User talk:Geo Swan/archive/2006-October-to-December

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Abrar Ahmed

• salam once again my "dear" are you pursuing me on arabic pedia or not just waste your time hope to hear from you.

Abrar Ahmed 07:56, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

• Once again thanks for pursuing me and my edits well i have edited it because you have no knowledge of Ahmad Sirhandi thats why you dont have any reason to say why i have edited it i know there are people like you working on this pedia just for destroying of information and which have no other reason to be here.

He was a brother like you an atheist who posted non relevent material to Ahmad Sirhandi's page which i have deleted and by the why you cannot put an eye on me because my posts are on the arabic and urdu version of wikipedia. On english i just correct some mistakes by users like you.

Thanks for pursuing

hope you will pursue me on arabic wikipedia also see you soon bye

• I think you are waisting my time and yours in replying me so dont be a philosopher you are not worthy of it but just a pesedu thats what you are in my opinion from your replies and dont message me again because i dont want to hear your bullshit ok

bye

Its nice to hear from you "my dear" once again. i think you are more angry on the phrase my dear rather then the edits. As for as that you are a female i dont know this and come to konw after your confession that you are a female trying to achieve salvation through these acts.

• The problem with you Americans are that you want to lead the world your way and if any one suggest you that this is not good you'll become personal

Thanks for urgent reply i know you are a bit busy

Abrar Ahmed 09:14, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Mullah Shahzada

Good work Geo. I'm looking into Shahzada's release date from GTMO. You seem to think he was released in 2005, where did you see that? I have seen DoD lists that mark his as released, but I see no dates. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.20.177.219 (talk • contribs) 12:14, 2006 December 13

The Washington Post has a list of 30 of the 38 captives who were determined to be "no longer enemy combatants".[1] And, if I recall correctly, Haji Shahzada's release was referred to during one of Abdullah Khan's proceedings. -- Geo Swan 18:52, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, you figure that was mentioned in Khan's CSRT? We are puzzled by the government's repeated claim that 12, 14 and maybe even 15 GTMO detainees may have "returned to the battlefield" and we suspect that this is bogus talking point.

Also, in your research, have you found any instances of detainees being found "non enemy combatants" only to have a second CSRT reverse this determination? I'm thinking of ISN 654 (Al Ghizzawi)but there may be others who have been subjected to a double CSRT. 10:54 December 15, 2006 (GMT)

I'll go back and check.

I read recently that it was twenty- former detainees who had returned to the battlefield.

Abdullah Mehsud and Maulvi Abdul Ghaffar are the two individual the war-hawks cite by name, as examples of tricky terrorists who lied their way out Guantanamo, and returned to the battlefield. I think they are the only two individuals for whom there is a grain of truth to this claim.

I believe they did return to the battlefield, but not due to an accidental release.

Abdullah Mehsud's name is not listed on the Department of Defense's full official list of all the Guantanamo detainees, released on May 15th, 2006. The DoD's full official list includes an individual named Abdul Ghaffar and another named Abdul Ghafour, but they weren't released to return to return to the battlefield and be KIA in 2003 or 2004. They were both still there in 2005, when their detention was considered by ARB hearings.

There is reason to believe that, prior to the implementation of the Combatant Status Review Tribunal, the CIA had its own detention facility in Guantanamo. It would explain why these two captives weren't on the DoD's list of captives if they were in CIA custody, not in military custody.

I think the documents and other evidence that have been released so far support another explanation for the release of these two men. If someone in a position of authority had seen two many spy movies, or read too many spy novels, they might have thought that these Taliban leaders could be turned into double agents. It explains why they were missing from the official list. It explains why they were released. I think it even explains why there are so many innocent men in Guantanamo. They were there to provide a cover for the moles the CIA wanted to release If they were releasing lots of simple, innocent villagers, it would enhance the credibility of the CIA's cover story for these two men that they had convinced the Americans that they too were simple, innocent villagers.

After your query I did some more google searching on Taliban and "mullah shahzada". Oliver North was one of hte yellow journalists who wrote about him. He claimed that shahzada was one of the children who were taught English in Camp Iguana, and that he was KIA just weeks after his release.

Have I come across other captives who had multiple CSRTs, where the second over-rode the determination of the first? I don't know. I have come across at least one captive who had multiple CSRT transcripts. The 5th Denbeaux study says they know of three captives whose second tribunal over-rode the first.

But the transcripts don't say what determination the Tribunals made.

I'll see if I made a note of the ID number(s) of those detainees.

Cheers! -- Geo Swan 09:18, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Guantanemo

The Current Events Barnstar I'm awarding you this Current Events barnstar owing to the excellent work you have done in creating and maintaining the articles on the now named prisoners in Cuba! Irishpunktom\talk 23:49, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi Geo Swan. I just wanted to second this kudos for your work on the Gitmo detainees, and make a suggestion if I could. It might be effective to consolidate the available information on individual detainees into pages with multiple entries. Something like, "Guantanamo detainees who are Egyptian nationals", for example, that will have the info on all those detainees. Just a suggestion. The main thing is getting the information out there, putting names with the numbers! Great work! -Fsotrain09 00:58, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Geo Swan, no where have I been able to find on your userpage describing your objectives/purpose for posting your articles on GITMO detainees by creating individual articles of each detainee. Is there a political means to an end behind your project? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 65.188.22.40 (talk) 04:13, 1 March 2007 (UTC).

Duplicates

I'd like to point out to you that there are quite a few duplicates in the Category:Extrajudicial prisoners of the United States. I've found five examples:

• Abdul Al Salam Al Hilal and Abdul Al-Salam Al Hilal
• Ali Husayn Abdullah Al Tays and Ali Husayn Abdutlah Al Tays
• Muhammad Abd Allah Mansur Al Futuri and Muhammad Abdallah Mansur Al Rimi
• Abdalaziz Kareem Salim Al Noofayaee and Abdelaziz Kareem Salim al-Noofayee
• Usama Hassan Ahmend Abu Kabir and Usama Hassan Ahmed Abu Kabir

There are probably more... Anyway, these should be merged; I've already tagged them with {{merge}}. Transliteration from Arabic can be tricky, but redirects to a single article are better than duplicates. GregorB 21:18, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

And you will have to forgive me... Your work on this category is tremendous. As I said, transliteration is tricky, not only for us, mere mortals, but obviously also for the US Army "experts". (Detainee ID is there for a reason.) Anyway: some cases are rather clear-cut, e.g. Abdutlah is wrong while Abdullah is correct; same with Ahmend/Ahmed.

All that aside, I now see that there is another issue... "We're looking for a person named XY. Your name is YX. Well, close enough, we're putting you in the slammer. When journalists ask, we'll say you're XY." Now, when one writes an article on a detainee in such a case, who is it about, XY or YX? I see your point there. GregorB 08:54, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Image descriptions

I left my reasoning on the page you requested. I don't know whether it is supported by the manual of style, but it does seem to be supported by the thousands of picutre desc's I have seen on the wiki. By the way, how do you consider someone who has been editing almost a year and a half a newbie?!? Zotel - the Stub Maker 13:07, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

So do you agree, disagree, hate my guts, or what? It has been a few days now... I just want to know whether you would like a compromise solution (like a link in the pic desc), move the text OR a link to trailer use desc, etc. Or if you're fine with the edits as is. Gracias. Zotel - the Stub Maker 13:23, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Notability

Could you please explain your placement of the {notability} tag on Fadil Husayn Salih Hintif and Mehrabanb Fazrollah more fully?

I am not familiar with this particular tag. Is it a new one?

I spent my first year on the wikipedia writing mainly on non-controversial topics. And I didn't find that involved me in any serious disputes. I spent my second year on the wikipedia writing mainly on topics related to the "war on terror". Controversial topics.

At first I found that I was triggering other contributors to challenge my contributions - on the grounds that I was showing a bias. Infrequently they were correct. I aim for an NPOV, but I don't think anyone succeeds 100% of the time. And I welcome when a civil correspondent helps me fix the occasional lapse. But most of the time it was due to a simple misunderstanding, or my correspondents were, innocently, mounting a challenge that illustrated their bias.

I responded with a civil inquiry every time someone said they thought something I had written showed bias, or when they put an {npov} tag on it. I found that, generally, most people who said something felt biased to them, or put an {npov} tag, could not be specific about which passages they thought showed bias. So, I felt it was safe for me to assume that they either found whatever explanation I offered was sufficient. Or they found they could not point to a specific passage.

I am afraid that a minor fraction of the challenges I received were from contributors who were not interested in improving the wikipedia, merely to censoring instances of material that they thought made the USA look bad. One contributor, an administrator no less, expressed the view, in an {afd}, that ANY article about a Guantanamo detainee was inherently anti-American. In other words, the topic itself was inherently biased.

Well, anyhow, either I have learned to avoid innocently leaving triggers that give readers the false impression my writing is biased, or I am being more careful. I rarely get challenges over bias. And I don't think I have had a serious one in at least six months.

What I am getting is challenges over notability. And what I am afraid is that I am left with the impression that some of those challenges are coming from people who just don't want to see material that they think reflects poorly on the USA covered on the wikipedia, and I have done such a good job in referencing my contributions from authoritative, verifiable sources, without straying from a neutral point of view, that they have to fall back to challenges over notability.

I strongly disagree with using notability as a criteria for deletion. Notability is far too subjective. It is inherently vulnerable to systematic bias. It is not an official wikipedia policy. It is merely a guideline that reflects some people's opinion. I regard WP:BIO as a tool that helps some people decide whether an article deserves closer scrutiny to see whether it violates WP:VER, WP:NPOV or WP:NOR. WP:VER, WP:NPOV and WP:NOR are official policies.

Americans are disproportionately represented on the wikipedia. And this exerts an unconscious systematic bias on the wikipedia, that we are all supposed to be keeping in mind, and doing our best to combat. Please conduct a thought experiment. Please imagine that there was another country that had rounded up some American citizens, and was holding them without laying any charges against them, claiming they could hold them indefinitely, claiming the Geneva Conventions didn't apply to them. Imagine there was strong circumstantial evidence that this other nation was humiliating, abusing, and, in some cases, torturing those American prisoners. Can you imagine that anyone would consider, for one second, challenging the notability of those prisoners?

If you played any role in the drafting of the notability tag I would encourage you to scale back its official sounding tone. Notability is not an official wikipedia policy. And, IMO, it is too subjective for it to become a useful policy. Your tag should not imply that it is official policy to remove articles based on notability when it is not an official policy.

