Talk:Behrouz Boochani

Language and nationality/identification

A number of changes have occurred recently, changing from this revision to the current one. Can those who have made the changes, especially those with no edit summary, please comment here to discuss whether a reversion should be done? @Paraw: @Serchia: @KiwiNeko14: 5.114.29.22.

I have been looking through a number of articles to try to find consensus on how to refer to him or see if he's expressed a personal preference anywhere. There's a lot of variation, but all mention Kurdish: either Kurdish Iranian, Iranian Kurd, or just Kurd. I am going to try to contact him directly to ask, but in the meantime, please don't make any changes in the first sentence in the lead without discussing first. And should his name be expressed in Sorani Kurdish (as it was), Persian/Farsi, or both? Laterthanyouthink (talk) 01:00, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

I think it's better to use "Kurdish writer from Iran", and furthermore he's a southern Kurd and his mother tongue is Southern Kurdish and not Sorani Kurdish. The correct pronounciation of his name is بێڕووز بۊچانی.Paraw (talk) 03:13, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

When I added the "lang-fa" template, I had only seen the very previous revision, dated from February 1st by 5.114.29.22; that revision showed a sort of broken template displayed in red; the red text said "Template:Persian:"; I just wanted to fix the template, having assumed that the name displayed was written in Persian. But don't hesitate to correct me if I am wrong, since I have very little knowledge of Arabic-script-based languages! Nice day to you. KiwiNeko14 _(Meow) 09:17, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you Paraw and KiwiNeko14. I've never used those language templates, but have now put something together which I hope is the correct form for Southern Kurdish and thought I may as well leave the Iranian there as well - if this is not correct, please let me know! I've also slightly reworded the lead and will continue to add a few things over time. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 10:59, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

@Serchia: I see that you have added the Kurdish form before Southern Kurdish, and removed the Farsi/Persian version. I am not in a position to make a call on this, but I would like to come to a consensus here in the discussion so that edit wars are prevented in future, by referring to this discussion. (If we can't agree, then I will call for a couple of expert editors to rule.) Also, would you please always write an edit summary when you make a change, on any article? Thanks. @Paraw:, do you have any further comment on this one? Laterthanyouthink (talk) 00:09, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

User:195.37.93.125 I see that you have made an edit without summary, adding Persian back to his name, without an edit summary and including a punctuation error (bracket in the wrong place, and no space. Can you please always add an edit summary, and also discuss how his name should be represented here in this discussion, with @Serchia: and @Paraw:? We need a consensus here, so that what we have best abides by Wikipedia rules. If you are unwilling to discuss, I am afraid that I will have to revert your edit and call in someone else to make a ruling on this. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 23:44, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

I have semi-protected the article for three months.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 06:18, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for that, Fuhghettaboutit. I have now removed all foreign language forms, following help desk advice and MOS:FORLANG. We don't know what language he speaks usually, but we do know that he wrote his book in Persian. And as my helper advised, "if someone wants to find his name in another script, both the Farsi and Sorani Wikipedia projects have articles on him". Laterthanyouthink (talk) 06:20, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

---

@Laterthanyouthink: I'm not sure what the issue is that prevents the Kurdish and Persian name from being added. Do some editors only want the Persian name added? Also, the reason I believe references are needed for the templates is due to verifiability, plus some disruptive editors have been removing the Kurdish template on various pages on the basis of being unsourced. --Semsûrî (talk) 11:15, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Hi Semsûrî, and thanks for your comments. The discussion that went on about 18 months ago was sparked by some frequent changes and disagreements over which languages should be shown, and MOS:BIO doesn't offer an example of this specific type of case. As you can see, there was also disagreement about which variety of Kurdish to use (Sorani or Southern). After a discussion at the help desk, it was decided it was best to leave it out altogether. I don't know enough about these languages to tell the difference, and at this point we still don't know which dialect Boochani himself uses. I can try to find out. I'm not strongly opposed, but I just don't want to see another edit war happening over a matter which is relatively trivial in the context of English Wikipedia. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 01:36, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Laterthanyouthink I see and thanks for replying. He is from Ilam where Sorani is not spoken at all and he appears to be a Southern Kurdish-speaking Feyli Kurd.[1] Southern Kurdish is not that much of a literary dialect so adding the Southern Kurdish name wouldn't be of much use for readers and adding Sorani could be deemed random. So, I don't know, perhaps the status quo is best for now. --Semsûrî (talk) 09:54, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Oh, I see Semsûrî - that's interesting, thank you. I'm happy to leave as is for now. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 10:13, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Kurdish Magazine Werya

There is no independent proof that 'Werya' ever existed, the only 'evidence' is hearsay from Boochani himself. There is also no proof Boochani was ever a journalist. He wrote 3 verifiable articles for Etemad on 12 Nov 2012, 6 Mar 2013 and 14 Mar 2013 as a 'writer' but nothing else. No Iranian media outlet has ever verified Boochani ever worked for them, including Etemad. Leveni (talk) 08:00, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

What kind of "independent proof" are you looking for? It's cited in multiple sources, and in the PEN letter (which also gives an English transliteration variant as Varia, btw), which one would think would have the resources to check these things out. And you'd think Kurdish source may have checked. Do you have any evidence to suggest that Boochani would lie about this? What reason do you have for doubting his word? You don't think that someone would have challenged him on it in all this time? An Iranian pro-government source would be pretty likely to contradict this, given the international publicity, don't you think? The fact that he has written for many publications seems to qualify him as a journalist, as far as I can see. Absence of evidence is not proof of the opposite, and unless we have a WP:RS that proves that he didn't, I don't see any reason to remove what has been written and cited in this article. (Perhaps a native speaker of one of the Kurdish languages or Farsi could Google in those languages and provide further information?)

