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The role of Wikipedia in the intellectualisation of the African Languages: Why, what and how?

Wikipedia changed the world by putting an encyclopaedia within reach of anybody with internet access. Available in over 280 languages, it grows and improves by the hour and has become one of the most well-known and used resources on the Web. However, in spite of the many languages currently represented in Wikipedia, not all of them have thorough and in-depth content to support multilingual education. Moreover, outside of the realm of a human readable online encyclopaedia in multiple languages, the full value of Wikipedia has remained largely hidden to many readers. Today Wikipedia, for example, also provides a building block for many other advanced technologies, especially language technologies.

Through this workshop, the Academy of African Languages and Science (AALS) hopes to play its part in creating an awareness of the significance of Wikipedia as a key educational and language resource through which encyclopaedic information and educational content can be produced and consumed in the African languages.

Our hope is that academics, school teachers, language practitioners, subject experts across many domains, students and any other interested persons will recognise and embrace the opportunities that Wikipedia offers for the development of the African languages. Possible ways of contributing are, for example, by translating articles from other Wikipedias, specifically the English one, or by writing new content in the African languages. Since Wikipedia relies on volunteers for its existence, growth and quality, AALS also offers opportunities for training and support for persons interested in getting involved in the building of the African languages Wikipedias in the future.

The specific aims of this workshop are to

(1) explain what Wikipedia really is and why it is of such strategic significance for sustainable multilingualism;
(2) explore possible ways to identify topics on which to write and to select articles in the English Wikipedia to translate;
(3) provide basic technical information on how to participate and how AALS can assist;
(4) get a glimpse of what it means to be a Wikipedian – examples and lessons learnt.

Invited keynote speaker – Amir Aharoni, Wikimedia Foundation. Amir was born in Moscow and now lives in Jerusalem. He received a B.A. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Hebrew language and Structural Linguistics, and began studying for an M.A. in Romance studies in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is a member of the language engineering team of the Wikimedia Foundation, improving the software support for different languages. As a volunteer, he is also a member of Wikimedia Israel and of the Wikimedia Foundation's language committee.

Date: 3 June 2015
Time: 08:30—15:30
Venue: Bamboo Room, Kgorong, Unisa Muckleneuk Campus, Pretoria
Attendance: Free of charge, but registration is essential since the venue has limited seating
RSVP: Ms Motswalle Kanyane, (aals@unisa.ac.za)

--Humetheresa (talk) 12:01, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

@Humetheresa Hopefully this will result in sustained action on the Wikipedias in the ten other SA languages. I have made a very small number of contributions to the Afrikaans WP which has only a handfull of regular contributors. (I should try to be more active there but en.WP takes up all my time.) I know the Xhosa WP has been under threat of closure at least twice in recent years, I have no idea about the status of WPs in the rest of the languages. Is there a more apropriate space (on Wikimedia ZA?) where we can discuss this as I'm sure many/most of the regulars here will not be able to attend the event? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 06:21, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
@Dodger67 - Thank you for your feedback. The English and Afrikaans wiki's are currently the highest ranking wiki's in South Africa and smaller language wiki's do face the problem of being shut down or staying very small. Your suggestion of creating a space for discussion on the topic is a very important one and I will attend to this as soon as possible. Kind Regards --Humetheresa (talk) 06:27, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

"Cape of Good Hope"

The usage and primary topic of Cape of Good Hope is currently under discussion at multiple locations, see the multiple conflicting discussions at Talk:Cape of Good Hope (landmark) and Talk:Cape Colony -- 70.51.203.69 (talk) 04:29, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Topic at the Reference Desk about the creation of the Union of South Africa

Something for the historians, take a look at WP:Reference desk/Humanities#Unitary USA were a question about why the Union of South Africa was constituted as a unitary state rather than a federation, is being discussed. Please feel free to participate. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 07:04, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

List of Massacres in South Africa

On the page 'list of massacres i south africa' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_South_Africa

the first entry, "The Mfecane / Difaqane" is a 'red' hyperlink, implying that a page related to this event does not exist.

In fact such a page does exist, and can be found at the hyperlink below: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mfecane

Can someone please activate the hyperlink accordingly?

Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.135.105.98 (talk) 15:40, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

A serious problem is that the nature and extent of the Mfecane is misrepresented in that list. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 08:38, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia survey results for South Africa

An infographic summarising some of the results from the Wikimedia survey of South African editors from April to June 2015.

Hello everyone. Over the past few months you might have noticed a banner when you were logged in inviting you to take a survey about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. You might have even participated in that survey. I thought you might all be interested to see some of the results of that survey that I have compiled into an infographic so as to give us all a slightly better level of insight into the South African Wikipedia (81% of participants edit Wikipedia) community. The survey was conducted by Wikimedia South Africa with the support of the Wikimedia Foundation. --Discott (talk) 15:54, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

A new copy-paste detection bot is now in general use on English Wikipedia. Come check it out at the EranBot reporting page. This bot utilizes the Turnitin software (ithenticate), unlike User:CorenSearchBot that relies on a web search API from Yahoo. It checks individual edits rather than just new articles. Please take 15 seconds to visit the EranBot reporting page and check a few of the flagged concerns. Comments welcome regarding potential improvements. These likely copyright violations can be searched by WikiProject categories. Use "control-f" to jump to your area of interest (if such a copyvio is present). --Lucas559 (talk) 15:30, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Cape (Town) Philharmonic Orchestra

Does anyone know if the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra has changed its name to the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra, and if so, when and why? Please comment at Talk:Cape Philharmonic Orchestra#Requested move 3 July 2015. --Deskford (talk) 16:53, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

I believe they are still known as the "Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra." At least thats what their website seems to indicate.--Discott (talk) 06:17, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

AfC submission

Could someone have a look at Draft:AmaTshatshu? Thanks, FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 13:40, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Help with article

Hi everyone, on the project page, it is stated that there are many red linked articles for the List of Acts of the Parliament of South Africa. I have decided to start seeing if I can make some headway with these articles.

I have started with the first one, South African Language Practitioners' Council Act, 2014, but I need a lot of help as I am still pretty new to this. For a start I do not know specifically how to fix the referencing so that when a reference is used more than once, it will only be shown once.

I am also not sure to what extent the provisions of the act need to be discussed.

Any help and input of this would be much appreciated. Especially on how I can improve as I want to see us slowly get these acts done, but I want them to still be up to standard articles.

Kind regards, --DSBennie (talk) 01:37, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

Have a look at Repeated citations and Footnotes: using a source more than once --NJR_ZA (talk) 05:17, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
@DSBennie - have a look at how it looks now. Use the Provelt's "add a reference" function at the bottom of the editing page to create a reference for the reference type you have sourced the information from. Regards Paul Conlinp (talk) 09:45, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
You will have to add ProveIt as a gadget under Preferences first if you haven't already Gbawden (talk) 09:54, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

Thank you everyone, really appreciate the advice and help. The next article I have created is the Military Veterans Act, 2011, would appreciate you guys going over it to fix up any problems or issues, would also appreciate any advice on anywhere I am going wrong content wise. regards, --DSBennie (talk) 22:38, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

Greyshirt

Talk:Greyshirt#Requested_move_20_July_2015 In ictu oculi (talk) 01:22, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

cf reopened at Talk:Greyshirt (comics) In ictu oculi (talk) 13:13, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Drink

See Draft:Boeber. Thank you, FoCuS contribs; talk to me! 22:09, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

SA userboxes needed

South Africa needs more userboxes for it's users, believe me! Some can express themselves by using userboxes. Ras Benjih/RasTalk 08:44, 31 Jul 06:54, 31 August 2015 (UTC)


