Talk:Free French Africa

Should this article exist?

This article provides no sourcing to suggest that "Free French Africa" was ever anything more than an expression and certainly not that it was a "political entity" in any legal sense. Unless this can be shown, I think it would be better to merge the content with Free France and French Equatorial Africa.—Brigade Piron (talk) 09:23, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Hello Brigade Piron,

Free French Africa had its capitale, its banknotes, and so on.

I think it is an important topic in WWII.

Please see:

• Free French Africa: banknotes: "Then, in a burst of pride, a French State is created and legally named "Free French Africa", including Cameroon and French Equatorial Africa".
• Free French Africa in World War II, by Eric T. Jennings, University of Toronto, Cambridge University Press, 2015 - ISBN 9781107261464 - DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107261464
  • Zimmerman on Jennings, 'Free French Africa in World War II: The African Resistance' => "With his newest publication, Jennings fills a major gap in the historiographies of French, French colonial, and African history of the Second World War"
  • Free French Africa in World War ii: The African Resistance, written by Eric T. Jennings In: Journal of African Military History
  • and so on.
• The Allied War Effort and the Economies of Free French Africa

Best regards, Kertraon (talk) 10:13, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Hi Kertraon, thanks for your comments. I do not deny that "Free French Africa" had some contemporary currency (I do not think Jennings' book uses the term as anything more than a descriptive term to refer to the period of "Free French rule" in Africa but I'm happy to be contradicted) but its usage does seem to have been pretty minimal and essentially served only to distinguish Vichy and Free French colonial holdings - AEF and Cameroun were the main administrative units before the war and remained so throughout the period. If the subject does merit an article, it should make its relative insignificance clear. —Brigade Piron (talk) 11:01, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Hi Brigade Piron,

Did you see the official Free French Africa banknotes here? With the label "Afrique française libre"?

Isn't from of an official entity over AEF and Cameroon, really existing at this time?

Best regards, Kertraon (talk) 13:30, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

I don't think that provides much support. They are still French Equatorial African francs, and the term refers to the issuing authority. As the same website shows, the name was replaced after only a year with "Caisse centrale de la France libre", but this argument is obviously WP:OR anyway. —Brigade Piron (talk) 14:30, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Hi Brigade Piron, French Cameroon and only a part of French Equatorial Africa were free at the end of August. Colonel de Larminat choose to create a special entity, the governement of Free French Africa, to rule these territories, since the 29th of August. Until November, not all French Equatorial Africa was free. When it has been, on the 12th November the Free French Africa became a High Commissary (Haut-Commissariat), over both French Cameroon and French Equatorial Africa. General Leclerc became the Commander in Chief Of Free French Africa Forces.

Please see

https://www.histoire-et-philatelie.fr/pages/005_decolonisation/0100_1936-1946_p-4_fin_40.html#afl : with the Creation of the Gouvernement de l'Afrique Française Libre, 29th August 1940

https://books.google.fr/books?id=WrlYDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT42&dq=%22Afrique+Fran%C3%A7aise+libre%22+-Wikipedia+-Jennings&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjeu_zCvPzpAhWHDxQKHVjKArgQ6AEIOTAC#v=onepage&q=%22Afrique%20Fran%C3%A7aise%20libre%22%20-Wikipedia%20-Jennings&f=false

https://books.google.fr/books?id=S2VJCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA39&dq=%22Afrique+Fran%C3%A7aise+libre%22+-Wikipedia+-Jennings&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjeu_zCvPzpAhWHDxQKHVjKArgQ6AEIQjAD#v=onepage&q=%22Afrique%20Fran%C3%A7aise%20libre%22%20-Wikipedia%20-Jennings&f=false

https://books.google.fr/books?id=HHlNBQAAQBAJ&pg=PT271&dq=%22Afrique+Fran%C3%A7aise+libre%22+-Wikipedia+-Jennings&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjeu_zCvPzpAhWHDxQKHVjKArgQ6AEIWzAG#v=onepage&q=%22Afrique%20Fran%C3%A7aise%20libre%22%20-Wikipedia%20-Jennings&f=false

https://books.google.fr/books?id=Pm56DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT102&dq=%22Afrique+Fran%C3%A7aise+libre%22+-Wikipedia+-Jennings&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwittf6FvvzpAhUj5uAKHc98CtcQ6AEIQjAD#v=onepage&q=%22Afrique%20Fran%C3%A7aise%20libre%22%20-Wikipedia%20-Jennings&f=false

https://books.google.fr/books?id=7DpYDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT11&dq=%22Afrique+Fran%C3%A7aise+libre%22+-Wikipedia+-Jennings&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwittf6FvvzpAhUj5uAKHc98CtcQ6AEITDAE#v=onepage&q=%22Afrique%20Fran%C3%A7aise%20libre%22%20-Wikipedia%20-Jennings&f=false

And also from old books (reprints), so no, it is not a recent invention:

https://books.google.fr/books?id=rXeSDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT121&dq=%22Afrique+Fran%C3%A7aise+libre%22+-Wikipedia+-Jennings&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwib7JTVvvzpAhXj6eAKHQuDDv4Q6AEIQjAD#v=onepage&q=%22Afrique%20Fran%C3%A7aise%20libre%22%20-Wikipedia%20-Jennings&f=false

https://books.google.fr/books?hl=fr&id=msnlAAAAMAAJ&dq=%22Afrique+Fran%C3%A7aise+libre%22+-Wikipedia+-Jennings&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22Afrique+Fran%C3%A7aise+libre%22

and so on.

