a greater input at the style guides by ZA editors would be much appreciated. Buzz me if you need any information. Tony (talk) 09:50, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

You are correct on both counts: -ise is preferred over -ize and we definitely use DMY dates. I'd also like to add that for the thousands separator we use spaces, not commas (1 000 000), and the plural (and singular) form of the name of our currency is "Rand", not "Rands". These are some common errors I fix here quite often. Roger (talk) 11:15, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't think we are doing to badly on the number of ZA articles. There are currently 9555 articles tagged for WP:RSA, constituting 0.26% of all en Wikipedia articles. By comparison, there are 99087 articles in WP:USA, 97972 articles in WP:Australia, 53447 articles in WP:Germany and 6733 in WP:UK. This compares quite well with List of countries by number of Internet users

Many more South African articles (specifically biography articles) are not tagged for WP:RSA yet, but that is an ongoing process.

You are quite correct regarding the spelling and date formats though, but I think that reflects more on the quality of ZA articles than the quantity. A ZA style guide included on WP:RSA is probably a good idea.

--NJR_ZA (talk) 11:23, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Congratulations: you seem to be doing well. Please let me know if I can be of assistance (although I'm fairly stretched already). Tony (talk) 11:47, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

NJ, we are still lacking in numbers; there are simply not enough SA Wikipedians. I think that in the near future there should be some kind of drive to encourage people originating from or living in South Africa to edit articles, and not just the interesting ones like Julius Malema which is taking a beating from vandals. But onto the matter of determining our standing on Wikipedia... we should not be quantitative, but qualitative; how good are the actual articles that have been released and edited? Look at the number of featured articles on WP:SA and you will see there are not many of them. WP:UK may have only 6K articles and we may have 99K, but what is disparity in quality between these two sets of articles? --User:DiscipleOfKnowledge (talk) 15:51, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Is there a South African chapter of the WMF? Tony (talk) 15:59, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes. It's been approved by WMF and they should now be busy filing the local paperwork to form a non-profit company. - htonl (talk) 16:18, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

That's great news. I'll go look it up to satisfy my curiosity as to the linguistic mix. I do wish it well; the chapter would be a good way to drum up more SAf editors. Tony (talk) 17:22, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Disciple, agreed, we are definitely still lacking in active members and I hope that when we do start getting more members most of them will concentrate on improving the quality of existing articles rather than just creating more stubs. As you have noted, there is currently a large number of important articles that is in urgent need of improvement. --NJR_ZA (talk) 18:44, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Assessment cleanup

I have started assessing a large number of articles for WP:RSA, correcting assessments of articles already tagged for WP:RSA and adding articles to WP:RSA that should be included in the project.

During the process I am updating the talk page template to a standard format:
{{AfricaProject|importance= |class= |attention= |South Africa=Yes|South Africa-importance=}}
and adding class, importance and South Africa-importance information.

Changes will appear under the assessment Statistics and Log. If the information seems out of date, then Toolserver can be used to force an update.

Anyone that wishes to help out is more than welcome to do so, specifically by adding importance to the 500 odd Start class articles and the 2100 Stub class articles that currently do not have importance assigned to them.

Quality assessment FAQ and Instructions are at Wikipedia:WikiProject South Africa/Assessment

--NJR_ZA (talk) 18:23, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Important AfD discussion - paticularly for those interested in SA military history

Please participate in the deletion debate at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kevin Winterbottom. He was a SA Air Force pilot who received the Honoris Crux posthumously for staying with his crashing plane to steer it away from a residential area and so giving up his chance to eject safely. The point of the debate is that people who recieve their country's highest awards are "inherently" notable - examples give are the Medal of Honor of the US and the UK's Victoria Cross. This AfD debate will set a precedent for all future articles about Honoris Crux holders as this article happens to be the first. Roger (talk) 06:56, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Added my comments --NJR_ZA (talk) 08:44, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Alfred Richardson

I've created an article on this chap who, in English terms, was a fairly run-of-the-mill cricketer but whose obituary in The Times of London suggests that he was a pretty important person in South Africa as headmaster at Umtata High School. Difficult for me to find more in the UK, but perhaps others nearer might have better sources. Johnlp (talk) 00:27, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

I'd rather say that headmasters are actually run-of-the-mill, so he is much more notable (and Notable) as a first-class cricketer. Roger (talk) 10:34, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Must have been something to fill a cathedral to overflowing at his funeral. Sure he's notable as a cricketer. But it's nice to give an impression of the man's whole career and life, not just his cricket. Johnlp (talk) 22:51, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes - he must have been very impressive! Roger (talk) 09:23, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Invitation - come "play" in my sandbox

I have a few draft articles in my sandbox that some of you might like to work on, particularly if you're interested in aviation, military or corporate topics. I'm in a bit of a rut as far as working on these drafts is concerned so I thought I'd invite some input from other editors. Roger (talk) 11:11, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

I had a look around, but can't really contribute significantly to any of those articles --NJR_ZA (talk) 18:30, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Talk page template

User:NJR ZA's work on tagging pages for this project have made me wonder: why are we still using the generice {{WikiProject Africa}} template instead of a {{WikiProject South Africa}} template. (It's a blue link, but currently it just transcludes the Africa template with the SA parameters set.) Many other African wikiprojects have started using their own templates - e.g. Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, even South Sudan! The combined template made sense when the number of Africa articles was small, but now that we're over 10 000 for SA alone, maybe not so much. Having our own template would also allow us to tag for specific task forces (yes, we only have one at the moment, but there will be more).

If we do want to do this, I'd be willing to write a bot that would find all articles that are currently tagged with {{WikiProject Africa}} with the South Africa parameter and not tagged for any other African country and replace the tag with {{WikiProject South Africa}}, copying the quality and importance parameters where they exist.

Thoughts? - htonl (talk) 03:30, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

I recently changed {{WikiProject South Africa}} from a redirect to transcluding {{WikiProject Africa}}. The redirect did not pass parm along to {{WikiProject Africa}}, so all the articles tagged for {{WikiProject South Africa}} did not show up in the South African assessment. After the change around 800 more articles showed up immediately.

It will probably be a good idea to have our own template, but we would need to first make sure that we fully understand the intricacies of the WikiProject system so we can be sure that we do it correctly. WP:RSA is large enough to justify splitting it off WP:AFRICA.

There are a couple of things we will need to do:

• Upskill ourselves on the WikiProject system
• Change {{WikiProject South Africa}}
• Change {{WikiProject Africa}} to remove South Africa
• Update all WP:RSA project pages to reflect the change
• Update all WP:AFRICA project pages to reflect the change
• Run a bot that can replace/modify the talk template on all articles. The bot should:
  • Preserve {{WikiProject Africa}} for other countries in cases where the existing {{WikiProject Africa}} includes more than one country
  • Use South Africa-importance from {{WikiProject Africa}} if it is available, else, use importance
  • Should preserve PArea if present, better still, change it to something more readable such as Protected Area. This will assist should we wish to create a South African Protected Areas task force.
  • Should rewrite African MH to South African MH if present. This will assist should we wish to create a South African Military History task force.

