Talk:Mount Kenya/Archive 1

Teleki
As I know Hungarin explorer Sámuel Teleki was the first European who stepped on Mount Kenya. --Korovioff 20:19, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Improvement ideas
I've started improving this article in recent times. Just for the record the plan is to eventually have the following: geological history, naming of the peaks, history and current state of the glaciers, exploration/mountaineering history and a table of the major lines up the majority of the peaks. Any comments or suggestions? --Mehmet Karatay 11:53, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
 * We are hoping to find the editions of The Times which reported Shipton and Mackinder's expeditions. If anyone has any idea please let us know.  Mehmet Karatay 10:46, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
 * The entire The Times digital archive can be accessed at the National Library of Scotland. It is a searchable database which makes finding entries very easy. Mehmet Karatay 18:07, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Long article
I know this article is getting long. I'm trying to get the information into it before starting to split it up. If you have any concerns about this please leave a comment here. Mehmet Karatay 19:51, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Mehmet: I think you are right, it is a bit long. However, I would accept your plan to fill in more information before splitting it up (just some mutual encouragement here, after the help on my article!)—GRM 20:44, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

An Update: We have started working on separate sections (especially ecology) and once these are presentable the article will be split. The geology and climate sections will be added as separate articles soon. After those three our plan is to make the exploration section into its own article. Mehmet Karatay 17:25, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

When we make Mount Kenya into a proper summary article we are planning on having the following sub-articles:
 * History of Mount Kenya (including the exploration, the first two ascents, the role in the Mau Mau events and anything else notable)
 * Geology of Mount Kenya (including formation of mountain and current distribution of rocks)
 * Mountaineering on Mount Kenya (notable first ascents, walking routes, climbing routes, huts, altitude problems etc.)
 * Climate of Mount Kenya (past, current, influences and effects)
 * Ecology of Mount Kenya (ecology of forest zone, moorland zone, alpine zone, etc.)
 * Geography of Mount Kenya (Peaks, Glaciers including history, Rivers, Lakes, streams etc.)
 * Culture/People of Mount Kenya (local community interactions past and present).

We also want to have the following lists: Names on the Mountain (why named and by whom), Vertebrate Fauna (maybe with a sub-list for birds). You can see the progress for these articles on our user page. Mehmet Karatay 18:07, 2 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Progress on the summary style articles is going well. The navigation bar under this message links to sandboxes where the current status of the articles can be seen. The main progress so far has been on climate, ecology and the names list.


 * Mehmet Karatay 16:16, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Naming of Mount Kenya
I think the following section is interesting and important but I do not have proper references for parts of it except word of mouth and random webpages. I'll keep looking. These sections lacking references have been made bold. In the meantime if anyone knows of decent references then we can move it to the main page.

✅ This task has been completed. Mehmet Karatay 22:00, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Mount Kenya got its current name through a series of convolutions since Krapf sited it in 1849. Various tribes have different names for the mountain. The Kĩkũyũ call it Kirinyaga, which means white or bright mountain. The Embu call it Kirenia, or mountain of whiteness. The Maasai call it Ol Donyo Eibor or Ol Donyo Egere, which mean the White mountain or the speckled mountain respectively. The Wakamba call it Kiinyaa, or the mountain of the ostrich. The male ostrich has speckled tail feathers, which look similar to the speckled rock and ice on the mountain.

Krapf was staying in a Wakamba village when he first saw the mountain and so settled on the name Kenia (pronounced Keen-ya), a corruption of the Wakamba Kiinyaa. Krapf spelt this as both Kenia and Kegnia. It is important to note that at the time this referred to the mountain without having to include mountain in the name. The current name Mt Kenya was used by some as early as 1894, but this was not a regular occurrence until 1920 when Kenya Colony was established. The name Mount Kenya was not the only English one for the mountain as shown in Dutton's 1929 book Kenya Mountain. The spelling had modernised but the pronunciation was still keen-ya. Before 1920 the area now known as Kenya was known as the British East Africa Protectorate and so there was no need to mention mount when referring to the mountain.