For the record I think these two individuals are notable for a number of reasons:

• They are both victims of serious violations of the Geneva Conventions. Article five of the Third Geneva Convention obliges a captor to extend all the protections of the Geneva Conventions to all captives, unless a "competent tribunal" has determined they don't qualify for those protections. AR-190 lays out how the US military is supposed to conduct those competent tribunals. They have held most of those guys for almost five years, and they still haven't convened a single competent tribunal.
• How close a look did you take at the allegations against these two men? The Bush administration routinely described the Guantanamo detainees as "The worst of the worst". Up until the release of the transcripts this March the public didn't have any good ways to come to an informed opinion as to the credibility of this claim. Now that the documents have been been released we can come to an informed opinion. When examined, in detail, the allegations bear out the conclusions of the Denbeaux study. When examined in detail the allegations against the detainees do not substantiate the claims of Bush administration. Admiral Harry Harris, the current camp commandant, claims there are no innocent men held in Guantanamo. My personal conclusion is that far less than half the detainees who went through their Combatant Status Review Tribunals should have been stripped of the protections of the Geneva Conventions, following a proper "competent tribunal". The US military did convene competent tribunals following the first Gulf War. They considered the cases of something like 1200 captives. 70% were classified as innocent civilians. The other 30% were classified as POWs. None of them were stripped of the protections of the Geneva Convention.
• Did you see that one of the justifications for continuing to detain Fadil Husayn Salih Hintif was he was captured wearing a Casio digital watch? A number of newspaper articles have been published about the men who were being held, at least in part, because they were wearing a casio digital watch. It is a highly controversial justification. IMO it is controversial enough it should be reported in detail. The allegations state that the detainees were wearing a particular model of casio, the Casio F91W. But, clearly, at least four of those guys were wearing different models. At least two of them were wearing the much more expensive Casio Prayer Watch. At least another two were captured wearing models that incorporated a calculator.

My guess is that those who do not regard articles about the Guantanamo detainees as notable don't recognize that there are any controversies surrounding the prison's conditions, the failure of the Bush administration to comply with the Geneva Conventions, the nature of their interrogation, force-feeding, detention without a chance to learn or refute the evidence against them. IMO that shows their bias, not mine. Without regard to whether one subscribes to the Bush administration's interpretation, or one subscribes to another interpretation, that there are controversies is undeniable. I wouldn't work on these articles if there were no controversies.

But there are controversies. And the public deserves a chance to use the wikipedia to learn the details for themselves.

I see from your user page, you are a lawyer. How much time have you spent looking into the legal aspects of the cases of the Guantanamo detainees? So, are you a Clarence Darrow kind of lawyer, or a Johnny Cochrane kind of lawyer? That is a personal question, you don't have to answer that. But I urge you to read some of the transcripts for yourself. You might try starting with Fouad Al Rabia's

Cheers! -- Geo Swan 16:38, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I'll start with a quick personal note: it may be accurate to call me a lawyer based on technical distinctions some place between the terms lawyer and attorney, but I am not an attorney. I am awaiting bar examination results and am not licensed to practice in any jurisdiction. I do have a JD. I believe in full disclosure.

I think it's fair to characterize me as a deletionist, but I'm not an extreme deletionist. I believe that notability is the only way possible to stem some of the systemic problems with the encyclopedia such as the insane amount of Pokemon coverage. It hasn't been effective on that issue in particular, but it may be one day. It is useful in making sure that every person, Church, fraternity chapter, and garage band isn't covered.

Though you did not mention it in the message to me, my concern that prompted the cleanup template is that there is a lot of general Gitmo/detainee text that is included in the articles on the individuals that should be in other articles linked to the biographies. Once this information is removed, I'm not convinced that there is really much of anything to discuss in individual biographies. I don't think that these articles would be likely to satisfy WP:BIO. It seems to me that your objective would be best served by an article that covers all the detainees with redirects when the individual names are searched. I don't think anyone can argue that there should be coverage on the subject matter -- it's simply the form that I question in this case. The substance should be somewhere. You mentioned POV, and I think it is true that these articles in their present form could be considered POV forks. Erechtheus 17:04, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I am going to respond here, so our discussion is in one place. I have indented your text, and transplanted my note on your page here.

At the risk of repeating myself, WP:BIO is not an official policy. WP:VER, WP:NPOV and WP:NOR are the official policies from which WP:BIO draws whatever legitimacy it has. I believe these two articles, and all the rest of the articles related to Guantanamo, strictly conform with those three policies.

At the risk of repeating myself, my experience with notability is that this is far, far too subjective a criteria to be useful. The judgement that something is not notable is a secondary judgement, that depends on a person's judgement of the importance of the overall topic. I am not a regular patroller of {afd}. But when an article that I started, or that I was a big contributor to, gets nominated for deletion, I take a look at the other articles that have been nominated for deletion. I am afraid I find other contributors who experiencing the same kind of brutal introduction to the procedure I went through, with rude, bullying regulars, who use opaque language, which they won't explain or even discuss. And some of those regulars demonstrate appalling bigotry. I remember several {afd}s where a fan of astronomy was trying to defend some stubs he had created about some stars he felt merited mention in the wikipedia. Some of those arguing to delete these files not only felt entitled to make heavy use of mockery, but they seemed to be saying that they would only accept articles about the stars they had heard about That is the worst example. It seemed so narrow-minded and bigoted. Some of the regular patrollers felt entitled to argue in favor of the deletion of any article that they weren't personally interested in.

I am not aware of the Pokemon problem you mentioned, or any other topics whose coverage is growing out of control. Is there an FAQ on these systemic problems?

You call yourself a deletionist. Forgive me, but I don't see Pokemon coverage as one of the biggest weaknesses of the wikipedia. My experience, once I started writing on controversial topics, has been its lack of obvious fora to discuss important meta-issues, like whether the wikipedia should follow a "deletionist" direction, or otherwise. In practice, in my experience, this is battled out in the trenches, such as {afd}. I found that when articles I started, or was a big contributor to, were suddenly nominated for deletion, most of those who voted weren't judging the article on its merits, but on how it filtered through their chosen design philosophy -- and they weren't interested in discussing their philosophy, or having their misconceptions corrected.

I will await you filling me in on the nature of this pokemon problem. If the nature of the problem is merely that immature contributors are creating low, or essentially zero quality articles on pokemon characters, rules, storylines, I question whether making notability an official policy is the solution. If the problem is that the articles are of low quality, then that is the issue that should be addressed. Just as I dispute what some contributors have told me -- that the entire topic of Guantanamo is "inherently anti-American" and "inherently POV" I question whether the topic of pokemon is inherently low-quality. With enough work to conform to WP:VER, WP:NOR and WP:NPOV I am sure a body of articles on Pokemon could be created. Maybe it is easier to use "notability" as a yard-stick. But it is terribly subjective yard-stick. And if we were to give it official status it would further empower those narrow-minded regular patrollers who are prepared to delete any topic they don't already know about, or which conflicts with their prejudices and misconceptions.

So, let me thank you for replying, unlike those other guys.

When there is no discussion between those with different philosophies, or those discussions occur informally, on personal talk pages, rather than in more widely read fora, the competing weaknesses and strengths of the competing philosophers never get properly talked out.

You aren't the first person to suggest that the articles should be merged into one huge omnibus article. In my opinion this is unworkable:

1. I find myself very frustrated by those who consider themselves "mergists". One of the real strengths of a branching hypertext system, like the wikipedia, is its potential to empower readers. Paper documents are inherently linear -- the reader starts at the beginning, and reads to the end. The order in which ideas are encountered is largely in the hands of the author, not the reader. Excessive merging strips that empowerment from the reader, and hands it back to the author.
2. There is an underlying weakness in merging and redirecting. While merging has its place it seems to me that those who keep suggesting it to me are oblivious to its weakness.
   • When you take a small, focussed article, and merge it into a larger article to which you think it is related, you can be doing a grave disservice to your eventual reader.
     • People propose merges that are guaranteed to mystify readers. "How the hell did I end up here? This wikipedia sure sucks." Let me offer an example. I started an article on the famous aphorism, "There's a sucker born every minute". About six months later someone nominated the article for deletion. Many, many people kept repeating the proposal that it be merged and redirected to P.T. Barnum, because they knew he coined the phrase. The phrase is frequently attributed to Barnum, but he almost certainly didn't coin it, or use it. One of the main reasons to have an article explaining the background of this phrase is for those who are not native speakers of English, who won't know the context, and won't know the connection between Barnum and the phrase. Google told me that half the references to the phrase didn't mention Barnum at all. Our ESL reader clicks on a link to TASBEM, and ends up at the page of a 19th century circus guy. WTF? Maybe they think to search for the phrase. Well, that is a big hit to the wikipedia's useability. And there is no guarantee they will find anything. Someone may decided to cut the section that addresses the phrase. If the person who does the merge uses links like [[P.T. Barnum#There's a sucker born every minute]] they open up another weakness. Someone can innocently break that link by changing the spelling of the subhead.
3. Both mergists, and you deletionists, if I can allow myself to guess at the meaning of those terms, because I have never seen anyone attempt to spell them out, at heart, want to wrestle control from the reader, and force them to follow their paths through the universe of human knowledge. Well, why should the rest of us agree to be limited by the paths through human knowledge that make sense to you?
4. In the specific instance of the Guantanamo detainees, that merged omnibus article would be dozens or hundreds of pages long. A maintenance nightmare, and a nightmare to the reader who wants to learn the allegations against a specific detainee, like Fadil Hintif.
5. In this specific instance the omnibus article would be multiple times too large for older browswers to handle.
6. I direct your attention to Casio F91W. I haven't added Hintif to the table on that page yet. If we were to follow the proposal of merging and redirecting all the Guantanamo articles to one huge omnibus the reader who went through those links, one at a time would find himself or herself constantly trying to load the same huge, unreadable file, over and over again. Casio F91W is just one of the articles that links to, and, in turn, is linked to, by numerous individual Guantanamo articles. There is al Farouq training camp, Khalden training camp, and articles about a dozen other training camps Template:TrainingCamp. I started an article about the Jelazee Refugee Camp. I started charities accused of ties to terrorism. I was planning to start articles about every training camp, every refugee camp, every charity, that has lead to any of the Guantanamo detainees being held in extrajudicial custody, I've started a couple of dozen articles about significant Afghan leaders who were mentioned in the Guantanamo trainscripts. All of this work would be much more difficult for me, and much less useful for readers, if we decided to put your proposal into action.
7. Many of the Guantanamo detainees are held, in part, because their name, or "known alias", was found on some kind of list. After reading over half of the transcripts my personal feeling is that the intelligence analysts at Guantanamo have done an absolutely appallingly incompetent job. One of the sources I have used when writing about the Guantanamo detainees is cageprisoners.com. There are detainees whose continued justification is justified because their name was found on an internet website which has the avowed purpose of trying to put pressure on foreign governments to put pressure on the USA to shut down Guantanamo. I encouraged you to go and read Fouad Al Rabia's transcript. Al Rabia is an intelligent, westernized guy. I liked his response to the allegation that his name was found on the computers of captured al Qaeda members. He pointed out that other detainees, who were captured after he was, told him his capture had been covered in Saudi press. The allegation that his name was found on a computer belonging to a member of al Qaeda meant only that the al Qaeda member had done a google search on Guantanamo, and had downloaded some of the articles published in the mainstream press. He called into question whether the presence of his name on a computer belonging to a suspected al Qaeda member.
8. Maybe you are thinking that surely the intelligence analysts wouldn't be such boneheads as to see an article in the mainstream press, about someone detained in Guantanamo, confirmed that detainee's guilt -- even if a copy of that article was found on an al Qaeda suspect's hard drive. Well, look at how many guys they hold, in part, because they were captured wearing a casio watch.
9. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had "a list of 324 Arabic names" on his computer. About half a dozen of the allegations against Guantanamo detainees specifically mention this list of KSM's "324 Arabic names". Other detainees have more ambiguous allegations. Their name, or alias, was found on a computer of a "senior al Qaida lieutenant". I'd like to form a better judgement as to the credibility of these allegations.
10. Abdullah Kamel Al Kandari, a Kuwaiti who was one of those detained, in part, for being caught wearing a Casio prayer watch that American intelligence analysts incorrectly identified as a Casio F91W, had just two other allegations against him. One was that his name or one of his known aliases was found on a list. Well, the guy said he was on the national volleyball team. I don't find it unreasonable to imagine even a possibly fanatical suspected al Qaeda member could be a sports fan, and might have the name of his favorite sports hero on his computer. Personally I found it pretty shocking that the American intelligence analysts couldn't manage to spell his name consistently. If you are going to hold a guy because you claim his name matches that on a list, I think you have a responsibility to make sure you spell his name right.
11. Or consider Faruq Ali Ahmed. One of the allegations against him was that another unnamed detainee told his interrogators he had once heard an al Qaeda or Talibn member utter the name "Faruq" over the radio. As a mainstream newspaper article commented, Faruq is a very common name in the Arabic world. It didn't point out that Farouq is the name of one of al Qaeda's most important training camps.