--NJR_ZA (talk) 06:53, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Agreed all round, except that we don't actually need to remove South Africa from {{WikiProject Africa}} - the other countries generally haven't done so, and I think for articles which involve more than one country we could stick with just the Africa banner and the country parameters. Drawing up {{WikiProject South Africa}} is something we can actually do now without getting involved with anything that'll be troublesome to reverse. I think I'll have a go at it. - htonl (talk) 07:19, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

So you can see the new banner at the top of this page now. I dropped the African diaspora project parameters since they weren't used by anything currently tagged with {{WikiProject South Africa}} and it seems unlikely that there'll be many articles needing it - they can just have the separate diaspora banner alongside the RSA banner. I dropped the MilHist importance parameter because AfMilHist doesn't assess for importance anyway. I renamed the PAreas and MilHist parameters, though it's set up so the old ones will work as well. Thoughts? - htonl (talk) 10:18, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Looks good. I have created Category:South Africa articles needing infoboxes, Category:South Africa articles with comments and Category:South Africa articles needing attention required by the template.

While we are at it, should we create assessment categories for the Municipalies task force as well? It will give us a good tool to better manage those articles.

Will test the template shortly on a couple of articles and regenerate the assessment to check that all is OK. --NJR_ZA (talk) 11:07, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

I have toolserver regenerate the assessment table after changing 3 articles to the new template. All looks well and the articles are correctly reflected. Now we just need to update the South African project pages. --NJR_ZA (talk) 11:49, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

I like this! It's high time we "declared independence". Hopefully this would also go some way towards helping the stereotypical "ignorant yanks" to understand that Africa isn't all one country. Roger (talk) 11:28, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

I have the bot code almost ready, but of course I'll have to get approval from WP:BRFA before I can run it. - htonl (talk) 12:52, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Excellent. Approval should not take to long. Let us know when you run it.

In will use the new {{WikiProject South Africa |class= |importance= |attention= |needs-infobox= }} template for further assessments. Only 4243 left to do to get the Statistics up to date.

There are quite a number of articles that I am tagging as C that probably qualify for B, specifically the excellent work User:Andre Kritzinger is doing on List of South African locomotive classes. Will go back to those and reassess once the big assessment cleanup is completed. --NJR_ZA (talk) 13:07, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

I've filed the BRFA. - htonl (talk) 15:07, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Update: the bot is approved and running now. See Special:Contributions/HtonlBot to follow what it's doing. - htonl (talk) 16:57, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

This also counts as a warning that, if you have lots of SA articles watchlisted, you're probably going to see a lot of bot edits in the next few days. - htonl (talk) 17:15, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Looking good. Nice to see those articles getting RSA identity. I have slowed down on the assessment cleanup lately due to work load, but will get back to it in full force in a couple of weeks. --NJR_ZA (talk) 18:02, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

So, the bot is done; there are now just over 10 000 talk pages that transclude {{WikiProject South Africa}}. I'm still busy going over the bot's contributions and checking for articles that specficially should have the whole-Africa template; there don't seem to be that many. - htonl (talk) 05:01, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Statistics Task Force

We use a lot of statistics in a very wide range of articles: elections, geography, economics, demographics, business, etc. (even sports!) so I would like to propose that we establish a Statistics Task Force. Roger (talk) 07:37, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

I'd agree in principle, but we don't really seem to have enough active contributors to need separate task forces. (I know we have the municipalities one, but it's for historical reasons essentially.) How about just starting a subpage at Wikipedia:WikiProject South Africa/Statistics and see how much activity it gets? - htonl (talk) 17:17, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

I see what you mean - everything around here is done by the same handful of editors. Roger (talk) 18:15, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree, we are probably still to "under-staffed" to form new task forces. It does however seem that there is a bit more activity in the project lately and if we can keep it growing we might have enough active contributors in a year or two to do these things. --NJR_ZA (talk) 18:32, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

I've started the subpage as htonl suggested. Roger (talk) 08:11, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Information and controversies at UKZN

Hi, if anyone wants something to do that will actually help people out, please can you have a look at University of KwaZulu-Natal and Controversies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. I tried working on them recently, but there's only so much I can do myself. I want to get these pages up to scratch because there are actually a good number of French, American and British students coming to the university each year on exchange/study abroad, yet many of them cannot find information online on the university, nor is it easy for them to phone and get an accurate picture of the university itself. The same applies for their home institutions. This can lead to some bad situations as I have just witnessed where international students were shot at and almost arrested during the strikes/residence invasions of 2011 and their universities had to pull them out! MartinMorrison (talk) 08:31, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Assessment - importance

Perhaps I am looking in the wrong place, but are there specific criteria for grading importance for this project? Wikipedia:WikiProject South Africa/Assessment doesn't seem to have any criteria listed.... Hack (talk) 05:05, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any specific criteria that currently exists. When tagging I default to mid importance with the following exceptions:

• Articles listed as a Main article on Outline of South Africa I tag as top importance
• Articles listed other than Main article on Outline of South Africa I tag as high importance

It will probably be a good idea if we start a discussion to formalize a WP:RSA policy for assessment importance so that we can do this in a more structured and consistent manner.

--NJR_ZA (talk) 07:08, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Sipho Ngwenya - the real first black mayor of Durban not on the List of Durban Mayors - he was mayor in 1994

We all know the IFP won the KZN province in 1994. And it's mayoral candidate was Sipho Ngwenya. However, his name seem to be disappear from history, surely the Durban municipality still has records of him being the first blak mayor - beaded mayoral chain etc, why has he been deleted? Before this makes some conspiracy story - I suggest the List of Durban mayors be relooked for correctness — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zamitheku (talk • contribs) 19:36, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Any external references for this? -- Firefishy (talk) 10:47, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Help with a photo

File:DSCF1085.JPG

I'm trying to a little deduction here, is it possible that this is a photo of South Africa? Could anyone confirm if it is, and what city? There is no description, and the name is File:DSCF1085.JPG. Any help would be appreciated. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 07:46, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

That's a picture of Perth, Western Australia taken from Kings Park. Hack (talk) 07:55, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Awesome, I was just grasping at straws, thanks! ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 07:57, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Articles in Afrikaans with no equivalent links in the English wikipedia

Using WP:AWB I have create a list of all articles in Afrikaans with no equivalent links in the English wikipedia. This maybe of interest to interlanguage link or create a suitable equivalent article. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 23:39, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

With just a quick look I have found quite a few that are simply missing interwiki links, not missing articles. Is this list maintained automatically, will adding an appropriate interwiki cause automatic removal of the item from the list or do we need to manually mark it as "Done"? Roger (talk) 09:08, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

I fail to see which are just "missing the en wiki link", I was looking through them and couldn't find one that was actually on the English wiki, which ones have you found? Bezuidenhout (talk) 09:21, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Here are a few:

167. af:Binnebrandenjin > Internal combustion engine

210. af:Breederivier > Breede River

158. af:Besigheidsprosesontwerp > Business process modeling (This one might not be absolutely perfectly equivalent but there are a whole bunch of "Business process xxxxxxx" articles in English)

198. af:Bootsman > Boatswain

Roger (talk) 09:47, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

I also added interwiki links to a couple of those on the list. I suspect there are many more that do exist, but are simply not linked --NJR_ZA (talk) 15:31, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Coenraad De Buys

Hi there,

A page I created for the stub Coenraad De Buys keeps saying that it has multiple issues, including that it needs additional citations for verification; may require cleanup that the introduction may need to be rewritten and that it may need to be wikified.

