# Talk:Papua New Guinea

Isn't it weird to have Ecology and Topography in the same container with purely political issues ? The subchapters of 'Geography' deal a lot with the landscape and topographic features, except for 'Borders' which is essentially political. Borders often follow natural features for pragmatic reasons but ultimately have nothing to do with these. They are rather arbitrary. If anything, they use to separate human speech areas, but even that's not a rule. 
So, intuitively, i would put this subchapter 'Borders' out of 'Geography' and into the previous chapter 'Politics'.
But there is the meaning of the term 'Geography' and then borders seem to belong to it too.
I don't see a solution for this problem, just wanted to point it out .... --rosetta  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.243.33.181 (talk) 01:43, 18 September 2019 (UTC) 

A discussion is taking place as to whether Portal:Papua New Guinea is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.
The page will be discussed at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Papua New Guinea until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.
Users may edit the page during the discussion, including to improve the page to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the deletion notice from the top of the page. North America1000 10:43, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

It appears as though there's no climate data for PNG - could someone fix this? The Verified Cactus 100% 20:09, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

In the Royal PNG Constabulary section, the word "even" is misspelled as "eeven." I tried fixing it but it said it's blocked from being edited. Punstress (talk) 04:39, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Fixed, thanks for pointing it out. I can't see any reason why you would be prevented from editing the article, yet can edit the talk page.-gadfium 04:54, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

The official name for the nation in Hiri Motu is incorrect, and is given as identcal to the Tok Pisin translation. While I have not found the official translation, it would be something like Papua Nui Gini Besena Sibona. Ptilinopus (talk) 01:00, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

According to UNGEGN, the formal name in Hiri Motu is "?". Don't think we can use that. I do note however that for both Hiri Motu and Tok Pisin, the short name is given as "Papuaniugini", one word, unlike what is currently in this article. CMD (talk) 03:18, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
According to online Encyclopaedia Britannica [1], section Papua New Guinea, footnote 1 to info box, the official name in Hiri Motu is Gau Hedinarai ai Papua–Matamata Guinea. I have corrected this in the article’s info box. Although as a Motu speaker myself, I would have thought it would be Gini-Matamata. Ptilinopus (talk) 04:22, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Change Queen Elizabeth II to King Charles III 84.13.56.101 (talk) 19:41, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

 Not done: Only remaining instance of Queen Elizabeth II in the article is referring to something in the past, not in the present. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 19:43, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

Should these sections remain in section 2? I feel as though they are more appropriate under section 6 Demographics. Neither section reference when these communities were established, and only 2.5 makes any kind of reference to a historical event.
WikEdits5 (talk) 20:08, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

How has this been noticed for over a decade? 195.11.108.100 (talk) 13:13, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Not a decade luckily, just a few months. The map was changed in this edit. That said, I've fixed the new map in this respect. Best, CMD (talk) 13:30, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

"The people of all these islands are blacke, and have their haire frisled," under Etymology.
Is this meant to say "The people of all these islands are black, and have frizzy hair."? 2601:195:C600:F930:FD26:D85:AA2B:330A (talk) 19:19, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

There were no typewriters or keyboards in 1862 when this translation from the 16th century original was published, so, no, not typos. It's how the writer being quoted wrote it. Largoplazo (talk) 19:53, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Reassess to C-class.
Without going into great detail, the article currently does not pass the B-class criteria #1. The following are hidden categories the article belongs to:
Articles with unsourced statements from January 2011,
Vague or ambiguous time from May 2023,
Articles with unsourced statements from May 2023,
Articles with unsourced statements from January 2024,
Articles with unsourced statements from May 2024,
Articles with unsourced statements from February 2025,
Wikipedia articles in need of updating from April 2025. --  Otr500 (talk) 08:54, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Really cool how much the article has improved over the contest. There were some painful sentences in there before that gave me racist jibes. There were two sections I though could do with improved understandability: biodiversity and economy. 
Some of the jargon in the biodiversity section I would try to replace:

