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I have reverted two basically unexplained edits.
This edit both contains an inaccuracy, is counter to the consensus arrived at back in January in a discussion at the WP:Help desk.
This edit uses the phrase "As of today". Strunk and White's Elements of Style strongly recommends avoiding the use of redundant phrases like this. Geo Swan ( talk) 00:23, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
As of today Bensayah Belkacem has been confined in the Guantanamo camps for 8 years, 3 months, and 26 days. He arrived there on January 21, 2002.
Another contributor reverted several hours of my work, in this edit, with an edit summary of "rv back to 00:31, 17 May 2010 Geo Swan - The original quotes provide more value to the article than the poor summaries and interpretation of it".
As a courtesy to other contributors could we please discuss controversial edits on the talk page, not in the edit summaries?
I am reverting the edit. In my opinion the other contributor had an obligation to state their concern here, rather than simply revert my edits. Reverting an edit that another contributor has clearly spent a lot of work on, with a brief claim in an edit summary is a trigger to edit warring. I first explained this to this contributor, back in March, and several times since then, requesting, each time, that they explain their concerns on the articles' talk page(s), or some other fora that allows a meaningful exchange of views.
This other contributor has been opposing wikilinks to articles to topics referred to in the allegations used to justify the continued detention of the Guantanamo captives, that dates back nine months. This contributuor has offered close to half a dozen different justification for excising or obfuscating these wikilinks.
I honestly believe that this edit obfuscates valid and useful wikilinks to the allegations. I honestly believe that this wikilink removal erodes the value of this article, and the related articles, for our readers.
WRT the comment "The original quotes provide more value to the article than the poor summaries and interpretation of it." I started this article, and most of the related articles. And I have done a very large fraction of the edits to maintain them. I always do my best to conform to all the wikipedia's policies and established conventions. I never thought I would succeed 100 percent of the time. I have never doubted that other good faith contributors would have good faith concerns with my original good faith contributions. Since I started my understanding of the wikipedia's policies has evolved, and the policies themselves have evolved.
One of the weaknesses in this material -- material I originally contributed, is that too much of it is quoted material. Entire publid domain documents can be quoted, on wikisource.
Back in 2006, when I started working on these topics, the 2006 and 2007 memos, and most of the 2005 memos had not yet been published. The 2004 memos were short, so quoting them in full wasn't much of a problem. The 2005, 2006, 2007 memos are all much longer -- even though they are less important. And they are highly repetitious.
So about a year ago I started rewriting these sections, replacing the quotes from the allegation memos with summaries -- summaries that only mentioned allegations that were new, or that had been significantly modified. This significantly shortens the articles -- which I think improves the articles.
Frankly, I think the wording used by the original OARDEC authors was often awkward, and hard to read. The original OARDEC wording was often opaque to readers who were unfamiliar with military terms -- or even to those with a familiarity with military terms. I honestly believe my summaries are easier to understand than the original quoted material.
I think if any other contributor who has read the original memos, has concerns over specific passages in these summaries, then I think the appropriate choices are to raise their concern on the talk page, or to offer new drafts of those specific passages, that they are then prepared to defend in a civil, serious, collegial, respectful manner.
Candidly Geo Swan ( talk) 20:13, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
This
- a. Commitment
- The detainee supported himself and several other naturalized former Bosnian mujahidin and their families.
- The detainee planned to coordinate and assist with the travel and arrival of a number of travelers from Afghanistan.
- The detainee was identified by a foreign intelligence service as being suspected of terrorist activities.
- The detainee has been identified as a primary al Qaida facilitator in Bosnia.
- The detainee was one of several Mujahidin Fighters who remained in Bosnia and was known for his ties to the Chechen Movement.
- b. Connections/Associations
- The detainee was arrested and possessed numerous phone numbers that linked him to Usama bin Laden's operational network in Afghanistan and the global Sunni Extremist Network.
- The detainee denied ties to a senior al Qaida member whose phone number was found in a book in the detainee's possession.
- A senior al Qaida member reported he has known the detainee since 1993 when the detainee went to Afghanistan from the war in Tajikistan.
- c. Other Relevant Data
- According to a news article, the detainee was supposed to be in charge of coordinating terrorist attacks to take place after 11 September 2001 and was to become the chief of operations for al Qaida.
- The detainee was discovered to have 3.5 million marks in Bosnian currency deposited in a Bosnian bank.
- a. The detainee was adamant that he is known by an alias that is associated with Abu Zubaydah.