I'm also trying to upload an image to the page, but struggling.

I'm not sure what to do. Can anyone please assist me?

Thanks

Tdebuys (talk) 11:54, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I have removed the may not include all significant viewpoints banner as no reason is given for it in the talk page.

Things that can improve the article:

• The lead section is very light on detail, the article will definitely better if a bit more detail is included there.
• More inline references will be good. There are large pieces of prose making a number of claims that are not referenced. For an encyclopedia those should definitely be referenced.

Other than that it does not look bad at all.

--NJR_ZA (talk) 17:57, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

The lead says he was impressive etc but it does not say "who" he was. What makes him significant enough to have an article here on WP? Roger (talk) 18:50, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Revision Idea

I think that a page that is in need of some major help is the article on Township (South Africa). I was hoping to get some ideas of things that could be added in order to make the article more scholarly and correct. I have a few sources that I will be using to add some new sections as well as add information to the current sections. Any feedback I can get will be greatly appriciated because I believe that the article deserves to have a good page so people can learn more about it. Clwilson91 (talk) 18:25, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Call for Applications: Wikipedian in residence in for WikiAfrica - R8500/month based in Cape Town

WikiAfrica is looking for a writer/coordinator/project administrator based in Cape Town.

Full details at Call for Applications

--NJR_ZA (talk) 04:22, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Wow. That is really cool. Now we will see more article expansions. --User:DiscipleOfKnowledge (talk) 09:56, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Source about East Indian languages in South Africa

Hi guys! I found something which may help Languages of South Africa

• Hornberger, Nancy H. "Language Policy, Language Education, Language Rights: Indigenous, Immigrant, and International Perspectives." Language in Society, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Dec., 1998), pp. 439-458

WhisperToMe (talk) 09:08, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Census 2011

I think it's time to start getting our ducks in a row for the upcoming census. The co-ordinated "high intensity operation" the municipal task force did for the recent municipal elections was IMHO a great success and I believe we should do something similar for the census.

I took a look at South African National Census of 2001 and found it to be in a really poor condition. (I updated the WikiProject template.) I propose that we have a co-ordinated go at getting it fixed up. This would also serve as practice for dealing with the 2011 count and also give us a "template" for creating South African National Census of 2011. A census obviously doesn't create a flood of information at a rate comparable to an election so the pace and intensity of our activity will obviously be much more relaxed but the focus and co-ordination we had here during the election is certainly applicable to the census too. Would a specific "Census task force" be a useful idea? Roger (talk) 10:52, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

I have written the first few words of South African National Census of 2011, unfortunately I am rather busy with university exams and other meatworld matters so I don't really have time right now to give it very much attention. Roger (talk) 08:47, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Can we get this show on the road? Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject South Africa/Statistics Roger (talk) 09:34, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Open page move discussion

• (Discuss) – District Six, Cape Town → District Six What is the common name for this apartheid flashpoint? Kauffner (talk) 00:55, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Paid PR firm work on SA articles

User:Biggleswiki has been caught editing on behalf of the PR firm Bell Pottinger. See Here

Likely worth spending some time cleaning up the South African articles he was involved with:

• Paramount Group
• Ivor Ichikowitz
• Lions (rugby union)
• More?

-- Firefishy (talk) 11:38, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Being handled here: Wikipedia:Bell Pottinger COI Investigations, mostly dealt with. -- Firefishy (talk) 20:21, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Military history articles

Congratulations on the new Wiki-africa office. There are a lot of wikiprojects that may be helpful; one is the military history project ("Milhist"). I think particularly when you're doing outreach to try to get non-Wikipedians involved, it makes sense to make use of the stronger wikiprojects, to help people get started. Feel free to add the {{WPMILHIST}} to the top of the talk page of articles that seem relevant to you, or post a message at our talk page if any of you would like assistance on these articles. We take a pretty broad view of what's relevant to "military history". - Dank (push to talk) 14:19, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Referencing style

For WikiProject South Africa, what is the prefered referencing style? For example just footnote references/citations as in P. K. van der Byl or citations referring to a bibliography as in Siege of Kimberley.

-- ShiningWolf (talk) 06:19, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't think a style has ever been decided on for WP:RSA, not do I think we need one. As per WP:CITEVAR I think we should use whatever suits the needs of a specific article. --NJR_ZA (talk) 09:56, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Modderfrontein

I found that af:Modderfontein has no English article. Would anyone be interested in starting an English article on the community? Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 23:03, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Charlize Theron

Could somebody here please chime in at Talk:Charlize Theron? Some misguided soul thinks that we should "Americanize" this actress who clearly achieved notability while a South African national simply because the films she acted in were American films. She had 12 years of notability as a South African national before becoming a naturalized American citizen in 2007, and according to WP:MOSBIO should be described as South African, as that is the nationality she held at the time she became notable. Yworo (talk) 06:36, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Sophiatown importance rating

Please participate in the discussion about the importance rating of the article. Some editors feel that the default "low importance" rating that suburb articles get in this project is not adequate in this case. Roger (talk) 09:12, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Please, please, please, we really need more opinions! Roger (talk) 16:28, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Details of dzwerani

Dzwerani is found in lwamondo village,under the chief tshililo.its near town is thohoyandou and its about 25km to the city.It is well known for its school called ndaedzo.ndaedzo was named after chief ndaedzo of dzwerani and then its called ndaedzo secondary school.it offers varity of learning from science and technology,history commerce and agriculture and ndaedzo is also regarded as the best school in lwamondo village ant it bring about 100% in english and with superior achivement in geography. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kmunzhelele (talk • contribs) 10:13, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Sophiatown

I would appreciate some feedback on the work I have done on the Sophiatown article. I am new to this so any guidance will be appreciated. ShiningWolf (talk) 19:38, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Nice job! My only real issue is the "Read more" links in the Landmarks section. They should either be used as references, or they should be in the external links section (or both), but they shouldn't be sitting around as raw URLs in the body of the article. - htonl (talk) 20:36, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Good Article Review

I have nominated Sophiatown for review, a lot of good work has gone into it. Please consider doing the review. Thanks Roger (talk) 18:29, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

New photo request

Hi! Would anyone in Pretoria be interested in photographing the SAMSA head office? It is at 161 Lynnwood Rd cnr Duncan Street Brooklyn 0181 P O Box 13186 Hatfield 0028 Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 14:22, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

film south africa

what and where do you go to bring an idea for film alive to film or at cinema. how to get funding are the first step but how do you get a R40millon budget and for companies to take on a project of that mass. i have gone through many film and production companies and most of our companies do commercials but what about film for south africa to make a mark. i have created ideas for that platform but it just cant get to that point of a go ahead project.for this and other creative ideas from other south africans; where and how do we go from here. thanks mr razak johnstone

—y Preceding unsigned comment added by Maker film studios (talk • contribs) 16:23, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

This is not really the correct place to ask such questions, but I just happen to know that the organisation you are looking for is the National Film and Video Foundation - www.nfvf.co.za

It really should not be a redlink. Roger (talk) 17:23, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Huisgenoot article

The current Huisgenoot article relies heavily on self published sources. The Afrikaans article on the other hand is well sourced from independent reliable sources. Who can help import and translate material from af:Huisgenoot to improve our article? Roger (talk) 11:22, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Airlines cleanup

I have just completed a cleanup of destinations served by Airlink and South African Express, some of the destinations listed them as acting on behalf of SAA. It's been quite a few years since these two airlines have been "servants" of SAA. They operate in their own names for their own accounts. Roger (talk) 12:36, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Assagay

Dear Administrator (of the ASSAGAY wikipedia page),

I was pleasantly surprised to find the lovely and informative new article about Assagay on Wikipedia. It really puts us on the world map!