More eyes on History of South Africa please

It has been heaviliy edited by an IP over a sustained period of several weeks, with very few contributions by others in the same period, thus it is at risk of WP:OWN problems. This is one of this project's fundamental articles so needs to be watched. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 14:26, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

Last time I looked, the relevant article talk page had had 99 "watchers". Presumably a similar number are watching edits to the article itself. Several of those watchers have obviously been monitoring recent edits to that article over the "sustained" period Roger (Dodger67) (talk) is expressing concern about. A few of those editors who are monitoring recent edits to the article have diligently and helpfully removed several vandal edits by other IP users geo-located in the United States. The aforementioned watchers have raised no challenges or objections to the quality or content of the good-faith edits Roger (Dodger67) (talk) is referring to. I suggest Roger (Dodger67) (talk) is possibly misinterpreting or overlooking some specific provisions of WP:OWN. 41.162.131.130 (talk) 13:46, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
Interested parties may care to note that before the recent good-faith edits referred to above, the History of SA article (which is officially categorised as being of Vital Importance), had earlier been demoted from Good Article status to C-class status. This probably due to fact that the article had, over the years, become dissimulated through extensive unreferenced (and possibly plagiarised) original research, obvious POV, and multiple other issues including repetition and a lack of cohesive structure. I suggest the recent good-faith edits, about which Dodger67 is now raising concerns, have improved the article quite substantially. It is not clear why Roger (Dodger67) (talk has himself apparently not raised previously any concerns nor taken remedial action about the poor state of the article prior to the recent improvements, of which he is now expressing concern. 41.162.131.130 (talk) 14:36, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
@User:41.162.131.130 my concern is that you appear to be on a "lone ranger" mission to rewrite the article according to what you alone deem to be "the truth". As far as I can see you've never made any attempt to recruit the participation or opinions of other editors, a vital article should not be a solo effort. In particular South African history is prone to controversy and "revisionism" for reasons that should be obvious to anyone with even a little knowlege of the subject. As for my lack of substantive contribution, I'm not a general history specialist, it's outside my comfort zone. By the way, I really do not appreciate the sarcastic way you have repeatedly mentioned and overlinked my username in your post above - the issue is not personal, it's procedural. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 15:33, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
Dodger67, The edits were not "my truth" but were based on reliable and verifiable sources. That is how wikipedia works. If anyone has reliable and verifiable sources that contradict my particular sources, they are of course free to contribute those sources. That is also how wikipedia works, in the interests of neutrality and encyclopedic content.
As regards your claim that I have "never made any attempt to recruit the participation or opinions of other editors", you are invited to refer to the relevant article talk page, and to your very own user talk page.
Meanwhile, the article at issue still has lots of room for improvement, if anyone is interested, including your good self.
Incidentally, the revisionist approach to history is a valid and universally accepted paradigm in the field of historiography. There is no need to infer a derogatory meaning or place the word in parenthesis, or equate it with conspiracy theory. I am not responsible for the particular way history has unfolded in SA. 41.162.131.130 (talk) 14:16, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
I dont know why I am only responding to this discussion now, 3 months later, because history of South Africa articles are usually something I am pretty interested in. My first suggestion to User:41.162.131.130 is to please get a username. Having a user name goes a long way to increasing a sense of accountability when editing Wikipedia and so increases the likelihood that other editors will no treat your edits with skepticism. The other issue, and this is a general issue that is no one's fault per say, is that the page as a whole is not very informative not as informative as it could/should be in addition to having a couple of POV issues. I had a conversation a few days ago with a head-librarian at a major research library which was all about how uninformative he found this article on giving an informative summary about the history of the country and how it came to be. I think that says as much about where we are (or are not) as a country in figuring out exactly what the South African story/narrative is as well as the other a fore mentioned issues.--Discott (talk) 11:01, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Parktown North

Thank-you WikiProject for having a section for our suburb. Please note that the Residents Association has had a change of website and can now be found on www.parktownnorth.org and NOT on the .org.za link. Thank-you. :) Administrator of the Parktown North Residents Association (PNRA) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.210.41.187 (talk) 07:23, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

List of Heritage Sites in South Africa Update

I was looking at Wiki Loves Monuments South Africa, which is running this month, this initiative links to the List of heritage sites in South Africa, while going through these lists I picked up that the tables are very incomplete.

So what I did was I updated all the coordinates on the List of heritage sites in South Africa and all its sub-pages using the South African Heritage Resources Agency website.

The code I used as well as a write up on what I did can be found on my GitHub.

While going through the pages I fixed some obvious mistakes here and there, added interwiki links, but there is still a lot to be done on these pages. For example a lot of the descriptions in the tables are broken sentences, which we definitely need to look at.

Before I started updating all the coordinates I contacted user Effeietsanders whom started all these pages using an Excel Spreadsheet. He can't remember where he got it from, but all the info in there he originally created the pages from, which has the broken descriptions as is. He did send me this Excel Spreadsheet to have a look.

For a lot of the Heritage Sites the description on the SAHRA website is complete, but it seems like what we have is broken but you do recognize that the text comes from this source, it's just shuffled and the sentences broken off.

Just like I did for the coordinates we can update the descriptions, but over the years users have slowly been fixing the broken sentences, so I did not just want to replace everything, because we can't just lose those changes?

So if anyone has any ideas or plans on how we can improve these lists, I am very willing to help. I'm just scared to make too many changes like just programatically updating all the descriptions.

Another thing every site has a page on SAHRA and just on the Stellenbosch page users added 11 references from the Site Reference to their respective pages on SAHRA, which I removed because they used the '/nodes' and not the useful '/sites' url. So yes this is something I can go and add, being the correct reference to every Site Reference in each table, but do we really want 300+ references on all of these pages? Instead of just the External Link to SAHRA?

--Johanvanl (talk) 10:30, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Hi Johanvanl, thank you very much for doing this. It is greatly appreciated. Heritage Western Cape has provided a little bit of funding for Wikimedia ZA to hire an intern (HeritageIntern2) to focus on Heritage sites in the Western Cape only and she has been working on improving the Western Cape database since August and should be finishing off in the next week or two. She was tasked with finding GPS coordinates for Western Cape sites that had addresses but no GPS coordinates and, if she had time, clean up some of the terrible descriptions. She does also have a spreadsheet of about 1000 additional sites from HWC. I am not very good with programatic updating so I was wondering if you might be able to update the list with the new sites if you get a chance?--Discott (talk) 18:17, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
Hey Discott this is great, I am very willing to help anytime, just drop me a message via email (linked on my user page) or here. Johanvanl (talk) 22:23, 5 September 2015 (UTC)


10th Cape Town meetup

Hello everyone, this is just everyone in the Cape Town/Western Cape area know that the 10th Cape Town meetup will be happening this Sunday 4th October 2015. Anyone interested in Wiki related stuff including and especially Wikipedia are welcome to join us. I can guarantee free coffee as usual. For more information check out the meetup page on Wikipedia at the link here.

