User talk:Issa J. Boullata

Thank you and welcome
Dear Mr Boullata

Welcome to Wikipedia! I am Peripatetic, a Wikipedia editor from London and creator of the Issa Boullata article. I wanted to thank you personally for the excellent additions you have made to your article. It is not very often that we get the support of an article's subject to enhance its quality. So your contributions are very welcome indeed!

More broadly speaking, the coverage of Arabic literature has traditionally been very poor in WP. I suppose there are not enough people out there who are both interested in Arabic literature and ALSO interested in Wikipedia! My interest derives from my Bangladeshi Muslim origins, a couple of brief trips to the Middle East, the acquaintance of many friends from the region, and also a deep curiosity about the depth and breadth of Middle Eastern culture in general, and literature and architecture in particular.

Over the last six months or so, I have been adding as much information as I can on Arabic lit, mainly creating articles on writers and translators of the genre. Back in February, when the Arab revolts really started taking off, I went on Wikipedia and realised that coverage of literature was embarrassingly scanty. For all of Yemen, for example, the only two people covered were Maqaleh and Baradouni! I started writing about Yemeni authors, helped in great measure by the short bios in Salma Jayyusi's 1988 anthology. Since then, I've created many more articles on both writers and translators, a full list of which can be found here: In this, my chief aid has been Google, as well as blogs like the invaluable http://arablit.wordpress.com.

There are very few people who want to get involved in adding knowledge - and can actually MAKE meaningful contributions - to such non-Western topics. You are one of the Western world's leading specialists in this area. If you were to see fit to contribute to Wikipedia every now and then, we would all be greatly obliged and I would be personally very grateful.

Thanks and regards, --Peripatetic (talk) 08:55, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

December 2012
Please do not write or add to an article about yourself, as you apparently did at Issa J. Boullata. Creating an autobiography is strongly discouraged – see our guideline on writing autobiographies. If you create such an article, it may be deleted. If what you have done in life is genuinely notable and can be verified according to our policy for articles about living people, someone else will probably create an article about you sooner or later (see Wikipedians with articles). If you wish to add to an existing article about yourself, please propose the changes on its talk page. Please understand that this is an encyclopedia and not a personal web space or social networking site. If your article has already been deleted, please see: Why was my page deleted?, and if you feel the deletion was an error, please discuss it with the deleting administrator. Thank you. Orlady (talk) 17:29, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Your draft article, User:Issa J. Boullata/Willem Bijlefeld


Hello, Issa J. Boullata. It has been over six months since you last edited the Articles for Creation submission or Draft page you started, "Willem Bijlefeld".

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, , or  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! — python coder (talk &#124; contribs) 22:26, 16 May 2021 (UTC)