My family moved into this beautiful area in September 2011 and we live at <private info redacted> (to be precise). This property also is the home of the <advertising removed>, which we have taken over from the previous owners. We are very excited about being able to host guests/tourists that visit Assagay on pleasure or business and would very much like to have a link added on the Assagay page to our website. Our web address is <Advertising removed> and the name is <Advertising removed>.

Kind regards,

165.143.155.55 (talk) 13:45, 10 February 2012 (UTC) <Name removed> email: <removed>

Sorry but you've come to the wrong place. Wikipedia is not an apropriate venue for advertising. See WP:Advertising for our rules. You might find sites such as Facebook suit your needs better. Roger (talk) 14:22, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Some assistance from experienced editors (Municipal task force) would be apreciated to get the article cleaned up. I've removed the worst spam but there's still a lot of peacock language that needs to be taken out. The layout also needs to be fixed to be consistent with our other articles about suburban places. It is completely unreferenced.Roger (talk) 14:32, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Dieter Gerhardt

I've been working on the this article, however the subject himself has taken exception to some the content. There are conflict of interest, weight and reliable source issues at play. I'd appreciate a review by an unconnected editor from this project - any suggestions for article improvement would be most welcome. Thanks in advance. Socrates2008 (Talk) 11:05, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

POV editing of Dan Roodt

The biography of Dan Roodt is being heavily edited by User:Ysgravin in a way that is attempting to "whitewash" (excuse the pun) his highly controversial positions on race and ethnicity. The editor is also ignoring problems such as inadequate references, the standard heading structure for biographies and inline external links which I have repeatedly tried to correct or point out to him/her - see the notes I have posted to User talk:Ysgravin as well as my edit summaries in the article history. I have now run out of AGF with this editor - please help. Roger (talk) 14:50, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Article improvement campaign - The Parlotones

I'd like to propose an editing campaign to improve the The Parlotones article. The current article is real mess and really needs drastic improvement. See Talk:The Parlotones#Article improvement campaign and join in the fun. Roger (talk) 09:13, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

HIV/AIDS in South African townships

WikiProject South Africa seeks to increase coverage of Wikipedia topics relating to South Africa. In accordance with this goal, I would like to create a new article entitled "HIV/AIDS in South African townships." In this article, I will demonstrate the link between HIV/AIDS and poverty and the long-term effects of apartheid on health disparities in South Africa. Apartheid, which was not formally discontinued until 1994, left non-white South Africans trapped in underdeveloped areas known as townships with little access to social services. Today, HIV/AIDS is particularly concentrated in South African townships due to poverty and a lack of education and awareness programs. I hope to contribute to the efforts of WikiProject South Africa through this article about health conditions in South African townships.

I welcome your comments and suggestions! Thanks!

Jak8 (talk) 22:52, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Requested move of Free State

Members of the project may be interested in a move request for the Free State article. - htonl (talk) 22:41, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Monuments 2012

The South African WikiMedia Chapter is considering participating in Wiki Loves Monuments 2012

See Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2012 in South Africa for more info or join the mailing list.

--NJR_ZA (talk) 08:11, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Merge comment needed - Herenigde Nasionale Party

Should Herenigde Nasionale Party merge to National Party (South Africa)? Please comment at Talk:National Party (South Africa)#Merger proposal. Also, please advise on how to carry out such a merger (or better yet, just do it if people support it, as you know more about South Africa than I do). Thanks, D O N D E groovily Talk to me 03:05, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Limpopo place names, cont'd

• Polokwane,Pietersburg Polokwane now accounts for 2/5 of all mentions, probably more as many instances of 'Pietersburg' are likely to be unrelated to the South African town
• Modjadjiskloof,Duiwelskloof Duiwelskloof is the only name with a significant number of results
• Sibasa,Tshivhase Tshivhase has now become the most common spelling
• Lephalale,Ellisras Ellisras is by far the most common
• Bela Bela,Warmbad Warmbad is the most common, but Bela Bela has been steadily gaining popularity
• Modimolle,Nylstroom Nylstroom is still used two times out of three, Modimolle accounts for the remaining third
• Musina,Messina impossible to assess because the query is polluted by the large number of false positives from 'Messina'
• Mokopane,Potgietersrus Mokopane and Potgietersrus are used in roughly equal numbers, but Potgietersrus is losing ground
• Mookgophong,Naboomspruit Naboomspruit remains the only common name

If these results are deemed accurate, I would recommend moving Modjadjiskloof, Sibasa, Mookgophong and Lephalale to their previous names, and leaving the rest as they are.--eh bien mon prince (talk) 12:24, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Have you discounted all mentions of the old names that date from before the name changes? Roger (talk) 17:22, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Pretty much, as the graphs show the results for every year from 2000 to 2008, and the count is not cumulative.--eh bien mon prince (talk) 17:33, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

What about Soekmekaar (new name Morebeng), Dendron (new = Mogwadi) or Bochum (Senwabarwana), and thanks for all the work on finding the sources? Bezuidenhout (talk) 18:36, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Although I disagree with the name changes, I don't know if a move back is a good idea? Google books isn't the best source (albeit a good one), but also does that mean we can move Mumbai back to Bombay? Or Ho Chi Minh City back to Saigon? Or how about Danzig back to Gdansk? or Mafikeng back to Mafeking? All these have been name changes in the past, yet all show more results for the former name. This doesn't mean we should move them back. We need current (past year or two) media coverage or RECENT references to see what people are calling them. My (white, Afrikaans-speaking) friends living in Pieterkwane, now call it Polokwane because they are now used to it. I strongely disagree with these name changes as I do believe they are targeting Afrikaans place names (hence why they change Pietersburg and Ellisras but keep Tzaneen and Thabazimbi), but I can't deny there is a emotional and personal attachment I have to these names which makes me want to move them back. I think we can all agree that some of these name changes we have to be realistic and use the more "official" name sometimes. Thanks and sorry for the essay :) Bezuidenhout (talk) 20:24, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Comparisons for Bochum,Senwabarwana; Dendron,Mogwadi; Soekmekaar,Morebeng. I don't intend to move all the pages back to the original name, but only the ones where the former names remain the only popular form even years after the change, and the new ones shows no sign of overtaking it, which is why I'm not proposing to move Polokwane or Modimolle or Mokopane, since in these cases the new names seem to have gained a good degree of acceptance.--eh bien mon prince (talk) 00:38, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

You also have to remember that some of those results could be for the actual municipality (ie Polokwane Local Municipality, which existed because Pietersburg was renamed to Polokwane). On Afrikaans wikipedia Naboomspruit and Warmbad havn't been renamed as they are far too uncommon. Witbank has also had some official usage both in media and even on google now. But Witbank and Nelspruit are still by far the most common, even though maps have changed their names. I'm actually quite shocked at Lephalale because I have friends from Pretoria that now call it that because of the development in the area. Duiwelskloof's new name is (no suprise) uncommon as I don't even know how to pronounce the new name. Also what about name changes in the eastern cape? Like Bisho to Bhisho, Lady Frere to Cacadu, Cala to Kala, Engcobo to Ngcobo or even Stanger to KwaDukuza in Natal?? Bezuidenhout (talk) 15:57, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

What I also found weird was that google books showed that the former names for Zimbabwean towns were gaining ground?