And other ones:

http://www.france-libre.net/site/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/France-dabord-janvier-1941.pdf with the signature of the "Haut Commissaire de l'Afrique Française Libre"

Regards, Kertraon (talk) 14:39, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Key early step in the Liberation

FFA was a very important early step for the Free French Forces, which played a key role in the Resistance effort which helped lead eventually to the liberation of France in World War II. Currently, Liberation of France is not linked in the article at all (except in See also), and mentioned only once, in the context of a medal. The role and connection of FFA in the eventual liberation should be mentioned. Mathglot (talk) 22:14, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Translated section History and territories

This 5kb addition of translated content in section § History and territories in December 2020 by SaranToure (talk · contribs) is entirely unsourced. The edit summary lists it as a translation from fr:Afrique francaise libre, and is accompanied by an attribution statement for the translation, but no citations. That was SaranToure's last edit at WP, and before that, the last edit was 18 months earlier, when in Spring 2019 Saran was a student editor in a Wiki Ed-supported linguistics class (under the guidance of Shalor at the time). So the good news, I guess, is that we have, or at least had, a returning Wiki Ed student, something which is the object of much thought and discussion on how to encourage more of, and the bad news, is that the centrally important WP:Verifiability issue, which must have been drilled into them during the training modules, had either been forgotten or ignored. (Interestingly, the attribution statement was included and done exactly as it should be—possibly copied out of the {{Expand French}} template at the top of the page.)

I've tagged this section as unsourced rather than removed it entirely, because Saran's original translation of that section was competent, and it's since been further improved by subsequent editors to the point where it looks quite good, and because the corresponding section of the original French article at the time had nine citations to five unique sources, so it appears that the content is WP:Verifiable, but sourced only in the French article and not here, thus rating the {{unreferenced}} tag, but not removal. Because of the 18-month gap between edits, I think that this is not really a Wiki Ed issue, but courtesy-pinging @Ian (Wiki Ed) and Helaine (Wiki Ed): who may be curious about the perhaps tangential retention issue, and/or the translation angle. Afaict, the issue of translating content from other Wikipedias never came up while the class was going on, but if it's a possibility in other classes, it might be worth thinking about.

It does raise an issue which I think is a more general one and not at all limited to Wiki Ed, namely, the translation of citations brought over from another language Wikipedia. This is something I have a lot of experience with, and it can take more time than doing the actual text translation of a section or article, which is no picnic, either. But I know how to do it, and so do plenty of other editors (Elinruby and Scope creep come to mind from recent activity), and it occurs to me that this is something that is both very important for editor-translators to learn how to do, and is perhaps inadequately explained on-wiki, and would be worth taking up at a dedicated discussion at some other venue, perhaps at WP:WikiProject Translation, to see if we could write something up to improve the situation. I'm guessing translation doesn't figure much into creation of content by student editors in Wiki Ed-associated classes, but it would be great to have feedback and input from Wiki Ed in such an undertaking, if anyone is interested in the topic. Mathglot (talk) 02:25, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

there is no question that a big part of translation has become translation of the markup. I have some thoughts on this, but for now I'll just agree with what you said, but amplify it. We really could use a workflow redesigned top-down. I would mention as issues articles getting tagged for translation when they are in fact merely very technical, and my favorite, the articles that are tagged for notability AFTER someone has gutted out a translation on a topic they didn't care much about.

I was looking at that particular article because I could swear the Senegalese tirailleurs marched overland to join Allied forces in North Africa (if anyone has a lead on this LMK please). The point is, I was reading for content earlier, but I don't mind fishing out the references and bringing them over, unless someone else is interested of course. If someone is, I also have a plethora of articles about various French military units that I have gotten from awful to not very good that should be looked at again. Elinruby (talk) 02:57, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

PS I would dearly love a tool that automated reference conversions. Elinruby (talk) 02:59, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

I have been thinking about that on simmer for a long time, but haven't done anything about it so far. However, others have. I'm still brainstorming on low, but if you want to see one really great idea from Trappist which has been available for a long time at en-wiki, see Module:CS1 translator and its associated data file at Module:CS1 translator/data. Just a 40,000-foot look is enough, you can skip the gory details there, because there are handy wrapper templates like {{lien web}}, or {{cite web/French}} which access the Module to do the dirty work, while presenting you with a simple citation template-style interface you're already familiar with from fr-wiki. I'm also a regex nut, so doing things like taking in MLA-9 or Chicago MOS citations as you can get spit out from the "Cite" link at practically any academic journal website, and turning them into a citation might be possible in some percentage of cases with a template (or module) using some of the regex available here (although the flavors I'm familiar with off-wiki are more powerful, and I've gotten bitten more than once by the relatively low-octane regex engine here). Mathglot (talk) 07:16, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

i have done simple regex at work but apparently the environment matters a lot and I am not going to attempt anything commando on-wiki without extensive discussion. Certainly nothing like the one that was changing "a eu" to "an eu" at one point, which was apparent in a spell checker (?).

But it is tedious, for example, to keep removing  · between references or the period after a reference or the one some people like to put between "}}" and "</ref>", so if even just that could go away....and yes in theory I could do this myself with find-replace if that was an option available to me. But here we are. Elinruby (talk) 01:52, 10 August 2023 (UTC)