Wikipedia talk:WikiProject South Africa

Change of ruling party in Ubuntu Local Municipality

I have updated the article with the details of the change from DA/Independent control to ANC control, but I'm not sure if any other related articles also need to be updated. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 13:23, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

I think the 2016 Election page will need updating. Will make a change to ANC minority. Conlinp (talk) 05:32, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

Daggafari

Hi all,

User:MickeyDangerez is the webmaster of dagga.za.net and claims to be the creator of the neologism "Daggafari". He created the article Daggafari and the corresponding afwiki article Daggafarianisme. These articles are currently the subject of deletion discussions. I became aware of the Afrikaans article first, and after reading the English article, proposed it for deletion today. The term is, as far as I can tell, not in any way notable to Wikipedia standards. I would propose that the material in the new article gets merged to Cannabis in South Africa.

Mickey has consistently been completely open about his CoI in this matter, and has been willing to engage with other editors. He's understandably defensive at this point, but I I am confident that he will be keen to help build consensus, and after agreement is reached, to follow consensus. --Slashme (talk) 07:08, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

Seeking feedback on Tswana vs Setswana

Your feedback is requested at Talk:List of Setswana medical terms#Setstwana or Tswana. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 04:07, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Cannabis in South Africa merge help needed

We need help merging the content from Daggafari into the Cannabis in South Africa article. Please see Talk:Cannabis in South Africa for my initial comments. I have to do my 100 WikiDays article for afwiki now, but I'll come back tomorrow and do some serious hacking to help get it into shape: it's not OK the way it is, but I would like to see this as an opportunity to work collaboratively and thrash out a good solution. --Slashme (talk) 19:31, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Cannabis in South Africa#David Carradine, dagga, racism and the Apartheid State

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Cannabis in South Africa#David Carradine, dagga, racism and the Apartheid State. -- Marchjuly (talk) 15:08, 17 September 2017 (UTC)Template:Z48

14th Cape Town meetup

I am trying to get the Cape Town meetups started up again, partly in preparation for Wikimania 2018 which will be held in Cape Town in July next year. As such there will be a Wiki-meetup at the deails below:

• Date: Sunday, 29 October 2017
• Location:Truth Coffee, 36 Buitenkant St, Cape Town 8000, South Africa
  NOT to be confused with the Truth Coffee at the Prestwich Memorial.
• Time: 11:00am - 2:00pm

You can see more at the 14th Cape Town meetup page.--Discott (talk) 14:50, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

South African Women in Science

Currently there is a project to write articles on South African women in science. If you are interested in helping in any way please check it out at the project page at the link below:

• Under-representation of science and women in Africa: Wikimania 2018 an opportunity to bridge the gap. --Discott (talk) 09:19, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Women in Red November contest open to all

		Announcing Women in Red's November 2017 prize-winning world contest Contest details: create biographical articles for women of any country or occupation in the world: [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/The World Contest|November 2017 WiR Contest]] Read more about how Women in Red is overcoming the gender gap: [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red|WikiProject Women in Red]]
		(To subscribe: Women in Red/English language mailing list and Women in Red/international list. Unsubscribe: Women in Red/Opt-out list)

--Ipigott (talk) 15:59, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

Wikimedia ZA Annual General Meeting 2017

This is just to let everyone know that the Wikimedia ZA AGM will be taking place in November 2017 in Cape Town. See below for more details.

• Time: Sunday, 26 November 2017, starts at 14:00 to 17:00
• Location: 6 Spin Street Restaurant (in the Tutu room at the back), ground floor, 6 Spin Street, in the Cape Town city bowl area.

If you would like to attend digitally we will be broadcasting the event over Google Hangouts, to join click on the link here.

The event page can be found on the Wikimedia ZA website here.

The AGM is open to all South African based Wikipedia and other Wikimeddia project editors. Membership is required to vote on resolutions but not required to attend. People are able to sign up as members at the AGM or they can signup before hand at the details on the Wikimedia ZA website.