• Kwekwe (former: Que Que) - Que Que has caught up with Kwekwe and they are now equal?
• Mutare (former: Umtali) - Used to be 2:1 for Mutare but now there are more results for Umtali (even though it was changed in 1982).
• Zvishavane (former: Shabani) - Shabani has always been most used, and is now growing quicker than Zvishavane.
• Chinhoyi (former: Sinoia) - Chinhoyi was more common but Sinoia has now overtaken it?
• Gweru (former:Gwelo) - Gweru is still more common but gap is closing
• Shurugwi (former: Selukwe) - Formerley they were even but Selukwe is now by far more common.
• Esigodini (former: Essexvale) - Esigodini was formerley more common but Essexvale has now overtaken it.

I am actually quite confused as to why google books shows more results for the former names (if now ever-growing) as those name changes happened about 30 years ago!! Why are the new names less common than the old ones?! Bezuidenhout (talk) 16:13, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

After examining some of the results, my conclusion is that more books are being written about Zimbabwe's past than its present. The results for South Africa might suffer from the same bias. Is there any way to determine conclusively when a name is more common than another?--eh bien mon prince (talk) 09:48, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Satisfying the massive number of photo request

I think that the best way to solve the issue of the dearth of adequate illustrations for our WikiProject, short of travelling around the country and taking the pictures ourselves, is establishing a content partnership with a South African image repository, and asking them to release their content under GFDL, as it was done with PicSwiss. Is this feasible for us? Has this possibility been explored by the local WM chapter?--eh bien mon prince (talk) 11:42, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

South Afrrican people of Dutch decent

Wikipedia should please not perpetuate the falacy about the origins of Afrikaans speaking people in South Africa. Most progenitors of Afrikaans families were not Dutch, but came from the German terrorities to the east of the Netherlands. They came to South Africa to work for the Dutch East Indian Company -- but the Dutch came first and these Hollanders had many daughters who could marry the many Germans.

Because the Dutch dialects and the Low German dialects were so closely related that they could easily be called one language, the Dutch brides and German bridegrooms had no problem whatsoever understanding each other. The results of these unions are that there are about 33 per cent Dutch and 33 percent German blood in the Afrikaner -- but that the Germans contributed substantially more to the Afrikaner's gene pool. (Twelve totally unrelated Germans could marry twelve Dutch sisters, for instance).

Several linguists, dr. Hans Heese being one of them, pointed this out decades ago, but the belief in the Afrikaner's totally Dutch origin keeps on being propagated.

In reality 17 per cent of the Afrikaner's blood also comes French Huguenots who emigrated to South Africa in the 1700s. The rest of the blood comes from other sources.

But Wikipedia features a list of South Africans of “Dutch" origin that needs to be reworked. Of Charlize Theron, for one, it is implied that her progenitor had been Dutch, while in reality he was French. The first South African Barnard, I am pretty sure, also came from the German Low Lands. The same applies to some other surnames. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mieliestronk (talk • contribs) 00:11, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

A surname comes from only one ancestor, it proves nothing about any other ancestors (which double in number with every generation). Roger (talk) 17:57, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

What point are you trying to make? It has been stated on wikipedia almost everywhere that Afrikaans people are decendents of mostly Dutch and German (with a substantial amount of French), it's just that we always state Dutch first because they were the first ones, and because of the historic link (e.g. the language) by no means it is by numbers, just culture. Now please get to the point of what you are trying to say? Bezuidenhout (talk) 18:26, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Please, I am not trying to antagonize anyone or to critisize anyone for all the hard work he or she has done for Wikipedia. Far from it. I am merely refering to this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:South_African_people_of_Dutch_descent . Shouldn't it be merely changed to South African people of Afrikaner descent? Or even South African people of Continental European descent or whatever? (Thereby excluding the British, if need be.) Paul Kr:uger was actually of German descent too, as were many others. Their "stamvaders" (progenitors) were certainly not Dutch. Mieliestronk (talk) 22:01, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

And the falacy I am trying to correct -- but fighting a loosing battle -- is that the Afrikaner is culturally of Dutch origin only, as far as the language is concerned and everything else. Afrikaans was also influenced to an undeterminable degee by Platduits (Low German) -- undeterminable because the Dutch and Low German languages were practically the same, only with different variants or dialects. To state only one case: Dutch-German influences in Afrikaner cultural origin were also realized way back when the church NEDERDUITS Gereformeerde Kerk was given its name. (Ek is 'n ou man en kom al 'n baie lang pad hiermee saam - glo maar die ou oom!!) Mieliestronk (talk) 14:04, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Point is: I really don't think it is historically, linguistically and culturally correct to use the word Dutch as a generic term in the category at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:South_African_people_of_Dutch_descent . Mieliestronk (talk) 14:46, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

The Zulu Wikipedia

A handful of us over at The Zulu Wikipedia have been reviving the site and recently saved it from being shut down. We're now almost at 500 articles, and we're wondering if anyone in this chapter can offer some assistance. There are a lot of stubs that just need filling out, and if you're more interested in the technical side we could really use some templates. Our priority now is quantity of articles - we want as many basic pages as possible to attract contributors - so if it's not your first language all you need is high school Zulu and this on-line translator. We hope you can visit our site and lend a hand! ...Crucially we'd benefit from having a bot that detects articles at our wiki and automatically links to them on other wikis, and vice versa. --Oisteadman (talk) 22:36, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Article improvement: Sexual violence in South Africa

I am planning on editing the Sexual violence in South Africa article. One of the main additions I will be making is to reference the South African constitution, South African set of laws, and reports to UN bodies by South Africa to display what the country is doing to combat this problem. Furthermore, I want to add more statistics and viewpoints about the issue through discussing different forms of sexual violence, conviction rates, social/medical ramifications, and portrayal in the media. I came to the South Africa WikiProject page because the article falls under the WikiProject of South Africa, but also because I will be specifically editing the article to show more government activity and more substantial information about what the problem is in South Africa. I wish to add onto the existing article to use more evidence of and more dimensions about the issue. I would appreciate any feedback. Juliabarrow3 (talk) 20:27, 8 March 2012 (UTC)Juliabarrow3

Are you also involved in the same programme as the users who posted the section immediately above this one? Welcome to the WikiProject. Roger (talk)

Yes I am! It's a really great program. Thank you! Juliabarrow3 (talk) 21:42, 16 April 2012 (UTC)Juliabarrow3

Help needed categorising photos on commons

A large number of old photos of South Africa from the Colonial Office photographic collection held at The National Archives of the UK has been added to commons. Help is required to categorise these photos at commons:Category:South_Africa --NJR_ZA (talk) 20:52, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Need input on a move proposal

I'd appreciate some input on the move proposal at Talk:South African Party - it's been relisted because noone except me has commented on it. - htonl (talk) 22:52, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Articles incorrectly tagged with "Use British English" template

I find that many of "our" articles are incorrectly tagged with the {{Use British English}} template. As I find them I change them to {{Use South African English}} - I've just done it on South African Airways and Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging. I'm just wondering if there is a way we can do this more systematically - perhaps even task a bot to do it? Roger (talk) 07:41, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

You might be able to use something like Cat Scan? (That page could take a while to generate depending on whether you're using my cached results or not...) Alex Muller 21:12, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

If someone can come up with a list of articles that are wrongly tagged, I have a bot (with the bot flag) that I can run to change them. (Of course we would have to go through WP:BRFA to get approval for the task.) - htonl (talk) 21:15, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

OK, I have a list, which is in the following collapsible box.

