Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Brahim Yadel

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was No concensus reached, default to Keep. -- Coren (talk) 04:47, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Disclaimer: I am not an admin, and am the originator of the AfD. -- Coren (talk) 04:47, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Brahim Yadel

Brahim Yadel (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Try as I might, I can't see any way this individual prisoner at Gitmo can pass WP:BIO. All news articles I can find are, at best, trivial coverage and none of the other notability criterion are met. Coren 03:52, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Changed !vote to neutral after article edits, see below. Coren 17:19, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Guantanamo Bay detainment camp-related deletions. -- Geo Swan 04:10, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete Wow, score one for the highly specific deletion sorting categories. Not every prisoner in Gitmo is notable. I hit a few random articles from the relevant category, and they were much better developed than this one. I think the word nontrivial in WP:N should be emphasized, especially with WP:BLP lurking in the background. YechielMan 04:46, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
    • Perhaps you overlooked that the nominator did not comply with WP:CFD and WP:CSD, placing his or her orginal {{db}} less than half an hour after the first draft was placed. Why don't you reserve your judgement, and wait for the article to be more complete? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Geo Swan (talk • contribs).
  • Keep -- Geo Swan 06:14, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
    • Disclaimer -- I started this article.
    • Guantanamo captives merit coverage on the wikipedia because they are at the focus of important events.
      • Close to twenty of the 400 plus articles on Guantanamo captives have been nominated for deletion. The same arguments come up again and again. I find that many of those who argue for deletion base that judgement on serious misconceptions -- like that the Guantanamo captives are just prisoners, like the millions of convicts in US penitentiaries, If you share this idea, I encourage you to read: Guantanamo captives aren't felons and aren't POWs
    • Brahim Yadel is particularly notable, as he is suspected of organizing jihadist training camps in France.
  • Keep In my opinion, all of the Guantanamo Bay captives are notable because of the nature, scale and historical significance of the political event that they are embroiled in. The nomination referes to "trivial coverage". Little is known about them for the very obvious reason that information is actively witheld and suppressed by the detaining authority. WP:BIO is only a guideline, not policy, for a very good reason: each case needs to judged on its merits. Nevertheless, contrary to the claim in the nomination, the subject meets the very first standard for determining notability of people: "The person has been the subject of published secondary sources that are reliable, intellectually independent, and independent of the subject." The article may need work and expansion, but that is not a valid reason for deletion. The AfD template was placed a mere two hours after the article was first created for goodness sake. It may be a stub at present, but it is well sourced and fully compliant with our core policies of WP:NPOV and WP:NOR. --Cactus.man ✍ 09:01, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment, that justifies an article on Gitmo, and on the events going on there. That probably might justify an article giving a short blurb on each non-notable prisonner (not a list, please!). But an article about every single prisoner we can get a name for? Coren 12:52, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Yes, as I explained above. --Cactus.man ✍ 13:49, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
  • In my rough notes I have a list I use that gives a short blurb on each captive -- [[1]]. I encourage you to go take a look at it. It is about 430K long. It is incomplete. I largely stopped working on it, when it was around two thirds finished, because it became just too large to edit. It may also be too large to be useful to a reader unfamiliar with the topic. So, this article you propose, that gives a short blurb on each "non-notable" captive, please tell us what you think it would look like. How do you think it would differ from the list in my rough notes?
  • You realize that this union list you propose would require at least several hundred hours of work? Will you commit yourself to a share of that work?
  • During earlier {{afd}} fora when some wikipedians made essentially the same suggestion you just did, that the article in question be merged to a big omnibus article, other wikipedians said they would agree, once the big omnibus article was in place.
  • I can't help noticing that you haven't addressed my earlier point, that Brahim Yadel is suspected of organizing jihadist training camps. Perhaps you should explain how you think we should draw the line between the captives you will acknowledge are notable, and those you would classify as non-notable? Perhaps you could explain why the allegation that an EU citizen organized jihaidst training, in an EU country, fails to make that individual "notable"?