vascular (plant)
Floral assemblages
ecosystem services
I'm not sure what this means: "Broad classifications differentiate different coastal areas, the mountains, and different island groups as distinct"
taxa  --> animal groups(?) on first mention. You use it a lot, so maybe explain it or rejig more text.
I think this complicated into sentence can be omitted for simplicity: "Different taxa have centres of endemism and diversity in different areas. For example,"
faunal --> can you rewrite it as a noun rather than adjective. I imagine it's jargon that people might only recognize in the standard form
The large islands to the northeast are oceanic islands that have never been linked to New Guinea. --> do we need 'are oceanic islands that'? My first thought is 'aren't all islands oceanic', before realising that like islands exist. But I still don't quite see the relevance (or don't understand jargon)
monotremes
Will come back for the economy stuff tomorrow, as it's my Tuesday evening Battlestar Galactica time. 
I believe User:Aza24 might have some comments too about the language section? —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:53, 24 June 2025 (UTC)

Hi Femke, thanks for this, definitely a topic where another eye helps me. I am struggling to figure out what to do with nouns, vascular plant and monotreme are just names of groups, like "bird" or "rabbit". I did wikilink monotreme though, as well as "marsupial". However, I made a stab at rewording Ecosystem service, as well as all the other items you mentioned and a few others I found while rereading. (Oceanic island=island that has never been part of a much larger landmass, Continental island=island that was once part of a much larger landmass.) CMD (talk) 09:59, 30 June 2025 (UTC)

Hi CMD. Not sure if I ever replied, but always keen to help with vital articles! There are people that actually know stuff about country FAs (you might want to ping Nikkimaria if you're still keen on this for instance). First, generally, FACs by first-time nominators are tough, and if you've not done so before, starting by reviewing will be appreciated. It's a big topic, so you probably won't suffer the 'not enough reviewers' curse that some topics have. 
I'll start with nitpicking, as I don't see anything major as of yet. You seem to be doing a good job with MOS details: barely any duplicate links (remaining solved), no issues with sentence fragments. 

I'll put fixing the infobox template to be accessible on my to-do list (the orange in 'medium' does not come close to meeting contrast requirements).
I found at least one place where there wasn't a lang template, might there be more? All images have alts.
I would avoid stating the size of the country in the lead, as people have no intuition for what a small or large country would be. If they want to compare multiple articles, the infobox is the place they'd look.
The first sentence of the second para might be ripe for a rewrite. I tend to avoid the word 'latter' and 'former', as it assumes people remember what they've just read. One option is "In the 1880s, the territory of present-day Papua New Guinea was split between German New Guinea in the north and the British Territory of Papua in the south. The southern portion was transferred to Australian administration in 1902."
The penultimate sentence of the 2nd para, and the first sentence of the 3rd para have similar structure. I believe it's tony's WP:REDEX exercises who dislike with as a connecting word; I would rephrase at least once. While these two on their own wouldn't stand out, the with structure is awkward in the sentence starting with 'The word Papua' ..
wikilink denominations, mild jargon
The land supports around 5% of all known species, and the export-driven economy is also dependent on natural resources. Double check for unnecessary use of also like that?
The country retains close ties to Australia, and has enhanced ties with both Asia and the Pacific. --> That last bit feels like it needs a time period (in recent decades??)
—Femke 🐦 (talk) 20:34, 2 August 2025 (UTC)

Such a long further reading section could get you a question during the FAC: are you sure you're comprehensive with more sources out there (I think you are, but people associate further reading sections with not being comprehensive), and are they all relevant per WP:FURTHERREADING. I usually start by cutting out multiple books by the same author. For those you decide to keep, further reading references need to be formatted in the same style as your references (so including an ISBN for instance).
Make sure your citations are consistently and neatly formatted. Citation 108 is complaining about an ISSN number. In citation 126, the title doesn't seem to be correct. Citation 5 misses a lot of information. I'm sure there's more.
—Femke 🐦 (talk) 20:56, 2 August 2025 (UTC)