Geology of South Africa

The article has just arrived in mainspace, it's nowhere near comprehensive yet, please help improve it. As a major core "Xxxxxx of South Africa" article it should be a fairly high priority. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 16:44, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Wax Dey

A Cameroonian urban musician based in South Africa. My first Africa article. Can someone take a look at a it? May be edit it a bit improve the article? Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 02:08, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

Disambiguation links on pages tagged by this wikiproject

Wikipedia has many thousands of wikilinks which point to disambiguation pages. It would be useful to readers if these links directed them to the specific pages of interest, rather than making them search through a list. Members of WikiProject Disambiguation have been working on this and the total number is now below 20,000 for the first time. Some of these links require specialist knowledge of the topics concerned and therefore it would be great if you could help in your area of expertise.

A list of the relevant links on pages which fall within the remit of this wikiproject can be found at http://69.142.160.183/~dispenser/cgi-bin/topic_points.py?banner=WikiProject_South_Africa

Please take a few minutes to help make these more useful to our readers.— Rod ^talk 18:44, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Bakaa

Are these baTswana in South African context or including Botswana. I am a moTswana of the BaKaa tribe ba bina Tlou and I see we are not listed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.231.173.251 (talk) 10:58, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

Please explain further so I can assist. Waddie96 (talk) 09:20, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

Disambiguation for Nasrec

For the article referring to the suburb nasrec I added that it may refer to the Expo Centre Johannesburg and the 54th National Conference of the African National Congress. I was wondering if it may warrant a disambiguation page. - Martinmenge (talk) 06:53, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

I'm inclined to say no. We may make the association briefly now that its topical but will perhaps be forgotten over time Gbawden (talk) 07:08, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

Should South Africa articles use "continental system" numbers?

Does the "consistency within articles" MoS guideline (MOS:ARTCON) apply to number formats? For example, should South Africa have "Population: 54956900" and Table Mountain have "Elevation: 1084,6 metres (3558 ft)"?

The convention in South African English seems to be to format numbers according to the "continental system", ie comma as the decimal mark and a gap as the thousands separator, (argued here, law here page 55).

This issue is liable to impact at least the 4,800 articles transcluding {{Use South African English}}, if not all 25,428 project ZA pages. Note that, because of screen reader issues, all numbers greater than 1,000 (except dates) will need to be template-formatted, eg with {{val}} or {{gaps}}, for example {{gaps|1|084,6}} → 1084,6. Clearly {{Infobox South African town}} etc would have to change accordingly. Batternut (talk) 23:45, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

One counter argument, along MOS:RETAIN lines, might be that the code of English used currently is to use South African English spellings but with non-continental numbers. Another argument might stem from MOS:COMMONALITY, in that intelligibility to English-speaking readers worldwide suggests overriding the local language variant.

Relevant policies and guidelines (mostly under MOS:ENGVAR) are:

• MOS:ARTCON: within a given article the conventions of one particular variety should be followed consistently.
• MOS:RETAIN: When an English variety's consistent usage has been established in an article, maintain it in the absence of consensus to the contrary.
• WP:TITLEVAR: Very rarely, a form that is less common locally is chosen because it is more intelligible to English-speaking readers worldwide (e.g. Ganges rather than "Ganga").
• MOS:COMMONALITY: ten million is preferable to one crore (Indian English).

Notes:

• The "continental system" seems to follow International System of Units#Printing SI symbols.
• I couldn't use Template:Convert for Table Mountain as it can't (yet) do commas for the decimal mark, (ie 1084.6 metres (3558 ft)).

Batternut (talk) 23:45, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

For spaces instead of commas, you can already use {{val}}: {{val|123456789}} → 123456789. The MoS doesn't disallow that. It doesn't seem to handle commas as a decimal mark, though. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 02:04, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

Mentioned already, but you formatted it better, so I've copied it ;) thanks. Batternut (talk) 07:54, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

My experience is that in actual SA English the most common use is a point as decimal mark and a space as thousands separator. The comma as decimal mark is much less used in English (although I believe it is common in Afrikaans). To demonstrate this, here are some recent articles from the major English-language SA media, all of which use the decimal point and not the comma: [1] [2] [3]. I am absolutely against any change to use the comma as decimal mark in SA articles; we should follow actual practise not an obscure law from the 1970s. - htonl (talk) 09:15, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

Agree with htonl. The comma is hardly ever seen as a decimal separator in South Africa, and Wikipedia should follow actual usage and not a standard or law that is largely ignored. Zaian (talk) 12:47, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