BTW, do you have links to those verifiable articles in Etemaad that you mention? Laterthanyouthink (talk) 10:13, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

The links to the only 3 verifiable articles are here, http://www.magiran.com/searchnp.asp?field=all&I5=%C8%90%D1%CF&t=n&s=%C8%E5%D1%E6%D2+%C8%E6%8D%C7%E4%ED the bottom 3 are the links to the Etemad source.

Your link to the Kurdish source doesn't work

Proof is what is needed. It is up to the person making the claim to produce the proof, that way it can be verified.

Multiple sources? Not one source has proved he is a journalist, 3 articles in 4 months doesn't make somebody a journalist.

Etemad has never mentioned he was a journalist there.

I'm not a native speaker, but I knew enough to find those 3 articles.

Leveni (talk) 11:15, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, no time for more now, but just to give you that link again in full (I think it must be because of the spacing before) - http://www.rudaw.net/mobile/english/world/06102018. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 12:10, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

That link was written only recently and is a repeat of Boochani's own claims that have never been proven. If you look at my links, they prove somebody with the same name had written articles before he said he left Iran. Your link is not substantive proof.Leveni (talk) 12:30, February 2019 (UTC)

Generally we would trust a source such as The Sydney Morning Herald, so when that source says that Boochani is a journalist and created Werya, that is sufficient to "prove" the claim, to the standard required by WP:Verifiability, unless there as some explicit reason to disbelieve the story. It's SMH's responsibility (as a RS) to verify Boochani's claims, not ours - we trust the mainstream media to check their facts (such as Boochani's claims) so that we don't have to. Mitch Ames (talk) 08:01, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

External links - social media

With regard to Beetstra's latest change, removing the Twitter link. I would like to revert this, on the grounds that Twitter is actually Boochani's main medium of communication. It would make more sense to remove the IMDb one (which has little and can be found via the Chauka film entry anyway), or Facebook (if you really want to pare it down to one). I deliberately included both social media in this case though because these are essential lifelines for Boochani as well as ways that readers can learn much about him and life on Manus. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 10:58, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

@Laterthanyouthink: I have no problem to switch from facebook to twitter if that is the more informative, we just don't list more than one with very few exceptions.

Regarding the imbd, I tend to generally agree, but for some obscure reason the community has decided to include it almost everywhere. For me, it can be removed just as often as the excessive use of social media, but I guess that the latter would result in a lot of resistance. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:05, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

Thanks @Beetstra:. I'll change it to just leave Twitter. In many cases I don't think it necessary to list any social media, but this one is a bit of a special case, IMO. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 23:17, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

@Laterthanyouthink: I do believe that listing one website that is personally controlled by the subject is important as external link, as it shows what a subject is saying about themselves. Even when I fully agree that most social media is not stating anything sufficient/encyclopedic about the subject (they basically completely and utterly fail many points in WP:ELNO). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:34, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

Human rights defender vs activist

I'm making this note here about terminology - minor as it is - because of a recent suggestion to change human rights "defender" to "activist". I looked into this at the time of making my first edits to this article (because I'm also more familiar with the latter term), but stuck with defender based on firstly, Boochani's own description of himself, and secondly, Google tells me that all major h.r. organisations seem to favour the term defender these days, based on recent pages, such as this recent world summit and the UN and this US org called Freedom House and the European Commissioner for Human Rights and Amnesty. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 04:50, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

Fair enough, I was under the assumption that they were synonymous, and defender seemed to be out of place if the two words were interchangeable. Thanks for the refs. LeoC12 (talk) 07:38, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

Way too long

I suspect COI editing. Sample:

While living in the Manus Island detention centre Boochani has had many of his articles published by online news and other media, such as...

-> Let us prune it.

Zezen (talk) 10:02, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

I doubt we need to list the individual articles as we do ("...such as "The Day My Friend Hamid Kehazaei Died" in The Guardian and "Life on Manus: Island of the Damned" in The Saturday Paper") but what you quote above demonstrates he is "a working journalist" whilst held in a detention centre, which is notable. -Lopifalko (talk) 10:16, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

Not COI editing. I have done a lot of work on this article and probably added those, and I have no connection to any of the subjects. I don't think that it's "way too long", and the two article titles are relevant to his experience on Manus and his notability. Feel free to remove the publication names, although one could argue for their significance too. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 10:37, 26 February 2020 (UTC)