Talk:Fouzi Khalid Abdullah Al Awda

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[edit] revert -- see talk

I excised the insertion of the sentence fragment: "although Fawzi's own testimony admitted use of weapons in association with Taliban activity. "

Another wikipedian recently claimed the authority of {{npov}} to justify the insertion of this sentence fragment, with the edit summary: "(→Capture - increase NPOV to balance one-sided version of story offerred by biased party)"

IMO, this sentence fragment does not "increase NPOV" -- because it is IMO factually inaccurate.

In addition to the Taliban's own, official training camps, Afghanistan was dotted with independent Afghan training camps. India's intelligence service estimate that there were at least 120.

What Fawzi's own testimony acknowledges is not "...admitted use of weapons in assocation with Taliban activity." In Fawzi's testimony he acknowledged spending part of one day, borrowing the marksmanship range of a training camp, to engage in a marksmanship competition with friends.

Now, maybe he is lying. Maybe he did engage in a use of weapons that could meaningfully be associated with Taliban activity.

But this is not what he testified. Asserting he did testify to it does not increase NPOV. IMO it decreases it.

Was this an official Taliban training camp? Who knows? The transcript doesn't say.

Is it more likely that a group of foreigners could arrange to use the rifle range of a private enterprise camp? Possibly. However, since he didn't say, this would just be speculation.

So the article should not state, one way or another, that the camp was a Taliban camp.

As to whether someone thinks material was added by a "biased party"... It is generally considered good form to confine your comments to the issues -- and leave off comments about the personality, motives, or character of other contributors. When any of us think we perceive a bias in someone else's contribution, we should stop short of accusing them of bias, because:

• Our perception of bias might be due to our own unrecognized bias, and the passage that triggered our concern might fully comply with {{npov}} -- only seeming to be biased because we have unacknowledged misconceptions.
• Or their might be information about the topic, that was not part of our fund of general knowledge, that if we did know, we would never have perceived a bias.
  • I can't count how many times I have seen dialogs like the following:

party1:	That is wrong. That is biased. You have a biased point of view!
party2:	Why?
party1:	You could only write that if you could document XYZ! Otherwise it is biased, and you are biased!
party2:	But I can document XYZ. I did document XYZ.
party1:	Oh. Er. Um. OK

• • Don't make your starting position that the other party is biased. It is a lot less embarrassing all around, if you start by giving at least the surface appearance of complying with the policy of assuming good faith. Even if you are correct, and the other parties contribution was biased, it is better to phrase your concern so it stops short of a flat-out accusation.
  • And, if your are mistaken, and lots of other people disagree with you as to whether or not the passage you were concerned about actually did conform to policy, then it is less embarrassing for you if you clearly complied with WP:AGF, stopped short of an accusation, and said you were addressing what you saw as the appearance of bias.

Finally, it is better if our contributions are whole, complete sentences -- not sentence fragments.

Cheears! Geo Swan 22:40, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Replaced transcluded image with inline image - {{npov}} tag as per dispute on Template talk:Combatant Status Review Tribunal trailer image and caption

Replaced transcluded image with inline image - {{npov}} tag as per dispute on Template talk:Combatant Status Review Tribunal trailer image and caption. Geo Swan 14:56, 24 September 2007 (UTC)