In brief the details are:

  • Time and Date: 11:00-14:00, Sunday 4th October
  • Location: Truth Coffee, 36 Buitenkant St, Cape Town 8000, South Africa

Cheers, --Discott (talk) 09:52, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Cabinets of South Africa

The current page about History of the Cabinet of South Africa is haphazard and clumsy. Rather than having a single page about all cabinets till date, it is better to classify these cabinets by their leaders as the case is for Template:British ministries and Template:Indian union ministries. Need opinion of this Project's members. -Karan Kamath (talk · contribs)

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Karan Kamath (talkcontribs) 12:23, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

I agree the article needs to be deleted once we have individual articles for each cabinet. Those two examples are a good start, but South Africa has a much more complex past. Do we include all the SWA and SA "Bantustans"? What about all the Boer Republics and the Cape Colony? My suggestion is to create templates for Template:Republic of South Africa Cabinets (starting from 1961, excl Bantustans) and Template:Union of South Africa Cabinets (from 1910 - 1961) to start with. Then have templates and articles for each Bantustan, Dutch Cape Colony, Cape Colony, Boer Republics, Kingdoms and the Cape Qualified Franchise cabinet or committee. - That Video Shop Guy (talk) (15:57, 8 September 2015 (UTC))

Interested editors are invited to comment at Talk:Homo_naledi#RfC:_a_dozen_articles_rejected_by_Nature. --Animalparty! (talk) 07:21, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Cherry-picking a person for the lede of an article

Two men going thru the Superman Crawl and onwards to discover a major fossil trove in South Africa, are havin their achievement downplayed while attempts [1] are being made at cherry-picking someone else into the lede of the article. Are there any points to be added? Here to sway (talk) 10:45, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

This looks like you're trying to canvass opinion with the intention of influencing the outcome of a discussion in a particular way, which, as WP:CANVASS explains, is not allowed. There is already a neutrally-worded notification of the Homo naledi RFC immediately above. - htonl (talk) 12:35, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
I am looking for more viewpoints in the linked discussion. If you feel that I have given slanted information etc. you might consider adding information here to offset any perceived slant - without your editing resulting in a slant. Here to sway (talk) 00:13, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

In this [2] version I have added the name of the two discoverers into the article lede in conjunction with cherrypicked co-author - amongst 47 co-authors. Here to sway (talk) 13:36, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

One of 47 co-authors in - South Africa's president being removed from article

Discussion at Talk:Homo_naledi#President.27s_reaction_notable_for_Homo_naledi.3F. --Here to sway (talk) 15:16, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia Primary School Project

Hi everybody. As part of the Wikipedia Primary School research project, I would like to announce that the article Children's Act, 2005 (which is listed in Wikipedia:WikiProject South Africa) was selected a while ago as an article to be reviewed by an external expert. We'd now like to ask interested editors to join our efforts and improve the article before October 31, 2015 (any timezone) as they see fit; a revision will be then sent to the designated expert for review. Any notes and remarks written by the external expert will be made available on this page under a CC-BY-SA license as soon as possible, so that you can read them, discuss them and then decide if and how to use them. Please sign up here to let us know you're collaborating. Thanks a lot for your support! --Anthere (talk) 14:22, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

This is to notify everyone that the Wikimedia South Africa Annual General Meeting will be held on Saturday the 28th November 2015.

If you are unable to attend the event in person in Cape Town then please let me know so I can organise a Google Hangout event so you can join electronically.

Details

Date: Saturday, 28th November 2015
Time: 10:00 - 13:00
Location: TwentyFifty, 2nd Floor, 8 Spin Street, Cape Town. (just above the "Bread, Milk, and Honey" cafe')

Due to the fact that a number of the directors of Wikimedia South Africa could not attend on any other date it was agreed that we would host the event in late November instead of early November. It was agreed to host this AGM in Cape Town again so as to coincide with the award ceremony for Wiki Loves Monuments (which will be on the same day) as well as to best serve the wishes expressed at the last Wiki-meetup in Cape Town. We also have a readily available space in Cape Town to host the AGM.

You can RSVP or send your appologives at the meetup page on Meta.Wiki here.

Thanks, --Discott (talk) 18:10, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Editing Human Rights in South Africa Page

Hi, I am working on a project at my University and my proposal is to revise the “Human rights in South Africa” page, and the “South Africa” page. On the “Human Rights in South Africa” page I intend to add sections concerning Education, Post apartheid issues, and issues with human rights in the workplace. Under the education heading, I plan to have a subheading pertaining to children with disabilities. Similarly, under the post apartheid issues heading, I plan to create a subheading for poverty and socioeconomic issues. Furthermore, for the human rights in the workplace heading, I plan to focus on how employees are treated and their benefits from companies. Additionally, I would add a section on human rights to the South Africa page. This section would focus most heavily on poverty, but I would mention other human rights violations as well. I would also provide a link to the “Human Rights in South Africa” article. Patience456 (talk) 20:22, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi Patience456 please add the relevant WikiEd course template to the article's talk page. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 23:00, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
Hi Roger (Dodger67) there is a link to the course page at the top of the talk page of my article. By using the link, you can get more information than the template provides. Thanks! Patience456 (talk) 16:23, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
Hi Patience456, you're doing a good job, but I've noticed a few style problems. Per the WP:ENGVAR rules spelling and vocabulary must follow the conventions of South African English, which is mostly the same as British English - "labour", not "labor", public "transport", not "transportation", "organisation" rather than "organization". Then there are a few neutrality issues - the article contains unattributed opinions when it uses words such as "in fact" or "fortunately". Starting sentences with "however" and "in fact" too often is also a style problem, these words should only be used to introduce a contrast or contradiction of the preceding statement. On a personal note, I would really like to see more on disability rights, you cover the issue under child education very well, but have not yet mentioned disability in terms of tertiary education, healthcare rights, employment, environmental and transport accessibility, information access, etc. The Disability in South Africa article contains some useful information and sources. Hope you find these comments useful. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 19:04, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the suggestions! I will work on them. Patience456 (talk) 22:14, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

South African National Census of 2011

I have just done a minor fix at South African National Census of 2011, I am quite worried about the poor state of such an important article - several sections have apparently not been touched since shortly after the census data was collected. The article barely discusses the results/reports of the census. We need to put in a bit of effort to fix it. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 07:57, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Hi Roger (Dodger67), I agree with you - they are important articles. I put some work into standardising the tables between the 1996, 2001 and 2011 censuses. I think I've worked-out the best layout for the series in the 2011 Census, thoughts? That Video Shop Guy (talk) 17:56, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Acts of the Parliament of South Africa

I have been looking through a number of the acts of parliament listed under List_of_Acts_of_the_Parliament_of_South_Africa. While some act are notable deserving of their own articles, many of the acts are not notable enough to extend past being a stub as there is very little information for the act other than the act itself.

What I would like to recommend is that instead of having List of Acts of the Parliament of South Africa, 1910–19, we have a single article for each year, named something on the lines of Acts of the Parliament of South Africa (1910). Within that article we could list the acts passed in that year with a description of the act and information on when it was passed, assented to, repealed or amended ect. Articles of greater importance and notability can be linked to within these articles. That way were are not left with a great number of stubs, but are also not left with an endless list of red linked articles, such as the before mentioned, List of Acts of the Parliament of South Africa, 1910–19

Input and consensus on this proposal would much appreciated. --DSBennie (talk) 00:35, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

The List of Acts of the Parliament of South Africa series was modelled on List of Acts of the Parliament of the United Kingdom - I'm just saying that to explain that the "long list of red-links" approach wasn't purely my own invention. If you want to write expanded list/articles with more information I'm all for it.
Something else that could be done to reduce red links, is to make sure that where there's an article for a principal act (e.g. Copyright Act, 1978) then the amendment acts (e.g. Copyright Amendment Act, 1992) are redirected to the pricipal act's article. Optimally there should then also be some mention of amendments in the article.
Also, there are some whole series of acts where the individual title could be redirected to a single article describing the context. For example all the Appropriation Acts could be redirected to the appropriation bill article; similarly the annual Division of Revenue Acts. - htonl (User:Htonl) 17:12, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

@Htonl That makes a lot more sense than my suggestion thank you, I will look into what acts should be redirected to others--DSBennie (talk) 18:48, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Hey, your idea sounds like a good idea also. It would be a hell of a lot of work to do it completely, though! - htonl (talk) 21:28, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Hi DSBennie and Htonl, a bit late on this one. If either of you could suggest a standard rule set for writing an Act article - clarifying what deserves a single article - that would be great. If you reached consensus on single year or decade of acts, then how those pages are laid out. I added a stub for the Acts style guide in the SA Politics Task Force. DSBennie maybe you want to pledge allegiance to the force too? — Preceding unsigned comment added by That Video Shop Guy (talkcontribs) 18:13, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Social Justice Coalition

Hello,

I need assistance in editing the webpage for NGO Social Justice Coalition in Cape Town. Currently the logo has the St. John's College emblem instead of SJC's. How can I remove that photo? Also, whenever I try to upload a new photo it says there was an unknown error. What should I do to be able to upload the photos?

Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dorymacmillan (talkcontribs) 11:41, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Hi Dory, I see that you managed to remove the incorrect logo. If you send me the correct logo by email (use Special:EmailUser/Slashme to make contact and I'll send you my address), I can upload it for you. I'm not sure exactly what's causing the problem you're experiencing, I'm afraid. --Slashme (talk) 12:19, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
@Dorymacmillan Just a guess, maybe the logo image you are trying to upload happens to have the exact same name as the college emblem, such as sjc.jpg as the initialisms of the two entities are the same "SJC". The solution would be to change the name of the image file before uploading it. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 20:21, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

The WINTYR

Good day

I just wanted to find out if the page 'The WINTYR' is in accordance with Wikipedia standards?

The information does have references to various third party websites.

Please advise if there is anything out of place to avoid having the page deleted.


Kind Regards

Tristan

27 November 12.47 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tristcarmichael (talkcontribs) 10:53, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Hello Tristan,
Please read about conflicts of interest on Wikipedia. It's strongly discouraged to write about yourself or your projects. It's normal to do so: one of my first articles was about my employer at the time, but it's just not a good idea. If you get famous, your fans will write the article. At the moment, the band doesn't seem to pass the Wikipedia notability criteria for musicians, and if your topic isn't notable, even a high-quality article won't save it.
I'd recommend that you find some other topics to edit on Wikipedia. Surely you have a good knowledge about South African music, so maybe you can help some of these articles? Remember, ask not what Wikipedia can do for you, but what you can do for Wikipedia!
All the best, --Slashme (talk) 12:49, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Plaatberg

Can someone create a page or disambiguation page for Plaatberg? Seems to be along the Vaal River? --Tobias1984 (talk) 19:23, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Also: Reit River, Natal Kopje, Cawood's Hope --Tobias1984 (talk) 19:24, 6 December 2015 (UTC)
Do you have content for these? I can create them, but won't want to create empty pages --NJR_ZA (talk) 12:02, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
Could they also redirect to to lists? For example a list of rivers in South Africa? I am proofreading a book on Wikisource and thought, that it is odd that so many mentioned places do not have a Wikipedia page (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Quarterly_Journal_of_the_Geological_Society_of_London,_vol._28.djvu/22). --Tobias1984 (talk) 18:16, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
Actually there are a couple of reasons why there are no articles.
  • Many places are not really noteworthy. Gong-Gong as mentioned in your link above is today just a railway siding with miles and miles of nothingness surrounding it. Google Map Link to Gong-Gong
  • Some places may have had their names changed or the spelling might have changes over the years. Cawood's Hope is quite possibly what is today another rail siding called Bad Hope just a short distance from Gong-Gong. Klip Drift at the bottom of your link is today known as Barkly West; I have created a redirect for that one. Reit River and Natal Kopje I can't really find any information on. --NJR_ZA (talk) 19:09, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Thanks for checking on the places. Now I don't have to worry why I can't find the corresponding Wikipedia pages, and I will connect only the better known localities. --Tobias1984 (talk) 23:45, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
Just as a sidenote. It is actually quite interesting looking at the area on Google maps. Around Bad Hope there are 5 farm dams with very regular shapes. This is quite unusual for farm dams. It is quite likely that those dams started life as diamond claim diggings [3] --NJR_ZA (talk) 21:01, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
  • That is really interesting! Old sources + aerial imagery will surely still reveal a lot of interesting historical and geomorphological things. And hopefully more books about South Africa will be avaialbe on Wikisource soon. --Tobias1984 (talk) 23:45, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Joburg Theatre

Can one of my more knowledgeable South African wikipedians help make the following changes? I have created a new article called the Joburg Theatre which is the new name of the old Johannesburg Civic Theatre. Can changes be made so if someone searches for the Johannesburg Civic Theatre, it directs the search to the Joburg Theatre. At the moment, Johannesburg Civic Theatre directs the searcher to Johannesburg article's tourism page. Thanks in advance.Conlinp (talk) 10:45, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Johannesburg Civic Theatre now redirects to your article. Nathan121212 (talk) 11:45, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
Thanks Nathan.Conlinp (talk) 11:48, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Ronnie Apteker

Would some kind person please help me get acceptance for my page on Ronnie Apteker, founder of Internet Solutions, South Africa's first internet company and more recently an author and established film producer. Some editors seem to think he is not worthy of inclusion, despite having already being judged worthy in 2010. Some time after that someone turned his page into a redirect link to Internet Solutions - on which he isn't even mentioned!! So I would really like to get some support from other editors to get the Ronnie Apteker page reinstate din its own right, along with all its sound references and citations. If you are interested in helping, I would be glad to hear from you. My page is in my drafts. It has been up once and then been removed, despite the 2010 ruling that he is a person of note - then and even more so now Picknick99 (talk) 16:06, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Ronnie Apteker

would appreciate help Picknick99 (talk) 16:08, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
How do I support you? I edited his bio before and know him since 1997. A film producer in Hollywood and South Africa is very noteworthy. You can easily find interviews with him online. Ramonthomas (talk) 21:06, 10 January 2016 (UTC

Is there a case to keep this article or is it a case of WP:LISTCRUFT? Gbawden (talk) 19:39, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

An Edit-a-thon in South Africa : 05 Dec 2015

Want to make a difference to the foundation phase of Education in South Africa? Then join us for the first Wikipedia Primary School edit-a-thon!

Wikipedia:WikiProject South Africa/Wikipedia Primary School/Edit-a-thon 1

The topic of this first edit-a-thon is... to work to establish a Timeline of South Africa discoveries or a List of South African inventions and discoveries. Think about it... this list does NOT exist for South Africa on Wikipedia ! Can you list the TOP 10 South Africa inventions and discoveries ???