There's only 124, so I don't know if a bot request is worth the effort. We could just do them manually or with WP:AWB. - htonl (talk) 21:54, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

OK, I'm doing them with AWB. I'm skipping those where there might be any doubt about the appropriate choice SA versus UK English. - htonl (talk) 23:21, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

And it's done. I've changed the tag on all the articles struck out in the list above. - htonl (talk) 00:00, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Article improvement campaign - Gift of the Givers

I'd like to propose an editing campaign to improve the Gift of the Givers article. It's really dissapointing that such a high-profile organisation has a miserable little stub article. A quick Google search (using the "News" filter) brought up many potential sources. Note that the News filter on Google can be too narrow when it comes to SA media - many mainstream SA news sources are not recognised by the filter. Remember to extend your searches all the way back to the early 1990s. Roger (talk) 15:28, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Great idea! I have worked a bit on this article, and even mailed Gift of the Givers to offer advice on how to work with Wikipedia in the presence of a WP:CoI, but the communication dried up after two emails. There is some text in the old revisions that can actually be used, but we have to be careful to remain neutral and cite sources, given the history of the page. --Slashme (talk) 14:32, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

I've discovered a poorly written stub at Imtiaz Sooliman that consists mostly of a list of awards and accolades given to hin. I have proposed that it be merged into Gift of the Givers. Please see Talk:Gift of the Givers#Merge proposal and give your opinion. Roger (talk) 11:46, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Another move proposal needs input

This time, Talk:Magistrates' Court (South Africa)#Requested move - hopefully this one won't get relisted for a second week before anyone comments! - htonl (talk) 21:55, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Missing District Municipality template

I've just been going through all the municipality articles of the Northern Cape (other provinces to follow) to check for consistent template use when I discovered that there is no template for John Taolo Gaetsewe District Municipality. It's the template that goes at the bottom of the page such as this one Template:Namakwa District Municipality. I'm not experienced enough with templates to make one of these. Roger (talk) 16:58, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

I've just checked Category:South Africa district municipality templates and discovered that there are many such templates missing- the category currently has only 25. Roger (talk) 17:00, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Last week's cabinet shuffle

It looks like this event has not yet filtered through into our articles. Roger (talk) 14:42, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

I thought I'd updated the relevant articles. Which ones are out of date? - htonl (talk) 16:34, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

South African National Defence Force and some other related pages still list Lindiwe Sisulu as Minister of Defence (mostly in infoboxes). Roger (talk) 11:51, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

We'll have to check every affected article - here is Special:WhatLinksHere/Lindiwe_Sisulu - even an improbable one such as United World Colleges mentions her as the MoD in the Alumni list. Roger (talk) 12:01, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

South Africa at the 2012 Summer Paralympics

I have just started the article South Africa at the 2012 Summer Paralympics with yesterday's announcement of the full team. Please help to get the article into shape - I'm not sure if I have the templates and other bells & whistles correct. Roger (talk) 09:10, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Place names in Limpopo

It would seem that while some of the new toponyms have definitely supplanted the previous names (Mokopane rather than Potgietersrus, and, to a lesser degree, Polokwane rather than Pietersburg), many have not taken hold, and the previous name remains the only one in common use (Warmbad remains the most used by some length, and the same goes for Naboomspruit). As these 'new' names have been around for about a decade by now, this is not likely to change any time soon. I believe we should use the most common name as page title in every occurrence.--eh bien mon prince (talk) 19:52, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

This has been suggested a few times, but what would you class as common or not. Polokwane is definitley more used now, I haven't heard much about Mokopane. We can't use a "google comparison" because what about "Messina" or "Musina"? Bezuidenhout (talk) 20:19, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

You are also using google books results. But who's to say that the results for "Polokwane" could be about "Polokwane Local Municipality"? Bezuidenhout (talk) 20:22, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

You're right, any method I can think of confronting the popularity of two names is bound to show at least some false positives. But in some cases the margin between the two is wide enough that one is patently more common than the other. (Naboomspruit is one such case, the new name Mookgophong is very uncommon).--eh bien mon prince (talk) 21:22, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

In case where doubt exists should we be "biased" in favour of the current official name? Roger (talk) 12:43, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

I think so, going with the official name is probably the least controversial choice.--eh bien mon prince (talk) 12:47, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

That's what I'm thinking too. Resistance to name changes is often associated with "conservative" whites, which would be an undesirable POV here on WP. Roger (talk) 12:53, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

What exactly is an "undesirable point of view" on Wikipedia, apart from matters illegal and abusive? I'm sure we would not like to shut up a "conservative white" such as Mrs Maggie Thatcher if she were to try adding to Wikipedia. I suggest an appropriate online test: put Naboomspruit into Google Maps, and see what happens. If it finds the town under that name, then use it in the interest of your obviously vast majority of Anglophone internet researchers searching this subject on this specifically English version of the site. They would be searching for Naboomspruit. After all, would you search for Lille or for Rijssel in Belgium? It depends on whether you are French or Dutch speaking; Walloon or Vlaams. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cfogge (talk • contribs) 20:27, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

The "Google Maps test" won't work, as a search for Naboomspruit and a search for Mookgopong produces the same result. (Google Maps, incidentally, labels the town "Mookgopong" but this is hardly conclusive.) - htonl (talk) 23:52, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Wait, but isn't the town spelt Mookgophong? Bezuidenhout (talk) 07:54, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Both spellings seem to be used, though I think you're right that Mookgophong is official. A GMaps search for Mookgophong also has the same result. - htonl (talk) 08:56, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

South African Geographical Names Council have the town as 'Mookgopong'. The Mookgophong Municipality website lists the office address in the town of 'Mookgopong' -- Firefishy (talk) 16:16, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

The Government Gazette notice from SAGNC has it as "Mookgophong". Where did you find SAGNC having it without the 'h'? I can't get anything out of the SAGNS website. - htonl (talk) 17:56, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

I used the http://sagns.dac.gov.za/MapPage.aspx + search. The map is provided by AfriGIS so it could be wrong I guess. -- Firefishy (talk) 23:01, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Oh right. I suspect that may just be AfriGIS. Curiously if you hover over the dot over the town, the tooltip that comes up says "Mookgophong". BTW I have a copy of the SAGNS database from when it was still available on their website, if anyone wants it. (It has Mookgophong.) - htonl (talk) 23:20, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Perth requested-move notification

A requested move survey was started at Talk:Perth_(disambiguation)#Requested_move, which proposes to move:

• Perth → Perth, Western Australia
• Perth, Scotland → Perth, Perthshire
• Perth (disambiguation) → Perth