Cheers! -- Geo Swan 23:36, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

P.S. For the sake of completeness, let me return to the topic of the astronomy articles that bullies were trying to delete. I left a message on the talk page of the guy fighting to keep them that I would come and help him or her in future discussion for any of the 2,000 stars that are visible to the naked eye. Ancient people named each one. I told them I would also return to voice my support for every astronomical object that was the lead object of its class, or was cited as one of the examples of its class, or an anomalous outlier. Plus, I was willing to return to voice my support for every real astronomical object that played a role in a science fiction story. -- Geo Swan 23:36, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

The legitimacy of the notability guidelines comes from the consensus they represent. It's certainly possible to make arguments that will change that consensus over time. I'm not suggesting that there should be a gigantic article -- I'm suggesting that the present format isn't acceptable because it repeats large amounts of information that is not specific to the subject. That information should be in an article on that subject matter. That might mean it is a part of a larger article, or it might mean that it is a separate article that is summarized and linked to in an article. Take a look at the featured articles on larger subjects to see how they are treated, and try to mirror that format. You're right that this is not paper and that the difference in format demands different treatment of the material. If we're writing an article on a king of England, we don't have to describe England in the article -- we can link to a document that describes England. Those who need to read that information have it at hand. Those who do not need it don't have to click. The final point I will make is that it's extremely difficult to respond to what you wrote above due to the sheer length of your response. Try to limit the points made to the most necessary ones when you attempt to engage people in discussion. I believe that will improve your success rate. Erechtheus 20:52, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

My replies

Huh, first of all, I'm not quite sure this is the right place for my response, so please "assume good faith". I commented on the annotations You made to my edits to Khalid El-Masri. Furthermore, You're right when asking to comment on the changes I make — I'll try better in the future.

Greetings, Ingo Pruefer 00:21, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Sergeant Heather Cerveny.jpg

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FYI

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mustafa Shalabi - CrazyRussian talk/email 05:21, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Mustafa Shalabi

looks great! Yes, I am an administrator once again. - CrazyRussian talk/email 14:49, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Executive Order 12392

I added the reason on the talk page; thanks for that bit of advice! SunStar Net 22:11, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Irfan Khan

Howdy! He was described as "a Unani", and the unani article said the word meant Greek. I wasn't sure whether it meant he was Greek or that he practiced the type of medicine described in the unani article, so I took it at face value. By all means change it back if you are more sure than I am. Cheers, Pegship 04:01, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Majid Khan (Guantanamo detainee)

Wasn't sure if you saw the update on Majid Khan or not, the gas station attendant from Baltimore. CNN article

As I summarized to the IRC channel I was on at the time...

• [18:29] <Sherurcij> Let's play a game
• [18:30] <Sherurcij> It's called, "On a scale of 1-10, how transparent is this?"
• [18:30] <Sherurcij> http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/11/04/terrorism.detainees.ap/index.html
• [18:30] <Sherurcij> "A suspected terrorist who spent years in a secret CIA prison should not be allowed to speak to a civilian attorney, the Bush administration argues, because he could reveal the agency's closely guarded interrogation techniques."
• [18:30] <Sherurcij> "closely guarded interrogation techniques"

Anyways, thought you might be interested in the update - I tagged a small sentence into his article about it. Sherurcij ^{(Speaker for the Dead)} 23:40, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Mystery

Your map was deleted by user:Dmcdevit 10 july 2006, because it was also at the commons. I gave the image a category, so it shows as being restored, but is is still only at commons. Electionworld Talk? 22:13, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

AWB fixes

AWB is doing this as an automatic fix. Can you give me an example so I can get AWB fixed. Also, I would really, really like to understand why you want wikilink to the title of the article in a ref in an article. Can you please explain that? Thanks --- Skapur 04:35, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I am still waiting for your response --- Skapur 13:41, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

There are about 400 articles about individual Guantanamo detainees.

There were about 100 articles prior to the release of the transcripts from detainees Combatant Status Review Tribunals and Administrative Review Board hearings. The Bush administration had fought to keep this information secret. But it exhausted all legal avenues to resist complying with Freedom of Information Act requests. Most of the transcripts were made public on March 3 2006.

The Bush administration’s compliance with Jed Rakoff’s court order wasn’t actually useful. Frankly, I don’t understand why Rumsfeld wasn’t charged with contempt of court. The court order directed the DoD to release the identities of the detainees by 6pm, March 3rd. The DoD delivered a CDROM with a bunch of large .pdf files on it, to the Associated Press on the evening of Friday March 3rd. They missed the deadline by about half an hour. If I had worked for the AP I would have had someone there to make an immediate copy of whatever the DoD had delivered. Because later on the evening of March 3rd the DoD came back, took back the original disk they had delivered, and replaced it with another one with a smaller selection of files. Apparently, a last minute internal debate had occurred. The 5,000 pages of transcripts weren’t really that useful, because they lacked a key - didn’t really comply with the court order.

The 5,000 pages of transcripts didn’t specify the names of the detainees, except by accident. Every page of the transcripts was stamped with a Guantanamo detainee ID number. Five to ten percent of the detainees names were spelled out in the body of their transcripts. Approximately 1,000 newspaper articles were published about the individual transcripts, focussing on those whose names were spelled out.

On April 20 2006 the DoD released some revised versions of some of the pdf files, together with an index, a file that listed the Guantanamo detainee ID number, name, nationality of every detainee whose classification as an “enemy combatant” was reconsidered by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal.

The release of this list made it possible to look up the transcript of individual detainees. But doing so required doing a visual scan of all 6,000 pages of transcripts. The .pdf were the kind the Bush administration likes to release - the kind where the text is not machine readable. That visual scan takes hours.

I decided to do the work of correlating each transcripts with the name of the detainee from that official list. This took a substantial amount of time.

Once I had done this I started reading through the transcripts, and expanding the existing articles about Guantanamo detainees, and creating new articles about detainees who hadn’t already had articles.

I don’t know how many I updated, before I decided to write some Python scripts on my computer to generate stubs, on my computer, to use as a guide when expanding the existing articles, or to expand, when creating a new article. And I started working doing that.

During the summer I decided to upload all the remaining stubs. At the risk of blowing my own horn, I decided that the stubs themselves, were an unique resource, in and of themselves, because they correlated the detainees name with the position within the 6000 pages of transcripts of that particular detainee’s transcripts. I don’t believe there is any other public place on the internet where an interested reader can look up the location of the transcripts. I figured it would take me until christmas to expand the stubs I created, and that it was better to put my stubs up, so interested readers could start looking up transcripts right away.

Half a dozen of those stubs have been nominated for deletion by people who argued the articles weren’t notable enough. Thank goodness I am almost done expanding them. I have just a couple of dozen left.

I thought expanding the stubs was just the first step in making these articles useful. To be really useful they should be cross-linked. See:

• Al Farouq training camp#References
• Casio F91W#References
• Uyghur detainees in Guantanamo#References

You might think just putting a wikilink to the article about the individual was sufficient, when the articles themselves were sourced. But, when I did so I kept having people tag those passages as being unsourced.

What is most convenient is to cut the reference to the place within the 6000 pages of transcripts where the individual's transcript was found, and paste it in the new article. When doing so, it is most convenient if the contributor can count on the wikilink to the article being in the reference. It should be there, in the other articles it gets pasted into.

So, is it a breach of policy to have a wikilink, in a reference, to the article itself. When I have discussed this with other users of the robot editors it was suggested that it might have been. I am not satisfied that it is a breach of policy.

I don't need to be reminded of WP:OWN. That I have done a lot of work on these articles doesn't entitle me to insist that those articles be written "my way". But I think I can advance a strong argument for not fixing wikilinks within <ref></ref> pairs.

You said that the "correction" of wikilinks was automatic. One of the first people to start to use robot editing that "corrected" wikilinks unlinked wikilinks to Combatant Status Review Tribunal and Administrative Review Board. Othere contributors who have swept over those articles with robot editing have left the wikilinks between <ref></ref> pairs alone. I guess that means leaving them alone is possible. I hope you will forgive some skepticism that doing so is automatic you couldn't comply with my request to quit doing so?

That article about the alumni of the al Farouq training camp is not complete. I have come across a bunch more detainees who American intelligence analysts assert attended al Farouq. There are over a dozen lesser camps. The second most popular camp, so far, is the Khalden training camp. It needs work too. Some of the transcripts contained discussion of this camp that asserted that it was not an al Qaeda camp, and that al Qaeda was pressuring the Taliban to have the camps that competed with theirs, like the Khalden camp, shut down.

Many of the detainees were held, in part, because they had some affiliation with an Islamica missionary group with a wikipedia article entitled Tablighi Jamaat. American intelligence analysts can't spell the name of this group consistently, but all of its spelling is something like Jama'at al Tabligh. If you look at the Talk:Tablighi Jamaat you can see that many of the other wikipedia contributors who contribute to this article have been quite resistant to that article having a section devoted to the claims of American intelligence analysts that the group is tied to terrorism. Every month or so someone deletes that section. The other contributors have argued that the American claims shouldn't be repeated because they are unsubstantiated and lack creibility, because it is well known that one of the group's principles is that it should be apolitical.

When I first made my contribution to that article I wasn't aware of how many detainees were detained because they were alleged to have been associated with this group.

I suggested, on Talk:Tablighi Jamaat that the main article have only a brief discussion on the claims of American intelligence analysts that the missionary group was tied to al Qaeda, but that it have a link to a new article that spelled out the allegations, and the rebuttals, in more detail. The dossier prepared for Murat Kurnaz's Administrative Review Board was over 150 pages long. Most of it was classified. But the unclassified portion was included in the documents the DoD released. It contained three letters from American professors of religion, who were experts on the Tablighi Jamaat, who spelled out, in detail, the group's history of steering clear of involvement in politics.