User:Aleksandar Bulovic' user:Aliwal2012 user:Andre Kritzinger user:Andbrew.downes user:Axxter99 user:Blarcrean user:Bobbyshabangu user:Conlinp user:crazydude22 user:Ctatkinson user:DanieB52 user:Dodger67 user:Doug user:DSBennie user:Ekhaya2000 user:Ethnopunk user:Firefishy user:Fudpukker user:Gbawden user:HelenOnline user:Htonl user:Hypergrove user:Icelandic Hurricane user:Islahaddow user:Jacobmacmillan user:Janneman27 user:Jcw69 user:Johanvanl user:Josephabradshaw user:Kierano user:Kittybrewster user:Knyzna1 user:Lmcelhiney user:markmit user:Mjakajaka user:Moyamo user:Nathan121212 user:NJR_ZA user:Now Look What You've Done user:Part user:Phorque user:Piet Delport user:Quadtripplea user:Raymond Ellis user:ramonthomas user:Robvanvee user:Sabloem user:Sahmeditor user:That Video Shop Guy user:TheAlteredState user:TheMightyPeanut user:Underlying_lk user:Victuallers user:Waitabout user:Wimconradie user:Wilro user:Xdamr user:Xufanc user:ZAMemphis

Anthere (talk) 15:28, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi Anthere, I'm sorry I missed this edit-a-thon. I think it's a fantastic idea, although does it meet the requirements of a stand-alone list? I did however do a bit of digging and came across another article, Science and technology in South Africa, that could be built upon. The USA wiki-folks created a combined timeline and list - Timeline of United States inventions. That could be a helpful template for an SA version. - That Video Shop Guy (talk) 08:23, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
Looks like the edit-a-thon met issues in terms of interesting new editors :( Oh well, we will try again :) I did not know the page Science and technology in South Africa. Excellent one to build upon ! Thanks for the findings ! Anthere (talk)

#FeesMustFall

Hello everyone, I have just created a page for the #FeesMustFall student protests and it is still in need of a great deal of attention to get it to a respectable quality. It is far from complete and I am sure I missed a whole bunch of stuff about the protest and possible event got one or two things wrong. I would greatly appricate some help on getting this article up to scratch. Thanks, Discott (talk) 18:22, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Congrats to the editors of #FeesMustFall, it appeared in the Wiki 2015 video overview. - That Video Shop Guy (talk) 21:27, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia 15 Celebrations in South Africa

Howzit, I just set-up the Wikipedia 15 event for South Africa on 15 January, and noticed thee's a Cape Town event to celebrate Wikipedia 15. [br] Feel free to join and share this with editors in the two cities.

@Ramonthomas: if you haven't already been invited Ramonthomas (talk) 21:15, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Namibian War of Independence

Howzit, we've opened a discussion on the potential merger of Namibian War of Independence and South African Border War here. Feel free to express your views on this important topic. --Katangais (talk) 16:25, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

@BoonDock: if you haven't already been invited Gbawden (talk) 18:56, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
@Gbawden: Nope. Thanks for the ping! BoonDock (talk) 17:13, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Regiment Westelike Provincie Insignia

Please correct the current Insignia on display The Insignia showed is the Regiment Boland( now defunct) Insignia (Vires) The correct Regiment Westelike Provincie (Spelled with aC and not a s) contains the inscription R. W.P and Non Sebi Sed Patriae Contact me at nardus.nel69@gmail.com and I will forward the correct .jpg file to you Thank you and regards 15:58, 19 January 2016 (UTC)~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nardus~simplewiki (talkcontribs)

Contest to celebrate South Africa's women leaders closes on the 30th January

Hello All

It seems that some of you may not yet know about the following contest:

Wiki Loves Women has celebrated Wikipedia's 15th anniversary by launching the Wiki Loves Women #15Challenge writing contest to increase the number of biographies on notable African women on Wikipedia. Please join in and celebrate Wikipedia 15 by participating in this bilingual (English/French) writing contest to increase the number of notable African women on the two language versions!

There are 3 ways to participate

We look forward to seeing your entries!! Isla Haddow (talk) 17:50, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Requested Articles

Can someone please fix the link from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requested_articles/By_country - just goes to the main WP:ZA page Gbawden (talk) 11:10, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

@Gbawden: The reason that it just went to the main page is that there wasn't a "Requested articles" section of the ZA page. I've created a blank section as a link target: is there a list of requested ZA articles somewhere else? --Slashme (talk) 14:17, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
There used to be before the "revamp" of the Project infobox Gbawden (talk) 16:32, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
I just looked at an old revision, and there seemed to be a link to List_of_South_Africa-related_topics previously. --Slashme (talk) 08:32, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
I did the revamp of the project infobox, Gbawden. I moved Open tasks to a separate page, as it was cluttering the home project page. It is clearly marked under the "How To Help" section. Apologies, I did not realise there was a template linking to the old open tasks on the front page. I have now corrected the template link to direct to the Open Tasks page. - That Video Shop Guy (talk) 08:38, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
That Video Shop Guy I didn't mean that as criticism. I am highly appreciative of the new infobox - I was just looking for RA and didn't know where to find it. Gbawden (talk) 09:12, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
Sorry Gbawden, didn't mean to make my response sound so aggressive. Much respect - That Video Shop Guy (talk) 09:47, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Notice

There is currently a discussion taking place at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Flag of South Africa (1928–1994) - theWOLFchild 21:08, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Invitation to an online editathon on Black Women's History

Invitation

Black Women's History online edit-a-thon

--Ipigott (talk) 10:23, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for the heads-up Ipigott. I saw there was no South Africa section in the red links, so I added it and a few names to the list. - That Video Shop Guy (talk) 12:09, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
That's great. Just what we need.--Ipigott (talk) 12:10, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
We really should do something like this here in South Africa as well.--Discott (talk) 11:13, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

SA Audiophiles and WikiDragons Unite!

The South African Music Awards are coming up and I've been doing some edits to the articles (and its subsequent children). There is a large bit of outstanding, easy and relaxing, table work to be done in listing the nominees and winners. I made a sparse template of the most recent ceremony - 21st South African Music Awards. You can find all the sources you need on these pages - SAMA Album of the Year and SAMA Group or Duo of the Year.

If you're feeling extra energetic, perhaps look at creating these list articles. - That Video Shop Guy (talk) 12:49, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

"Easy and relaxing table work" is an oxymoron - wikimarkup tables are horrible, difficult and finicky. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 14:41, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
Shhhhh. I'm trying to sell the idea here. - That Video Shop Guy (talk) 16:51, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

South African Film and Television Awards needs you

The SAFTA page was in disarray, I have no life so worked on it this long weekend. I'm looking for contributions to complete the notable moments and criticism sections on the page. If you look at the article's talk page, I've added the proposed sections along with all the references you need to work from. If anyone has time, lets get the article up to FA. Also I don't want to be accused of WP:OWN or anything, so more editors the better. - That Video Shop Guy (talk) 11:59, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Will help where I can. I am a great believer in "Write it and they will edit" Gbawden (talk) 14:00, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

An article on our new Miss SA is already at AfD. Gbawden (talk) 07:15, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

I think the redirect is a reasonable solution. The pageant is the source of her notability at the moment. --Slashme (talk) 08:30, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

Please see a topic at the Help Desk

Please take a look at WP:HD#Correcting Article Wesley Douglas. It seems at first glance that an article about this politician may be possible, he needs an experienced Wikipedian familiar with the topic of South African politics to create it. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 13:05, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

I have almost no familiarity about the topic, but I went ahead and started a stub, leaving a note on the talk page about how it could be expanded. Ian.thomson (talk) 06:01, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Lark page looking for edits

For the last week, I've been working on the Lark article. Managed to jump from 8 references to 62. Would appreciate feedback and edits. - That Video Shop Guy (talk) 11:13, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Morning everyone. I hope this email finds you well. I started a Wikipedia page about a month ago about a music group in Durban called IV & Neptune. Recently I got a message that the page was up for removal from Wikipedia and would like to ask if you could please give the page a good quality rating, or even a decent one. Just enough to keep the page running. The music group's credentials are legitimate and well known within the industry. They have worked with reputable SA hip hop artists and it would be a shame to let good work go un-recognised. So for the sake of South African music, and the youth who supports it, please take a minute to read through the page and rate it. Thank you very much.