That brings back memories. I was an engineering student at Stellenbosch when that came out and it was all a big deal for a year or three, bur seemed to fizzle out after a while. I wouldn't take it too seriously, and certainly would not support a move to change to consistent comma decimal indicator for South African subject matter articles. I think most South Africans would understand either a comma or point as a decimal sign, and we are more likely to use spaces as separators than commas, which would cause confusion if there is only one and no point. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 15:35, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

I think one should use the thousands separator and decimal point in articles that have a strong association with South Africa or South African English. (i.e. 1 234 567.00). This can be done with {{convert|comma=gaps}}. This is the convention in South Africa. I made changes to South Africa in this regard but Batternut changed this; see discussion at his/her talk page here Waddie96 (talk) 09:18, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

Should existing South Africa articles be changed to use gaps as thousands separators?

From the discussion above it seems that in South African English the effective convention is to to use gaps as thousands separators, ie to write numbers as 1234567.8, rather than 1,234,567.8. Currently most articles do not use this convention, for example South Africa. Should such articles be changed now to use gaps as thousands separators? Thanks, Batternut (talk) 17:36, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

• No, per MOS:COMMONALITY, MOS:STYLERETAIN, and MOS:DIGITS; plus the fact that MOS:ENGVAR is being completely misunderstood and miscited.

The detailed version:

MOS:DIGITS: "1234567.8" is a style "especially recommended for articles related to science, technology, engineering or mathematics", and "South Africa" doesn't qualify. The claim that this is some kind of national standard is easily disproved; it's simply favoured by particular news publishers. Two closely related points: A) WP is not written in news style as a matter of policy, so the style favoured in SA news sources is irrelevant. And if you look at it, it's neither consistent from publication to publication (Times Live and Mail & Guardian don't use the gappy style [4] but News 24 does [5], while Mail & Guardian confusingly uses it to the left of the decimal [6] but not to the right [7]), nor compatible with MoS, e.g. frequently employing awful constructions like "R23billion" with no spacing, etc. News writing is not encyclopedia writing.) "National" usage in SA provably varies, with "1,234,567.8" style well-attested in mainstream publishing there. B) Most importantly of all, our articles on a particular place are not written especially for the people who live there, but mostly for everyone who does not and needs basic info about the place. The local style quirks are of no concern to us at all, or we'd be writing articles on Texas with lots of "y'all" and "ain't". MOS:ENGVAR is not about pride-of-place, nor about editorial control by one group of editors against another; it's exactly the opposite, a dispute-prevention mechanism: do not change any [MoS-acceptable] style from one version to another on nationalism grounds unless a) it's provably a near-universal in the dialect in question (not true here), b) there's a strong national tie to the subject (true), and c) the style distinction is completely arbitrary and WP has no reason to care one way or another (not true again; a "don't care" case is, e.g., colour vs. color, or boot vs. trunk of a car). WP does have a reason to care here, namely MOS:COMMONALITY: every English speaker understands "1,234,567.8", while only a subset understand "1234567.8". Their concentration in technical/academic professions and, apparently, South Africa is incidental, but clearly distinguishable. Maths editors claim (rather dubiously) that anyone capable of understanding WP's advanced maths and other technical articles is already familiar with that notation; this is certainly not true of everyone capable of understanding articles about South Africa. Finally, even if using "1234567.8" were entirely acceptable in non-technical material (it's not) and even if it were an ENGVAR matter (it's not), using "1,234,567.8" everyday, universal English style is also perfectly acceptable, and we don't change from one acceptable style to another without a very good reason, per MOS:STYLERETAIN. Doing it to SA articles will not only fail to improve them for anyone (objectively speaking, even if it subjectively made them more pleasing for some), it will make them palpably and objectively worse (less understandable) for many readers. There's actually a good additional reason to not to do it in this case: copy-pasting (or otherwise text-extracting) "1234567.8" results in "1234567.8", a less user-friendly result in regular prose than "1,234,567.8". Using "1234567.8" or "1234567.8" is more appropriate in tabular data, where sorting and other direct numeric manipulation might be expected for one WP:REUSE or another; probably no one, with any tools, is parsing regular WP article paragraphs for numeric strings and doing calculations with them, but they might well be doing this with, say, consistently presented tables of economic data, which are easy to import into spreadsheets and databases, and where the commas would interfere with treatment as floating-point numbers rather than as text strings.

