User talk:Labdella/sandbox

Article evaluation
Everything in the article is relevant, but it is unclear how the editors decided which censorship cases to include. For example, a few countries are highlighted in the political section, but there are many cases of political censorship that are omitted. Furthermore, there is unbalance in that some of the subsections are just a sentence or two while others are lengthy paragraphs. Article appears to be quite neutral. A bit strange that section on Turkey mentioned only the censorship of Wikipedia though other forms of censorship exist in Turkey. The citation links work and the sources are reputable and unbiased. The article could use more supporting citations though because there are a lot of un-cited facts. Talk page shows that the article is C-class, so somewhat incomplete.

Article selection
One article that I would like to improve is the Human Rights in Ethiopia page. I noticed two areas with room for improvement. I was exploring the censorship by country portal and found that there is no page for Censorship in Ethiopia (which is my B.A. thesis topic). So, I decided to check the Human Rights in Ethiopia page to see if it touched on censorship. The article does tackle freedom of the press, but the last incident that is cited is from 2014. This is particularly concerning given the mass arrests of journalists and subsequent state of emergency that the Ethiopian government started in response to protests in 2015 and 2016. Furthermore, the section mentions international declarations that condemn censorship, but I would go further and add the excerpt of the Ethiopian constitution that explicitly protects freedom of the press and condemns censorship. This is important because it shows that the Ethiopian government censors despite freedom of the press being a "protected" right. I would also add to the section titled "Anti-Terrorism Proclamation". This proclamation is one of the ways that the government justifies arresting journalists. Although the section covers many ramifications of the proclamation, it does not reference the connection to censorship. This is quite a notable missing piece as several human rights organizations have exposed the government for arresting oppositional and/or anti-government journalists on the basis of "inciting terrorism".

Another, though much more ambitious option, would be to get the Censorship in Ethiopia article started. It is shocking that there is still no page for this topic as Ethiopian censorship is classified as one of the strictest in the world. Furthermore, with the change in regimes earlier this year, a report on censorship under the previous regime is long overdue. Since this is closely related to my B.A. thesis topic, I can confirm that there a several reputable sources from which this potential article could be built and can verify its notability.

A third option would be to create an article on Citizen Media in Ethiopia. This would cover different media such as print, radio, television, and Internet. This is key to the understanding of censorship in Ethiopia. For many years, citizen media was virtually non-existent as the government maintained a monopoly over newspapers, television networks, etc. However with a growth in independent media, the government continues to censor through unconventional methods such as withdrawing funding or advertisements that many citizen media outlets depend on in order to operate.

Note: For the Week 5 "Add a citation" assignment, I added supporting content to the "Freedom of the press" section of the Human Rights in Ethiopia page along with a citation from Human Rights Watch. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Labdella (talk • contribs) 12:51, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Peer Review from Joseph Marques
First and foremost, I don't see any sources on your draft? I assume you have them, but you really need to add them so we can evaluate them.

The lead section seems perfectly fine to me (aside from the lack of citations). You may want to add a sentence about the social impact to the lead, however.

I like the structure you're proposing and think it makes sense. Maybe consider a timeline if there is a clearly defined one? (I don't know enough about the history of Citizen Media in Ethiopia to know if there are enough major events for a timeline or not.)

Your balance of different viewpoints and section lengths seems fine to me. (I highly doubt you need a section describing a position that would try and justify the censorship.)

I think your overall tone is pretty good, but there are a few spots that could use some touching up. Namely your TV section describes the more recent TV as more balanced and your Internet section has the phrase "without forewarning or explanation", which both seem distinctly anti-Ethiopian-Government. Granted, I 100% agree with that position, but still, the fact that I'm getting signals of your personal feelings on the matter means it could probably use some minor edits.

Overall, what you have seems pretty good, but not adding any sources into your sandbox makes it hard to me to really evaluate your article edits overall.

JosephLMarques (talk) 08:36, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Peer Review from Laila
As the other editor said, there's no sources here which should be included as footnotes or you can put direct quotes too. I'd be interested if there was more context behind the difference between different media viewership with respect to how big TV culture is or literacy rates, or how many people own computers (or have access to internet-- good you included this), etc basically describing the main ways people get their information, even if a lot of it is just word of mouth. Also how the past 10 years have influenced and redirected censorship. I know it can be kind of hard to find some of that data or analysis. I was going to do censorship in Eritrea and ran into similar issues. I would definitely talk abou the impact of censorship during war w Eritrea. I'm sure there was a crackdown on journalist investigation from within the country and also outsiders trying to investigate. Also could you specify more on the state of emergency in the past few years.

--Alaila (talk) 20:28, 16 November 2018 (UTC)