I have also come across, in the transcripts, some clues to why association with the Tablighi Jamaat made the checklist of items that triggered suspicion. There was a guy whose transcript I read through, and summarized, earlier this week. He said he had traveled to Pakistan, months prior to September 11, 2001, for medical treatment. He said he sought out treatment in Pakistan, rather than stay in Saudi Arabia, because it was so much cheaper in Pakistan. However, not long after the attacks on 9-11 he heard that Pakistani security officers were rounding up every Arab they could lay their hands on. FWIW, what he heard is completely correct, Pakistani security officials were rounding up every Arab they could lay their hands on. Mushareff was under pressure from the USA to show it was making serious efforts to help track down al Qaeda. So, "round up the usual suspects", made sense for him. And it made sense for Pakistani security officials, especially corrupt ones, because the Anericans were paying a bounty for every suspect handed over to them. The most serious allegation against this detainee was that he was captured in a guest house -- basically what we would call a bed and breakfast, where some al Qaeda suspects had also been found. He told the Americans -- I didn't know any of my fellow guests. I had only been there a couple of days. When I heard that all Arabs were being rounded up I contacted this charity that helped missionaries, travelers, and pilgrims, and asked them to recommend a safe place to stay. He didn't realize that admitting an association with Tablighi Jamaat would be regarded as a black mark against him by American intelligence analysts.

This Tablighi Jamaat missionary organization is unlike Christian missionary organizations. IIUC, it only seeks to work within the greater community of moslems. IIUC, unlike Christian missionary organizations, and unlike fundamentalist moslems, like Osama bin Laden, it doesn't seek to convert people who aren't already members of its religion.

This Tablighi Jamaat organization is, from what I have read, quite large. IIUC, something like 3 million people have traveled on a Tablighi Jamaat missionary trip. Or perhaps the place I read that said that something 3 million people per year travel on a Tablighi Jamaat missionary trip.

What do they do on these trips? They travel, in groups of about a dozen, and go from mosque, to mosque, and talk about Islam. They talk about how to be a good muslim. They talk about how to pray. I gather that part of the value of this is that pilgrims might learn something, that they can go home and add to the community at his home mosque. And, when they are traveling in a backward area, where literacy is low, their more educated practice of Islam can rub off on the locals. And finally, it reinforces muslims' feeling that they are part of a world-wide community.

I think the wikipedia needs a good, comprehensive, NPOV, article about the American claims that the group was tied to terrorism. This article needs to report only the facts, not contributors conclusions or opinions about the group. Fair quotation from those three letters from the American professors of relition I mentioned above would fit well. As would quotation from the few references within the many places where the transcripts connect a Guantanamo detainee to terrorism through an association with Tabligh.

I mentioned Murat Kurnaz. Another important detainee who was held because of an association with Tabligh Jamaat was one of those three guys the Bush administration claims committed suicide on June 10 2006 -- Mani Shaman Turki al-Habardi Al-Utaybi.

Al-Utaybi did not choose to participate in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal or his Administrative Review Board. So, we don't have access to any of the allegations he would have faced, if he had attended. But, following the reports of his suicide, the Bush administration justified his detention because he was associated with an Islamic missionary group that had, in turn, been linked to terrorism. That is the only justification the Bush administration has offered for his detention.

My personal opinion is that participation in a group that has had 3 million participants, is not sufficient justification for holding someone in extrajudicial detention, without laying charges against them, or offereing them a fair chance to challenge the evidence against them. Even if every single member of al Qaeda had used participation on a Tablighi Jamaat pilgrimage as a cover to mask travel to plan or conduct a terrorist project that would leave more than 99.9% of the people who participated in Tablighi Jamaat as completely innocent of any ties to terrorism.

Let me tell you something you probably don't know about those reported suicides. Some weeks after the suicides the DoD sent the bodies back to their families. The families said that they were going to have a team of independent pathologists conduct new autopsies. Initial examination of the bodies when they arrived home, determined that their were organs missing. This upset the families, and triggered accusations that the men didn't really commit suicide, that the USA was covering up their murders.

A widely published French Forensic pathologist -- someone I gathered had a world-wide reputation as one of the leading guys in the field, had agreed to chair the blue-ribbon panel that was going to perform the third-party forensic examination of the bodies. He didn't please some members of the families, because he said that the removal of some organs, like the liver, spleen, etc, was routine. I gather that this was because they were hard to embalm, and taking pictures and samples that future pathologists could use was sufficient.

But he said something else that was not widely reported. He said he was concerned about other evidence the DoD had withheld. He said before his team could offer an informed opinion on the cause of death they needed to have the sheets that the DoD claimed the men used to hang themselves, and gag themselves, as they slowly suffocated. And, most importantly the DoD had dissected the men's throats, and had held this evidence, and not returned the men's throats to the families, when they returned their bodies. The French pathologist said the return of the men's throats was crucial for his team to offer their informed opinion.

I have a google news search alert on the name of that French pathologist. I haven't read anything further on whether he was able to retain the confidence of the families, or was able to get the DoD to return the men's throats.

Al-Utaybi was one of the most committed hunger strikers. According to the DoD he had been on a hunger strike from early August 2005 to late May 2006 -- over nine months. You may not know that in the fall of 2005 there were reports, which the DoD denied, that when the DoD started force-feeding the captives, they did so in a brutal, inhumane and unsanitary manner.

• There were reports that the medical staff used unnecessarily wide feeding tubes, which were unnecessrily painful.
• There were reports that ordinary guards, non-medical personnel, were inserting and removing feeding tubes, that they were putting their boots on the detainees chests, and simply yanking the tubes out by main strength, and then reusing these tubes, which were covered in blood and vomit, by inserting them in the nose of the next detainee, without even wiping them off.

You may not know that in early January the DoD started using a "restraint chair".

• The detainee to be fed were strapped into the chair, with their head, arms and legs strapped immobile,
• Detainees said that they were filled up to the point that their stomach's became painfully distended.
• Detainees reported that they suspected that malicious staff adulterated their food with laxatives and purgatives.
• The DoD acknowledges that they would leave the detainees strapped in the chair for an extended period of time after they were topped up. They justified this by saying they had to strap them in long enough that they wouldn't be able to easily induce vomiting before they absorbed the nutrients from the formula.
• The DoD has acknowledged that they left detainees strapped in the chairs for longer than the manufacturer of the chair recommended as safe.
• The detainees reported that they were left in the chairs so long that their routinely were forces to soil themselves through voiding their bladders and bowels.

The use of the restraint chair almost broke the hunger strike. Then number of hunger strikers dropped from more than eighty to about half a dozen. Al-Utaybi must have been one of the holdouts.

If you read both the transcripts of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals and the Administrative Review Board hearings you can see that, although the Boards had even less authority than the Tribunals they were recorded in a more professional manner, and the allegations against the detainees were more forthcoming and more professionally presented. For me, at least, this gives the appearance of injustice. Allegations that the detainees might easily have refuted, if they had been unclassified, when the unclassified allegations were presented to them during their Tribunals were declassified a year later, when refuting them before their Board could not cause them to be reclassified as civilians, as they deserved.

Among the “factors favoring continued detention”, routinely presented to Administrative Review Boards, was that the detainees had not been compliant with the camp’s rules. IMO, for detainees who were not terrorists, who were entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, either because they were really innocent civilians, or were entitled to POW status, punishing them for not complying with the camp rules is extremely unjust. If they were not terrorists, if they were entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, then their detention was, at best, of questionable legality, and, at worst, completely illegal. Why doesn’t that mean that their resistance to the camp rules was not a crime, but completely legitimate civil disobedience?

You probably heard that Al-Utaybi was one of the 120 or so detainees whose Administrative Review Board had recommended could safely be transferred, or released, because whatever threat he posed to US national security didn’t justify his continued detention. This decision would have been confirmed, by the Secretary of the Navy, over a year earlier. You probably heard that he died without learning that his transfer or release was imminent?

What you probably didn’t hear was that the lawyers who had been working with his family to file a writ of habeas corpus on his behalf had not been allowed to communicate with him. The DoD had been returning all the mail that his lawyers sent him, saying they did not have any detainee with that name.

Maybe that doesn’t sound sinister to you. But, reflect on this. When these three men were reported to have killed themselves I went to my list of detainee’s names, to see whether I had updated their article from stub status. I couldn’t find Al-Utaybi. The name the DoD used when they confirmed his death wasn’t one of the names on the two official lists of names.

How can that have happened? His death was reported only 27 days after the second official list of detainee names was released.

One possibility I am afraid analysts should not dismiss was that the camp authorities were routinely changing the spelling and transliteration of the detainee’s names in order to hide them from the lawyers who were trying to file their writs of habeas corpus. If you take a close look at the two official lists, released 25 days apart, on April 20 2006, and May 15 2006, you will see that approximately 20% of the names are spelled inconsistently.

• Some of the inconsistent spellings are obviously simple typos “ahmend” instead of “ahmed”.
• Some of the inconsistent spellings are due to homophones. The transliterations of “Mohammed”, “Mohammad”, “Muhammed” etc, all map to the same Arabic name. Less obviously, one of the detainees was from a European country, where “Hassan” was transliterated as “Ahcene”. It took me about six months to recognize these two as homophones.
• Some of the inconsistent spellings seem to be a crude attempt by the intelligence analysts with the responsibility of serving as the librarians for the different suspect’s case files to deal with guys who had the same name. There are a couple of dozen of these, so we get two guys named some variation of “Abdul Ghaffar” (or was it three guys?); we get three guys named some variation of “Acktiar Mohammed.
• Some of the inconsistent spellings are, less obviously, the same guy, only with extra phrases added, or subtacted, so one name was a proper subset of a longer name.
• Some of the inconsistent spellings are, even less obviously, the same guy, because they shared an intersection subset, but each name had unique portions.
• Then there were some names which were unrecognizeable as the specifying the same guy.
• One March 3rd, the DoD released three files that didn't contain transcripts. These three files contained the "factors" memos prepared for 121 of the detainee's Administrative Review Board hearings. Instead of having no names, but bearing an ID number, these memos had a transliteration of the detainees name, but the ID number was redacted. When I sat down to cross link these memos to the detainee's ID numbers, I found over a third of the names were spelled incosistently with the names on the official lists. I couldn't match four of the names with any of the names on the "full official list" at all.

Another possibility that I am afraid we cannot dismiss was that the reports that Al-Utaybi committed suicide, by hanging himself, are untrue. Trying to refuse food, as a matter of principle, when one finds oneself imprisoned, with no fair chance to learn why one is imprisoned, and with the prospect that one will be imprisoned, under brutal conditions, for the rest of one's life, could be regarded as a form of suicide. But, IMO, the Bush administration should provide the evidence needed to disprove that he died from a throat hemorrage, because the camp staff had been brutal in the way they inserted feeding tubes 1000 times. Do I believe that the senior members of the Bush administration would hush up something like this? I do not think the possibility should be dismissed. Do I believe that the senior camp staff could be counted on to be complicit in a coverup? Unfortunately the senior camp staff seems to be leavened with dishonorable bullies. I regard Geoffrey Miller as a dishonorable bully. You know he committed perjury when he testified before Congress? You know he pled the fifth amendment after his perjury was exposed? You know that Congress would not allow him to resign his commission until he testified before them? I regard Harry Harris, his most recent replacement as another dishonorable bully. He was the one who called the reported suicides "Acts of asymetrical warfare". And, he later asserted "There are no innocent men in Guantanamo" -- something I regard as patently untrue to any fair-minded people who read a random selection of the detainees transcripts.

