Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Library of Congress Country Studies

Untitled

For what it's worth, I had set up Category:Background Notes based on what I'd seen with Category:Country Studies. But I was not nearly so ambitious as this project. ;-) There were some nation-related articles that I suspected of being copyvios, until I found the same text in the State Dept.'s Background Notes (part of the problem was that a Google search on a a given chunk of text pointed to mirror sites, not the State Dept.'s webpage itself). -- Gyrofrog (talk) 00:51, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Also, I'd meant to mention earlier, it looks like what I had done with "Background Notes" was the reverse of this project. In other words I was first identifying articles that had incorporated text from the Background Notes, and then placing those articles in the category. Anyway it lost steam quickly... But there ya have it, FWIW. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 03:22, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Cautions

One issue that needs to be pointed out somewhere... This is a reasonable project, but does need to be approached with great caution. I'd be concerned with simply cut-and-pasting the text of the country studies into Wikipedia articles, even though it would be legal to do so. The source needs to be considered - these are United States government publications, and while they're written by smart people with substantial country expertise, they will inevitably reflect the US government's, including the US military's, priorities. Quoting from the LOC Country Studies homepage:

This website contains the on-line versions of books previously published in hard copy by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress under the Country Studies/Area Handbook Program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Army. Because the original intent of the Series' sponsor was to focus primarily on lesser known areas of the world or regions in which U.S. forces might be deployed, the series is not all-inclusive. At present, 101 countries and regions are covered. Notable omissions include Canada, the United States, France, [...] (emphasis added)

That is, these studies were originally commissioned by the United States military as background on places it might be sent. So especially in relation to issues which the US was a major player in (for example civil conflicts in some third-world countries), but probably in most cases, the LOC country studies should only be considered as one source, and probably not a neutral enough one for word-for-word inclusion in Wikipedia. To do so would not reduce systemic bias; in fact, it might even exacerbate it. CDC (talk) 21:41, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't see bias as major issue in most of the country studies. There may be some editorial bias in the issues covered, but I think that can be addressed by future edits and additions from other sources. For the most part, these seem to be pretty good, straight up, sources of information. However, I have noticed some US-bias in the newer profiles on Iraq and Afghanistan. I word of warning on the main project page would probably be a good idea. Perhaps on the separate pages for countries that might have bias. I still think a lot can be added through basic cut and paste though, as long as some thought is given to whats being pasted and whether it contains bias.--Bkwillwm 22:53, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I added a warning of POV to the subpages for Haiti, Venezuela, Afghanistan, and Iraq. I have noticed some clear US bias in these profiles. However, I think these still have much to offer, they just deserve a touch of scrutiny. Most of the others are good, fair resources as far as I have seen.--Bkwillwm 07:05, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

A few suggestions

Cool project, I'm for it, I just wanted to make a few suggestions as to how this can fit better into (1) our guidelines for citing sources and (2) the fact that this is a wiki and these articles will inevitably be modified.

• The template could be revised to indicate year of pulication of study, since several of these have gone through more than one edition. The dates of the current editions can generally be found at [1].
• Also to be found there are the names of the editors. Shouldn't we include those, as for any other source that we cite?
• I would suggest that we should link to an unaltered version of the country study page someplace (maybe countrystudies.us, I don't really have a preference). These articles will evolve; there ought to be a link to the reference material, as to any reference material available online.
• Further (I realize that this one is slightly more of a pain) I suggest adding a footnote to each paragraph, as I have just done at Spanish society after the democratic transition. Again, these articles will accumulate more material, and it will be very important to anyone watchlisting them to see what material is cited and what is not. (E.g. substantive new material added without citation to a cited paragraph is always suspect).

-- Jmabel | Talk 21:48, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Other good PD resources from the US govt

• International religious freedom reports - also contain info on religion generally.
• International human rights reports
• Background notes
• Labor in the UK
• Labor in India
• Congressional research service reports
• Mineral industry descriptions by country
• Energy industry descriptions by country
• Economic policy and trade practices by country
• Foreign agricultural service attache reports
• Forestry by country
• Criminal justice by country - unclear whether this one is PD, it was written by non-DOJ (i think) people using DOJ funding Heard back from their general counsel, this is not PD.

Peace corps welcome books

Also have good info.

What's available:

• Albania
• Armenia
• Azerbaijan
• Bangladesh
• Belize
• Benin
• Bolivia
• Botswana
• Cameroon
• Cape Verde (already incorporated)
• Chad
• China
• Costa Rica
• Ecuador
• Ethiopia
• Fiji
• Georgia
• Ghana
• Guinea
• Guyana
• Honduras
• Jamaica
• Jordan
• Kazakhstan
• Kenya
• Kiribati
• Lesotho
• Macedonia
• Madagascar
• Malawi
• Moldova
• Mongolia
• Morocco
• Mozambique
• Namibia
• Nicaragua
• Niger
• Paraguay
• Peru
• Romania
• Samoa
• Senegal
• Suriname
• Swaziland
• Tanzania
• Thailand
• Togo
• Tonga
• Uganda
• Ukraine
• Vanuatu DONE
• Zambia

Fact-checking required

It looks like this WikiProject is not currently active, but maybe it should be reviewed. The LoC Country Studies may still be a useful reference, but statements from them could be located, corroborated and referenced. Education in Iraq included a statement from a April 2005 report: "In 2000 the literacy rate was 55 percent for males and 23 percent for females." The August 2006 report updates this to "In 2003 the literacy rate was 56 percent for males and 24 percent for females." However, the LoC studies must have used a different measure of literacy rate from the usual, since these figures would be typical of a country in sub-Saharan Africa and the figures bear no relation to stats from two other sources. Use with caution. --93.96.136.249 (talk) 13:10, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Project-independent quality assessments

Quality assessments by Wikipedia editors rate articles in terms of completeness, organization, prose quality, sourcing, etc. Most wikiprojects follow the general guidelines at Wikipedia:Content assessment, but some have specialized assessment guidelines. A recent Village pump proposal was approved and has been implemented to add a |class= parameter to {{WikiProject banner shell}}, which can display a general quality assessment for an article, and to let project banner templates "inherit" this assessment.

No action is required if your wikiproject follows the standard assessment approach. Over time, quality assessments will be migrated up to {{WikiProject banner shell}}, and your project banner will automatically "inherit" any changes to the general assessments for the purpose of assigning categories.

However, if your project has decided to "opt out" and follow a non-standard quality assessment approach, all you have to do is modify your wikiproject banner template to pass {{WPBannerMeta}} a new |QUALITY_CRITERIA=custom parameter. If this is done, changes to the general quality assessment will be ignored, and your project-level assessment will be displayed and used to create categories, as at present. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:24, 12 April 2023 (UTC)