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Template:Did you know nominations/Komboni

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The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Cwmhiraeth (talk) 09:34, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

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Komboni

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  • ... that Zambian slums called Kombonis began when white landowners housed their African employees in irregular neighborhoods on their compounds? Source: "Technically, since the only Africans who were allowed to live in such areas were the employees of the white settlers (who were authorized to house their employees on their so-called compounds), such neighborhoods were unauthorized at their origins." [1]
    • ALT1:... that approximately 80% of residents of Lusaka live in one of 37 slums called Kombonis? Source: "These settlements, which have grown in number over time, form Lusaka's current 37 compounds." [...] "Approximately 80% of its population live in poor, unplanned settlements (also known as ma komboni), which constitute 20% of the city's residential land."[2]

5x expanded by ONUnicorn (talk). Self-nominated at 15:59, 9 January 2017 (UTC).

  • I think that ALT1 is the better choice, because it is punchier and more interesting to general readers. The sourcing and policy-compliance check out. The expansion started January 3. My one concern is that the expansion looks to me, based on character count, to be just slightly below 5-fold. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:35, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
I'll work on expanding it a little more tomorrow, and also get the QPQ done. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 20:52, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
Should be long enough now. I'll do the QPQ tomorrow. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 04:25, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
The length looks good, thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:11, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
I added a QPQ. @Tryptofish: can you give it the final green checkmark please? ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 18:21, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
for ALT1. Everything has been addressed. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:14, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Re-opened in light of discussions at here. The Rambling Man (talk) 09:16, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Discussion from Prep Area 6

== Prep 6 - kombonis (ma or not ma?) ==

... that approximately 80% of residents of Lusaka, Zambia, live in 1 of 37 slums called kombonis?

So I added "Zambia" because I'm certain that a vast majority of our "English-speaking" audience don't know where Lusaka is. And I changed "one of 37" to "1 of 37" per our manual of style (MOSNUM), but looking at the source, it calls these "ma kombonis" not simply "kombonis". So I'd like to see this fixed or clarified before it hits the main page. Asking ONUnicorn, Tryptofish and Cwmhiraeth, all of whom were clearly very happy with the discrepancy in nomenclature (and italics). Plus, the sole source for this was published 10 months ago, so it needs a timeframe, so "as of March 2016", or even better, when the research was actually conducted for the book.... I would suggest these kind of numbers are fluid so stating it as fact as of now is somewhat dubious. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:56, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for pinging me, and thanks for catching those things. I will be clearly very happy if anyone makes the necessary corrections. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:11, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
BTW the article doesn't say that 80% of the residents live in 1 of the 37 slums, but that 80% of residents live in 37 slums. So I deleted the numbers from the hook and made it: ... that approximately 80% of residents of Lusaka, Zambia, live in slums called kombonis? Yoninah (talk) 22:42, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
I had read it to mean that all 37 slums are occupied, but that of course any single resident would live in just 1 of them. But I can see now how the wording could be misunderstood to mean that they are all crowded into just 1, leaving the other 36 bereft. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:46, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Pull: Yoninah's version is a substantial improvement, so thanks for that.  :) I was going to post some tweaks, but I think we have bigger issues to look at, including:

