Today I learned: Africa is a country

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   lobobrandonposted 5 years ago

   Is it common knowledge that Africa is a country? Just read an article on Pairedlife by someone who just ranted on the HP forums about a certain big company. It's sad to see some good work by reputed hubbers get snipped and edited when global facts are changed and accepted. What do I do about this? Do I report it?

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      TessSchlesingerposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      The editor probably didn't know Africa wasn't a country. I would often have conversations like this in the States::
      
      Them: Where are you from?
      Me: South Africa?
      Them: Which country in South Africa?
      Me: South Africa is a country.
      Them: Oh, I met John from Kenya. Do you know him?
      Me: No, Kenya is another country. It's about 3000 miles from South Africa.
      
      Here's another conversation I had with someone..
      
      Them: Where are you from?
      Me: South Africa.
      Them. Oh, which State is that?
      Me:It's not a State. It's another country.
      Them: What is a country?
      
      To many people Africa is a country. I don't think they know the difference between a continent and a country.

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         Castlepalomaposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         Australia and Antarctic are both countries and continent.
         
         Africa is a continent with 50 Countries

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            lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            Australia is not a continent and country in most definitions. NZ, etc also fall under the same continent and it's often called Australasia.

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               Dean Traylorposted 5 years agoin reply to this

               Don't forget that recently a new continent was discovered. While most of it is underwater; however, the part above water is New Zealand.

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                  lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                  Yup I did mention this in another comment.

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            Rochelle Frankposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            Antarctica is not a country. It has no government, no cities, no capital, no permanent residents except penguins. An international group of twelve countries agreed to a treaty designed to protect the continent of Antarctica and limit use of it for scientific purposes.

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               Castlepalomaposted 5 years agoin reply to this

               Your right, was not sure if it was.
               
               It was a hearsay, thanks for clarifying.

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                  TessSchlesingerposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                  "You're right." Not your right.
                  
                  "You're means 'you are.'
                  Your means something that belongs to you, e.g. your phone.

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                     Castlepalomaposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                     Just not correct that Antarctica is a country.
                     
                     It's amazing Australia is a country, a continent and an island all in one.
                     
                     How all those Australian animals went to the middle East got on an Arc, than returned home, is beyond my imagination.l

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   DrMark1961posted 5 years ago

   I think serious factual errors like that need to be reported. If I were a random reader and came across that sentence, I would be sure to never trust anything else I read on that site.
   (It may have just been an error, as the author showed a map of the countries in West Africa in the same article. However, it should have been fixed before being moved over to a niche site-either fixed or never moved in the first place.)

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      lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Yeah, I was referring to the factual error and that editors should be paying attention to this stuff when moving articles over. I'll report it for that error, hopefully, they work on it. I wasn't sure if reports were only for spam or also factual errors. Thanks.

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   DrMark1961posted 5 years ago

   I think it should be reported under "low quality" The little box that pops up allows you to leave addittional information and it would be a good idea to copy and paste that info on Africa.
   
   On another persons article I would just leave a comment about that, but this guy is so angry that he would probably just tell you to go away, or whatever. Based on his responses on the other thread, he may be banned anyway, and this serious factual error will go with him.

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      lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Yeah, I reported it under "other". I usually comment and tell the others about it or send an email if I find errors. The reason I brought this up here is for the editors. It's important that they look into this stuff to maintain the quality of the niche sites.

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         DrMark1961posted 5 years agoin reply to this

         I did too. As I mentioned on another thread, I think too many articles are going to the niche sites that should not be moved. This is a good example.

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            lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            Yup, it is after that post of yours that I realized that the quality is not what it was like at the beginning.

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   Rupert Taylorposted 5 years ago

   Definitely report. I saw one a couple of days ago that had reached Featured status but it was full of grammar errors. I reported it and it's gone. The question is how did it pass QAP in the first place?

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      lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Yup, that's the question.

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         TIMETRAVELER2posted 5 years agoin reply to this

         Makes me wonder if Maven is letting lower quality articles slide through in an attempt to earn more money.  This would be a massive mistake that could hurt all of us!

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   theraggededgeposted 5 years ago

   Maybe they got through in the earlier incarnation of the niche sites? They rushed a lot of stuff over in a big hurry.

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      Jean Bakulaposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      I think that's possible. When the niches debuted, at least one third of my articles were moved in the first period. When I looked at some of them later, I was shocked to see many mistakes in them. As you recall, we've all spent loads of times bringing articles up to ever changing standards, and I think it's a good thing. But on some old articles, I still find things to fix.

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      lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Something just came to mind, I did put it off as an early move. But early moves were based on traffic and hubs that were getting 100 views a day were not directly moved, but this particular author does not have the 1k accolade yet, so this is definitely not the case.
      
      But, as others have commented those hubs that were first moved could have used some editing, I edited a few of mine and hubpro premium did the rest.

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   Kenna McHughposted 5 years ago

   I am inclined to agree with Tess because people can have incorrect definitions or incomplete definitions by stupidity or culturally. That can create upsets as well. We see it all too often in the forums here. HPers have their own definitions regarding subjects and the definitions do not agree with each other.
   With that, I am concerned about quality in general. I am concerned about my own quality. I have feature articles and reread them only to find a typo or grammatical error I didn't notice before and quickly fix it. Then, I wonder why the HP staff didn't catch the error during the approval process to feature article or a niche site. Are they reading/editing our articles? Or, is it an automatic approval process based on an algorithm?
   Furthermore, I have an article submitted for a niche site, which the editors want to edit before moving it over to the niche site. The email said that the list of articles needing editing for niche sites is quite long and it will be some time before they can get to my article. If I would like to try editing it, based on the guidelines, I could do that but I can't resubmit.  I still have to wait - first come first serve.
   I curious because we have more editors, now. If HP editing quality is still low and slow in responding and we have more editors, something is not right.