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  01:40, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

Comment: every English speaker understands "1,234,567.8", while only a subset understand "1 234 567.8" (quoting SMcCandlish in the collapsed comment above) - I think most South Africans (technical or non-technical) would understand both (and as an aside, I suspect most would understand "1,234 as 1.234, not 1234). But as for other English speakers not understanding "1 234 567.8", wow, I had no idea. I am glad I live in South Africa where we are exposed to multiple varieties of English and other languages, and don't get confused by such things! Zaian (talk) 09:32, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

• ÝES Articles written in South African English, should follow the style of SAE. MOS:DIGITS specifically states that either commas or narrow gaps can be used to separate thousands, the choice just has to be consistent throughout a given article. South African English style guides and government language style guides specifically state that spaces are the correct form of separating thousands. Furthermore South African law, namely South African Government Notice R.1146, makes the space and comma variant the only recongnised system in the country. What speakers of other forms of English do is irrelevant, MOS:DIGITS allows its use and thus articles written in SAE should conform to the correct style usage of SAE. As to people not understanding 1 234 567.8 I cannot agree to at all, it is much more likely for someone to confuse 123,456 than 123 456, especially in the context of SAE.--DSBennie (talk) 22:42, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

  Repeat: 'MOS:DIGITS: "1234567.8" is a style "especially recommended for articles related to science, technology, engineering or mathematics", and "South Africa" doesn't qualify.' That seemed pretty clear the first time. Again: We have concrete proof that SA publications, intended for general SA audiences, also use "1,234,567.8", meanwhile those that use "1234567.8" style don't do so consistently within the same genre or even the same publication. I had originally collapse-boxed my set of arguments above but will expand them so people actually read them.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  22:12, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

  • "is especially recommended", that does in no way preclude its use in other types of articles, it just recommends that no other system is used in those sort of articles. MOS:DIGITS does in no way preclude its use in South African articles. Arguments can be made for MOS:COMMONALITY and MOS:STYLERETAIN, but MOS:DIGITS is most certainly not a reason to prevent its use. --DSBennie (talk) 22:56, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
• No,   SMcCandlish has already done a good job of listing the reasons why but I will repeat MOS:COMMONALITY, MOS:STYLERETAIN, and MOS:DIGITS as important reasons. I want to add that I find the comma system to be easier to read but that is more of a personal preference as apposed to the convention related reasons already mentioned. Zaian is also right in pointing out that most South Africans will likely understand both conventions easily enough.--Discott (talk) 17:07, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
• No. I see no convincing evidence that there is an "effective convention". I would go with MOS:STYLERETAIN provided that the existing style is adequately intelligible. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 07:09, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

Mayor of Johannesburg

I notice that the Mayor of Johannesburg article only lists post-1995 mayors but there are a few earlier mayors contained within Category:Mayors of Johannesburg. Just wondering if this is correct. Hack (talk) 05:06, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

• The Mayor of Johannesburg article refers to the executive mayors of the modern municipality of the City of Johannesburg. The category Category:Mayors of Johannesburg should be dealing with all mayors, not just the modern executive ones. So I think both are correct as is, although it would help if the Mayor of Johannesburg article was expanded to explain its powers and its role in city management. --DSBennie (talk) 18:55, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
  • That may be the current scope, but I see no reason why previous mayors cannot be covered by the article - otherwise the name should change. The article should explain the powers of the mayor, and how they have varied over time. Batternut (talk) 19:03, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
    • If the name has stayed the same but the scope has changed, perhaps it could be displayed in a similar way to the List of mayors of New York City. Hack (talk) 02:33, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
      • Yes indeed, that's a good model to follow. Batternut (talk) 13:40, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Lorry or truck?

In South African English, do you use the word "lorry" or "truck"? Mjroots (talk) 16:20, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

I have seen both used, but truck is the preferred term in SAE. It is also the term used pretty much exclusively in news sources in South Africa.--DSBennie (talk) 18:16, 4 January 2018 (UTC)