  • Cheers! Geo Swan 16:29, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Yes, I do realize that would be work. Although, if it got to 430K long then some pruning would need to be done; regardless of how notable their treatment is/was, not every detainee would even be slightly notable enough for even a blurb.
I don't agree with the need or usefulness for such a list/article in the first place (although I wouldn't contest it collectively meeting WP:NN), but if that work is the only thing that stops cluttering the Wiki with hundreds of non-notable articles no one will ever search for by name, then I'm willing to give a hand with it. Coren 16:58, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
  • 430K -- How much of a review do you think a fair minded person would need to do to reach the conclusion that "pruning would need to be done"? Can I ask how much time you spent reviewing those 430K before you reached your conlcusion? Did you reach this conclusion merely based on the size, without reviewing it at all?
  • Let's do the math. There are 500 or so captives for whom we have authoritative, verifiable references. Each reference is about 200 bytes long, what with the URL, title, date, publication, author. That is 100K right there. Some captives have multiple authoritative, verifiable references. Over half that 430K is references. We could cut the size in half, if we abandoned the references. But I don't think that is a good solution.
  • You said you weren't being personal. But, in fact you are being personal. You can't imagine that these individual articles could ever be useful? That is you being personal, in that you are relying on your personal judgement and imagination.
    • I know that these articles are useful, are, in fact, being used. The Jurist is a good site I came across as I started writing articles about the captives. I found it to be a very pleasant surprise when they started referencing the wikipedia's articles that I was a big contributor. Here is a recent instance: US military investigating apparent suicide of Guantanamo detainee.
    • About a month ago I wrote to one of the Guantanamo captive's lawyers. He was a former police officer, who became a public defender after twenty years as a police officer. The DoD threw up incredible roadblocks to him meeting his clients. He couldn't meet with them, phone them, or write them. So he decided to travel to Afghanistan, and seek out their friends, relatives and acquaintances, to see whether their accounts would confirm or dispute the DoD's detemination that they were enemy combatants. That was extremely courageous of him. I wrote him, and told him so. I also asked for his help in updating the articles about his clients. He wrote me a very nice reply telling me that he regularly counted on looking up his clients on the wikipedia, anytime he was away from the office, and needed to consult their Tribunal transcripts.
  • So, that your imagination fails to see how the articles could be useful does not, IMO really counter the demonstrable fact that these article are already proving useful.
  • I can't help noticing you still haven't addressed my point that Brahim Yadel was accused of organizing jihadist training camps in France. I continue to hope you will explain why you do not consider this makes him "notable".
  • I am mystified by your characterization of these articles "cluttering up" the wikipedia. Would you reconsider characterizing any contributions that fully comply with the core wikipolicies of WP:NPOV, WP:NOR and WP:VER as "clutter"? Do you think that the wikipedia is at risk for of running out of hard drive space?
  • Cheers! Geo Swan 19:12, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Merge to List of Guantánamo Bay detainees or to the article about the Gitmo detention camp. Seems like a directory listing based on trivial coverage. The policies which lead to long-term imprisonment of claimed "unlawful combatants" are highly encyclopedic, but not every individual affected by the policies needs a stubby article. Edison 13:59, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep So far from these articles cluttering up WP, the presence of these articles demonstrates our integrity as an information source. For all those where there is enough information to write an article, one should be written.Finally there is becoming enough information to do so properly. DGG 03:48, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of France-related deletions. -- John Vandenberg 10:52, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete being a prisoner in Gitmo doesn't make you notable; Gitmo is notable, the detentions are notable, being one of a slew of bit players in the drama doesn't make you notable. If the argument of the keepers were followed every coalition serviceman who served in Iraq would be notable, because Iraq is notable, the war is notable, and without soldiers (marines, etc.) we couldn't have a war, so these guys are all players in this international drama. Wrong! Carlossuarez46 22:56, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
    • Are you arguing there shouldn't be an article about every GI who was KIA, for whom there are authoritative, verifiable sources, which supply something meaningful to say?
