Talk:Haile Selassie

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Haile Selassie has been listed as one of the History good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
January 8, 2024	Good article nominee	Not listed
March 25, 2024	Good article nominee	Listed
December 24, 2024	Good article reassessment	Kept

Current status: Good article

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A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the On this day section on 10 dates. [show]

April 2, 2004, April 2, 2005, April 21, 2006, April 21, 2007, September 12, 2007, September 12, 2008, September 12, 2009, September 12, 2010, September 12, 2012, and September 12, 2014

GA concerns

I am concerned that this article no longer meets the good article criteria. Some of my concerns are outlined below:

The article uses lots of long block quotes: these create copyright concerns and make the text very long. I suggest that these are summarised, reduced, or removed.
The article is over 11,000 words and contains too much detail: WP:TOOBIG recommends that articles of this size are spun out to other articles and the prose reduced.
The article contains uncited prose.

Is anyone willing to address the above concerns, or should this go to WP:GAR? Z1720 (talk) 21:41, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

GA Reassessment

Haile Selassie

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result: Kept. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 12:24, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The article uses lots of long block quotes: these create copyright concerns and make the text very long. I suggest that these are summarised, reduced, or removed. The article is over 11,000 words and contains too much detail: WP:TOOBIG recommends that articles of this size are spun out to other articles and the prose reduced. I think summarising the block quotes will help with this, as well as removing other material. The article also contains uncited prose. Z1720 (talk) 16:36, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Many of the quotes in this article provide no substantive contribution to it, and seem to be included only for aesthetic reasons. You could argue that this article also uses too many images for the same reason. Removing some of these would be for the best. As for prose issues, I've been working on cleaning up the worst of it (the Personal life section). genderBiohazard (talk) 21:46, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@GenderBiohazard: I see that you started working on the block quotes. Are you planning to continue working on this? Z1720 (talk) 16:43, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but any help is appreciated. genderBiohazard (talk) 16:56, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

TOOBIG helps ensure articles stay within WP:SUMMARYSTYLE, but in this case (and for many other biographies) it's not clear what the sub-articles might be. The existing main articles do point to obvious places to be cut (eg. the Collective security and the League of Nations, 1936 subsection is a lot for one speech and has some prose issues, and the background in Wollo famine could be condensed), but in general I would not delist a slightly longer biography with no sub-articles just for size reasons. The various bits of unsourced text is more of an issue. CMD (talk) 08:53, 30 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Agree, the article is rather long but not absurdly so, and the material is very evenly distributed among the biographical sections, and almost all properly cited too. I'm accustomed to hiving off lists and bibliographies and so on into subsidiary articles, but there's really nothing here that would make sense to split out. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:51, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If it was between 9,000 to 10,000 words, I probably wouldn't be too bothered (and a copyedit would probably reduce that word count). However, at over 11,000 words I think some information should be removed. I think some places that subject-specific editors might want to summarise information more effectively throughout the article. Some specific areas I would target are the lead (to get it down to four paragraphs, and ensure that all the information in the lead is also in the article body), "1960s", "Rastafari messiah", and "Personal life". The "Gallery" at the end of the article should also probably be removed and images redistributed in the article, per WP:NOTGALLERY. Z1720 (talk) 15:19, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We certainly mustn't delist an article because an editor finds it uncomfortable. The shared criteria do not specify any exact length, and major subjects can have longer articles, that's just how it is. I've copy-edited the lead, Collective security, 1960s, Rastafari messiah, and Personal life. I've removed the terminal gallery; there seem to be plenty of images already in the text. The text is down to 10,700 words. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:41, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Z1720 I am inclined to agree to keeping. Thoughts? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:37, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've trimmed the speech section, removing the peacock language in the process, and also removed the league of nations claim which was not supported by the source. I can't find a source for the French Somaliland trip I can access, but I'm pretty sure it's in the NY Times archives. CMD (talk) 02:02, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have added cn tags to places that need citations. Except for the first paragraph in "Name", the citations are for a sentence or phrase which should be quicker fixes. As for length: 1a says that "the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience." If an article is WP:TOOBIG, then I have doubts that it is concise, but since that itself is not enough to be against WIAGA, I added places where I felt the phrasing was not concise, like the lead "1960s", "Rastafari messiah", and "Personal life". I'm not too fond of the connotation that I recommend delisting because I find something uncomfortable, as I try to ensure my comments are based on Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, not my own feelings. If others think the TOOBIG editing guideline needs to be modified, they are happy to propose changes in the appropriate venue. Z1720 (talk) 02:59, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@GAR coordinators: discussion has stalled, a close would be appreciated. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 19:20, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not seeing a suitable consensus to delist here. Happy to close as keep unless anyone has any last minute cases to not do so. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 20:31, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Pronunciation removed

