Wikipedia:WikiProject National geography
Hello
The Problem
Almost all of our country articles are based on the CIA World Factbook, a pubnlic domain document. We have taken the information and created separate subpages for each of the sections, such as our History of ..., Geography of ..., Demographics of ..., etc. pages. In most cases, these articles mimic the infromation give in the Factbook, and can be found in various formats throughout the Internet.
Personally, I would like to see us going beyond cutting and pasting standard information, easily available anywhere, and create new information that is unique to Wikipedia. I am inspired by the infoboxes created for each country, and especially by the in-depth work done by people like Mav on his geographic articles about various regions in the United States. That is a more in-depth, encyclopedic approach, far preferrable to listing bare statistics in a dry format that exists elsewhere.
The Beginnings of a Solution
I'd like to start resolving this with the country geography pages, such as Geography of Gabon. I believe that the basic information can be placed in a Geo-infobox of our design, leaving room for more in-depth text about the specific geography of each country. That can also be formatted in an appropriate manner, with links to further subtopics.
Getting Started
To get started, I propose that we devise a geography infobox for each country. It will contain such information as:
- Area
- Coordinates
- Coastline
- Highest point
- Lowest point
- % Arable land
- % Forests
- Natural resources
- Geographic subregions
- etc.
Each article will also contain an outlined overview of the country's geography, written as an encyclopedic essay.
Interested participants
What Next?
Let's plan the infobox and create an outline for what should appear in the essay.