Talk:List of World Heritage Sites in Africa

major revision and rename
Hey, whoever is watching this list-article. I want to put in a major revision, to revise this to cover just the UNESCO list for subSaharan Africa (leaving north african countries for the UNESCO Arab list), and to switch to a table format that allows for much more info. Table in draft form now at WikiProject World Heritage Sites/Tables of WHS Sites. If there are a lot of editors who want the current list article kept covering all of geographic Africa, plus Sicily(?) and other non-African places, then I could just create a parallel, new article, "UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites in Africa" or something, to cover just their list. But I'd rather move the current list to a name like that, and keep the edit history, rather than compete. See also wt:WHS for some related discussion, perhaps. Any objections or support or questions? doncram (talk) 03:25, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I would much prefer that your table not replace the current list format organized by state party. That said you've obviously put a lot of effort into it and it has some great info. I think it's unique enough to deserve its own page, though perhaps a title like "List/Table of World Heritage by UNESCO Region" would be a better name for it. Chouji Ochiai (talk) 07:29, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I think we should get rid of Sicily and Malta, though, and possibly all the other territories that are listed outside of their state parties. Chouji Ochiai (talk) 07:29, 21 April 2009 (UTC)


 * i dont believe that the Arab countries should be included in the sub-saharan list, since this is a list of World Heritage Sites in Africa according to the regional division of the UNESCO, and not based on the continental division, it is pretty much irrelevant to add the Arab States, and ofcourse Sicily and Malta to this article, since they are already included in their own regional articles of List of World Heritage Sites in the Arab States.

--Arab League User (talk) 19:23, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Site in Danger
Rainforests of the Atsinanana are a site in danger as of 2010 and should be marked as such. bamse (talk) 15:55, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
 * WP:BOLD. Go for it. I was the one expanding the article, but I haven't got the time as of now. Eric Leb 01 (Page &#124; Talk)  22:30, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Did it, hopefully correctly. Are you going for WP:FL with this list? At least on first glance it already looks pretty good. BTW, I expanded List of World Heritage Sites in Danger. When you have more time, I'd be happy if you could comment on it. The design is based on your Africa list. I am thinking of implementing the following changes: Would be very happy if you could let me know what you think about these changes or suggest any other modifications. There is also the corresponding (featured) German article to compare with. bamse (talk) 16:22, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) smaller images (to make more space for the other columns)
 * 2) adding a column for the year of designation as WH site (not sure if that makes sense)
 * 3) removing the "Description" column as the information is (or should be) already present in the continent lists of WH sites.
 * 4) the "Criteria" column currently sorts by "Natural/Cultural" and by location (as in your Africa list), which is somewhat confusing. Maybe have it sort by something else or just by "Natural/Cultural" not to confuse the readers
 * 5) shuffle around the columns. Maybe something like: Site - Location - Criteria - Year - Reason - Image or something else!?
 * It was correctly done. I like what you did at that other article as well. If there isn't enough space to display the other information, the images should definitely go down in size. (They show up fine on my display, but would probably cramp everything else on a small one.) I will do that on this article, and you can do that on the danger list if you want. Try 150x150px for now. The description column should probably be removed on the danger site per your reasoning, and this would definitely make way for the extra year column (one should be named something like "Year (WHS)" and the other like "Endangered"). The criteria column should probably be switched to an unsortable column on both articles, but I think that the image should stay on the left side.