Of course none of the personal conclusions I shared with you belong in any of my contributions to wikipedia articles. I think I do a good job of keeping conclusions like those I shared out of my contributions to the articles.

But this is why I want the wikipedia's coverage of these issues to be comprehensive.

If the only justification that the Bush administration can offer for confining Al-Utaybi under conditions so brutal he would rather die than endure them, is that he was associated with the Tablighi Jamaat, then the wikipedia will serve its readers best if its coverage of justifying suspicions that individuals were associated with terrorism because they were associated with Tablighi.

The same holds true for justifying the continued detention of a suspect because he wore a Casio watch. Were there any hints that the intelligence analysts could justify basing suspicion on the ownership of any extremely common watch? One of the transcripts contains the claim that graduates of one of the al Qaeda training camps were given one of those Casio F91W watches when they graduated from a course were they were taught how to make timebombs. And Ahmed Ressam, the "millenium bomber" had bought two new Casio F91W shortly before he started his trip to plant timebombs at LAX. Maybe bomb experts detected the remains of Casio F91W in bombs that had exploded? But, surely, it would be more effective to put possession of a soldering iron and a multi-meter on the suspicion checklist instead of possession of the digital watch. I am sure that whereever one was, anywhere in the world, that it would be easier to go to a dollar store, and buy a cheap digital watch, then it would be to hunt down a place to find a soldering iron and a multi-meter. Your bombmaker could use any cheap digital watch that has a daily alarm, or a countdown timer, or both, to form the timer portion of a timebomb. But they would need a soldering iron to connect it to an amplifying circuit that triggered the detonation. And, I think they would want to test the circuit with a multi-meter. So, it would be more effective to inspect baggage for soldering irons and multi-meters, rather than for very common digital watches.

Another pair of justifications for continuing to detain the captives the USA took in its war on terror has been that they were alleged to have stayed in guesthouses, or safehouses, in Pakistan or Afghanistan. Hundreds of the captive's detention is justified, in part, because they stayed in a safehouse, or guesthouse. Some of the intelligence analysts who wrote the justifications for the captive's detention conflated the terms "safe house" and "guest house", as if they were the same thing. IMO we are less safe if intelligence analysts treat guesthouses, which might be completely innocuous, with real safehouses, which I would regard as legitimate triggers for suspicion. From my reading I gather that the term guest house" could be applied to something as innocuous as what we call a "bed and breakfast" here.

Every time I read an allegation against a Guantanamo captive that alleged that they stayed in a "safe house" in Afghanistan, prior to 9-11, my skepticism alarm bells went off. When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, their dorms didn't have to hide from the authorities. They were the authorities. I think it is highly deceptive to describe an official Taliban dorm as a "safe house". It is well-known that the ISI, the Pakistani security service, was a big supporter of the Taliban. Some say that the Taliban would never have taken power if they hadn't been sponsored by the ISI. If this was true, then I question whether it was useful to describe transit houses for Taliban recruits, in Pakistan, pre-9-11 as "safe houses".

There is a small "university" in Faisalabad, Salafi University, that seems to have fallen under suspicion. I put "university" in quotes because this organization seems to have very lax academic standards. The Pakistani city of Faisalabad is named after the Saudi Faisal dynasty. And Salafi is a kind of fundamentalist Islam. From the transcripts some of the students at this organization arrived with lots of piety, but were almost illiterate -- not what we would find at most western seminaries I think. And, if I read what the detainees reported in the transcripts correctly, Saudi sponsors paid for the rent of all the dorms. It sounds like the dorms contained not just pious students, but both pious guys who wanted to be students next term, or were still too illiterate for the current low academic standards, or mere hangers-on who were willing to give the occasional surface appearance of piety, or reform.

As I mentioned above the Pakistanis are under pressure to round up the usual suspects, to give the appearance that they are cooperating in the war on terror. The dorms at Salafi University have been raided, maybe multiple times. It is unclear from the transcripts. But, on at least one occasion they raided the dorm for foreign students, and held everyone they found there. One of the captives taken there had the allegation against him that he was living in a safe house with muslims from Russia, and a list of about half a dozen other countries. He challenged the description that he lived in an international safe house. He lived in the foreign students dormitory. Presumably, if counter-intelligence authorities thought that the institution's administration, or key members of it, were, tied to terrorism, they should have either arrested the leaders, arrested the leaders and shut the institution down, or covertly tailed and wiretapped the whole shooting match (it only had 200 students), to see if that lead them to anyone more important. But simply occasionally rounding up all the students who weren't Pakistanis seems fishy to me.

One of those raids was on September 11 2002. One year following the attacks of 9-11. That raid was just one of a concerted crackdown, held that day.

One of the alarms filtering from the US counter-terrorism establishment was that we should raise our anxiety level, and be more suspicious, on the anniversaries of key events, because terrorists might schedule attacks on dates with symbolic significance. It seems kind of adolescent to me. And unprofessional. So, why would US counter-terrorism officials cooperate in secret raids on a symbolic anniversary, like September 11? It is yet another clue to me that the US counter-terrorism efforts are marred by emotionalism and unprofessionalism.

I have mentioned a bunch of Guantanamo related topics where it would be useful to paste in the references from the articles about the detainees, where it would be useful if contributors didn't have to check to see whether a robot had removed the wikilinks to the article that discussed and summarized the contents of the transcript being linked to.

• Detainees alleged to have owned a Casio F91W, or some other Casio watch.
• Detainees alleged to be ties to Tablighi Jamaat.
• Detainees alleged to have trained at the al Farouq training camp, or the Khalden training camp. Well approximately two dozen training camps are mentioned in the transcripts. I'd like to cover them all.
• Detainees who have been reported to have attempted suicide. The Bush administration has been highly deceitful in its reporting of suicide attempts. The DoD tried to justify denying Juma al Dossari the right to meet with his lawyer because Al Dossary made a suicide attempt when he asked his lawyer to leave his cell so he could go to the bathroom. They claimed that visits from his lawyer triggered suicide attempts. They have acknowledged that he has made over a dozen suicide attempts. At that time they were only acknowledging thirty something suicide attempts, in total. And it became known that there was a mass suicide attempt that was large enough to fill the camp's 48 bed infirmary, so that the overflow was sent to base's Naval hospital.

Some other topics that, IMO, should have individual references to the individual transcripts include:

• Detainees alleged to have been affiliated with Hezb-I-Islami Gulbuddin. The allegations say that this group had long-standing ties with Osama bin Laden. They don't say that it was part of the Anti-Taliban resistance, when the Taliban was in power. They don't say that it was part of the all-party anti-Soviet resistance that the CIA backed from 1979 to the early 1990s.
  • Nazrat Khan's detention was justified, in part, because was alleged to have served in this group while it fought foreign invaders to his country. He acknowledged fighting foreign invaders -- during the Soviet invasion, prior to the debilitating stroke that confined him to a walker.
  • Another detainee, the only Christian held in Guantanamo, was a low-level Iranian drug dealer. He told his Tribunal he paid 5000 rupees for a card that said he was an refugee from Afghanistan. He wanted this card so he could cross the border on a drug-smuggling trip. He owed his dealer a lot of money. (He told his Tribunal half a million dollars -- evidence this guy was kind of a moron.) Afghan refugees in Iran had to carry some of ID, saying they were an Afghan refugees. Apparently the place, or the most common place, to get this card that served as a refugee card was the local office of the HIG office. But, when this guy was captured by the Northern Alliance, they said that his card, which he thought was a bogus refugee card, issued by HIG, was a membership card in HIG. I read a second transcript where a guy who was a real Afghan, who had been a refugee for a while in Iran, was held because he had an old ID card issued by the HIG, which the authorities said was an HIG membership card. I don't know whether the HIG had separate cards that said, "the HIG certifies that the bearer is an Afghan refugee", or "the HIG certifies that the bearer is a member of the HIG". It might not matter because, after decades of warfare, most Afghans can't read or write.
  • Some of the detainees are alleged to have been members of both HIG and the Taliban, during the period of time when the HIG was part of the anti-Taliban resistance. These conflicting claims should both be documented.
• An alarming number of the detainees report being officials of Hamid Karzai's government, who were denounced as terrorists by members of rival parties, or underground members of the Taliban. Unfortunately local American intelligence officials were alarmingly credulous.
• At least a dozen Guantanamo detainees were prisoners of the Taliban who passed almost directly from Taliban custody to American custody. The Taliban suspected them because they were foreigners in Afghanistan. And the USA suspected them because they were foreigners in Afghanistan. Some of these guys were accused of participating in terrorist activities when it should have been relatively easy to document that they were (or weren't) sitting safely in a Taliban prison.
• Some American intelligence officers conflate staying in a refugee camp with training at an al Qaeda military training camp.
• There are at least a dozen other charities that American intelligence analysts associate with terrorism that should be covered in more detail, so readers can come to an informed opinion as to the allegations' credibility, like the Revival of Islamic Heritage Society, and al Wafa..
• I created an article about the Union Beverage Company, a sponsor of the Shoah Foundation that intelligence analysts accuse of sponsoring Islamic terrorism. No, I am not making this up.

AWB response - In summary

Okay, I have gone on at length. The short version is that all this cross-referencing is made a lot more difficult if users of automated editing robots aren't more careful, and futz around with the wikilinks between <ref></ref> pairs. So, I'd like to repeat my request that you do your best to refrain from allowing the editing robots to make those kind of "corrections". Thanks.

Cheers! -- Geo Swan 22:20, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Please read WP:OWN If you object to an editor cleaning up an article and removing self-referencing wikilinks, you are most certainly violating it. Unfortunately, I disagree on the need for a self referencing wikilink. Please modify your program to remove self referencing wikilinks in an article. --- Skapur 22:58, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

I am going to add two indents to your comment. On my talk page I like articles to follow the standard convention that replies should always be indented one more indentation thant the comment they are following up on. Of course, on your talk page you are free to follow non-standard conventions.

On your talk page you made the assertion:

"It is the article poster's responsibility to prove notability. I believe that being the unfortunate victim of circumstance does not make a person notable. If you object to an editor cleaning up an article and removing self-referencing wikilinks, you are most certainly violating."

How do you figure that? WP:BIO is quite clear. It is not a wikipedia policy. It is a guideline that some wikipedia contributors regard as useful in finding articles that violate the three real policies the guideline references: WP:VER, WP:NPOV, and WP:OR. I take those policies seriously. I think I do a good job of complying. I doubt whether anyone who posts a lot manages to comply 100% of the time. So I welcome when other civil wikipedia contributors give me a heads-up when they think I fall short of complying with those policies.

The first year I contributed to wikipedia most of my contributions were to non-controversial topics, like nautical history, which it looks like you are also interested in. I hardly ever got challenges on those topics. I didn't experience any heated challenges on those topics. My second year contributing to the wikipedia most of my work has been to controversial topics. And, at first, I got challenges, from contributors who thought I was writing from a biased POV. Some of those challenges were quite heated.