Background: There was a previous requested-move survey which ran from late May to mid June. There was a great deal of controversy surrounding the closure and subsequent events, which involved a number of reverts and re-reverts which are the subject of an ongoing arbitration case. There was a move review process, which was closed with a finding that the original requested-move closure was endorsed; however, the move review process is relatively new and untried. — P.T. Aufrette (talk) 03:25, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

No offense, but have you looked at a map recently? Neither of these places are anywhere near South Africa. Roger (talk) 07:04, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it was intentionally trying to gather input from people with no connection to either Perth. — P.T. Aufrette (talk) 07:09, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Something for the military boffins

I have the start of an article in my sandbox about a new/currently under development indigenous SA weapon system - User:Dodger67/Sandbox/Denel Dynamics Umbani. I unfortunately don't have the time to do much work on it these days, so if anyone else would like to adopt this baby, please feel free to do so. Roger (talk) 12:49, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

I have just moved the draft to mainspace - please take a look at Denel Dynamics Umbani and fix any errors I might have made or expand the article. Roger (talk) 12:52, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Another new article, this time about Denel Aviation. Please feel free to dig in and improve it. Roger (talk) 12:40, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

I created a Navbox for Denel and added it. Company is big enough for one. --NJR_ZA (talk) 13:26, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

KaNgwane Article - Map and Reintegration Information Errors

The KaNgwane article contains a map that I believe incorrectly identifies the former bantustan within South Africa. Information on reintegration is also incorrect.

The map shows three areas in red - two to the north of Swaziland (Mswati to the west and Nkomazi to the east) and one to the south-east.The area to the south-east is the Ngwavuma region that was part of KwaZulu bantustan. The area was proposed to be incorporated into Swaziland alongside KaNgwane to the north but was never part of KaNgwane.

Further, a third area of KaNgwane (Nsikazi) is not shown on the map. This area was located to the north of Mswati and north-west of Nkomazi - close to White River. I believe it has incorrectly been show as part of Gazankulu on the Gazankulu wiki page.

Identification of Ngwavuma as part of KaNgwane has also led to the article claiming that when KaNgwane was reintegrated into South Africa it formed part of Mpumalanga and KwaZulu Natal. This is also incorrect - all of the former KaNgwane now sits within Mpumalanga.

In short - the south-east red section (Ngwavuma) should be removed from the map and a new section placed to the north (Nsikazi) while the information on reintegration should be amended. Corresponding changes should be made to the Gazankulu and Kwazulu pages. --Dulais valley (talk) 14:39, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

My initial investigation suggests that you are correct. I'm going to go and check with the 1993 Constitution which includes details of all the reintgrated territory and where it comes from. These things are surprisingly difficult to find out! - htonl (talk) 14:43, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

OK, you're right on both counts, Ngwavuma and Nsikazi. Two useful maps at [5] and page 4 of [6]. The 1993 Constitution confirms that the entirety of "the area for which the Kangwane Legislative Assembly has been instituted" became part of the "Eastern Transvaal" (as it then was) so Ngwavuma clearly cannot have been part of Kangwane - and indeed Ingwavuma magisterial district is noted as being part of KwaZulu. I will update the maps and articles this evening. - htonl (talk) 15:21, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks - I personally have no idea how to edit maps etc... I am currently doing some post-grad research that concerns KaNgwane. As it is currently assessed as a stub article with low priority is it worth me working on some edits for it? I'm new to all this and not sure how these things work.--Dulais valley (talk) 15:30, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Please do add to it - improving and expanding it beyond stub status is absolutely welcome. If your research manages to unearth new sources that would be really awesome - so much of our recent history is being burnt at the altars of historical revisionism and political expediency by people who seem to think the universe was created in 1994. Roger (talk) 16:05, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Discusion about the MOS's advice about use of the old SA flag.

Please take a look at this diff and the subsequent discussion at WT:Manual of Style/Icons#South African flag issue. Roger (talk) 13:45, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Monuments

Wiki Loves Momuments is in progress on Commons and you can participate by uploading photos of South African monuments.

See the Wiki Loves Monuments South Africa website for details. --NJR_ZA (talk) 12:08, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

I have photos taken on Table Mountain but am not sure what the erf number is of the upper cable station area. Any ideas of where to find this info so I can enter the heritage site numbers in? Kay-africa (talk) 14:21, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

The upper cable station is situated on the farm "Plateau" No. 850, Registration Division Cape. (No erf number because it's not in a proclaimed urban area.) Don't know if that helps with the heritage site info, though. - htonl (talk) 16:55, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Wanted - Photos of SA Paralympians

Over the past weeks I have built up and maintained the South Africa at the 2012 Summer Paralympics article. While the text is practically complete except for a few finishing touches, I'm desparately looking for photos of any of the team members - photos that do not have any copyright problems. Please help. Roger (talk) 11:39, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Have you tried asking the wikinewsies who were there to report about the event? --Elitre (talk) 13:58, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Lot's of pics of Oscar Pistorius but nobody else! Roger (talk) 09:42, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Request for help

Hi, the WikiAfrica and Share Your Knowledge teams are glad to announce that many "African" pictures are being published on Commons, either donated by international institutions or by single photographers. You can help: please see the list of categories here, then you can either add relevant categories to the pictures or place them in relevant articles in your favourite Wikipedia. Contents are mainly about, but not limited to, Senegal, Ethiopia, Mali, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, South Africa. Thanks a lot!--Elitre (talk) 19:41, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Hi, I updated the list, there are many new images waiting for Wikipedia articles to host them. Who's willing to help? --Elitre (talk) 13:52, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Nice, some good South Africa photos there. I'm categorizing those I can. --NJR_ZA (talk) 16:35, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Heads up - census results incoming

The 2011 census results are apparently going to be released on Tuesday. It's not clear if this is just the "big picture" results or if it will include all the detailed town- and suburb-level data that we use all over the encyclopaedia. Anyway, there are lots of articles that will need updating. - htonl (talk) 21:58, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

See my post at WT:WikiProject South Africa/Statistics - some may have forgotten that we created subpages for certain themes and topics - Statistics is one of them. The article South African National Census of 2011 contains almost nothing about the preparation and data collection phases. I remember there being a few incidents reported in the news such a census workers striking and so on. Roger (talk) 08:48, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

See http://www.statssa.gov.za/Census2011/Products.asp for the first publications of Census 2011. Roger (talk) 09:53, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Am I the only editor working on the South African National Census of 2011 article today? Roger (talk) 12:08, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

I suspect you are - I've been working on getting the stats updated in other articles (eg South Africa, Provinces of South Africa and the like). - htonl (talk) 12:11, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

The usual suspects LOL! Seriously though, we need to recruit new active members to this project - I've seen the same handful of usernames doing most of the work here for years... Roger (talk) 12:31, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

I will help if someone allocates me tasks (I wouldn't know where to start and don't want to stand on anyone's toes). HelenOnline (talk) 12:44, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

@HelenOnline I could really use some help with the main census article South African National Census of 2011. So far today I've sifted through various news sources and added some "broad stroke" statistics. The article really needs some info on the census process itself - take a look at http://www.statssa.gov.za/Census2011/Products/Census_2011_How_the_count_was_done.pdf and some of the other documents at http://www.statssa.gov.za/Census2011/Products.asp News reports from a year ago when the counting was happening can also yield good info - (I remember reports of ennumerators going on strike). The major news sites such as M&G, IOL, News24, etc hhave good archives. If you prefer to work directly with the numbers I'm sure htonl would have some pointers for you. Roger (talk) 14:34, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

OK I will give it a go tomorrow. HelenOnline (talk) 15:03, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Off Topic - Looking at the cover page I'm not altogether sure if I we trust the census results.