 * Other than that, the TOC on the danger list should either be placed to the left or removed, as it's offsetting the entire table on my display. Eric Leb 01 (Page &#124; Talk)  18:23, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the feedback. I'll try out your suggestions. As for the TOC, this problem should be fixed when expanding the intro. I used 150px for Lists of National Treasures of Japan, so that should work. I'll move the description column (or rather the whole table entry) of out-of-Africa (:-)) sites to the respective talk page of the List of World Heritage Sites in the Americas/Arab States/Asia and Australasia/Europe. Do you know any non-UNESCO sources which could be used to write about world heritage sites (in danger) in general? bamse (talk) 19:30, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Implemented almost all of your suggestion. The Criteria column is still sortable (useful in my opinion to separate natural and cultural sites), but I removed the magic code which made it sort according to location. bamse (talk) 22:50, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Ahh, but watch out; whether or not a country is in Africa, doesn't mean we should be moving it. If it's in UNESCO's Africa list, then it should stay on this article. Eric Leb 01 (Page &#124; Talk)  02:09, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, I am aware of UNESCO's definition of "Africa". Instead of moving content, I just left a note. bamse (talk) 11:18, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Hey guys, just to chime in: I think you're doing great work in improving these lists. The tables may be time consuming, but they're the best way to display this information. I haven't had the time to work on these pages for a couple months now, but I just wanted to say from experience that I've tried moving sites to their "proper" pages by UNESCO's definitions before and it's ruffled quite a few feathers. The people who update the List of World Heritage Sites in Europe page are particularly feisty. I think that these pages should reflect UNESCO's regional categories, but it will be hard to do so without changing every regional page at the same time. I don't know if this is useful to you guys or not, it's just my experience. Chouji Ochiai (talk) 16:23, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Good that I started with the endangered list which does not use any regions :-). When List of World Heritage Sites in Europe and North America (UNESCO region) is created, the problem with the Europe list would be solved. A problem I see with these lists is that they are very long +400 entries for the Europe/North America list. Having pictures in them (like for the Africa and "in Danger" lists) would make them excessively long in my opinion. Also, I think that the same table style should be used for all such lists. But what style should we use? There are also these works: 1 and 2. bamse (talk) 17:15, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * We have no obligation whatsoever to follow UNESCO's "definition" of continents/regions. Quite the contrary, we have to display information in such a way that it is logical for readers to understand. If they come to a list of sites in Africa, they expect to see a list of exactly that, not a list of "Africa minus someones definition of Arab states". As long as we choose to not make a complete list of all the sites in the world (which by any reckoning now is too long), we have to find the most pragmatic way to distribute the sites. Grouping Europe and non-Latin America together just doesn't make any sense. Note again that UNESCO calls Canada and the United States for "North America", while Caribbean and Central American countries are "not" considered part of North America. Only an inter-governmental organization could come up with such a mess. Also, we're going to have to make a consistency in the detail level in the "continental" articles, and that will probably mean breaking the Europe article in two or three (Southern Europe, Northern Europe, Western Europe?). Arsenikk (talk)  18:16, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Since there appear to be different opinions on this issue, I suggest to move this discussion to a more prominent place in order to reach more people. In my experience, the wikiproject world heritage's talk page is not an extremely active place, so how about WP:RFC or some other more general forum (I am not really familiar with the correct procedure in such cases.)? bamse (talk) 21:31, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I started a RFC here. bamse (talk) 11:10, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Request for comments
There is discussion on what should be included in this and other regional lists of World Heritage Sites. Please voice your opinion on the issue here. Thank you. bamse (talk) 15:40, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

