User talk:Bretonnia

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[edit] Speedy deletion of Jan Arp

A tag has been placed on Jan Arp requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section A7 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the article appears to be about a person or group of people, but it does not indicate how or why the subject is notable: that is, why an article about that subject should be included in an encyclopedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, articles that do not assert the subject's importance or significance may be deleted at any time. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as notable, as well as our subject-specific notability guideline for biographies.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hangon}} to the top of the article (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on the article's talk page explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the article meets the criterion it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. The Helpful One (Talk) (Contributions) 16:58, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Current Canadian armed forces officers

You seem to be creating articles for everybody from bird colonel on up. I really must suggest that most of these folks are not notable, and don't need articles of their own. I think this is a kind of recentism to which Wikipedia is particulary prone, since it's easy to find information about current officers, compared to important officers of, say, the pre-Confederation era. --Orange Mike | Talk 17:54, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

I am making these short biographies on Wikipedia about selected officers because they have been mentioned in much larger articles with links but they do not go anywhere, I believe giving some information rather than none may help people trying to research the topic a better view of who exactly is partaking in said event. Here is a link to the article in which said Commanders did not have links to their own pages on Wikipedia which I have started. Operation Falcon Summit Bretonnia 18:46, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
I would suggest merging these stubs into the Falcon Summit article, then. If this is their only claim to fame, there is not enough to justify separate articles, and you'll end up with a bunch of speedy deletes on your hands. --Orange Mike | Talk 20:36, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

I think what you suggest would work for Colonel Lavoie, but how should I go about doing that? They are not mentioned in the article on my once over read (only in the commanders box of the article) so should I make a new section in the article? I am new to Wikipedia and do not have nearly as much knowledge on how to assert it as you do, any help is appreciated. But for Tim Grant on the other hand, he is a high ranking officer with multiple "claims to fame" as he was Commander of all Canadian Forces in Afghanistan before Guy Laroche assumed that posititon (Guy Laroche is another article I have created. See Guy Laroche (Canadian)). I have expanded the Tim Grant article as I have had time now, pictures will be up when I get home.

[edit] Notability of Omer Lavoie

Hello, this is a message from an automated bot. A tag has been placed on Omer Lavoie, by another Wikipedia user, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. The tag claims that it should be speedily deleted because Omer Lavoie seems to be about a person, group of people, band, club, company, or web content, but it does not indicate how or why the subject is notable: that is, why an article about that subject should be included in an encyclopedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, articles that do not assert the subject's importance or significance may be deleted at any time. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as notable.

To contest the tagging and request that administrators wait before possibly deleting Omer Lavoie, please affix the template {{hangon}} to the page, and put a note on its talk page. If the article has already been deleted, see the advice and instructions at WP:WMD. Feel free to contact the bot operator if you have any questions about this or any problems with this bot, bearing in mind that this bot is only informing you of the nomination for speedy deletion; it does not perform any nominations or deletions itself. To see the user who deleted the page, click here CSDWarnBot (talk) 18:00, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Omer Lavoie

Thanks for your note. I went back and read the article again -- I will be honest and say that it is closer to notability than most of the pages marked for speedy deletion, but not quite there. That very closeness makes me want to work with you to fix it, because I have a feeling that you could make this article qualify by finding more secondary sources. So I hope you will accept this note as an apology for deleting the article (I might have been a little quick off the mark) and accept my help to make it better. (You might have staved off the speedy deletion by using the hangon tag, but I expect you were in class at the time the article was tagged for deletion.) The first thing I'm going to do is add the text of the article to what's called a "sandbox" that you will find at User:Bretonnia/sandbox. A sandbox is a way for you to work on the article without anyone tagging it for deletion (although you may run up against problems in, say, 30 days or so). As to what it needs to demonstrate notability -- the website that you cited at the end of the article is a start, but I'm not sure if it's precisely on point, as it were. The weblink proves that Mr. Lavoie is who you say he is, but it doesn't seem to indicate that he is special or unusual in any way from anyone with his same rank in the CAF, and that is the "notable" factor that's required. You can read up on what makes an article about a person notable at this link. It might be that you are asserting (without really saying so) that anyone who is sent to do this particular job is notable because the job is notable, but that's not really clear from my scan of the article. The source article about the military operation contains a weblink that mentions Mr. Lavoie's name (it's the one weblink there that is still in useful operation), and that link would be a good one to add to the article as an example of "secondary sources". I'm anxious to make your experience with Wikipedia a good one that will keep you here and contributing, because from what I see your article was well written and, from your note, you're trying to fill in the holes in other articles, which is very laudable. If there is anything that I can do to help you, I'm at your service; you can leave a note on my talk page, or reply here (I now have this page "watchlisted", but I have been known to overlook things, so if you ask a question here that I don't answer, please just prompt me on my talk page). Your sandbox page with the text of the article will be there within a few minutes. Accounting4Taste:talk 20:57, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and as per the comment above -- if Mr. Lavoie isn't really notable enough, then yes, it would be appropriate to fold information about him into the article about the military operation; that's done all the time here. I hope to help you to decide that when I see if we can find references together. Accounting4Taste:talk 20:59, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply, I will work on adding Lavoie to the operations page where he is mentioned as per the suggestion of another user and yourself. Bretonnia 21:04, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] further comments

