Talk:Comoros/Archive 1

Official Languages

Both the CIA World Factbook 2008 and the Ethnologue report for Comoros list Arabic and French as the only official languages for Comoros. Both this page and the page for the comorian language add comorian as an official language. Please provide a citation for this.--The Jacobin (talk) 18:48, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Deleted comorian after no response--The Jacobin (talk)

Here's one citation: http://www.geonames.de/coukm.html. The name of the Union des Comores in Comorian is supposedly the Udzima wa Komori. If I knew how to add this to the article I would.Malveramenso (talk) 21:28, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Mayotte/Mahoré

The parts of this article still refer to the island of Mayotte/Mahoré as if it were a de facto part of the Comoros. Also the section of the introduction regarding the sovereignty of Mayotte/Mahoré is not clear. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.135.221.194 (talk) 00:57, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

yes I too wonder how Mayotte can be officially part of the Comoros when they voted against becoming part of the Comoros and stayed part of France. This should be changed to reflect the politcal reality of the situation, rather then an iridentalist dream. Thecrystalcicero (talk) 21:49, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I would like to see some opinions on this. While Comoros can claim Mayotte all it wants, the fact is that Mayotte voted to remain a territory of France and in 2009 will vote on whether or not to become an overseas department/region of France, which would make it a true part of France, so the article should be changed to reflect that Mayotte is NOT part of the country of Comoros. If there are no objections to this, I'll change it myself. --MPD ^{T / C} 23:15, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

I am sympathetic with that point of view, but I don't think it stands up to NPOV. Characterization of Mayotte is one of the most challenging parts of this article. However, what we have here is not properly characterized as simply a "Comorian claim," and by the same reasoning (that de facto status should be treated as de jure) we would have to do things like make Kosovo or Turkish Cyprus independent and make Western Sahara Moroccan. No one denies that Mayotte is de facto a French-administered territory, but that is very different from saying that "Mayotte is NOT part of the country of Comoros," when, to my knowledge, France is the only country that recognizes France's jurisdiction over Mayotte. Instead, the United Nations General Assembly has repeatedly referred to it as an illegal occupation of sovereign Comorian territory, and considered the subsequent referendums organized by the French to be "null and void."

Now, the article does refer to Mayotte as under de facto French administration, and expends on that in a footnote to the introduction, and if anyone can make that clearer, they should. But, as far as the international community is concerned, Mayotte has never had a legally-recognized referendum to consider whether to join the Comoros or France, and the situation is similar to Cyprus, which defines the country according to its commonly recognized borders (the whole island), while noting the de facto independence of the north. Dmcdevit·t 10:51, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

I think that Dmcdevit has it mostly right. In general, I agree with the tone of the introduction but find the wording awkward. So, I am going to risk it and make it sound better and less contorted and POV-y. Since this is an article about Comoros, I think it is fine to talk about Mayotte as part of Comoros but making it clear that politically it is not. If people want to understand the dispute they can click through to Mayotte or Google it. This is an encyclopedia and not a complete dissertation on the topic. The basics of the dispute should be made clear and then move on. Gibraltar, Northern Ireland, or the Falklands are other similar territories to look at, not to pick on the British, though they are not the subject of similar UN resolutions. --125.60.227.202 (talk) 12:21, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Mayotte is not and never will be part of Comoros. Its per capita GDP is 10x that of Comoros for a reason. Its level of political stability is more akin to a 1st world country, while Comoros has had more than 20 coups. The only one who has not figured this out is the UN, apparently. More proof that the UN is a den of commies more intent on forcing people to rewrite the past than allowing people to determine their own fate.Arlesd (talk) 03:22, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

20, December 2003 agreement

Reuters reports that the main union government and the three semi-autonomous islands singed an agreement, which set up a customs authority, including international experts to solve disputes over collection and ensure fair distribution of revenues, and gives control of the local police to the island authorities, while the army will be under the command of the federal government. [1]

I don't know where is appropriate places this adds to. Politics or History?

New Developments

This entire article needs updating. The IMF currently has a Staff Monitored Program (SMP) in place and the World Bank has a Social Fund credit which became effective in August 2004. A Donors Round Table is due to be held in Mauritius (chaired by President Mbeki) around December 8, 2005.