I noticed that the IPA pronunciation for Haile Selassie's name was removed in [1]. Is there a reason for this? Can it be restored? Yxtqwf (talk) 03:44, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Yxtqwf: What was removed on 15 January 2024 was the IPA pronunciation, together with the source (slightly adjusted here for formatting reasons):

Amharic pronunciation: [kʼədäˈmäwi ˈhäjlə sɨlˈläse] ;^{English: /ˈhaɪli səˈlæsi, -ˈlɑːsi/ HY-lee sə-LASS-ee, -⁠LAH-see.^[1]}

Both URLs in that citation no longer work, but they have both been archived close to the stated access date: Merrian Webster gives an audio example, and Dictionary.com gives /ˈhaɪli səˈlæsi, -ˈlɑsi/ (hahy-lee suh-las-ee, -lah-see) as the pronunciation. This does not seem to agree with what we were claiming (hy-lee sə-lass-ee, -⁠lah-see), and parts of what we said (kʼədäˈmäwi ˈhäjlə sɨlˈläse) remained unsourced. Since the material in the source didn't align with what we were saying, the removal may have been justified.

CtasACT's edit summary may give further clues (again slightly adjusted for clarity):

Would someone kindly be able to put ^[2]^[3]^[4]?

I don't have access to that book. I guess CtasACT expects it to contain a more reliable pronunciation for the different parts of the name? If not then maybe they can clarify. This could be a case for an WP:RX request. Renerpho (talk) 14:25, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ "Haile Selassie". Merriam-webster. Retrieved 24 April 2014..; "Haile Selassie". Dictionary. Reference. Retrieved 24 April 2014..
^ Fay 1999, p. 902.
^ Munro-Hay 1999, p. 698.
^ Fay, Robert (1999-01-01). "Halie Selassie I". In Gates, Henry Louis; Appiah, Anthony (eds.). Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience. New York: Basic Civitas Books. ISBN 978-0965032742.

Exceptional claim from obscure source

There is a claim in the 1970s section of this article that "there were no more than ten political prisoners during [Haile Selassie's] reign". This line is attributed to two sources. One of which, this article from the Independent, does not support the claim whatsoever. The other is an Amharic language book titled "የአፄ ኃይለሥላሴ ታሪክ" — I could find very little information about it online, but this appears to be the book in question. I would like to know if anyone has access to this book and could verify or share its contents. Regarding the claim itself, I could find no other sources for it online, and it contradicts various reports from Amnesty International. genderBiohazard (talk) 02:08, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The claim that there were few political prisoners detained under Selassie is widely held, most suffered from mental illness upon release as its believed they were administrated psychotic drugs. Magherbin (talk) 16:48, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Selassie Games

It says right here (invalid link) that Selassie liked to play board and card games. Why do I not read anything about the games he played and who he played against? 2A02:8071:B687:8B60:1859:7A27:CFC2:E3D5 (talk) 14:52, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

[1] "Haile Selassie". Merriam-webster. Retrieved 24 April 2014..; "Haile Selassie". Dictionary. Reference. Retrieved 24 April 2014..

[FOOTNOTEFay1999902-2] Fay 1999, p. 902.

[FOOTNOTEMunro-Hay1999698-3] Munro-Hay 1999, p. 698.

[4] Fay, Robert (1999-01-01). "Halie Selassie I". In Gates, Henry Louis; Appiah, Anthony (eds.). Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience. New York: Basic Civitas Books. ISBN 978-0965032742.

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