Talk:Karoo

message: IMHO these are actually two totally different entities, although they share a common border and (part of) a name, and should thus be split into two separate articles. Comments, anyone? Elf-friend 10:47, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm sorry, but that doesn't make sense. That's like saying East Germany and West Germany should still have separate articles [although they do here!!], simply because they used to be separate. (RM21 19:47, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, the two Karoo regions are still distinctive geographical entities with different types of flora, etc. Elf-friend 14:42, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Strictly speaking there are three major Karoo regions. What is commonly called the Great Karoo is actually divided into the Great and the Upper Karoo. The division being the watershed dividing the Orange River basin from the rivers that flow southward into the Indian Ocean. One of the well known landmarks on the watershed are the Three Sisters peaks which form part of the Nuweveld range, situated next to the N1 highway between Beaufort West and Richmond/Victoria West. This division aproximately co-incides with the boundary between The Western and Northern Cape Provinces. The Great Karoo basin is on average more than 1000 feet lower than  the Upper Karoo. Roger 10:57, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Split

message: I removed the bit about "place of great thirst". The etymology looks very iffy: The Encyclopaedia Britannica kind of backs it up as "a Khoisan word meaning 'land of thirst'", but this isn't confirmed by the OED which says "the precise etymology is uncertain", explaining that early 1800s sources identified it as Khoi for "hard", but later ones suggest they might have confused it with garo = desert. Go figure. Gordonofcartoon 21:00, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Etymology

message: Look here, at least 2 towns were founded in 18th century, one of them in Great Karoo. But you wrote until 1800 it was wilderness.--Vicpeters (talk) 12:18, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Two settlements 

message: I think many a reader would want to know what towns are found within the geographical space of the Karoo and that a section simply naming these is appropriate to this article.  Agreed?  Which towns warrant mention is another question.  I went for some of the bigger ones, that's all.  I suggest restoring the deleted section on its towns, perhaps under a heading that says, "Towns and settlements" BlandBaroque (talk) 04:00, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: If we're going to list towns, list them all! Roger (talk) 14:12, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: You think?  OK.  I'll give it a bash shortly.  I trust that, if I fall short, instead of deleting, you'd help add where my knowledge is inferior to yours. BlandBaroque (talk) 14:53, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Towns in the Karoo 

message: The photo gallery paints an unbalanced picture of the Karoo. Almost all the photos were taken in the spring and in the south-western "corner" of the Karoo - Willowmore and Laingsburg in the spring are not a representative sample. No photos show the harsh greyness of mid-winter around De Aar or the wide open flat countryside of Brandvlei. How about including the Valley of Desolation near Graaf-Reinett. Also "close-up" photos of flowers are pretty but don't really illustrate the landscape. The Karoo only looks like that for a few weeks after exceptionally good spring rain - maybe twice a in a decade. How about showing some sheep? I'll see what I can do about getting a wider variety of photos. Please help if you can. Roger (talk) 07:02, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  The photo gallery is "biased" 

message: There are several inconsistencies in this article. 
In the introductory section it states that "the the 'Upper Karoo' in the north ... is divided from the 'Great Karoo' in the middle by the Great Escarpment, ... the Upper Karoo ...and the Little Karoo in the south". (A rather confusing sentence.) Lower down, under the section "Little Karoo", the "Little Karoo" is defined as  "a valley bounded on the north by the Swartberg, and on the south by the Langeberg and Outeniqua mountains. Although the boundaries of the region are not strictly defined, most people consider the western limit of the Little Karoo to be in the region of Barrydale and the eastern extremity around Uniondale." This second definition of the "Little Karoo" is the correct one. The Karoo to the north of the Swartberg Mountains but below the Great Escarpment is definitely not "Little Karoo" as suggested in the introduction, but is widely regarded as simply part of the Great Karoo, though it is occasionally referred to as the "Lower Karoo" if one wants to distinguish it from the "Upper Karoo" above the Great Escarpment. More generally it is known by a series of local names like the "Tankwa Karoo", "Moordenaarskaroo", "Die Koup" and "Die Vlakte". (Source: various atlases, very few of which give a special name to the Great Karoo below the Great Escarpment. Only the "Tankwa Karoo" in the far western part of this region, is reasonably widely known because part of it has been declared a National Park.)
There is a second inconsistency, or a confusing inaccuracy, in the "Klein Karoo" section. The paragraph which mentions the main towns of the Klein Karoo, ends with the sentence "On the railway line Cape Town-Johannesburg lies the historical town of Matjiesfontein, seat of majestic Lord Milner hotel, still extant." This sentence belongs to the second paragraph of the "Modern History" section which describes the building of the railway line between Cape Town and the north, including Johannesburg. That railway line runs through the "Great Karoo", or, initially, through the "Lower Karoo" where the historic village of Matjiesfontein is situated, north of the Swartberg Mountains, and definitely not in the "Little Karoo".  This last problem is easy to rectify, but the Introduction is more problematic, partly because it corresponds with none of the atlases I have consulted as to the extent of the Karoo. Only in a footnote is it admitted that "few people in southern Africa would hold that 'The Karoo' proper extends into Namibia." That admission should be included in the main text if the "Karoo" is being defined in strictly botanical terms. Furthermore most South Africans, and atlases refer to what is, in this article, called the "Succulent Karoo" - they would call that area "Namaqualand", never having heard of the "Succulent Karoo". 
I hope this these comments prove to be helpful. Oggmus (talk) 15:34, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: It sounds like you are more familiar with the Karoo than many others. You are welcome to make changes to the article. I would just like to suggest that, before you click "Save" you click "Preview" and read through the text to be sure it is the way you want it and that there are no typos. In the edit summary, you can write, "Edited for clarity and accuracy of information", or something like that. If you need help with wording a sentence or with ordering sentences in a paragraph, I'd be glad to help. If you add new information to the article, you really ought to add accompanying references, also. If you need help with that, you can look at Wikipedia's guide to adding references WP:REF. If you come across a real problem, ask User talk:Dougweller. CorinneSD (talk) 16:55, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inconsistencies

message: :The problem is that the article uses a rather indiscriminate mixture of "definitions" most are botanical but there are also geological and cultural/historical ones. If we are to tighten this up to use purely botanical definitions the authorotative source is the South African National Botanical Institute http://www.sanbi.org.za
:In terms of the broad biomes Succulent Karoo is the basically the winter rainfall part and Nama Karoo is the summer rainfall part - http://bgis.sanbi.org/vegmap/biomes.asp - the finer grained subdivisions are far more complex and the map is quite scary! This article - http://www.sanbi.org/node/4855/reference - is also very relevant. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 20:47, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Improving the article

message: Is there anyone out there who could describe the climate and soils of the Great and Little Karoos, under the appropriate headings? Oggmus (talk) 08:06, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Climate and Soil of the Karoo

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thread_title:  External links modified (January 2018)