User talk:ZeBiographer
Welcome!
[edit]Hello, ZeBiographer, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions.
I noticed that one of the first articles you edited appears to be dealing with a topic with which you may have a conflict of interest. In other words, you may find it difficult to write about that topic in a neutral and objective way, because you are, work for, or represent, the subject of that article. Your recent contributions may have already been undone for this very reason.
To reduce the chances of your contributions being undone, you might like to draft your revised article before submission, and then ask me or another editor to proofread it. See our help page on userspace drafts for more details. If the page you created has already been deleted from Wikipedia, but you want to save the content from it to use for that draft, don't hesitate to ask anyone from this list and they will copy it to your user page.
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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{Help me}} before the question. Again, welcome! 331dot (talk) 13:03, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
Advice on editing
[edit]Hello, and welcome to editing Wikipedia. I see that you have asked about your draft article at the "Teahouse", and some editors have made comments there, which may be of some help to you. However, I have found over the years that there is a problem with the "Teahouse". Most editors who spend a lot of their time there wish, quite rightly, to avoid discouraging new editors, but they make the mistake of thinking that a good way to achieve that is to hold back from telling them anything that may suggest that the new editor's draft article is not likely ever to be accepted. While in the short term that may avoid discouraging new editors, in the longer term it is likely to be more discouraging than being direct from the start, because new editors are encouraged to put time and effort into working on something which is never going to be accepted, with the result that eventually they leave, frustrated and disheartened. I have seen that happen many times over the years.
I shall give you a few comments specifically about the draft you have written, but first some more general advice. My advice to new editors is that it is best to start by making small improvements to existing articles, rather than creating new articles. That way any mistakes you make will be small ones, and you won't have the discouraging experience of repeatedly seeing hours of work deleted. Gradually, you will get to learn how Wikipedia works, and after a while you will know enough about what is acceptable to be able to write whole new articles without fear that they will be deleted. Over the years I have found that editors who start by making small changes to existing articles and work up from there have a far better chance of having a successful time here than those who jump right into creating new articles from the start.
You have been told at the "Teahouse" that you need to provide references to sources, and that is perfectly true; if you don't, then your draft will never be suitable as an article. However, putting a lot of effort into providing references for your draft in its present state will not achieve anything, as there are other profound problems, which make it unsuitable as an article. The issues involve aspects of your writing which would be entirely suitable for a biography to be published in a book, but Wikipedia's requirements are different. I get the clear impression from reading the draft that you have an admiration for Zadig Abraha and the work he has done in trying to improve the situation in Ethiopia. However, Wikipedia policy is that articles must be written from a neutral point of view, and a reader should not be able to tell what opinion the writer has of the article's subject, nor even whether the writer has any opinion about it. The draft frequently provides commentary or assessment, rather than mere factual reporting, as for example "His inner drive ... helped him excel very quickly", and you use words such as "atrocities", which expresses a value judgement about what happened. Please note, even if you and I and 90% of people would agree with that value judgement if they knew the facts, it is still a value judgement, and Wikipedia articles should not make such judgements. You attribute opinions and motives to people, as for example when you say "some TPLF old guards, who not only felt threatened by the pace of his rise but also doubted his loyalty". We cannot say what anyone felt or doubted unless we have reliably documented evidence that they themselves have said so. Your writing is largely in an informal, personal style, rather than in the formal and impersonal style that is required for Wikipedia. Finally, you say on your user page that you aim "to highlight the lives and works of Ethiopia's unsung heroes". The fact that you refer to what you wish to do as "highlighting" and that you refer to the people in question as "heroes" indicates that you are not here with the intention of writing from a neutral point of view, and the fact that you refer to those people as "unsung" suggests that they may not yet have received a large amount of published coverage, in which case they may not satisfy Wikipedia's notability guidelines. If yo have not already done so you should look at the general notability guideline and the guidelines on notability of people.
I write not in the hope of discouraging you from contributing biographies to Wikipedia, but in the hope of helping you to do so in ways that are likely to lead to those biographies being accepted, rather than rejected and deleted. It is not easy to learn what is acceptable by reading what others tell one; it is much easier to learn from experience, and, as I have said above, it is much easier to get the right sort of experience by gradual small steps than by going straight into creating whole articles. I know from what you have written on your user page that your interest is in writing biographies rather than in making small changes to what other people have written, and if you are not at all interested in doing anything other than writing new articles then my advice may not appeal to you, but I do strongly urge you to consider what I have suggested. JamesBWatson (talk) 15:25, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
Just one more comment, this time about use of references. After I had posted my message above I found that you had made another edit while I was preparing that message. In that edit you added a reference to an article in The Guardian. That reference was attached to the sentence "Zadig became the face of the national public mobilization efforts to raise local funding for such a grand project for the first time in the country’s history", and therefore the cited article should tell us that he became the face of those "public mobilization efforts". However, it does not tell us anything of the sort; the only thing it tells us about him is that he has said "We have finished with the syndrome of dependence" and "We want to recover our past glory". JamesBWatson (talk) 15:41, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
Your thread has been archived
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Draft:Zadig Abraha concern
[edit]Hi there, I'm HasteurBot. I just wanted to let you know that Draft:Zadig Abraha, a page you created, has not been edited in 5 months. The Articles for Creation space is not an indefinite storage location for content that is not appropriate for articlespace.
If your submission is not edited soon, it could be nominated for deletion. If you would like to attempt to save it, you will need to improve it.
You may request Userfication of the content if it meets requirements.
If the deletion has already occured, instructions on how you may be able to retrieve it are available at WP:REFUND/G13.
Thank you for your attention. HasteurBot (talk) 01:28, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
Your draft article, Draft:Zadig Abraha
[edit]
Hello, ZeBiographer. It has been over six months since you last edited the Articles for Creation submission or Draft page you started, "Zadig Abraha".
In accordance with our policy that Wikipedia is not for the indefinite hosting of material deemed unsuitable for the encyclopedia mainspace, the draft has been nominated for deletion. If you plan on working on it further, or editing it to address the issues raised if it was declined, simply and remove the {{db-afc}}, {{db-draft}}, or {{db-g13}} code.
If your submission has already been deleted by the time you get there, and you wish to retrieve it, you can request its undeletion by following the instructions at this link. An administrator will, in most cases, restore the submission so you can continue to work on it.
Thank you for your submission to Wikipedia! CptViraj (📧) 09:09, 19 December 2019 (UTC)