Yours sincerely, Michael Ashby. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MichaelAshby (talkcontribs) 09:00, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi Michael, please take a look at the relevant notability criteria and give reliable sources to support the notability of the group. Then the article is much less likely to be deleted. --Slashme (talk) 10:50, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
@Slashme I've taken the liberty of fixing a broken link in your post. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 11:25, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
Hi Michael, it looks like the group fails the google test. This is an all too common occurrence for South African, and African, musicians. Although, I think the group is still relatively underground with 442 likes (Facebook) and 802 followers (Twitter). "Yin Ngathi" is a good track, it needs to chart and gain a bit of press (even if just big bloggers), then I'm sure WP:ZA editors can help. Are you their manager or just a fan? - That Video Shop Guy (talk) 11:13, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

"Balfour Declaration"

The primary topic of "Balfour Declaration" is under discussion, see Talk:Balfour Declaration -- 70.51.45.100 (talk) 04:53, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Greetings. This article was just created, but completely without references or wikilinks. This topic is well outside of my wheelhouse, but as this seems to be a notable subject, I wanted to call it to your attention. Thank you for your time. --Finngall talk 16:39, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Succulent Karoo

Knersvlakte says in the lede

The Knersvlakte is a Succulent Karoo...

That statement has some problems, described on the Talk page. I haven't been able to resolve the issues; can someone from this project give it a go? Please {{Ping}} me to discuss. --Thnidu (talk) 02:25, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Hi. As part of the Wikipedia Primary School Project, we have identified an expert to review the article on Saartjie Baartman. We will send her a version of the article mid may. If you have time and energy to do a review of the article before we send it, that would be wonderful. Thanks Anthere (talk)

@Anthere: Some of your comments on this page have dates and some don't. Would you please sign all your talk page comments with four tildes (~~~~), to automatically create a timestamped signature? (See WP:TPYES and WP:TILDE.) Thanks. --Thnidu (talk) 04:04, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
Sure Anthere (talk) 09:05, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Netherlands-South African Railway Company

I've been working on the article on the Netherlands-South African Railway Company and could use some extra eyes to check my work. I haven't fully mastered the art of Wikipedia layout, so I'd appreciate somebody work on that, as well as check on my spelling and grammar. Finally, a copyright free photo of Old Park Station in Newtown would be appreciated!

There's quite a lot of articles on South African Railway History on Wikipedia that could use eyes in general. I've noticed that many of the articles contradict each other, especially regarding dates, and that they are quite poorly linked to each other. I've added a whole bunch of new links in the meantime, but more work is needed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Francoisdjvr (talkcontribs) 13:24, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

@Francoisdjvr: I've just gone through the article; nice job! I don't particularly know the subject matter, but I've been editing Wikipedia for about ten years and am pretty good at copyediting in general. I've done some of the latter — improving sentence structure, fixing bits of grammar (very small fixes in this article), and so on. Mostly what I've done is add links, set up redirects (Amsterdam Exhibition (1883)), and fix or refine template calls (see the Template:Convert calls in paragraphs 3 and 4 of Pretoria–Delagoa Bay Line (and the anchor for the rename, just above the section title)).
By the way, you didn't sign this section, above; that signature was added by a bot. Always sign your posts on Talk pages with four tildes (~~~~); that will create a signature with your user name and talk page link and a date-time stamp.
Please {{Ping}} me if you want to discuss any of this. --Thnidu (talk) 03:52, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
@Thnidu: Thank you very much for the help and advice! I'm not an expert in the topic either, but it seems there's a lot of contemporary research going on regarding this topic, and I figured I'd improve the Wikipedia page. It turns out there were six rail lines, so I'll probably be working on this article for a while to come. Francoisdjvr (talk) 10:49, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

Cape Town Tourism paragraph added to Cape Town wiki page under the tourism section

Hi All,

I have added a paragraph on Cape Town Tourism to the Cape Town wiki page under the tourism section.

I will like to impress at the outset that I am in no way myself affiliated with Cape Town Tourism. I do however believe that they are very relevant to Cape Town's tourism industry - in fact they play an essential role to cape town's tourism - and definitely deserve a mention.

My idea is eventually to write an entire article on them - so this is in a way creating a first link which would direct to said article eventually.

I am however still a bit of a newbie and I would like to request everyones assistance with regards to fixing the issues that I am currently being pinged on regarding this paragraph in question.

Thanks in advance for everyones help. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nam1979 (talkcontribs) 16:18, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

@Nam1979: Thanks for working on this article. Not knowing the subject, I can't comment on the content, but please accept this bit of advice from a fairly experienced wiki editor: Always sign your contributions to a Talk page (but never an article) with four tildes: ~~~~. That will automatically turn into your signature, linked to your User and Talk pages and with a date-time stamp; mine here shows the format. See Wikipedia:Signatures. Thnidu (talk) 00:07, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Mabusa Nature Reserve

The article Mabusa Nature Reserve has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

No content since 2009

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Xx236 (talk) 11:41, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

Auto-assessment of article classes

Following a recent discussion at WP:VPR, there is consensus for an opt-in bot task that automatically assesses the class of articles based on classes listed for other project templates on the same page. In other words, if WikiProject A has evaluated an article to be C-class and WikiProject B hasn't evaluated the article at all, such a bot task would automatically evaluate the article as C-class for WikiProject B.

If you think auto-assessment might benefit this project, consider discussing it with other members here. For more information or to request an auto-assessment run, please visit User:BU RoBOT/autoassess. This is a one-time message to alert projects with over 1,000 unassessed articles to this possibility. ~ RobTalk 01:23, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

Grant focused on South Africa

FYI m:Grants:Project/Rapid/Wiki From Above 2016--Alexmar983 (talk) 13:00, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Contests

User:Dr. Blofeld has created Wikipedia:WikiProject Africa/Contests. The idea is to run a series of contests/editathons focusing on each region of Africa. He has spoken to Wikimedia about it and $1000-1500 is possible for prize money. Would anybody here be interested in contributing to one or assisting draw up core article/missing article lists? He says he's thinking of North Africa for an inaugural one in October. If interested please sign up in the participants section of the Contest page, thanks.♦ --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 20:03, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

This draft is languishing in Draft-space - is there an editor (or three) who might be interested in bringing it up to publishable standard? It's a major topic article which should IMHO be a priority for this project. I've taken it about as far as I can given my limited knowledge of the subject. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 18:45, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Anyone, please. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 08:29, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Anglo-Boer War Memorial (Johannesburg)

Can one of my more knowledgeable South African wikipedians help make the following changes? I have created a new article called the Anglo-Boer War Memorial (Johannesburg) which is the current name of the old Rand Regiments Memorial. Can changes be made so if someone searches for the Rand Regiments Memorial, it redirects the search to the Anglo-Boer War Memorial (Johannesburg)? Thanks again in advance. Conlinp (talk) 04:17, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

Why not try it yourself? I would create a page for Rand Regiments Memorial, with the only content a line with the redirect instruction to ABWM Gbawden (talk) 14:30, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

I live in Johannesburg and have been working on the history of Johannesburg. I am sure there are more Anglo-Boer War Memorials in Johannesburg. I wonder whether they should be placed on this page or just linked to this page. Regards, Vaaljapie (talk) 06:09, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

Medalist?

I was wondering which way South African English spells this word, "medalist" (1-L) or "medallist" (2-L's) ; I noticed that Category:Olympic medalists for South Africa uses one, while Category:Olympic medallists for Great Britain uses two. -- 65.94.171.217 (talk) 23:04, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

It should be "medallists" - we follow British spelling. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 07:11, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
So shall I initiate a WP:CFDS to rename them? (I note that someone seems to be questioning the request I filed to use Canadian English for the Canadian categories) -- 65.94.171.217 (talk) 03:29, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Post-Apartheid South Africa.