Kenya was given its Independence in 1963 and Jomo Kenyatta was elected as the first president. The coincidence of the spelling of his surname meant that pronunciation of Kenya changed to reflect the pronunciation of Kenyatta. The country was named after colony which in turn was named after the mountain as it is a very significant landmark. To distinguish easily between the country and the mountain, the mountain became known as Mount Kenya  with the current pronunciation ken-ya .

Mehmet Karatay 08:21, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

This website mentions that Kenya Colony was named after the mountain but doesn't give a reference.
 * I e-mailed History World and they very quickly replied to me with their reference. I will now have to find a 1972 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica as the 1974 edition seems to miss out that fact. Either that or I was being blind.

We need proper references for:
 * Kenya colony being named after Mount Kenya
 * Found this in the 1972 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica
 * The pronunciation of Kenyatta altering the pronunciation of Kenya from Keen-ya to Ken-ya
 * Found this in the Bradt Kenya travel guide, wouldn't mind a primary reference
 * More detail on how the early European explorers settled on the name Kenya i.e. the pronunciation difficulties of the local names
 * It wasn't pronunciation diffuculties, it was the fact that Krapf had Akamba porters who call the mountain kiinyaa
 * We now have a reference for the spelling changing from Kenia to Kenya

Any advice for places to look welcome. Mehmet Karatay 21:31, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

I've made a few more changes to the passage above, and updated the status of the missing references. We're almost there now. Mehmet Karatay 11:06, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

There are several logical errors above. There doesn't seem to be any reason for Krapf to spell Kenia if he was trying to record the Wakamba Kiinyaa. As this explains, Krapf was most surely trying to use a fairly phonetic spelling for /kenia/. --Espoo (talk) 15:40, 8 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you for tidying that up. I think it reads much better now and is more informative and neutral. Mehmet Karatay (talk) 09:53, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Native pronunciation
The article says "original native pronunciation, the current /ˈkɛnjə/", but, as far as I know, in Swahili (and several other African languages) ny is pronounced as /ɲ/, not /nj/, and Kenya is pronounced as /ˈkɛɲə/. --81.38.179.185 (talk) 20:59, 25 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, this should be fixed/improved. And also noted that the /'kiːɲə/ pronunciation is still frequently heard in English. Maybe I'll find someone a bit better than I with IPA to add it to Kenya and then we can improve it here. Robert Ullmann (talk) 11:33, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Commercial Link
"Mount Kenya History & Description" - this is a commercial link selling safaris. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.12.13.38 (talk) 18:08, 19 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you. It's now gone. Feel free to remove links like that yourself when you find more. In the summary type something along the lines of "Removed advertisement spam". Mehmet Karatay (talk) 11:52, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Great work
I've nominated it for GAN; I thnk that this article is up to standards (or so I think...) But in the long term, we're going to need a translate of the FA on the French wiki ResMar 00:16, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I'd like to point out that most of the French FA article is based on the following articles:


 * If someone wants to make this article fit inline with the French one then go ahead. A full translation shouldn't be needed as most of the information is already available in English through the links above. I really want to to this but don't have the time. Mehmet Karatay (talk) 08:50, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I've started translating some of the svg images used by the French FA into English. These are available from commons. Mehmet Karatay (talk) 10:43, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Recent changes and removals
Hi all,

Could someone please explain why it is best to remove large sections of the article? I know being bold is an important part of Wikipedia, but it seems only fair discussing major changes to the article on its talk page.

The two main sections that have been removed, or greatly reduced, are the history and the etymology. In my opinion the history is critical to any article on Mount Kenya. There is now no mention of:
 * the first ascent except for the date in the infobox at the start of the article
 * Krapf, the first European to hear of, and see, the mountain
 * Significant first ascents
 * Details of how the peaks received their names

Removed historical photos include:
 * the first ascent party on the summit
 * the portraits of the first Europeans to find the mountain
 * the picture of Lenana, the medicine man after which the third highest, and most climbed, peak is named

I feel that these changes severely reduce the quality of the article. I know that the cultural history of the mountain goes far beyond the Europeans first discovering it, but nevertheless these are significant events in the mountain's history and should therefore be included in the article.