3. 21 ÷ 7 = 6 ?

--NJR_ZA (talk) 08:30, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Lies, damned lies, and statistics! (I will rejoin the effort in mid November - I'm busy with university exams now.) Roger (talk) 10:19, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedians in Residence wanted in Cameroon and South Africa

WikiAfrica is seeking Wikipedians in Residence! One to work in Cameroon and one in South Africa. Please visit their blog to learn more. SarahStierch (talk) 18:46, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Wikimedia Project ZA?

Hi

I recently found Wikimedia Project ZA @ wikimedia.org.za and on wikipedia.

What relation is that project to this one? Which one am I to join? Airbender3 (Talk) 22:38, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Hi, I think WikiProject SA is where South African Wikipedia editors coordinate actual contributions. Wikimedia SA "seeks to promote local awareness of the projects and their proper academic use, encourage translation efforts into local languages and support the creation of local free knowledge and media." If you want to help write and edit articles about SA, this is the place for it. HelenOnline (talk) 07:27, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

WikiProject South Africa - this site - exists to organise and coordinate articles about South African subjects here on the English Wikipedia. There are thousands of WikiProjects on the English Wikipedia covering just about any subject you can think of.

Wikimedia Project ZA is an actual organisation that promotes the whole of WikiMedia in South Africa - that includes all the Wikipedias but particularly those in our local languages as well as the other Wikimedia projects such as Wiktionary, WikiQuotes, etc.

Join both! Roger (talk) 09:05, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Hi

Well joining there seems to be harder. It says its free and just email them but there site is not frequently updated, they seem to have been carrying on since before 2011 but have really been mostly offline. There contact page don't work, you can't register on the site! http://wikimedia.org.za. So I am pretty disappointed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Airbender3 (talk • contribs) 12:58, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

The WikiMedia Chapter is very new. Only registered as a not-for-profit company earlier in 2012. Join the mailing list and let them know that you found it hard to join. Get involved and help to make it easier. The free part may be old information that needs updating; as far as I know there is a R30/year membership fee.

These guys and girls are really working hard to grow the chapter, but they are a small team and can definately do with additional members. --NJR_ZA (talk) 07:23, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Hluhluwe-Umfolozi

I am currently reviewing "Elephant" as part of its peer review. Per WP:DASH, should "Hluhluwe-Umfolozi" (as in "Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Game Reserve") use an endash or a hyphen? Thanks. Axl ¤ [Talk] 22:11, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

As the union of two game parks (Hluhluwe and Umfolozi) the "Minneapolis–Saint Paul" precedent seems to say that the endash would be correct. I should point out, though, that Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife of late refers to it as "Hluhluwe Imfolozi Park" - see here for example - and that's what the signs say at the entrance, though I have also seen it with a dash and with the captalisation "iMfolozi". - htonl (talk) 23:06, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Per MOS:ENDASH I would say use a hyphen as it is a compounded proper name of a single entity, e.g. McGraw-Hill, a publishing house named after two founders. Minneapolis–Saint Paul is still two cities not a single entity. HelenOnline (talk) 07:48, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

This book says the two parks have a separate identity; they style it with en dash; as does this book. I'd say either en dash or space, both of which make more sense than hyphen here. Dicklyon (talk) 03:52, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

If that is the case this statement in the Wiki article is misleading: "Hluhluwe Umfolozi was originally three separate reserves that joined under its current title in 1989." HelenOnline (talk) 06:39, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

I don't see how that's misleading. It's about the same thing the book that I linked says. There are two (actually three) named regions joined in this park. Dicklyon (talk) 18:50, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

I say it is misleading because it suggests to me they are no longer separate reserves, which is what led me to cite the exception in MOS:ENDASH ("A hyphen is used by default in compounded proper names of single entities."). According to one source which may be out of date, the reserves were formally joined in 1989 (which is when the linking corridor reserve was proclaimed) but the combined reserve has not been proclaimed yet ("Completion of the integrated management plan and formal proclamation of the reserve as Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park is still in process."). However, as that is the plan I would probably still use the hyphen. Please explain where my logic fails so I know how to use the MOS in future. HelenOnline (talk) 06:38, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

P.S. This appears to be the latest information on the official website: "This further consolidation of land included the proclaimation of the Corridor Game - Reserve in 1989 and later the re-naming of the three Reserves as Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Park.".

• As a proper noun it is spelled with a hyphen, space, or even a slash, but not a dash. The test is to see how is spelled most often in reliable sources. It is erroneous to cite Minneapolis-Saint Paul, because the Minneapolis-Saint Paul airport is spelled with a hyphen, and Minneapolis–Saint Paul is spelled with an endash, as it is not a proper noun, but simply two cities. Apteva (talk) 07:35, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Apteva's theory of proper nouns not using en dashes has no support in reliable sources, and has been widely rejected at every move, RM, and move review where he has tried to assert it, so it is best ignored. Dicklyon (talk) 18:50, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Rule number one in consensus building, discuss the issue, not the editors. Naming an editor, saying you, instead of discussing the issue is flatly not productive. It is patently absurd to say that reliable sources which state that hyphens are used in proper nouns have no support in reliable sources. It has long been a running challenge for anyone to find a proper noun that uses an endash. No one has been able to find one. And I am not talking about wikipedia missuses, I am talking about a predominance or even a plurality of sources that use an endash in a proper noun. I have checked many and found none. Wikipedia for several years has had some editors pushing the idea, well meant but ill advised, that endashes should convey meaning in proper nouns. That simply is not the case, and the sooner it is corrected the better. As far as I have been able to determine, hyphens, slashes, spaces are used in proper nouns, but never endashes. It is patently absurd to ask anyone to ignore anyone. The contributions of everyone to Wikipedia are respected and welcomed, no matter who they are or what they are. Apteva (talk) 01:49, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Above you advanced the theory that "a proper noun is spelled with a hyphen, space, or even a slash, but not a dash". If you don't want to own it as your own, tell us where you found it. In any case, the theory has so far found no support among other WP editors. Dicklyon (talk) 01:53, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Here is the management plan for the park from KZN Wildlife, which, with a fair degree of consistency, refers to it as "Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park", with what appears to be a hyphen. I have renamed the article accordingly, although I express no opinion in the punctuation debate and I don't mind if someone wants to change the hyphen to an en-dash.- htonl (talk) 21:50, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

I moved it to use the en dash, as used in some articles, such as this one. Dicklyon (talk) 05:49, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Article improvement: Corrective rape

A classmate and I are in a Wikipedia contribution class and we want to expand the Corrective rape article. We are very passionate about this article because we think that it needs a lot of expansion, as it is lacking in depth and gives only a basic description. We came to the South Africa WikiProject page because not only does the article fall under the WikiProject of South Africa, also, but the article is very pertinent to gender relations/LGBT support in South Africa and other countries around the world. If anyone would be interested in giving us advice/feedback, we would love to receive it. -Rachel and Tasneem 0:15, 8 March 2012 (UTC)