What happened to the good list?
What happened to the list that had sites listed by country? This current one is rather useless, as it lists them based on the often flowery names given to them by UNESCO. It was so much better as a reference when they were organized according to country. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.92.218.122 (talk) 06:24, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
 * If you click on the small arrow symbols next to "Location" in the table's header, the table gets automagically sorted by country. You can also sort by area, year, etc. Much better and more flexible than the old "good list". bamse (talk) 11:11, 28 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Wow, the list is so much better that way. I feel like these directions should be mentioned in the article, though, because I don't think the default displays them in a way that anyone would actually want to view this information. Could this information be added above the table or is this one of those "if you don't know how to do it, it's your fault" sort of things? 72.92.218.122 (talk) 05:03, 1 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Added "The table's columns (except for Image and Description) are sortable pressing the arrows symbols." bamse (talk) 11:44, 1 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Reverted the change. This feature is widespread across the site with lists and does not need to be pointed out (otherwise we would be placing them before each and every list on this site). Notes in articles are normally only used when necessary, for example, when using legends. Eric Leb 01 (Page &#124; Talk)  00:56, 2 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't feel strongly about this, it is just that I have such phrase in a couple of featured lists that I wrote and it was never an issue in FL reviews. It might even have been suggested in a review to put such a note. To me it is somewhat similar to having a legend explaining the table headers (which often are self-explanatory). Also in my experience, the sorting feature is not well known among users of wikipedia and pointing it out could help to increase interest and usage of this particular article. bamse (talk) 11:56, 2 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I find that "sort by" features are very common in computing. Maybe not exactly the most noticeable, but nevertheless. You can create a if you really want it there, but I think it would intrude on the reading if it were in plain text. I don't feel strongly about it either way, either. Eric Leb <font color="#660000">01 (Page &#124; Talk)  18:57, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Featured list?
Hi? Looks like a very good list to me. Why not nominate it at WP:FLC? bamse (talk) 13:06, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I had originally planned to expand the text for each site a bit more before nominating, and then probably do the same for the lead. You're very welcome to nominate it anyway; perhaps it's just fine as it is! <font color="#4B0000">Eric <font color="#550000">Leb <font color="#660000">01 (Page &#124; Talk)  19:52, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
 * As a non-contributor, I won't dare to nominate it at FLC. To me the site description seems sufficient, but I only had a quick glance at it. I'd rather flesh out the lead part a bit. For instance it could be mentioned, that Africa has relatively many endangered natural sites (12 out of 17 worldwide). Also the distinction of what UNESCO calls Africa (i.e. geographical Africa minus "Arab States") should be made more clear in my opinion and it should be stated which definition of Africa this list uses. Possibly there are some other interesting facts about African heritage sites (compared to those in the rest of the world) beyond pure statistics that could be mentioned, but I don't know enough about the topic to imagine what those could be. In the FLC of the danger list I was asked to put the "site" column first (which makes sense to me) and to introduce a separate "Refs" column. I just noticed that according to the todo list, this list is meant to cover UNESCO's Africa (i.e. without Tunisia, Morocco,...). As for UNESCO regions vs. geographical division, I'd be happy if some kind of consensus could be reached and we could have a set of non-overlapping World Heritage Sites lists on wikipedia. At present it seems that each list uses its own division. I tried to kick of a discussion on that, but possibly only a vote (not sure how to initiate that) could resolve this issue. bamse (talk) 21:46, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I created most of this list back about a year ago with the intention of making it an FL, but then was distracted a bit. I agree that the lead needs to be longer, and there area also some MOS and ACCESS issues, but these are fairly easy to fix (although they might take some time). Personally I don't see the need for lengthening the descriptions; if anyone wants to find out more than the basics about a site, there is a nice handy link to the article in question. Of course, a copyedit of the descriptions is more than encouraged. I remember Bamse's attempts at discussing the grouping of sites; it seems very counter-intuitive to a reader to have a list of sites in Africa, but exclude half a dozen sites because they are Arab. We need to have a reader-oriented focus on the lists; UNESCO's categorization is more about politics than anything else. Similarly, the corresponding list for Europe would be too long for a single list following this format, so we're going to have break it up. Anyhow, I can take a look at this later when I have more time and I'm more awake. <strong style="color:green;">Arsenikk <sup style="color:grey;">(talk)  22:21, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I tried to give you credit in the to-do list for the table format, haha. Last year I had the same goal of bringing it up to FL, but improving on the description is tedious, and finding relevant information became quite the task. So I've kind of given up on this topic, but if we can somehow get some sort of collaborative effort going, I'll probably tag along. <font color="#4B0000">Eric <font color="#550000">Leb <font color="#660000">01 (Page &#124; Talk)  22:37, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I am in it. Do all of us three agree that we use the geographical definition of Africa for this list? May I: (i) swap the first two columns (for consistency with other FL of WHS), (ii) add a "Refs" column and (iii) join "Area (ha)" and "Area (acre)" (to save space)? bamse (talk) 22:57, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm fine with the suggestions. I might do a bit of research and write a bit regarding the topics you mentioned above. I don't want to enter an edit conflict with you though, so I'll refrain from editing the page itself. <font color="#4B0000">Eric <font color="#550000">Leb <font color="#660000">01 (Page &#124; Talk)  23:03, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