Coat of Arms

The coat of arms seems to be dated, as it gives the former long name of the country. Ybgursey 05:15, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Defacement

Someone put a picture of a prince albert piercing into the page, somehow. It wasn't in the source of the page, so a quick re-save removed it. - APF

Languages

There are two contradictory sections regarding the language distribution, one under demographics and the other under Media and Culture. If I knew which one was correct I'd fix it, does anyone have a source to back either of these claims up? --Cdills 18:38, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

See french version.

I think that mentioning very similar information in both of those sections is unnecessary. The information on the dialects seems useful, but could it not be put in the Languages section? Besides, it looks like someone simply copied the first paragraph of Comorian language. --Xeṭrov 19:09, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Proposed WikiProject

In my ongoing efforts to try to include every country on the planet included in the scope of a WikiProject, I have proposed a new project on Eastern Africa at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Eastern Africa whose scope would include Comoros. Any interested parties are more than welcome to add their names there, so we can see if there is enough interest to start such a project. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 16:23, 20 December 2006 (UTC)What is the main religion and on what website can you find every nations religion?

GA review

I've just been through the article, and notwithstanding the few minor typo and punctuation errors, fulfills all GA criteria with bravour.

Formal criteria:

• The article is well written, verifiable, tells me all I want to know (and more), keeps all (potentially anti-French) bias well in check, and appears to be reasonably stable.
• I do wish there were were more pictures of the place, but considering that it is so small, and there may not be very many wikipedians coming from there, I think the "if possible" clause of the GA requirement applies.

GA review summary: pass

To-do issues:

• As noted above, the article has a few minor typo and punctuation errors. The former should be resolvable with any spell checker, and the latter could be partially resolved by checking that references come after the punctuation mark (not "... island[5],") and that there is only one of them ("... collectivity.[31]. Comoros ...").
• Further, I strongly recommend switching to a citation format that supports proper footnotes and explicit page numbers. For an example, see Rabindranath Tagore. This article needs (and can support) both. It will take some effort, but the results will pay off.

Well done, folks! -- Fullstop 01:52, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

As a second note, this article is very, very [dangerously] close to the GA minimum standards with respect to criterion 3 (broad in coverage/completeness). There's nothing in the article regarding the climate (should be added to the geography section), education, or infrastructure (transportation, electricity, water, utilities, etc). I won't delist this now, but this should be added or the article could be delisted at some future point. Dr. Cash 05:54, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Nothing at all, or not enough? You will find information on the climate in the geography section, the first paragraph especially; literacy and education is discussed in the last paragraph of the demographics section, and the first paragraph of "Media and culture." The problem is that these are hard topics to cover in any depth on the the basis of the sources available for a poverty-stricken, politically-unstable, island nation in southeast Africa with less than a million inhabitants. It will take some time. Dmcdevit·t 06:37, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

perhaps the fact that Dr. Cash didn't find that information immediately is an indication that the Geography section could do with subsections (e.g. Political geography, Physical geography, and Climate). And while the Comoros is not Luxembourg, and with only one two-lane metaled road in the whole country not exactly a paragon of good infrastructure, there are a few sentences on infrastructure in the Economy of Comoros article that could be integrated here. -- Fullstop 09:24, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Automatic addition of "class=GA"

A bot has added class=GA to the WikiProject banners on this page, as it's listed as a good article. If you see a mistake, please revert, and leave a note on the bot's talk page. Thanks, _BOT Giggabot (talk) 05:15, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Island names

I notice that this article is somewhat inconsistent with the island names. In the intro, it states that the Comoron names are preferred, and says so again in the Geography section. But the rest of the article seems to use the French names. Should these all be switched to the Comoron names?

71.212.4.53 (talk) 14:24, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Official languages of country are Arabic, French. English map usually preferred French names. Uses of Shingazidja names is neutral ? Vincnet (talk) 16:39, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

moi karim karani rooney ok bebe —Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.205.182.226 (talk) 15:17, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

"The Ayatollah of Comoros" should be moved

The section under government "The Ayatollah of Comoros" would be more appropriate on Ahmed Abdallah Mohamed Sambi's article. I am going to move it, with minor edits for streamlining with that article.--RDavi404 (talk) 14:59, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

International organizations

The "Union of the Comoros" is the only state to be a member of each of the African Union, Francophonie, Organisation of the Islamic Conference, Arab League, and Indian Ocean Commission, among other international organizations.