An earlier version of the article, for comparison, is at: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mount_Kenya&oldid=360910272

Please discuss,

Mehmet Karatay (talk) 12:53, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The article is about the Mountain. Please see other Mountains (Everest etc) and compare. The hitory of First Europeans to see or climb the mountains was way off-topic within the context of the article - to the point of detracting its legibility.
 * Britain's history can be put in an appropriate Page. Otherwise we would soon end up with irrelevancies like the first Chinese, Indian, American, Ugandan, Nigerian to see mountains, lakes, rivers, buildings etc... See my point? DrJenkinsPhd (talk) 20:13, 14 May 2010 (UTC)


 * A lot of the information you removed seems to be relevant to the article. The first ascent of a major peak is an important part of its history. If you look at other articles about mountains (Everest, K2 and Mount Logan are some examples) you will find that they often include a history of ascents and attempts. If someone looks at this article to try and get an overall view of Mount Kenya they will be missing a major important aspect if you remove the European history, the first time it got surveyed etc.
 * An alternative solution to this could be to have a summary of the history on the main page, and then link to another article containing the more detailed information. Everest has an example of this. It is a way of shortening the article but still including all the relevant information. If you think this is the best thing to do please go ahead with it, and link to the new page in the main article. We are currently working on something like this, but are very busy at the moment and haven't created a new page yet. Mehmet Karatay (talk) 20:59, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Looks ok to me.
 * Mehmet, European colonial history is already extensively documented (repeatedly) in a huge number of Wikipedia pages. We could list the first one-eyed / one-legged / one-armed etc person to see/climb/photograph/camp/take a dump/sing/stand 2.399 meters near/in front of/behind the mountain... But for what? When does it end?
 * Usefulness of the page to readers should drive the edits. When someone googles "Mount Kenya", its a good bet that the person wants to know about the mountain as it is right now. Trivia is nice to have but lets keep it in separate pages. ScottPAnderson (talk) 13:12, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with Mehmet Karatay that a lot of useful information was removed and I think it should be replaced. ScottPAnderson and DrJenkinsPhd (whom I believe to be 2 accounts used by the same person) appeared briefly, pushed the same POV very hard on a variety of Kenya-related pages, and vanished after 2 weeks or so. The same pattern of removing wholesale material related to Europeans in Africa and painting colonial history in the worst possible light was consistent across both accounts. I am in favour of re-inserting the deleted material. Squiddy | (squirt ink?)  10:27, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

I disagree. The article should remain as is. Mr. Scott is right about the tendency to paste Colonial propaganda on all all wikipedia topics about Africa. Reading African history is like reading Europe's history. Utterly irrelevant nonsense. I wonder what Squiddy would do if I pasted Europe'[s history with irrelevancies like the First African / Chinese etc to walk along Picaddily street etc. Christ! What is wrong with these neo-colonialists??? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.212.14.26 (talk) 17:05, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I have moved the "History" section to "Mounteneering on Mount Kenya" where it is most relevant. The said history is really European history told from European perspective. Doesn't make sense to have it here! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.24.111.247 (talk) 15:03, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree that the former version did devote too much space to European "discovery" of the mountain, but for any prominent mountain it's reasonable for the article to include a brief history section telling about its first appearance in historical records, about early explorations and attempts to climb it, and about the first documented successful ascent. (We DON'T need to get into listing the first British ascent, first ascent by a woman, first alpine-style single-day ascent, youngest successful summiter, or an itemized listing of routes with YDS ratings.) Omitting basic historical information is a big mistake, in my view. Simply including a link to a "mountaineering on Mt. Kenya" page isn't enough. 206.208.105.129 (talk) 16:34, 10 January 2011 (UTC)


 * The fact that it was a Briton who first climbed Mt Kenya is/was included because it is relevant, Kenya being part of the British Empire at the time, whereas " ... I wonder what Squiddy would do if I pasted Europe'[s history with irrelevancies like the First African / Chinese etc to walk along Picaddily street etc...." would not be because the fact of the first " First African / Chinese etc to walk along Picaddily street ..." has no relevance to the history of the British Isles.


 * BTW, Mount Kenya has, I believe, existed for some considerable time, and there was nothing stopping someone from any other country or race from climbing it before Mackinder did. But they didn't. So he gets the recognition.


 * ... I nearly forgot. Climbing a mountain is a significant event, as any mountaineer with tell you. OTOH, "to walk along Picaddily street .." is something done by thousands of people every day, and is a significant event only to them.

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