- b. The detainee adamantly denied involvement in the plot to blow up the United States Embassy in Sarajevo, Bosnia. The detainee reported that he was told that there was no case against him and that he would be sent back to Algeria.
- c. The detainee stated he never associated with any terrorists or anyone who want to hurt the United States. He never worked with al Haramayn or al Furquan, although he has heard of al Furguan.
- d. The detainee denied that he ever had a bank account in Sarajevo nor in Bosnia.
- e. The detainee denied being involved in the facilitating of fraudulent passports for other; the only involvement the detainee had with fraudulent passports was that concerning his own fraudulent Yemeni Passport.
- f. The detainee denied any knowledge of the al Farquan [ sic] and Haramay organizations. He stated the Saudi High Commission could not be a bad organization.
- g. The detainee reported he heard of al Qaida and that Usama bin Laden was the leader but he knew this from the media reports
changed to:
the only involvement the detainee had with fraudulent passports was that concerning his own fraudulent Yemeni Passport.
The original document can be found here. IQinn ( talk) 00:44, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
1 |
I am not going to respond to most of the first paragraph above, because much of it doesn't seem related to the content of the article. It would be very useful if you were specific about how these changes I introduced were "problematic". Long quotes are discouraged, in general. Over and above long quotes being discouraged, in general -- these quotes contain the same allegations, repeated multiple times. So, my recent changes not only improve the quality of the article, they bring it closer into compliance with our usual conventions. |
2 |
I am not going to respond to most of the second paragraph, because much of it doesn't seem related to the content of this article. You assert above that the quoted documents are "unique in their nature". OK -- maybe; possibly; I can't agree without knowing what you mean by "unique". |
3 |
Why is a good faith contributor summarizing a "unique" WP:RS?
|
4 |
What does OARDEC mean by "Commitment", "Connections/Associations", "Training" and the other terms they use? I think I came across a document that was a guideline for the authors of the memos. Sorry. It is not in my notes. In the meantime, why don't we just assume the OARDEC authors used the ordinary, routine, surface meaning of these headings? |
5 |
I dispute we don't know the meaning behind the two subheadings of factors. And even if, for the sake of argument, we didn't know the meaning of the subheadings, I would argue that we should then base our summaries on the surface meaning of the phrases: "factors favoring continued detention" and "factors favoring release or transfer". |
6 |
As I wrote above, I usually include factors new to that memo in the summary for that memo.
If there specific instances of allegations you think should have been included, or specific instances of allegations I summarized that you don't think should have been summarized, why don't you offer them up? |
7 |
You write: "To summarize factors and to change the wording of them ultimately changes their meaning." Sorry, I believe we have addressed this before. As I wrote above WP:OR explicitly encourages summarizing the material in WP:RS. Other contributors have pointed this out to you as well. |
8 |
WRT your concerns about wikipedia contributors interpretating WP:RS. All of our WP:RS have been interpreted by wikipedia contributors. I do not understand why these WP:RS should be uniquely treated as if they shouldn't be subjected to the kind of interpretation we routinely apply to all WP:RS. |
9 |
The length of the quotes overwhelm the articles, and they are highly redundant. |
10 |
Finally, at the end of your post, you called the version of the document supplied by the New York Times the "original document". Sorry, the NYTimes is mirroring the DoD documents. The DoD's page for downloading original versions of the documents is here. Multiple revisions of many of the OARDEC documents have been published, sometimes those different versions are inconsistent with one another. Since the NYTimes does not state which revision they are mirroring I would prefer you not refer to the NYTimes mirror as "originals". Thanks. |
I'd like third party input on the basic question addressed in the section immediately above this one. Should articles on the Guantanamo captives contain long blocks of quotes from the memos that contain the allegations against the captives, or should they contain wikipedia contributor drafted summaries of those allegations?
My position is that:
My best good faith paraphrase of the current objections of the contributor who disagrees with me is that they think the OARDEC allegation memos are somehow unique and that they are unique in a manner that means no summary of them can be neutral, and that any summary of them will necessarily be misleading.
Cheers! Geo Swan ( talk) 16:32, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
Another contributor removed File talk:Andrew purvis's sidebar -- 'The Suspects- A Bosnian subplot.png from this article, even though it is relevant to half a dozen paragraphs in the article.
This contributor performed this excision with the one word edit summary "useless". This concerns me as one word edit summaries should be used with care, they should not be used to obfuscate controversial edits. Geo Swan ( talk) 18:03, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
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