1. I will suggest to incorporate a more extensive and detailed historical background about apartheid. 2. I believe is important to include other political parties that contributed to abolition of apartheid, both during and post-apartheid. 3. Maybe we can add some of the protagonist of this movement such as Desmond Tutu who like Mandela was a key for the abolition of apartheid. 4. It is important to talk about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and how does this policy contributed to the abolition of apartheid and continue to do so during the post-apartheid era. Jessymar (talk) 06:04, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Citation

African National Congress Draws 62 Percent of the Vote in South Africa.

I think this article will provide a good inside to how South Africa is functioning at a electoral level. This article reports the ruling of the African National Congress in terms of votes, so I will consider this information really important if we really want to explain in detailed how South Africa has evolve during the post-apartheid era at a political state.

NORIMITSU, O. (2014, May 10). African National Congress Draws 62 Percent of the Vote in South Africa. New York Times. p. A9. Jessymar (talk) 06:09, 10 October 2016 (UTC) Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the help page).

New article start: Cannabis in South Africa

I've begun Cannabis in South Africa, but I've been having a surprising amount of trouble finding sources on GoogleBooks, and I'm not sure which news media are reliable for adding sources from the news. If anyone has any additions to make to Cannabis in South Africa, it'd be appreciated! Goonsquad LCpl Mulvaney (talk) 21:34, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

Have you used "marijuana" in your searches? It's much more commonly used in SA than "cannabis", you should also search for "dagga". Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 22:06, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
Searching under "dagga" did indeed turn up more and better hits. I've got some good momentum on it so far, but would welcome any further help, and additions as the situation develops further. Goonsquad LCpl Mulvaney (talk) 03:52, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Cuito Cuanavale, the Border War, and white supremacy

Howzit all.

We have an ongoing discussion here about lacing the text of Battle of Cuito Cuanavale with references to white supremacy. In several new revisions which have been contested by two other contributors in addition to myself, South Africa has been repeatedly described as "white supremacist South Africa".

The editor responsible has countered that references to the specific ideology of the National Party regime in the day are necessary to help readers understand the conflict. I have contested this. My take on the matter is that many people believe the colonial powers espoused a white supremacist ideology, but that doesn't mean we go around to every battle or campaign-related article concerning the Algerian War or the Portuguese Colonial Wars throwing in references to that fact. Ditto for modern African conflicts similar to Cuito Cuanavale, such as the Rhodesian Bush War.

Of course, I'm trying to gauge consensus here. Some constructive commentary by some more experienced editors (especially with regard to South African military history) would be very much appreciated, as we seem to be at a bit of an impasse and this could set a precedent for other articles about the South African Border War. --Katangais (talk) 01:38, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Greetings WikiProject South Africa/Archive 5 Members!

This is a one-time-only message to inform you about a technical proposal to revive your Popular Pages list in the 2016 Community Wishlist Survey that I think you may be interested in reviewing and perhaps even voting for:

If the above proposal gets in the Top 10 based on the votes, there is a high likelihood of this bot being restored so your project will again see monthly updates of popular pages.

Further, there are over 260 proposals in all to review and vote for, across many aspects of wikis.

Thank you for your consideration. Please note that voting for proposals continues through December 12, 2016.

Best regards, SteviethemanDelivered: 18:08, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Apartheid Museum

Would someone from this WikiProject mind taking a look at Apartheid Museum. Article has undergone a major revision over the past few days by a new SPA editor who says he's involved in litigation with the museum or someone associated with the museum. The editor posts at Talk:Apartheid Museum#CORRECTIONS - LEGAL AND VERIFIABLE and WP:THQ#PRESERVING THE INTEGRITY OF WIKIPEDIA: The TRUE facts or the perpetuation of fraud & racism seem to indicate they are more WP:NOTHERE than WP:HERE, but being a new editor they could also just misunderstand what Wikipedia is all about. Anyway, so much content (much of it unsourced) was added that I was just going to revert back to the last stable version before the editing took place, but I figured it would be best to see what others think before taking such a drastic step. Thanks in advance. -- Marchjuly (talk) 06:47, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

The RM discussion is ongoing. I invite you to improve consensus. --George Ho (talk) 20:53, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Category:Order of Good Hope has been nominated for discussion

Category:Order of Good Hope, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has been nominated for deletion. A discussion is taking place to see if it abides with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you.RevelationDirect (talk) 04:16, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Media upload of historical photographs of South Africa

Dear editors,

I would like to draw your attention to a media upload that may be of relevance to this page:

The Temminck Groll Collection consists of 2,641 historical photographs taken by the Dutch architect and architectural historian Coen Temminck Groll (1925-2015). The photos were taken in regions with which the Dutch have had historical relations, including countries in Africa, South America and Southeast Asia (see the category description for a full listing). The photos were taken during Temminck Groll's travels and study of 'shared cultural heritage' (heritage of the Netherlands located outside the country’s borders) and mainly date to the 1960s and 1970s. The photographs were digitised by the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands and made available to Wikimedia Commons in the context of the project The Netherlands and the world. If you have any questions about this upload, or have other media requests regarding Dutch shared cultural heritage, don't hesitate to leave a message at the project page!

Kind regards, --AWossink (talk) 15:03, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

February 2017 at Women in Red


February 2017

Black Women & Women Anthropologists online editathons
Faciliated by Women in Red

(To subscribe, Women in Red/Invite list. Unsubscribe, Women in Red/Opt-out list) --Ipigott (talk) 14:23, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Feminism in South Africa

Hey folks, wondering if a member of this wikiproject can review Feminism in South Africa. I had started the article and believe I have gotten it up to a good standard. Let me know what you think. I.am.a.qwerty (talk) 12:00, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Looks like a good start. You might want to mention Black Sash in its historical context. --Slashme (talk) 13:05, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Commons:Photo challenge February 2017 is Multilingualism

FYI, take a look in commons:Commons:Photo challenge/2017 - February - Multilingualism if you have any file you'd like to upload, maybe in some of your archive at home. So far nothing from South Africa.--Alexmar983 (talk) 04:18, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Notice about adminship to participants at this project

Many participants here create a lot of content, may have to evaluate whether or not a subject is notable, decide if content complies with BLP policy, and much more. Well, these are just some of the skills considered at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship.

So, please consider taking a look at and watchlisting this page:

You could be very helpful in evaluating potential candidates, and even finding out if you would be a suitable RfA candidate.

Many thanks and best wishes,

Anna Frodesiak (talk) 05:40, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

CHANGES TO NASPERS COMPANY PAGE -

I have moved this discussion to Talk:Naspers. --Slashme (talk) 08:14, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Companies and Intellectual Property Commission

Draft about the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission Johnbplett (talk) 13:43, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Hi Johnbplett, I have replaced the copy of your draft with a link to it, please do not copy entire pages, a simple link is perfectly adequate.
Do you need help with the draft? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 14:01, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Netherlands and the World Exchange Platform is online

Wikimedia Nederland launches the Netherlands and the World Exchange Platform. The platform aims to stimulate global re-use of Dutch collections on non-European cultural heritage. In particular, it aims to stimulate collections on countries with which the Netherlands have had historical ties. These countries include Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Brazil, Ghana, Suriname, South Africa, and others.

The platform also aims to foster contacts between Dutch cultural heritage institutions and Wikimedia contributors across the globe. However, participation is not limited to Wikimedia contributors. Anyone can participate, making it relevant for education and research as well.

Key properties:

  • Dutch heritage institutions can post offers on (parts of) their collections that are relevant to non-European countries
  • Wikimedia contributors gain insight in the contents of Dutch collections and can make requests for digitalisation.
  • Knowledge exchange and cooperation are key concepts.

The platform is easy to use. After registration, users can post offer/requests notices, depending on whether they are looking for material, or want to offer material for re-use. Statistics on re-use are also available.

