Wikipedia:Africa-related regional notice board/Peer review/Cameroon

Cameroon edit

This article's been rewritten over the past two or three months. I'd like to submit it to WP:FAC, but this is by far the most ambitious article rewrite I've ever attempted, so I want to solicit opinion first. Any suggestions, comments, or criticisms are welcome. For example, the citation density was very high just a short while ago, when I had cited a source for every single statement in the article. Did I cut too much? Not enough? What needs to happen to make this an exemplary country article? Thanks, — Brian (talk) 10:55, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

bcasterline edit

I don't know much about the subject or the standard for country articles, but, caveats aside, this looks like a great overview. Well-written and organized; not much I can criticize. Couple comments though:

The sentence "Cameroon came to international attention on 21 August 1986 when Lake Nyos belched toxic fumes and killed between 1,700 and 2,000 people." comes out of no where since the rest of the history section focuses on politics. It's a noteworthy event, but in the scope of the article it may not be important -- unless there's more to say about consequences, etc.
Perhaps add more on tribal vs. national affiliation? The conflict was mentioned a couple times but only in passing.

Good luck. -- bcasterline • talk 22:05, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the comments. Regarding your first point, it's a toughie. Basically, the two facts most everyone knows about Cameroon are: a) They have a good football team; and b) They had a natural disaster in the 1980s where a lake killed a bunch of people. I wanted to make sure I covered both points. I'll see if maybe I can't work Nyos in somewhere else, such as the Geography section. Regarding your second point, I'll see if I can't dig up some more information about tribalism in the country. Thanks again! — Brian (talk) 22:49, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Nichalp edit

Subsections needs to go
Sections need to be summarised
Further review once this is done.

=Nichalp «Talk»= 19:02, 10 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the comments, but I'm not sure I understand. What's wrong with subsections? And the prose size is currently within standards, so I'm not sure why further summarization is needed. However, I do acknowledge that "History" may be a bit long. I'll see if I can't reduce it some. — Brian (talk) 00:54, 12 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've edited down the "History" section to 4 KB of text-only prose, which is equivalent to the same section of the Featured Article on India. — Brian (talk) 05:10, 13 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Much better, now other sections need to be pruned down. Culture, Demographics and Economy can get rid of unessential data, while politics and government can be split into a one or two sections.
Remove all set pixel values for images. Align them to the right for now
Administrative divisions could do with the regions as a list. Also could you request that the map be converted to SVG format?

=Nichalp «Talk»= 19:29, 17 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. I disagree that anything else needs to be really pruned. Readable prose is now almost perfect: 32 KB (so I could conceivably trim 2 KB of stuff, granted). I think you may be onto something about splitting Politics and Government, so I'll look into it. I rather like the image distribution at the moment; what would be the point of removing the pixel values and right aligning the lot of them? As for the list of provinces, lists get the ax regularly on FAC, in my experience. But the SVG map would be a good idea; I'll ping the folks at the graphics lab. Thanks again for the comments! — Brian (talk) 01:46, 18 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It should be pruned further, 6-7 paragraphs make the section too long, and sections for a geographic location article are all summaries. Ideally, it should be three mid paragraphs (~200-250 words) with the content being the summary of the main article (ie the content of the article which appears in the lead of Geography of Cameroon, Economy of Cameroon etc.). About the list for administrative divisions, that's one case where nobody objects since putting it in prose is more difficult to read. =Nichalp «Talk»= 04:27, 18 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If I can add my opinion, I tend to agree with Brian here. I full agree regarding the list of provinces: few things are as ugly in this sort of articles. While I disagree with the radicality of Nichalp's proposals regarding pruning, I do feel that a minor pruning with the sections "economy" and "culture" could be useful. After that, pass it to FAC, where other editors will be ready to offer further suggestions. That said, I'm no expert in FA.--Aldux 12:28, 18 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've trimmed some more fat and killed another 1KB of text. Trimming further from the "Politics and government" or "Economy" sections is problematic, since these are actually conglomerations of things that other country articles devote several sections to. For example, "Politics and government" covers the politics of Cameroon, foreign relations of Cameroon, education in Cameroon, and healthcare in Cameroon. Likewise, "Economy" (now renamed "Economy and infrastructure") includes the economy of Cameroon, tourism in Cameroon, transport in Cameroon, and communications in Cameroon. In other words, they cover a lot of ground and shouldn't need to be cut further. — Brian (talk) 05:02, 19 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Aldux edit

Damn, this article is simply too good, I really would love to have a similar one for Chad :-) It's certaincainly ready to stand for WP:FAC. Also the sources and the images are very good. Only, I'll observe:

I also feel that the subsections should go; really one of the problems is that the history of the economy sections of this article are much better, and almost greater of the respective history of Cameroon and economy of Cameroon, which in theory should give a more detailed treatment of these topics. I advise to reduce especially the history section, moving considerable chunks of material to History of Cameroon.
The "external links" section is really meagre. Couldn't you add some other valuable external links to to this sections.--Aldux 00:50, 11 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. Yes, I primarily write articles on Cameroon's history, so it's tough for me to decide what to cut from the "History" section. I do note that it is the longest section in the article and could be shortened. However, I don't think that the abysmal state of history of Cameroon and economy of Cameroon should be held against this article; my goal is to get this one up to FA first and then turn my attentions to the sub articles. But I'll look at maybe reducing the "History" section a bit more and moving stuff to history of Cameroon. :(

As for the external links, Wikipedia:WikiProject Countries suggests linking only to official websites, and the Cameroonian government just doesn't have much web presence. There was a huge link farm before I began my revisions, but it was mostly spam. I'll take another look at it to make sure I didn't miss anything, though. — Brian (talk) 00:54, 12 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A thing I've noted only now: there are almost no categories. Shouldn't you add :Category:African Union member states, :Category:Organization of the Islamic Conference, :Category:La Francophonie. Among the navigational templates, you should remove {{Countries of West Africa}}; if you give a look at West Africa, Cameroon is not considered part of that subregion by the UN.--Aldux 18:41, 19 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for checking these things. All of those subcategories are appended to Category:Cameroon. (It's my understanding that if a subject has an eponymous category, further categorization should be done at the category level rather than the article level). As for the region, the UN has it's categorization scheme, and many other sources differ. Cameroon is regularly categorized as both West and Central African, so I'm not sure that the UN should be the only source deferred to on this. — Brian (talk) 22:25, 19 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]