Quite a few of these challenges were from sincere contributors who were willing to engage in civil dialogue. In general I either reached a compromise with them, or I convinced them that their perception that my POV was biased was incorrect. I also found I got quite a few challenges from people who did my best to make a civil request for them to be specific about what they thought was biased were unwilling or unable give a serious reply. I feel free to discount vague challenges from people who can't or won't reply to a civil request to be more specific. My request to you to name a Guantanamo article that doesn't belong on the wikipedia is an example of that.

Anyhow, to return to notability, by engaging in dialogues with the people who were willing to be civil and serious about their concerns I started to figure out how to change how to write my contributions so they didn't trigger perceptions that they were POV, when they weren't NPOV. I can't remember the last time I got a challenge over my POV that was from someone willing to engage in a civil, serious dialog.

Unfortunately, the downside of this seems to be that I still get challenges to my contributions, but they are on notability, not POV. And it has lead me to the conclusion that notability is not a useful tool for evaluating whether articles, or contributions, on controversial topics belong on the wikipedia. It is too subjective a tool. It violates the policy of combatting hidden systematic bias.

Consider this part of your comment: "I believe that being the unfortunate victim of circumstance does not make a person notable."

This is not a "fact". This is a conclusion. Forgive me for being blunt, but this is a subjective value judgement based on your POV. Another POV is that the Guantanamo detainees were the victims of a conscious policy decision. If I thought that they were just unlucky there is no way I would devote anywhere near the amount of energy I have spent on this topic.

So, if two sincere people can have wildly differing interpretations as to whether an article on a controversial topic is "notable", then we have to fall back and evaluate whether the article complies with the three real policies -- WP:NPOV, WP:OR, WP:VER.

I worked hard to turn those raw .pdf files into resources that can meaningfully be consulted. I believe my Guantanamo contributions fully comply with WP:VER. Because of the quite large effort I put into correlating the names with the transcripts, the transcripts can be read and verified.

I shared some of my private conclusions with you above. But, I like to think I am disciplined enough to keep my own conclusions out of my article contributions. If a civil person finds a place where I fall short, I'll thank them. But I haven't had a civil serious challenge to my POV in a long time. So I think my contributions comply with WP:NPOV too.

Some of the private conclusions I shared with you, above, would violate WP:OR, if I put them in an article. But, just like with WP:NPOV, I think I have been disciplined enough to keep them out. I think I fully comply with WP:OR too.

And, FWIW, I still think I comply with WP:OWN.

I know many people are confused and think notability is a wikipedia policy. It isn't. I know there are some people who like to treat it like it is a real wikipedia policy, who know full well it is not a real wikipedia policy. If those people aren't challenged, they will succeed into steamrolling the rest of us into turning it into a real policy, by simple inertia. My personal feeling is that this would be damaging to the wikipedia.

In my experience one of the weaknesses of the wikipedia is that there is no obvious place for civil discussions for high level design decisions to be discussed. So there are battles, in the trenches. In my experience one of those trenches are the {afd} fora. Many of the regular patrollers of that fora don't seem to see anything wrong with casting a "vote" based solely on a reading the one or two sentence justification of the nominator. They don't seem willing to read all the comments, or to check back later. You get discussions where those who identify themselves with a label, like "mergists" or "deletionists" congratulate one another over their diligence in stamping out articles that don't comply with the vague criteria of their group. It can be like a lynch mob.

Note: I think I am giving you an honest, serious, civil reply. If you don't agree, I hope you will say so, explain what you think falls short of civility, and let me make a second try. FWIW, your stating of opinions, without accompanying them with explanations, gives an appearance of a slight civility deficit. Sorry.

I was serious about being willing to listen if you can name one or more Guantanamo articles that you think falls short of what belongs on the wikipedia.

And I was serious about being willing to consider your explanations, if you care to offer them, for the opinions you offered without explanation.

Cheers! -- Geo Swan 00:50, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the references that you cite in the articles that you expanded mostly refer to US DOD documents, hardly an unbiased source on such a controversial topic! I am sorry but your long polemics above make it clear that you are yourself not a NPOV editor but are trying to make the articles look NPOV by following the letter of the NPOV policy without the spirit of the policy. In the wierd world of wikipedia, the more a persons knows and is qualified in a topic, the worse the person is as a wikipedia editor because rather than relying on reliable sources (which in this case DOD is not), the person inevitibly injects their own biases in. The very phrase "extrajudicial detention" that begins almost every article is filled with POV! As an individual I agree that detaining people in GITMO is just plain wrong from a Human rights POV and stupid as US policy but as a wikipedia editor I do notice that the articles are simply all POV (if not in letter, certainly in spirit). I do not see the US POV anywhere in the articles nor the reason that the US gives for detaining them stated anywhere in a non-POV manner. Yet I see the phrase "extrajudicial detention" repeated in every article and the bare nature of the prisoners circumstances repeated in every article. --- Skapur 13:58, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

1. To be an editor whose contribution to articles are NPOV does not mean that one has to be without a POV in one's personal life. It merely means that one has to keep that POV from clouding one's contribution.
2. I dispute that describing the captive's detention as "extrajudicial detention" shows bias. It is merely being accurate.
   • Tell me, have the captives been sentenced in a court of law? No.
   • Tell me, have the captives been charged in a court of law? No.
   • Tell me, have the captives had a fair chance to challenge whatever evidence there might be against them in a court of law? No.
   • That is what -extrajudicial- means. It means outside of the authorization of a court of law. Calling it extrajudicial detention is not being biased. It is merely being accurate.
3. You say that I have not put the US POV anywhere in the articles? What aspect of the US POV do you think is missing?
   • Almost all the articles say: "Initially the Bush administration asserted that they could withhold all the protections of the Geneva Conventions to captives from the war on terror."
     • Do you think this statement is inaccurate?
     • Do you think this statement uses inflammatory language?
     • Do you think this statement has left out some important justification of the Bush detainee policy?
   • Feel free to suggest a rewording or expansion.
   • Can you tell me how the rest of this paragraph, or the next paragraph, that describes the history and authority of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals shows bias? Leaves out an important justification of the Bush detainee policy?

Let me propose a thought experiment to you. Let's suppose we lived in a world, and were contributors to the wikipedia in a world, where slavery, real slavery, continued to be practiced, openly, and widely, in a modern industrialized, otherwise democratic society.

Let me suggest that the human bondage industry would be like the Tobacco industry, with an army of PR flacks to defend the reputation of their industry, and another army of lawyers, told to sue anyone who besmirched the good name of the human bondage industry.

Those PR flacks would invent a new, friendly sounding phrase to describe being a slave. They might call them something like, "beneficiaries of guaranteed lifetime employment". And their lawyers might try to sue you if you called them anything else. Some of the anti-slavery types would probably want to call the bosses and owners something inflammatory, like "flesh-rippers".

So, what would wikipedia contributors try to do in that situation? Use the fuzzy phrases, like "beneficiaries of life-time employment", that the PR flacks argued was the only fair description? Be afraid that a candid description of the human bondage industry would offend the wikipedia contributors and wikipedia readers of the country that still practiced slavery? Or would we try to figure out how to describe the human bondage industry in a manner that was both accurate, and avoided inflammatory language?

If you can suggest specific improvements, to those passage shared within these articles, by all means go ahead and suggest them. Similarly, if there is any specific passages that only occur in a single article, that you feel is inaccurate, uses inflammatory language, or shows a bias, please don't hesitate to draw it to my attention.

Cheers! -- Geo Swan 16:25, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

response

The indentation was too much so I am starting a new heading. As I stated, you are following the letter of NPOV policy without the spirit of the NPOV policy. English is interesting that way. Stubborn and Resolute both describe the same thing but one is negative and one is positive. The same is true of Inflexible and Firm or Flexible and Flip-Flop. whereas Inflexible is bad, firm is good. Flexible is good, flip-flop is bad. Although the term "extrajudicial" may be accurate, it is also prejudicial, especially when used in the first sentence of an article. I have made some changes to Bessam Muhammed Saleh Al Dubaikey article. --- Skapur 06:42, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Which is NPOV? "Bush administration" or "US Government"

I believe that "Bush administration" is the accurate term.

I believe that the use of "US government", in instances like this, does not restore NPOV, but injects a hidden bias.

The US government has three branches. Executive, Legislative, and Judicial. President Bush is the head of the Executive branch.

The three branches have overlapping powers, duties and responsibilities. I am trying my best to be clear here, without leaving you with the impression I am talking down to you. The theory behind giving the three branches overlapping powers and responsibilities is to provide a system of "checks and balances".

Aspects of the Bush detainee policy have been over-ridden by both the Judicial branch and the Legislative branch.

Applying the phrase "US Government" to a policy implies that all three branches are in agreement.

Can we agree that this is not true in this case of the detainee policy? I believe it is a mistake to replace "Bush administration" with "US Government". It leaves a false impression. Now, if this is convincing to you, but you still have an objection to "Bush administration", can you suggest a compromise phrase that does not imply unanimity?

The US Supreme Court moves slowly. Other aspects of the detainee policy face challenge, and they too may be over-ridden.

I know "wikipedia is not a crystal ball". I shouldn't be implying that further aspects of the policy will be over-ridden. I am pretty sure I haven't done so. If I find I have, or someone convinces me I have made this mistake, I'll own up, and say so, and fix it. And if I realize or someone convinces me I made that error in a whole bunch of articles, I will step forward to start fix all the instances ASAP. I don't know how to use robot editing. If you end up convincing me that I made the same error in whole bunch of articles maybe you will tell me how to start using robot editing to fix all the instances.

But, if "wikipedia is not a crystal ball", then wouldn't it be just as much of a mistake to imply that the US Supreme Court will endorse the other aspects of the detainee policy that will be coming up for its consideration?

But I am not convinced that US Government is less POV than Bush administration. -- Geo Swan 07:14, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

The soldier who captured the detainee and the one gaurding the detainee are part of the US Government, not the Bush administration. I have studied the US government structure in detail for the last thirty years and can say with quite some confidence that using the term "Bush administration" is very biased and completely inaccurate portrayal of the US governmental structure. I can not agree with you on this. All the branches of government are responsible and the legislative and judicial branches can not escape responsibility for allowing the detentions to continue. Both have shown an ability to move with lightning speed when it suits them to. Here they have not. The Military Commissions Act of 2006 was passed by the legistlative branch and by not allowing Habeas Corpus to the detainees, the judicial branch through its inaction has demonstrated its intention. --- Skapur 08:07, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

So, just so I am clear.

1. You are saying that "Bush administration" is completely inaccurate.
2. I would appreciate it, because I really want to understand your position, if you would spell out more clearly whether you have agreed or disagreed with my point I was trying to make that US Government is inaccurate.
   1. If you think "Bush administration" is biased, and I think "US government" is biased, then, can you agree that we need a third term everyone can agree to?
   2. Similarly, if you think "Bush administration" is biased, and I convinced you that "US government" is also biased, then we also need a third term everyone can agree to.

I know there are formal procedures for soliciting comments from other contributors. I think I know a couple of other contributors who are interested in articles on the war on terror. With your permission I will ask a couple of them to offer an opinion the "Bush administration" versus "US Government" question.