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      lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      You can still edit the one you submitted if you want to make changes, I reckon? If you think something would hinder its movement and you want to fix it, may as well do it.

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   Kenna McHughposted 5 years ago

   There are seven continents. Can you name them?
   
   PS Brandon, I am editing my article. But, I can't resubmit. I still have to wait.

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      lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Haha Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe and Australasia or Oceania. If I'm right, this is in decreasing order of land mass (area).
      
      Yup, you can't submit again as it's probably in some kind of queue. When they get to it, I'm pretty sure they see the latest version. If you could re-submit, it would probably go to the back of the queue. So this may be a good thing.

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         TessSchlesingerposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         Eurasia?

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            lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            That's the landmass consisting of Europe and Asia. It's not classified as a continent by most conventions, but two continents: Europe and Asia.

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               TessSchlesingerposted 5 years agoin reply to this

               So is Australia lumped in with Asia as in Australasia? Did't know that. Thanks.

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                  lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                  Nope, Australasia from what I studied is: Australia, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, New Zealand and anything else that I'm missing in that region.
                  
                  On the classification of Australia as an Island continent on its own, NZ tends to get left out, some would consider Papua New Guinea as a part of Asia in this case, I believe. I would guess this is the reason it was termed Australasia, not to confuse it with being just Australia, while considering some of the so-called Asian countries. Probably makes NZ feel better that it's not Australia lol.

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                     TessSchlesingerposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                     Just googled it. Eurasia is the continent of Europe and Russia, India, etc.
                     
                     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasia
                     
                     To quote:
                     
                     The division between Europe and Asia as two different continents is a historical social construct, with no clear physical separation between them; thus, in some parts of the world, Eurasia is recognized as the largest of the six, five, or even four continents on Earth.[5] In geology, Eurasia is often considered as a single rigid megablock. However, the rigidity of Eurasia is debated based on paleomagnetic data.[7][8]
                     
                     I'm very confused now. It says Eurasia is the largest continental landmass, but I've read repeatedly that Africa is.
                     
                     Got to do some more explorng...

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                        lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                        Yup, this is right. It's in line with what I said, Eurasia is the combined land mass of Europe and Asia. But Papua New Guinea is not highlighted in green because it belongs to the continent of Australasia.
                        
                        Asia is the biggest of the 7 continents. When you have 7 continents, that means Europe and Asia are two continents. When you combine them into Eurasia (the geological land mass) it results in a larger area making it the largest with Africa being second (land above water).
                        
                        There are quite a few definitions for what constitutes a continent, if I had to pick I would pick Geology and in that case, there are recent discoveries of a new tectonic plate that separates NZ from Australia or something on these lines. There's a new tectonic plate discovered in that part of the world.

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                           TessSchlesingerposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                           Um. No. When you mentioned the 7 continents originally, you just said Europe. I said Eurasia. If you read the wiki entry, the days when Europe and Asia/Russia were regarded as two continents are long gone. It was a human construct. A continent is a landmass that is surrounded by the sea.
                           
                           You're correct about the tectonic plates, but I think generally when we are talking about continents today, we are talking about land masses surrounded by the sea.

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                              wildernessposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                              "A continent is a landmass that is surrounded by the sea. "
                              
                              How many continents are there in the western hemisphere?

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                              lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                              By this definition Africa isn't a continent either.  And all islands become continents. This definition is flawed.

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   Kenna McHughposted 5 years ago

   Cool! The editors will probably see new date stamp or something like that.

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   Kenna McHughposted 5 years ago

   Which continent is surrounded by water on every conceivable side?

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      lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Antartica Not Australia.

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    ethel smithposted 5 years ago

    imo you were right to report. If Hubpages got in trouble previously for inaccuracies something like this could cause more problems

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       lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

       Yeah, I guess so. At best readers would doubt the website after reading that.

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    Natalie Frankposted 5 years ago

    Huh - I always thought it was: Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, Australia - decreasing order of size.
    
    But then I've also heard talk of Zealandia (sp?)

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       lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

       Yup, I just edited my recent post, this is what I said yesterday Shouldn't message here while commuting haha. Yes! Zealandia sounds like that new one I heard about.

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    eugbugposted 5 years ago

    I'm glad the crackpot "science" hubs about perpetual motion machines and free energy generators didn't make it to Owlcation

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       lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

       Do those exist here on HP I'd love to see some. A hub on why PPMs are not really possible or how they would be possible only in ideal situations would be a good hub to move to Owlcation though. Maybe an idea for you to write one provided there's search volume.

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    Kenna McHughposted 5 years ago

    Jean, I am glad to hear it happens with others, too. Fixing things is part of keeping the articles fresh.

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       Jean Bakulaposted 5 years agoin reply to this

       Kenna,
       I also find that even if I am fixing something on an older hub, even if it's evergreen, I think of a few new facts to add to it. So it does pay to check in on those "forgotten" articles every now and then.

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