Talk:List of rivers of Africa

Rivers High‑importance

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Africa High‑importance

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Lists Mid‑importance

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Comments

I don't think the grouping by part of Africa is particularly helpful. For one thing, if I'm looking for an African river by name but don't know its region, I have to look through each region's list to find it. Also, some rivers are in multiple regions, such as the Nile, whose upper reaches are in "East Africa". Finally, the boundaries are vague - the Ogooue is in "West Africa" even the Congo's mouth is just a few miles to the south? Stan 00:50, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Big Lists

That's the problem with "Big Lists" (Casu Marzu 02:12, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)).

The Ogooue is definitely is named after the latin name for Santa Claus which is Opauoe. But aside from that, geographical "big lists" are always faced with a choice between one big alphabetical list with no structure, and a list with arbitrary divisions which will never satisfy everyone.

I defnitely disagree with one of Stan's arguments. It's a phenomenon common to all "big lists": If you wanted to look for an item in the list by name, you wouldn't come to the "big list" -- instead, you'd search for it. In order for a "big list" to be worth the effort, it must (IMHO) do something a built-in system function (such as the search function) can't. And so, a list article should (again IMHO) have some structure.

There are a couple of elaborations, which aren't necessarily mutually exclusive:

Label each section with the landmarks or countries that define it. Thus, "West Africa" could refer to the stretch of coast from Dakar to Victoria, Cameroon, or a specific set of countries.
Have a few entries (such as the biggest rivers) appear in the list more than once. This would work especially well if the sections were divided up by the biggest rivers. I dislike it for aesthetic reasoons, though.

You should see the List of rivers not in Africa!209.102.127.144 01:20, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The discussion has cropped up elsewhere; searching doesn't work that well in WP - too many matches, too many out-of-date. In the end, there should be a list of rivers by name and list of rivers by continents; lists of people is an example of a more highly-evolved set of indexes that many other categories will eventually grow into. Grouping by arbitrary divisions has its uses, but it requires some thought; the regional divisions of Africa don't "play well" for rivers, because so many cross those regions. Stan 04:33, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I've seen some lists of rivers (in Europe, I think) arranged directionally. IOW: start with the Nile and work west, south, east, south some more, and easterly a bit before north a long ways. It's almost regional. Xaxafrad 08:03, 19 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]