I don't understand your explanation as to why "Bush administration" is biased.

1. You say tht the soldier who captures, and the soldier who guards are part of the US government. OK. But, if you have been a student of the US Government maybe if you answer some questions you can clarify this for me?
   1. So, a Supreme Court Justice, he is part of the US Government, he is also part of the Judicial branch, agreed? Am I incorrect to think it would be a mistake to say he was part of the Legislative or Executive branches?
   2. Senators, and members of the House or Representatives -- part of the US Government, also part of the Legislative branch, but not part of the Executive or Judicial branch, Correct?
   3. US Cabinet members, head Departments, and Agencies, like Energy, Homeland Security, Labor, Defense. The employees of the four Departments I named, they are all part of the US Government, and all part of the Executive branch, but not the legislative or judicial, correct?
   4. So, the Department of Justice, answers to the Attorney General, correct? In addition to the judges, who else would you consider paart of the Judicial branch? Bailiffs? US Marshalls? The FBI? What about those who answer the Judge's phones, clean his or her office? Judicial branch?

You cited the quickness with which Congress approved the revised Military Commissions as proof that they can move quickly when they need to. I guess the quickness with which the Supreme Court ruled on Gore v. Bush shows they can act quickly, when necessary?

I think you and I may be agreed, that passing the Military Commission Law, in the form originally specifieed by the leaders of the Executive Branch, or in the compromise form that was passed, was a mistake. But wouldn't this be our personal opinion -- something we can discuss here on the Talk pages, but something we should be careful to keep out our contributions in article space?

To my way of thinking putting "US Government" because we think the other two branches are complicit is an opinion -- A point of view. Changing the article injects an interpretation. Now, if you can find verifiable, authoritative sources that drew this conclusion, by all means add this opinion, properly quoted and cited to the article.

Cheers! -- Geo Swan 19:38, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

A quick note, it's awkward, but even "US Government's executive branch stated that..." is a little more NPOV. The trouble is that by naming a specific person, in this case George Bush, you get tied in with (whether fairly or unfairly), "bush-bashers". But I do understand what you're saying about the three branches - but traditionally, face it, the executive branch wields the international "go to war" decisions Sherurcij ^{(Speaker for the Dead)} 19:54, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. You must be a mind-reader. I was going to seek out your opinion informally, if Skapur agreed.

So, candidate wording so far:

wording	pro	con
"Bush administration policy"	Distinguishes that the policy arises from just one branch.	Triggers defensive emotional response from those who see the identifying President Bush with his policies as "Bush-bashing". (IMO, those defensive emotional responses are misplaced, and should be responded to through reasoning. Not either unilateral reversions, or yielding. See below.)
"US Government policy	Doesn't trigger emotional response from poorly informed patriots, and George W. Bush fans.	Inaccurately implies that the policy is that of the entire US government. Inaccurately implies that the policy is not controversial. Inaccurately implies that the policy is of unquestioned legality.
"US Executive Branch policy"	May not trigger as much defensive response from poorly informed patriots, and George W. Bush fans. May appear more neutral.	Less clear. Requires more brain power to parse. Appearance of unnecessary obfuscation will encourage the replacement of the phrase with something more direct, by contributors who are unlikely to view the talk page to see if there was any controversy.

Some new suggestions

wording	pro	con
"detainee policy"	Less likely to trigger emotionally based defensive response from patriots and George W. Bush fans.	As with "US Executive Branch policy" the lack of specificity over who was responsible for this policy invites casual replacement with something more specific by contributors unlikely to consult the talk page for a discussion of the choice of alternatives.
For the first instance use something like: "...a detainee treatement policy whose key principles were first outlined by President Bush, on mumble mumble, 2001" Then simply use "detainee policy" for subsequent instances...	Undeniably factual? May require a small subsection of its own, that ends in something like {{main|policy regarding the treatment of captives taken during the United States "Global War On Terror"}},	Would require a lot more work and discipline to always place the extended instance consistently, in the right place. Also invites casual "correction" from contributors responding solely to the awkward phrasing.

FrI am going to try using "Bush Presidency" instead of "Bush administration". Geo Swan 10:16, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Lack of Checks and Balances

It is a question of who reports to whom. Here I am using the more mundane meaning of reporting that includes simple acts like who signs periodic time sheets, who does job evaluations, who can hire/fire someone etc. By the term report I do not mean the president's state of the union report or congressional or judicial hearings or impeachments. All government employess that report to members of congress individually or as a whole are members of of the legistlative branch.(e.g. congressional staff, GAO etc.) All government employees that report to the justices directly or indirectly are members of the judicial branch. Judges are given a staff that they hire ("officers of the court", clerks, bailifs etc.) that are members of the judicial branch. The US marshall service executes judicial orders and is therefore a part of the executive branch. The FBI is definitely executive branch. I do not know who hires and pays the cleaning staff in a judge's office but that is an interesting question.

Using the term "Bush administration" personalizes the issue too much. Bush can not act alone. He needs the agreement of the legislative branch (the quick passage of the Military Commisions act is my reference and proof) and judicial branch (despite numerous appeals, the supreme court by not acting has denied justice by delaying it which is my reference and proof). Although Bush appoints senior government officers, the Senate confirms them.

The bias issue is that by using the term "Bush administration", the rest of the US government is absolved and looks better than it should on this issue.

For the record: I am (and always have been) a member of the Democratic party in NY state and think holding prisoners (like at GITMO) without habeas corpus is wrong. I also think Bush is the worst president the United States has ever had.

You have to understand no matter how you feel about this issue, Wikipedia articles that have an overall POV carry much less impact than those that are written from a NPOV. Articles written with a NPOV spirit have much more impact.

--- Skapur 20:27, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Responding to strongly held, emotionally based, but indefensible arguments over POV and NPOV

I am going to expand my thoughts in a little bit of detail. But let me first clarify, for the record, I am not characterizing any of my recent correspondents as arguing from strongly held, emotionally based, but indefensible arguments. -- Geo Swan 21:24, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Stub tags

When you expand an article, please remove the stub tag from it. You can leave an expand tag if you want but a stub tag is definitely misplaced. --- Skapur 23:10, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I will remove stub tags from the articles, as I edit them.

FWIW, the {{GuantanamoBay-detainee-stub}} stub was not my creation.

Cheers! -- 207.112.59.87 00:44, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Please stop claiming article ownership

Geo Swan: You are again claiming ownership of an article. I suspect you do not even realize you are doing it. Read all the bullets in Wikipedia official policy at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:OWN#Events that I am repeating here:

• Minor edits concerning layout, image use, and wording are disputed on a daily basis by one editor. The editor may state or imply that changes must be reviewed by him/her before they can be added to the article. This does not include egregious formatting errors.
• Article changes by different editors are reverted by the same editor for an extended period of time to protect a certain version, stable or not. This does not include vandalism.
• An editor appears on other editors' talk pages for the purpose of discouraging them from making additional contributions. The discussion can take many forms: it may be purely negative, consisting of threats and insults, often avoiding the topic of the revert altogether. At the other extreme, the owner may patronize other editors, claiming that their ideas are interesting but that they lack the deep understanding of the article necessary to edit it.

Your activities are consistent with actions described in all three bullets above.

• You have disputed my changes and other peoples changes concerning layout on a regular basis
• You have reverted the self-referencing wikilink removal
• You have left messages on my talk page to discourage me from making additional contributions

My reasoning is very simple: I strongly believe that there should be no self referencing wikilinks in articles and am cleaning them up as I see them. You even admit above that you will keep on doing it even though other editors disagree with you on that.

You also claim you are using a bot like tool to update articles. Are you a registered bot? --- Skapur 05:51, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for making a fuller attempt to explain yourself.

I'll respond more fully when I have had a chance to take another look at WP:OWN now that you have been clearer about your concern.

But first I am going to mention that I am wondering whether something I said left you with the wrong idea about my efforts. Or maybe there is something I need to know about bot policy.

What is a registered bot? I am not familiar with this policy. I have never run any automated tools on any of the wikipedia servers. Is there something I said that left with you with the impression I do run automated tools on the wikipedia servers? -- Geo Swan 06:27, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

On second reading, your python tool would not qualify as a bot. A bot is an automatic program running on your computer that updates articles on the wikipedia server. See WP:B --- Skapur 06:39, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Image:CCGS Henry Larsen 1.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:CCGS Henry Larsen 1.jpg. I notice the 'image' page specifies that the image is being used under fair use, but its use in Wikipedia articles fails our first fair use criterion in that it illustrates a subject for which a freely licensed image could reasonably be found or created. If you believe this image is not replaceable, please:

1. Go to the image description page and edit it to add {{Replaceable fair use disputed}}, without deleting the original Replaceable fair use template.
2. On the image discussion page, write the reason why this image is not replaceable at all.

Alternatively, you can also choose to replace the fair use image by finding a freely licensed image of its subject or by taking a picture of it yourself.

If you have uploaded other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified how these images fully satisfy our fair use criteria. You can find a list of 'image' pages you have edited by clicking on this link. Note that any fair use images which are replaceable by free-licensed alternatives will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. ----Robth^Talk 22:12, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up!

For the record I uploaded that image almost two years ago. There have been policy changes since them. IIRC, at that time there was a "noncommercial" tag, to put on images that had been published with a proviso that they could be re-used, in a noncommercial context. IIRC, it was decided to deprecate the images uploaded and tagged with this liscense, because there was no practical way for the wikipedia -- or any other person re-using those images, to verify, and police, whether third parties who got the images from us, really weren't reusing them in for-profit contexts, and were making sure that fourth parties who got the images from them were complying with the original terms.

When the policy change first kicked in, the instantiation of the liscense warned uploaders (1) that images uploaded after May 5 2005, that used that liscense, were subject to speedy deletion, (2) that images uploaded prior to May 5 2005 would be reviewed, and subject to deletion, at some point in the future.

Most of the images I had uploaded under the noncommercial liscenses were of Canadian Coast Guard vessels, or vessels in Canada's Maritime Command. I decided:

1. To leave the existing images, but not fight for their preservation, when it came time for the images uploaded prior to May 5 2005 to be deleted.
2. To search for replacement images that were available under different permissions, that would allow them to remain after all the noncommercial liscensed images were gone. I exhaustively used Google's image search feature, searching solely for images under the .mil and .gov domains. The initial images I found were generally of inferior value to the ones from the Canadian sites. And I didn't find that many. So I searched for each vessel, by name, and doubled the number of images. It was a case of "ten percent of the work takes ninety percent of the time, and the other ninety percent of the work takes the other ninety percent of the time." The search, by the name of the individual vessels took well over a dozen hours.

As you can see, from these notes on Talk:Canadian Coast Guard, most of the CCG images under questionable liscenses have been policed.

I appreciate that you left me the note, as per procedure. I am afraid many of the other wikipedia contributors who worked on the deletion of these images weren't so diligent.

I flagged some bad images myself, which were uploaded by a serious vandal who had been harrassing me. When I looked up the procedure, I saw that, in addition to putting a note on the uploader's talk page, an {{unverifiedimage}} tag was supposed to be put in the caption everywhere the image was used. Is there a convention that a similar tag by put in the captions of images about to be deprecated because their liscenses are no longer valid?