  • TRM's point, to ma not to ma, about whether the correct term is "komboni", "ma komboni", or "ma komboni".
  • Whether these are actually slums. Page 94 of this report (not presently used in the article) by Francis Chigunta uses the term as "informal communities", and distinguishes them from squatter camps. The associated footnote says: "Informal settlements should not be equated with squatting or illegal occupation. Although the former do not comply with the requirements of one or more laws regarding land tenure, land use, provision of social services or building stands, rights of occupation ranging from de facto official recognition to free hold title exist in the informal settlements (Muller, Ibid.). No such recognition is given to illegal settlements. For this reason, squatter camps are not entitled to provision of social services by the state or local authority." The reference used in the nomination and article (ref 3) described them as "poor, unplanned settlements" and makes clear that there residents include parts of the middle class, and the "unplanned" part is mentioned on WP as a long-standing problem with the city. This source also uses ma komboni.
  • The article gets the publication details of the source 3 wrong. The article gives the reference as:
Gough, Katherine (2 March 2016). Young Entrepreneurs in Sub-Saharan Africa. Routledge. pp. 67–79. ISBN 9781317548379. Retrieved 28 December 2016.
The actual reference is:
Chigunta, Francis; Gough, Katherine V.; Langevang, Thilde (2016). "Young entrepreneurs in Lusaka: Overcoming constraints through ingenuity amd social entrepreneurship". In Gough, Katherine V.; Langevang, Thilde (eds.). Young Entrepreneurs in Sub-Saharan Africa. Routledge Spaces of Childhood and Youth Series. Routledge. pp. 67–79. ISBN 9781317548379.
  • The lead author, Francis Chigunta, should have an article (though this would not hold up the kombani nomination). He was a Professor at the University of Zambia, a Presidential economics advisor, earned his DPhil at Oxford (working in the community on which the article is focused), and died in mid-2016. There are about half a dozen newspaper obituaries of his death, one I noted quoting an Australia-based academic describing Chigunta and his contribution in glowing terms. I can find plenty of things he wrote, including ones where he used the term slum (in a discussion of HIV vulnerable populations), but not where he uses komboni as meaning slum.
  • The current first sentence equates komboni and slum ("A komboni or compound is a type of slum common to Zambia, particularly the capital city of Lusaka."), yet I am finding more that support for "komboni" = informal community (ref 1 in the article, ref 6 in the article which is actually by the same author (the article gives the book editors as the author, rather than the chapter author) and the two sources are actually the same, in parts. The relevant section is identical in both: "The green veneer of the Garden City mystique still masks what it has always masked: a dusty, inelegant and largely poor sity made up of a checkerboard of large, low-density planned elite townships (massive footprints, low populations) and high-density informal compound areas (komboni in Chinyanja, the city's lingua franca). Some of the terminology, like compound/komboni, may be particular to Lusaka, but a similar bifurcation of the city into broadly formal and informal housing zones which increasingly blur into one another around the poorly managed—indeed, unmanaged—urban edges afflicts the spatial form of most cities in Sub-Saharan Africa.") rather than "komboni" = slum (coverage of Komboni Radio in ref 7), though some (like article ref 2 from The Guardian) are simply using the term slum.
  • The hook might also be tweaked to include the fact that the komboni cover about 20% of the city, though the above sourcing / accuracy issues need to be addressed first.
  • @ONUnicorn, Tryptofish, Cwmhiraeth, The Rambling Man, and Yoninah: As the article expander, nomination review, hook promoter, and both commenters in this thread, your thoughts are invited, along with everyone else's, of course. EdChem (talk) 03:50, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
  • To give us time to sort this out, I've moved this hook to prep 4. Schwede66 08:34, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Realistically, with this kind of upheaval, it should really be taken back to the nominations page until it's good to go again. This should not be the venue for such detailed discussions. The Rambling Man (talk) 09:04, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
  • I think you are right, TRM. Frees up the talk page. Could you please do the honours? For me it's sleep time. Schwede66 09:10, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
@The Rambling Man: Thank you for bringing up these issues.
  1. The source I was citing for the statistic (# of kombonis) uses ma kombonis, but other sources drop the ma and just call them kombonis. One of my sources [3] uses ku komboni (which in context I believe the ku means something like at - at komboni). I don't believe dropping the "ma" is an issue when none of the other sources use that prefix.
  2. Tryptofish's reading of the "one of 37" is correct - Lusaka has 37 neighborhoods that fit in this category of komboni, and approximately 80% of the people in Lusaka live in these neighborhoods, but no single person lives in more than one of them at a time. Spelling out one and not 37 is an indication of that - per WP:MOSNUM, "But adjacent quantities not comparable should usually be in different formats" "they live in one of those neighborhoods" "there are 37 of those neighborhoods" - talking about different things, and one is not being used as the number 1; it would be inappropriate to put 1 of 37. "One of thirty seven" might be appropriate; but "1 of 37" wouldn't; IMO. I do agree though that Yoninah's version is an improvement in clarity.
  3. Ed Chem Thank you for finding that additional source! I'll have to look it over and see if I can work it into the article. It seems to clear up some things that other sources left ambiguous. Thank you also for providing a fuller citation for that book.
  4. Komboni=slum is in part an artifact from the article as it stood before I started working on it. Towards the end of my research I was begining to doubt that equality since these neighborhoods sometimes middle class and aren't always quite "slummy", especially in cities other than Lusaka. The two sources by Patience Mususa especially lead me to question that. However, I still think a comparison to Brazil's Favelas is apt; and Favelas are described as slums even where they aren't so "slummy". The main thing about the kombonis is that the term originally described irregular housing for Africans on land belonging to their white employers - in modern times some of these neighborhoods are still poor, run-down slums, while some are more middle class, but all are still "kombonis" "compounds" "irregular neighborhoods" "informal communities".

