Wikipedia:Collaboration of the week/Africus

Africus

Nominated on 15:39, 13 December 2005 (UTC); needs 3 votes by December 20, 2005.

Africus was a Roman god of wind. I could accept that as being a stub, but seeing as the subject of this article is directly responsible for the name which the continent of Africa received, I'm convinced that this article should be thoroughly expanded.

Support:

---- Astrokey44|talk 12:30, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I see absolutely no reason to spend any time at all working on such an amazingly trivial topic. For one thing, most experts agree that the god "Africus" probably isn't the source of the name "Africa" (or at least not the original source), since there are many other noteworthy etymological possibilities. Second of all, what makes you think that there is much existing information about this god beyond what we currently have? "Africus was the god of the southwest (storm-rain) wind. He was depicted as wet and surrounded by clouds." That seems to be just about the sum of information that remains on this extremely minor Roman god. Rather than bothering with the sort of obscure, minimal trivia that doesn't really teach us anything about the world and its history but is just an amusing tidbit to point out at parties, why not nominate for CotW one of the thousands of Africa articles that is a truly vital and integral aspect of the history of Africa? Africa would be no different if it was called a different name, but many other aspects of the many African cultures have had a profound and lasting impact. Or at least consider working on a different god, one with more substantial information lacking. For example, the Prometheus and Atlas (mythology) articles are surprisingly short, considering their enormous importance.
If anything, Africus doesn't need to be expanded—he needs to be merged into a general article on the Roman wind gods, since there's so little noteworthy information on them all: Favonius (west wind—largely a disambig), Aquilo (north wind—currently merged into his Greek equivalent), Vulturnus (west wind—currently merged with Greek), Auster (south wind—currently an airplane), Africus (south-west wind), Corus (north-west wind—currently a disambig), etc. That, or he needs to be merged with Lips, the Greek south-west wind, who there is similarly very little information on - see Tower of the Winds for all the Greek versions. Regardless, this collab seems kind of futile and aimless. -Silence 05:40, 21 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
After reading other coments, I hereby revoke my voteYellowmellow45 13:20, 23 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
And so do I. -- SoothingR^(pour) 14:24, 23 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Note: I have now merged this article, and all other Roman and Greek wind deities, into a new Anemoi article, based on a brief discussion on Talk:Zephyrus. If no one objects, Africus, and all the other Anemoi/Venti pages, will now become redirects to that page. However, please feel free to expand on any portion of the Anemoi article which you wish to contribute to, including the paragraph on Africus/Lips in the Minor winds section; there's plenty of room to expand on what we currently have, this merge is merely designed to facilitate consistency and to centralize our efforts to improve and expand on classical wind-god coverage. Hope to see ya there! -Silence 18:36, 23 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]