Cheers! -- Geo Swan 01:16, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for being understanding about it, and keep up the good work. --Robth^Talk 14:32, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Arabic names / Extrajudicial detainees

I left a note on User Talk:Yonmei on November 7th.

I wondered why Yonmei didn't reply. And Yonmei was probably wondering why I didn't reply.  :-) This happens sometimes -- busy wikipedia contributors who leave their note on another contributor's User page, not their Talk Page.

I moved their reply here, and I will reply here; Yonmei's November 9th reply, cut and pasted from User:Geo Swan, below:

Hi Geo - thanks for your note about the issue of Arabic names.

I do think that I probably made some errors piping the names of Guantanamo Bay detainees. And in some instances, we know that we are uncertain about the right name of the detainee - transliteration errors and incompetence and deliberate obfustication have been allowed to confuse the issue.

But I also think that it's important to recognize that the prisoners do have family names. (See Arabic family names on wikipedia.) The page on Arabic names is extremely useful, and I think should be linked to as a resource to identify the family names (where known) of the prisoners.

I will continue to pipe the names of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners, where a family name is identifiable. I would like, in place of the current note about not piping the names, to have a link to the article on Arabic names, and a request that when editors pipe the names, they check the resource and make an effort to identify the prisoner's family name. Only when the family name is not known should the prisoner's name not be piped.

Does this make sense to you? I don't want to start making changes without your agreement.

I have begun on what I anticipate being a fairly long project - diffusing the extrajudicial prisoners by nationality and by other useful categories. I hope we can come to an agreement about this that we can put up on the appropriate pages as a guideline for other editors. Yonmei 12:43, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Greeting again Yonmei!

Arabic names sure are tricky. And I keep having reminders that make me kick myself for not documenting more thoroughly how versions of the Guantanamo detainee's names differed on the DoD's two official lists.

I still think it is a mistake to sort these names as if they had European style surnames. But maybe you have looked into this more thoroughly than I have, and I'll come around to thinking some of their names can, usefully, be sorted on something other than their first character.

I didn't find the explanation you cited helpful. Am I mistaken, that you are from Scotland, or have looked into Scottish history? My understanding of the Scottish highland clans is that many of the main Scottish clans, like MacDonald, have a number of surnames associated with them. My impression of what the Arabic names article calls "family names" -- or at least some of them -- bear a closer resemblance to the topmost name of a Scottish clan, than they do to a regular European style surname.

And then there is the transliteration issue -- which wouldn't be so much of a problem, if the different transliterations more closely resembled one another. But, if "ibn" and "bin" are two different transliterations for the same Arabic phrase -- or when what the Arabic names article calls a "family name" might be transliterated as "al Banna" or "el Banna", we are just as well off leaving the names sorted on their first character.

The advantages to this approach are:

• It is a lot less work. It significantly reduces the cognitive effort of maintaining these articles.
• It, arguably, makes it easier to correct transcription and typographical errors that creep in when someone, somewhere in the process of documenting these individuals, made a mistake through unfamiliarity with the Arabic naming conventions.
• We can learn from the embarrassing failure of the US intelligence analysts inability to keep track of the identity of the Guantanamo detainees because they were unable to establish a consistent standards for recording their names.
• I think there are some other advantages, which I will remember later, and fill in.  :-)

I know you meant to wait a reasonable period for my reply. And when you saw me apparently ignoring you, you then went and did a considerable amount changing the sort order on several hundred, or possibly more than a thousand categorizations. I wouldn't want you to think that work won't prove worthwhile. I could turn out to be wrong, or unconvincing, on this issue. I am going to ask a busy wikipedia contributor, who has studied Arabic, and related languages, if he has time to offer an opinion here.

Cheers! -- Geo Swan 20:36, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

P.S. In the interests of completeness, I am going to record that sometime in the last nine months or so there was another wikipedia contributor who changed the sort order on half a dozen or Guantanamo detainees, who had been sorted on the "al" portion of what Arabic names calls the Family name, to the actual last portion of their name. And when I questioned him on it, IIRC, he dug in his heels, became increasingly uncivil, and promised to revert any attempt I made to restore the sort order to the "al" portion.

I had another guy who insisted that it was impossible that "Muhamad Naji Subhi Al Juhani" and "Khalid Ibn Muhammad Al-Juhani" might refer to a single individual, or that, if they referred to two individuals, that the general public might confuse those two men even though the Saudi embassy issued press releases where they referred to the terrorist "Muhammed Al Juhani".

Cheers! -- Geo Swan 20:36, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi Geo - sorry for my mistake in initially responding on your User page.

I actually didn't go to work on all those categorisations - most of that was done by another wiki editor who saw the "Cat diffuse" tag I'd placed and wanted to be helpful. Done's done, and I do take responsibility for the editor in question responding to the cat diffuse tag (and I didn't ask them not to, because I thought I hadn't heard from you...)

If we can agree on what needs to be done, I would like to help out editing the categorisations as they should be.

Yonmei 23:42, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

No need to apologize.

I am encouraged to see other contributors taking a positive interest in the Guantanamo articles.

I think I remain cognizant that, although I started 90 percent of the articles on Guantanamo detainees, I don't own them. If other people have energy to work on these articles, I think I need to figure out how to lay out the conventions I followed during the work I have done so far. Not to try to insist that other people follow them -- but rather to lay them out, so other contributors people who are interested in working on these articles can think about them, and decide whether they agree with me, and think the articles should continue to follow those conventions, or whether they think those conventions should be modified, abandoned, or replaced.

Do you have any experience in creating wikiprojects?

About changing the sort order of Arabic names in the new categories I started in the last couple of weeks... I am going to continue to leave those entries in the default sort order. I asked that Arabic scholar I mentioned to weigh in, and give their opinion on how the rest of us cope with the sort order of these names. I won't change the sort order on the categorization of any names until we get some more input. But I am not going to worry if someone changes the sort order.

So, if you or I see anyone else doing work on the categorizations, shall we invite them to join a discussion? If so where? Any suggestions?

Cheers! -- Geo Swan 00:20, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Alaska highway map

Thank you for the compliment on my talk page. I made that map the hard way, first tracing it from The Milepost many years ago, then scanning the tracing and using a bitmap editor to clean it up. There is one error in it, Dawson Creek should be closer to the Alberta border. Also, the fonts needs to be consistent and the water should be coloured blue. Plus, a number of missing roads need to be added (such as the Canol Road. Stay tuned for a new improved version which I am slowly working on.

If you want to use it on the Haines Junction article, go ahead. The current one, I understand, was developed using Canada 2001 Census data. On the northern airports, Yes I live in the Yukon and I have flown into or out of most of them over the years (as a passenger!). The only ones I have not are the Beaver Creek Airport, the Carmacks Airport, the Teslin Airport and Whitehorse/Cousins Airport which is about five kilometres from my house. Also in and out of numerous airstrips as well as many lakes on float planes. Luigizanasi 06:52, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Proposal to Delete Duplicate Image

I am proposing that this image be deleted. It turns out that I uploaded the same image to the commons at roughly the same time to [[Image:Guantanamo Bay David Hicks Cell, Reading Room Inset.jpg|thumb]]. On the basis that the image I uploaded has a more descriptive filename, I have copied your well written metadata across to the image I have uploaded, changed links and have proposed that [[Image:Hickscell wideweb 470x311,0.jpg]] be deleted. John Dalton 23:10, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Double Redirects

I've left you a response here. - (Nuggetboy) (talk) (contribs) 15:55, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Iraq Study Group Report

As I've edited Wikipedia I've encountered your edits on Guantanamo Bay detainees several times. If you are not too busy at the moment, the article on the Iraq Study Group Report could really use editing from someone with knowledge of the American government or American policies. Regards, KazakhPol 03:55, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Ref conv

Sorry for the downtime. References converter is now back up and running. About a week ago the hard drive in my server crashed. Luckily it stayed together long enough to allow me to pull all the data off onto a new hard drive, but I still had to go through the process of installing Linux on the new hard drive, installing all the necessary programs, and loading in all of the old data from the server. I got all of my essential services up within two days (CVS, Apache, Wiki), but I kind of forgot about web scripts, which I finally got around to fixing today. Everything should be fully functional again. If you see any bugs, just send me a message. You are receiving this message because you are on the spamlist. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, simply remove your name. --Cyde Weys 19:14, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Tar sands again

It's probably been a while since you've been on the Tar sands page. Once again, a proposal to change the name to Oil Sands have been raised. Although you had been vocal about your opinion, you are the only one to come out in favor of retaining the old name. I agree that you have a good point in how the article was originally created. Unfortunately, that can't be a major basis, since many pages are renamed. I wanted to give you a chance to respond. I also propose a compromise. If you can provide verifiable data as to the historicity of the term tar sands, feel free to expand the article with more history, but I believe the most common current name should be used. See also WP:NCON. JeremyBicha 06:19, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Minors in GWOT

I think you misunderstood me. It's not the article itself that I perceive to be biased, it's the way of looking at GWOT prisoners all together. Grouping them as minors to me seems pov because if we list them that way, we might as well list them using other criteria too. KazakhPol 16:42, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, I guess I still misunderstand you. As I don't see what is wrong with listing them using other criteria, like whether their ownership of a Casio F91W digital watch plays a role in their continued detention, or whether they were reported to have attended the al Farouq training camp, or whether they were captured in an al qaida guest house in Faisalabad.

Cheers! -- Geo Swan 17:41, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

RE: Daniel Coburn

As you requested, I have given an explanation for the removal of information at the Daniel Coburn article. Simões (^talk/_contribs) 19:51, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Allegations that Tablighi Jamaat has ties to terrorism

The article is now restored and I'm readying it for AfD. I won't post the discussion until later today, so I recommend you add to the article. ~ trialsanderrors 21:31, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

New article

Thought I'd toss you a nod towards Khalid al Zahrani in case you had any further information on the Gitmo detainee. I created it out of my interest in "failed 9/11 hijackers", but since Gitmo detainees are your specialty, I figure you may have information other than what I mostly gleaned from the Commission. By the way, sent you an eMail to your WP-registered address. Sherurcij ^{(Speaker for the Dead)} 17:54, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

He's listed at [[2]], and the 9/11 Commission referred to his interrogations without saying where he was being held. Since he participated in the hunger strike at Guantanamo, everything certainly seems to him still being held there - but yes, several lists clearly don't mention him. Sherurcij ^{(Speaker for the Dead)} 03:35, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Deletion review, Memset Ltd

You are one of three editors that asked to see the deleted history of the article for the deletion review, which is on the 28th of December. It is now available. GRBerry 03:59, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Copyright problems with Image:RV John P. Tully.gif

An image that you uploaded, Image:RV John P. Tully.gif, has been listed at Wikipedia:Copyright problems because it is a suspected copyright violation. Please look there if you know that the image is legally usable on Wikipedia (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), and then provide the necessary information there and on its page, if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you.

MECU≈talk 18:55, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Allegations of Tablighi Jamaat ties to terrorism

My mistake, I did not mean to remove the links. I have re-added them. KazakhPol 07:52, 9 January 2007 (UTC)