The Netherlands and the World Exchange Platform is part of the program The Netherlands and the World. This program is supported by Wikimedia Nederland and aims to make available knowledge and content on non-European countries.

Regards, --AWossink (talk) 14:59, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Articles being manipulated

I don't know if anyone has read this M&G article - http://mg.co.za/article/2017-01-27-00-hidden-hand-drives-social-media-smears - which mentions editing of WP articles by sockpuppets. Perhaps project members can watch these articles to prevent any disruptive editing in the future? Gbawden (talk) 13:39, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

A few of us have read it and it is an issue of concern. The best thing to do, I feel, is to keep a closer eye on the articles mentioned in the article and similar articles. I recall checking out the articles mentioned in the M&G article shortly after reading it. Most probably the most significant article like this is the one for the Gupta family which has also had an article in the M&G written about it and POV editing. I think we might all want to check them again and on an ongoing basis. All of the articles mentioned could certainly do with the positive editor attention either way.--Discott (talk) 07:56, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Early history of South Africa

Hello. I stumbled upon Southern Africa BC and ADs in Southern Africa. These don't have much content and could be merged into another article such as Early history of South Africa, but I don't have the subject knowledge to know whether this is valid or which text to keep. The titles suggest that the articles cover southern Africa rather than specifically RSA, but they're linked from List of years in South Africa and are members of Category:History of South Africa by period. Please can a subject expert help? Thanks, Certes (talk) 17:57, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

LGBT rights in South Africa has serious problems

Several sections and paragraphs are completely unsourced, some may even contain BLP violations. Some parts also have an "activist" POV tone. The subject is outside of my "comfort zone" for editing, so I'm not the right person to fix it. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 20:09, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

The subject is also one I am not likely to edit in the near future but I might take a crack at it some day. Although I don't know if I would be any better at improving it than any other member of the general public. We could ask for help from the LGBT project folks? That might resolve the "activist" POV tone and it is a subject that is clearly in their area of interest and "comfort zone".--Discott (talk) 07:50, 21 March 2017 (UTC)
I'm not quite sure what comfort zones have to do with it. Unless we're talking highly esoteric topics, a reliable source is a reliable source and NPOV is NPOV, as far as I know. Whatever. I support the edit you made recently. Are there other problems? I don't see any maintenance tags or any discussion on the talk page. I can't commit the time required to carefully go over the whole article right now, but if you could identify specific problem areas, I'd be happy to take a look. RivertorchFIREWATER 05:39, 29 March 2017 (UTC)
Thanks Rivertorch, the "comfort zone" comment is about my not having even a rudimentary frame of reference to judge the reliability or relevance of subject-specific sources. I have no way to tell whether a particular source about LGBT issues is solid mainstream or loony-fringe. The "standard" everyday newspapers and similar media are easy to recognise for what they are, but LGBT literature is as alien to me as nuclear physics journals. I've made a note to take some time over the weekend to go through the page to individually tag concerns. Roger (Dodger67) (talk)
Sounds good. I'll check back in a few days, then. (Ping me if I forget.) RivertorchFIREWATER 14:26, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Sport in South Africa

Hi I would like to know if there are people who are working on South African sport pages? Some of the pages seems very behind, if they exist at all. Pages like some of the lower leagues in football, as well as many of the smaller sports, and also the teams that participate in the sporting codes. Freddie2016 (talk) 14:53, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Freddie2016 I sometimes work on articles related to disability sport - I took South Africa at the 2012 Summer Paralympics to GA. I also very occasionally work on cricket articles. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 09:36, 15 April 2017 (UTC)
Thank you for the feedback Freddie2016 (talk) 09:20, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Is there a way and place to build a community of "sportswriters" or contributors to sportpages, whose main/speciality focus is on sport in South Africa? Freddie2016 (talk) 09:20, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Some affected images due to no FoP
Gugulethu Seven Memorial
Cape Town Stadium.
Mandela Capture Site Monument
Nobel Square, V&A Waterfront, Cape Town.

Background

Hello everyone. As many of you know South Africa does not have freedom of panorama. This means that only photographs of old buildings and public monuments can be uploaded to Commons or used on Wikipedia without a Fair-use argument. The problem is that the current act (written in the 1978) just does not mention the sharing of images over the internet in any explicit way and so needs updating. This means that many places, mostly recently built (younger than 50 years old + life of the author/architect), in South Africa can not have a photograph to illustrate them. Or at least should not. This also means that most Facebook and other social media users are breaking the law when they share photographs of public artwork that is less than 50 years old + life of the author. Countries in other parts of the world get around this by including Freedom of Panorama into their Copyright Acts.

Currently the Copyright Act of South Africa is being redrafted by the Department of Trade and Industry (DoTI). We have engaged with the DoTI in on an effort to include Freedom of Panorama in the new version of the Copyright Act. However we are concerned that the draft version they will release in the near future (date still uncertain) might not include any mention of Freedom of Panorama or effort to establish any similar rights to freely share photographs of public artworks. This is a perfect opportunity for us to enhance the act by getting Freedom of Panorama included in the new version when it comes out.

Solution

We would like to line up a public banner for display on all Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia in South Africa. The banner add would only go out if the draft version of the act to be released by the DoTI does not include any mention of Freedom of Panorama. Draft versions are released by the Department for public consolation. The banner add will inform people using Wikipedia in South Africa that a) this act is open to public consultation and b) encourage them to comment on the act so as to include Freedom of Panorama whilst informing them of why this is important.

In short the proposal calls for:

  1. Creation of banner add for use in South Africa on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects in the event that the draft Copyright Act does not include Freedom of Panorama.
  2. The banner add, if used, will inform readers of that they can comment on this act and point them to a page on Wikimedia Commons where they can learn more.
  3. The 'learn more' page will inform readers of why Freedom of Panorama in South Africa is important and how to get involved.

Wikimedia South Africa voted on this at our December 2016 board meeting where we agreed, as a chapter, to proceed with this. We would like to now get broader community support. As such I would like to discuss this issue here so we can get a banner ad lined up for when the public consultation period begins (that date is still unclear).--Discott (talk) 15:41, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

More information

Vote

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


Leave your vote or comment here on whether or not you support putting up a banner add on Wikipedia calling for Freedom of Panorama to be included in the Copyright Act of South Africa.

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Wikipedia Primary School Project

Hello ! I just joined the Primary School Project and will be the community liaison for it :) If you have any questions, please contact me.

I wanted to take that opportunity to outline that, as part of the project, we received and expert review for 4 articles. It would be lovely if you could have a look at them, and even better put a bit of energy in the improvement of these articles (they DO need the attention). The articles are

The reviews are posted in the talk page.

Thanks

Anthere (talkcontribs) 17:02, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia Primary School Edit-a-Thon

Want to make a difference to the foundation phase of Education in South Africa?

Then join us for the first Wikipedia Primary School edit-a-thon to help add and improve articles on Wikipedia that are important to primary school children in South Africa.

Wikipedia is meant to be an education tool but experiences have shown us that once accessible, Wikipedia does not provide information that responds directly to curriculum-based questions. Wikipedia Primary relies on Wikipedia as an existing and growing resource, it solves the need for an encyclopedia capable of responding to curriculum-based questions, and it fosters Wikipedia content, quality and outreach.


Dates : 19 and 26 February 2016
Where : American Corner, Central Library, Old Drill Hall, cnr Parade and Darling Streets
Time : 15:00 - 18:00
Cost : Absolutely free


Refreshments and light snacks will be provided.

To read more about this project, please visit the Wikipedia Primary School Programme


Please RSVP for these events via Eventbrite

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Humetheresa (talkcontribs) 07:31, 9 February 2016 (UTC)