I hope this clarifies things somewhat. I'll try to make both the article and the nomination clearer. Can we actually continue discussion of the article itself on the article's talk page? I'll copy this discussion there. I welcome any feedback anyone has. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 16:24, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

I believe both of these clear up the confusion. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 18:33, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Oh, and regarding The Rambling Man's concerns about the source using the prefix ma, Google translate (I know - not the best source for translation - but it's what's readily available) translates the ma as Nyanja for "the", so basically, "the komobonis". The ku kombonis used by the other source I mentioned translates as "to kombonis", but again, given the context I'd think it meant something more like at rather than to. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 21:29, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
I found a Nyanja-English dictionary] published in 1979. It translates ku as "to, at, in" (so my reading of context and Google Translate are both correct). That dictionary does not include Ma as a separate word; though it does include it as a prefix, but that definition doesn't make sense in context. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 21:44, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Hi, I was pinged here. ALT3 is stringing together too many facts – it says 80% of the population of Lusaka lives in slums, and then says that Lusaka has 37 such slums. Shorter is always hookier; leave the reader wanting to know something so they'll click on the article. ALT4 is fine if you really want to tell the reader all this information. I lowercased "kombonis" and tweaked the grammar in the hooks. Yoninah (talk) 21:34, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
  • In fact, if you really want to pique readers' interest, say:
  • ALT2a: ... that approximately 80% of residents of Lusaka, Zambia, live in kombonis? Yoninah (talk) 21:36, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
Oooh, I like ALT2a. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 21:46, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
Several points still need consideration:
  • Should "komboni" be italicised or not?
  • Two references in the article have common content (1 and 6). 6 needs to be changed to show the actual authors and formatted as a chapter in an edited book, and everything common needs citation to just one of those sources, and the same one. The author, Garth Myers, should not have used to same text in two different sources, and if he re-used more than the section I identified then he has likely created a copyright issue (not our problem, but not a good practice from an author we are using as a reliable source).
  • On "slum", the first sentence is a problem. A section in the article can explore the term and its implications, and then a summary written for the lede. It presently asserts, in Wikipedia's voice, that a kombani is a type of slum. We need solid sourcing to support that. I haven't looked in detail, but at the moment my impression is that an appropriate lede might be along the lines of:
  • ALT2b: ... that approximately 80% of residents of Lusaka, Zambia, live in kombonis that occupy 20% of the city's land?
This ALT is based on Yoninah's with the links combined and the area occupied added, as I think it gives an impression of the komboni population density. I like leaving the term unexplained for hookiness. Choosing a hook is the easy part, however, as the article content changes need to but up to standards as well. EdChem (talk) 00:20, 24 January 2017 (UTC)
  • I endorse ALT2a, as accurate and catchy. I think that ALT2b ends up being too long, and the area percentage isn't that critical.
  • I'm not sure what to say about italicizing it. I've made an edit to the page to clarify the authorship etc. of cite #6. I take the other points about handling the two similar cites, but it seems to me that this is not a GA review, and I do not see these things as something that should hold up a DYK.
  • I've thought about the issue of slum, and also read the comments at the article talk page about it, and I think that there is a reasonable concern about it carrying emotional weight, and that it simply is not necessary to include it in the lead sentence. I've revised the lead as follows:
A komboni is a type of compound or informal housing area common to Zambia, particularly the capital city of Lusaka. It is characterized by a low income and a high population density.[1]: 72  Kombonis typically began as housing for employees of a particular company, estate, or mine.[1] An estimated 35% of Zambians live in urban areas,[2] and kombonis exist in many of them.[3] It is estimated that 80% of the population of Lusaka live and work in these areas.[3]
  • Perhaps this gets us close to going ahead with ALT2a. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:08, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
  • I think this may be ready for a reviewer to look over the ALT2 variants, though I'm not quite sure. Either way, it clearly isn't ready to be promoted immediately, so I'm superseding the pre-pull tick with this icon so the nomination doesn't show up in the list as promotable. BlueMoonset (talk) 06:16, 28 January 2017 (UTC)
Given that discussion seems to be less active, I'd like to wrap this review up. Unless any other editors raise concerns in the next 24 hours, I'm going to give the green OK mark to ALT2A. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:05, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

for ALT2A. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:05, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ a b Myers, Garth (24 February 2016). Urban Environments in Africa: A Critical Analysis of Environmental Politics. Policy Press. pp. 65–73. ISBN 9781447322924. Retrieved 28 December 2016.
  2. ^ Smith, Georgina, rest of cite defined in another section.
  3. ^ a b Chigunta, Francis; Gough, Katherine V.; Langevang, Thilde (2016). "Young entrepreneurs in Lusaka: Overcoming constraints through ingenuity amd social entrepreneurship". In Gough, Katherine V.; Langevang, Thilde (eds.). Young Entrepreneurs in Sub-Saharan Africa. Routledge Spaces of Childhood and Youth Series. Routledge. pp. 67–79. ISBN 9781317548379.
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