This list of organizations should be reduced, so that the central claim of the sentence is more notable. (By way of example, if we also added, "in the Eastern Hemisphere", it would be true, but would make the claim less interesting.) I removed "among other international organizations" because it destroyed any notability of the claim. Tempshill (talk) 18:31, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Motto

The motto is inconsistent with the seal, is there a reason or shall I edit it? Moemin05 (talk) 12:46, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Flag

The flag colours are inconsistent across internet media. Japan Foreign Ministry possibly has the correct colors according to direct evidence of the flags. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.171.186.251 (talk) 21:54, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Confusion

Where Anjouan and Mohéli real, full-fledged nations, or where they simply a secesionist movement? 97.96.65.108 (talk) 23:45, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Early map

An early map of 1638 refers to Comoros as "Comro" predating the existing map in the article by over 150 years. Jakeybean (talk) 19:59, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Demonym

The demonym is sourced from the US Department of State website. However, that website uses "Comoran" as well as "Comorian" and it appears that "Comoran" is used more often. Since this article uses "Comorian", it might be worthwhile to sort this out. --Airborne84 (talk) 19:31, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

The US CIA World Factbook uses "Comoran" under "Background".[2] --Airborne84 (talk) 19:37, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Source doc uses "Comorian" only once (where it probably should use the noun "Comoros") and "Comoran" nine times, including where it defines what the proper adjective is. The preponderance of available on-line information favors "Comoran"; I can't find an authoritative source that promotes "Comorian" over "Comoran." Therefore, I'm changing the page. Holy (talk) 08:48, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Medieval Comoros

The section on Medieval Comoros talks about the role of Comoros in the medieval spice trade. It lists vanilla as one of the spices commonly traded through Comoros, despite the fact that vanilla did not arrive from the Americas until much later. I went ahead and removed this error. -unregistered user, 10:49 PM EST, 16th of December, 2011 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.49.105.27 (talk) 03:50, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

I am unsure as to why the references to vanilla in Medieval Comoros were added in after I removed them. Vanilla was not known to the Old World until the 1520s. Vanilla was not introduced to the Comoros until the French occupation. Whoever is editing the article to include this incorrect information, please stop. -unregistered user, 7:35 PM EST, 18th of December 2011 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.49.105.27 (talk) 00:35, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Something seems to be off in the mention of the Comoros as "a major hub of trade and an important location in the sea route between Kilwa (an outlet for Zimbabwean gold) in Mozambique and Mombasa in Kenya.[12]": Kilwa is linked to Kilwa Masoko in Tanzania, not Mozambique. On top of that, going from Kilwa in Tanzania(about 300 km North of the Comoros) to Mombasa, Kenya (about 800 km North of the Comoros seems a silly detour. On the other hand: taking gold from Zimbabwe all the way over land to Kilwa, doesn't seem that logic either. A quick browse on google maps gives me the impression Beira, Mozambique http://goo.gl/maps/IZaGx would be a more logic place to ship zimbabwean gold to Mombasa from as Google maps doesn't know a place named Kilwa, Mozambique and it would make the Comoros a more logical hub. It's possible that the gold was first shipped to Kilwa (Tanzania), passing the Comoros and then, from Kilwa, was shipped to Mombasa, but in that case the explanation is not clear to me. Otherwise, either Kilwa is not the place refered to or the link to Kilwa Tanzania is wrong. (I was unable to verify the reference 12) 81.82.139.82 (talk) 11:10, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

GA Reassessment

This discussion is transcluded from Talk:Comoros/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the reassessment.

This article contains a lot of unaddressed citation needed tags, thus failing criterion 1b. I will wait a week before closing this reassessment so editors can have the opportunity to fix these issues.--FutureTrillionaire (talk) 00:57, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Result: Delisted. The issues have not been fixed.--FutureTrillionaire (talk) 01:37, 21 July 2013 (UTC)