I left a comment replying to your latest on Talk:Tarnak Farm incident. I am leaving you a further comment here, because, as I was re-reading my comment there, I realized this remaining bit wasn't really on topic there.

This "inhererent right to self-defense" -- we have read about other American serviceman asserting this right it has come to light because he committed an atrocity. Back in the fall of 2004, when Kevin Sites videotaped that Marine shooting the wounded, unarmed Iraqi captive, in cold blood, at point-blank range, this was the excuse trotted out for him, too. Personally, I think it was a very huge mistake that Ilario Pantano didn't have a proper court-martial convened. He shot two unarmed captive. He too claimed the "inherent right to self-defense".

The Guardian published an article, a couple of years ago, about British Generals trying to explain the lessons the British had learned in Northern Ireland. The most important lesson they learned was that aggressively going after shooters, with overwhelming firepower, and consequently killing lots of innocent civilians, alienates those civilians, making them support the underground, bring them recruits, teaching the school-kids to hate the occupiers, and not give them friendly warnings about ambushes and IEDs, and bringing the underground new recruits. The British Generals tried to explain that, in the long run, it saved lives to be less aggressive, to only escalate the firepower you were using in stages, proportional to the level of the threat your opponents were using.

Americans are prepared to drop a couple of 500 pound bombs, to take out a couple of opponents, without regard to the cost to nearby civilans. If I understood the point the Guardian said the British Generals were trying to explain to the Americans, this tactic only saved American lives in the short term. Showing restraint, showing respect for the lives and property of the local civilians saves lives in the long run, even if the bad guys get away, because the bad guys don't get to accuse you of atrocities.

If I understood the article the Americans didn't disagree with the point the British were trying to get across, it was from such a different mind-set, different paradigm, that they couldn't even take in that the British were trying to make a coherent point.

It is tragic.

So, the foreign fighters in Afghanistan who represent the biggest danger to our Canadian troops are our American allies, because they are alienating the civilians, who can't distinguish Americans from other foreigners.

Trying to oppose the Taliban, and the drug lords, is a bone-head idea. Allowing the Afghans to legalize and regulate the opium trade is a no-brainer. Strip the Taliban of most of their funds and a big chunk or their allies in one step.

The Taliban is not a monolith. It has moderate elements. The last Taliban Foreign Minister tried to warn the USA about the 911 attacks. He had been warned by the leader of a jihadist independence group from a neighboring country. Like al Qaeda he too had his bases and training camps in Afghanistan. And, when he heard about the 911 attack plans he realized they would trigger a US retaliation that would hamper the efforts of his independence movement. So he tipped off the Foreign Minister, who tipped off the USA, who ignored his warnings.

Fragmenting the opposition, courting some of the less committed elements, so they defect, is also, IMO, a no-brainer.

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 21:44, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
Even if the danger is ever imminent because we are not distinquished from Americans in Afghanistan, we need to stand behind our Ally and back them up while the Afghan government rebuilds the nation, that is our job in Afghanistan, even if it means risking our lives for other peoples freedom. Bretonnia (talk) 16:27, 13 December 2007 (UTC)