A related issue, which probably does not affect this list but others, are sites located in overseas territories. How do we deal with those? List them in the continent they are located in or in the continent of the controlling state? bamse (talk) 23:00, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd say we keep it consistent with "geographical, not political". <font color="#4B0000">Eric <font color="#550000">Leb <font color="#660000">01 (Page &#124; Talk)  23:05, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. bamse (talk) 23:35, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I went to quite a bit of trouble to make this map, but there is a rendering error so I need to figure out how to fix it before adding it. As you see if you render it as a native .svg in the brower (click on the image for full size), it works, but the WikiMedia software seems to be rendering it wrong. <strong style="color:green;">Arsenikk <sup style="color:grey;">(talk)  04:44, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
 * SVG rendering is usually a problem on wikipedia and the only way around it AFAIK is to make a png out of it (upload the svg as well to allow for easy editing if something changes later). Not sure how good the map looks in the article at 300px or so since the labels will be tiny. Possibly just color coding the countries would be better for looks. This could be combined with GeoGroupTemplate. BTW, Arsenikk, do you agree with the stylistic changes (i, ii, iii) to your table I proposed above? bamse (talk) 09:14, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh wow, and just a few hours apart as well. If I had known, haha. If you remove the text and leave in the dots, I think it would look much better (and retain its EV). <font color="#4B0000">Eric <font color="#550000">Leb <font color="#660000">01 (Page &#124; Talk)  01:54, 10 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Before editors nominate this list, I think it's important for us to confirm what it's about. There's a discussion at WT:WHS to finalise this. Please take part.  Night  w   15:17, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Goal list
The following is what should be on the new list. This is for reference for anyone thinking of wanting to progress the article. * designates multi-national site, !!END!! designates endangered site:

And here is a vector image for the top of the article. <font color="#4B0000">Eric <font color="#550000">Leb <font color="#660000">01 (Page &#124; Talk)  01:38, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

W National Park
W National Park is a three-country transborder Park. Is only the Niger part a World Heritage Site or should Burkina and Benin be added in the country column?--Marco Schmidt (talk) 12:26, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
 * It's only the Niger part of the park, even though the site does span Burkina Faso and Benin. According to the inscription document, "A considerable debate followed, including the question of the protection of the transfrontier ensemble of the three National Parks (Benin, Burkina-Faso, Niger)". Apparently it simply didn't work out. <font color="#4B0000">Eric <font color="#550000">Leb <font color="#660000">01 (Page &#124; Talk)  17:02, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

An-Nakhl Fortress
Unlisted and an orphan article, table editing isn't still my thing. Thanks! Yosef1987 (talk) 21:42, 14 November 2011 (UTC)


 * An-Nakhl Fortress is only on the tentative list at the moment, and tentative sites aren't included in this article. Nev1 (talk) 21:46, 14 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for clarifying. Yosef1987 (talk) 21:48, 14 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Some articles do include the tentative lists, but in an article which covers an entire continent it's not really practical as it could double the length. Unfortunately, there's no List of World Heritage Sites in Egypt. Nev1 (talk) 21:55, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Templating list contents
While I'm not against replacing the list with a template that we can use throughout the project, I reverted this recent attempt for various reasons:
 * This is a featured list. I don't think I'm the only one who would highly appreciate discussion before making major changes like these to a priority article.
 * From a 1080p screen, the table font is way too small for some reason and the entire thing is just cluttered. Centering the description isn't necessary.
 * I don't think having the region as the initial sort is the best idea. The name of the site is much more universally accepted than the region name we happen to have come up with.
 * Coordinates would look much better under the region, kind of like how Tobyc75 did it over at List of World Heritage Sites in Western Europe.
 * I don't see the point of an entirely new column for UNESCO identifiers. It's not useful information.
 * I'm trying to find who said it, but we were advised to have the image to the left, after the site title.
 * There are multiple images that weren't appearing under the template. I didn't get the chance to find out why; it's exam week here...
 * Template is missing the conversion from acre to hectare. No separating commas either.
 * In this article, a "reference" column is totally unnecessary. Template should probably allow for its ommission.
 * Separating the criteria with a space or a comma (like it was done here) would be visually pleasing.
 * A ref for the Old Towns of Djenne was removed.
 * Asterisks for Trans-border sites were removed.

A few things about the revert and in general:
 * The edit that replaced the  with " was reverted as well. Sorry about that.
 * I like the idea of having the "Monument on map" thing beneath the coordinates.

