Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Atsbeha

 This page is an archive of the proposed deletion of the article below. Further comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or on a Votes for Undeletion nomination). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was DELETE ALL THREE. -Splash talk 23:39, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Dej Desta, Atsbeha, and Buzunish Atsbeha
Hoax or vanity.

Sigh. It can be difficult to determine whether an Ethiopia-related article should be kept or removed. There is no fixed rule of transliteration for names, so one name may be represented by a wide number of spellings; Ethiopia isn't on the Internet in a significant way, so a small number of hits form Google is not conclusive. And we need more Ethiopia-related articles. However, we don't need articles like these.


 * Buzunish Atsbeha. According to the article, she was of noble birth, ran a couple of nightclubs during the '30s, & fled the Derg for Canada. Substitute "Paris, Brussels, etc." for "Addis Ababa", & "Germans" for "Italians", & you have the story of countless people during WWII. (Let's be snide, make a couple more name-changes, & say this is the plot of Casablanca.) Her claims to nobility rely on the credibility of the next 2 articles, but even if they were about real people, I don't think being the black-sheep daughter of a noble merits inclusion by for itself. (Although knowing that John F Kennedy would be president one day -- or even know of his existence in the late '30s -- might be notable.)


 * Dej Desta. Article claims he was a close friend of Emperor Menelik II. A check in the index of Chris Proutky's Empress Taytu and Menelik II: Ethiopia 1883-1910 (Trenton: The Red Sea Press, 1986) fails to turn up anyone by the name of "Dej", but 4 or 5 "Destas", none of whom fit the biography here. Because Proutky's book is fairly detailed, & mentions all of the people around Menelik II -- especially while he was emperor -- its hard to believe that this person ever existed. A number of other odd statements in this biography confirm this conclusion -- which I can share if people are curious.


 * Atsbeha. Let's assume that even if the other 2 articles should be deleted: does that mean we can still keep this one? There is one puzzling discrepency in the ancestory that argues this is also a hoax. Assuming that "Subagadis," is another way to spell the name of "Sebagadis" (an actual person & an important warlord of Ethiopia who died in 1831), why would the author insist he was of "royal" blood when the historic Sebagadis himself made no such claim. However, his daughter Diniqesh was married to an Emperor of Ethiopia, Tekle Giyorgis II, & his primary wife was the sister of Empress Taytu Betul, the wife of Menelik II. Shouldn't these connections to the Solomonid dynasty be mentioned, rather than to just another warlord from the 19th century? (FWIW, this name also collides with a far more famous Atsbeha, a legendary ruler of Axum, who needs an article; or it is another indication of the fiction here.)

A few more points these 3 articles share: (1) had someone added dates -- say the birth or death date -- to any of these articles, then I might be inclined to believe that these people actually existed, but I guess providing these details was too much work. (2) All of these articles have been contributed or editted from the same 3 IP numbers. (3) Oh yes, no hits on Google for any of these people that is independent of Wikipedia. -- llywrch 19:31, 9 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Comments: I'm guessing "Buzunish" is a name I've seen spelled in English as "Bezunesh," but "Bezunesh Atsbeha" and other variations in spelling did not turn up on Google (for whatever that's worth). Ethiopian names are often made using the person's given name (i.e. first name), then his/her father's name, followed by the grandfather's first name. Thus, Buzunish Atsbeha's father would be named Atsbeha [Something] - perhaps the editor didn't know the rest of the father's father's name, and so only used "Atsbeha." I looked up Adigrat in my Bradt Guide to Ethiopia and it said there was little in the way of sightseeing and did not mention anything about the remains of any castles (though this does not mean they don't exist). (I did tag the Adigrat article with not verified; see Talk:Adigrat). Note that the edits in question are from two IPs in Canada, where Buzunish Atsbeha lived - my gut feeling is that someone who knew this person wanted to add her to Wikipedia. -- Gyrofrog  (talk) 17:51, 10 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Delete, non-notable, with no evidence to prove otherwise (e.g. birth dates, cited sources, or even external links etc.). -- Gyrofrog (talk) 03:54, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
 * If original authors fail to verify information, delete---CH (talk) 02:07, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. Non-notable, not verifiable. Quale 07:09, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.