    • We have articles about Pat Tillman, and Lori Piestewa, because there are authoritative, verifiable sources we can reference, that have something interesting to say about them. If there aren't articles about the other casualties of these wars wouldn't that be because:
      1. There are no authoritative, verifiable sources.
      2. There are authoritative, verifiable sources, but all they say is, thing like: lived a good life, died bravely, will be missed. There is no controversy around the circumstances of their death, as there is for Tillman and Leger.
      3. No wikipedian has gotten around to compiling the sources for the casualty yet.
    • Like Tillman and Piestewa, there are authoritative, verifiable source that support building articles that cover the unique controversies that surround their cases. The Guantanamo captives aren't notable merely because Guantanamo is notable. The Guantanamo captives who have had the allegations against them each have a unique set of allegations.
      • Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld have characterized the Guantanamo captives as "the worst of the worst"; they have claimed they all "were captured on the battlefield". Do the allegations against the captives support the "captured on the battlefield" claim? WP:NPOV prohibits any of us stating an opinion on this in article space, but, if you go through all the allegations: Summary of Evidence (CSRT) for a couple of dozen captives. I think it is possible for the wikipedia to contain articles that fully comply with WP:NOR, WP:VER and WP:NPOV. I believe the existing articles do comply with those three core policies.
      • It is clear to me that a significant faction of the public accepts some or all of the DoD and Bush administrations account that the Guantanamo captives were "the worst of the worst", that they were "terrorists". But do the documents the DoD has released just don't support that interpretation?
    • No offense, but I think your comment actually supports the importance of these articles, because, excuse me, your comment suggests you are laboring under misconceptions about the captives, that, while you accept that the conditions of their detention may be,in general, questionable, and that the "extended interrogation techniques" some of the captives were subjected to, were questionable, it hasn't occurred to you to ask whether the allegations against the captives were credibile, and, if they were credible, whether they supported those key claims of the Bush administration, "committed terrorists", "worst of the worst", "captured on the battlefield". No offense, but, if my guess is correct, and your "delete" is based on misconceptions, if you think you are sufficiently informed, but you aren't really informed, that reinforces the necessity for these articles.
    • Some of the captives not only weren't considered "enemy combatants" because they were "captured on the battlefield", weren't accused of engaging in hostilities post 9-11; weren't accused of engaging in hostilities during the lead-up to 9-11, but were accused of fighting Afghanistan's Soviet invaders during the 1980s. No. I am not making this up.
    • Leaving aside the other captives, as I have pointed out before, Brahim Yadel is accused of orgainzing jihadist training camps in Europe. Why don'es this make him as notable as, let's say, a 9-11 hijacker?
    • To return to your comment about articles about casualties of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, I support creating one for every casualty for whom there are authoritative, verifiable sources, that support WP:NPOV coverage of something interesting. I'll help with this.
    • Cheers! Geo Swan 10:17, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Delete: Guantanamo is notable, as are the pretexts for its existence (WoT). Simply being a prisoner there is not notable. Simply being accused of a crime, even terrorism, is not notable. The man is innocent unless or until proven guilty, regardless of what a government may believe or assert. List the man on the Guantanamo page or on a Guantanamo list page with brief details. Hu 20:30, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

  • Trial postponed -- his trial was postponed to allow an investigation of official lies by the Government. Noteworthy? Cheers Geo Swan 01:53, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Weak keep, few of the prisoners are notable of their own doing, but this one has been the cause of political tension between to UN SC members. -- Steve Hart 17:15, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Neutral, I'm still rather ambivalent on the suitability of the article, but enough meat has been edited into it that it no longer clearly fails to meet WP:BIO. Coren 17:19, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep Notable. If the United states government feels that he is 1 of 400 persons in the entire world that should be held indefinately and deny them any rights under US or International law, well I think that makes them notable. Callelinea 20:27, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.