Don't take the revert the wrong way, I appreciate the work. I think it was just too bold a move for now. <font color="#4B0000">Eric <font color="#550000">Leb <font color="#660000">01 (Page &#124; Talk)  06:52, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi Ericleb01,
 * Thank you for your input. I will try to seperate it into technical input and process. I will respond to the process part here, and copy the technical imput to the template talkpage because it will be also relevant for other lists later on. I will copy & respond to the technical input on Template_talk:UNESCO_World_Heritage_Site_row. Layout etc can all be changed of course once the templated structure is in place.
 * I did my best to discuss this change in a general sense through the relevant WikiProject before I started the merge of information. As you probably know there are many different World Heritage Lists on this Wikipedia, and it didn't make sense to me to have the same discussion (probably with different technical outcomes every time) many times. The fact that I first started with Africa is simply because of alphabetical order by the way - and I didn't have the opportunity to work with the rest yet.
 * Please also note that together with the structure update, I also used the official information from the UNESCO database for some data rather than some of the outdated information in this table. It was indeed quite a lot of work to merge these two sources of information so I would appreciate it if you could have the more technical discussion together with the rest of the WikiProject World Heritage Sites and that we can work out the most optimal layout for all the lists (I guess you'll agree that in principle the optimal layout should be the same for all the different lists?).
 * Finally a few technical remarks specific for this list. The reference to the old towns of Djenné was not removed, but only the doublure was resolved. As you can see, all the reference numbers link to the official UNESCO page (which is a good thing for consistency). This should probably be done more consistently, but I didn't get to that yet. Asterisks were removed because the background is already blue for those sites. Also the use was inconsistent for the lists.
 * In any case, I hope you can quickly join the discussion on how to improve the template, and that we can quickly revert to the templated version. That way I can also improve on some of the mistakes that slipped in that version. effeietsanders 11:33, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Quick note: asterisks need to remain because of accessibility. The blue isn't visible on screen readers. Either that or the blue goes entirely. <font color="#4B0000">Eric <font color="#550000">Leb <font color="#660000">01 (Page &#124; Talk)  19:57, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Sounds fair to me - although I agree that the blue makes little sense then. I would however integrate it in the template structure if possible.effeietsanders 21:57, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I think the reason we added it in the first place is that UNESCO puts quite a bit of emphasis on the fact that they are cross-border. Not much harm in leaving it in, but I don't mind taking it out either. <font color="#4B0000">Eric <font color="#550000">Leb <font color="#660000">01 (Page &#124; Talk)  23:46, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Also, why not model the template on a design more widespread and long-standing like the one we got on here instead of trying to change all current models? You would meet much less resistance and achieve the same goal, in my book. <font color="#4B0000">Eric <font color="#550000">Leb <font color="#660000">01 (Page &#124; Talk)  23:48, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
 * It's a matter of what you call wide spread :) I just have also seen several lists on other wikipedia's for national heritage, which is basically all about the same. I didn't put a huge amount of thought on the image left/right etc, but just went with what I knew. It's easy to change anyway if there's a group of people who like it different. However, adding more information to the table is of course a different matter (and the sorting is more of a practical problem). So far the amount of feedback from different people I can get is unfortunately rather low. I hope that improves!
 * Oh, by widespread I mean that all of the lists here use this version (including 2 FAs), while all of the individual country FAs use different styles. And I guess you could include the 60 fork lists that were made a week ago for countries with one or two sites (we're trying to get consensus to redirect those...) <font color="#4B0000">Eric <font color="#550000">Leb <font color="#660000">01 (Page &#124; Talk)  17:38, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
 * In any case, I agree UNESCO puts emphasis on this fact, but I suspect that is primarily because of their background, and of how the fields in their database are structured (you need to make explicit that it is cross-border because that influences how you interpret the country field). I don't have a strong preference either way, as long as it is consistent. effeietsanders 16:10, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

List of World Heritage Sites in Zimbabwe
I see that there are several sites in Zimbabwe, but this link: List of World Heritage Sites in Zimbabwe

is simply a redirect.

Wikimedia was contacted by a reader who wondered why there was not a separate article. ticket:2017020610020021 Perhaps someone would be willing to create the page.-- S Philbrick (Talk)  16:42, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

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144?
There are 145 site in the list. So I make the necessary change. --<font face="Bookman Old Style" color="#99 32 cc "> Sofy   <font face="Bookman old style" color="99 32 cc"> ₪  ''  08:21, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Tourism
warrent heritage site 105.245.110.48 (talk) 04:58, 18 October 2023 (UTC)