You asked on my talk page for me to look at Executive Order 13355 and Executive Order 13356, both of which have only a single primary source citation, the executive order itself. I do not believe that all or most executive orders are inherently notable (as User:BD2412 suggested in a recommendation you quoted), and I believe that articles about executive orders should have secondary sources to establish notability. On the other hand, a cursory search indicates that secondary sources do exist as to Executive Order 13355 and Executive Order 13356. Thus, I personally would see no point in nominating them for deletion, unless it was someone's goal to stimulate people to improve the articles by adding those secondary sources. But, in any event, that does not mean that the articles should be left as they are, because they do need to get those secondary sources. --Metropolitan90(talk) 04:28, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
AfD nomination of Peter Murphy (JAG)
I have nominated Peter Murphy (JAG), an article that you created, for deletion. I do not think that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and have explained why at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Peter Murphy (JAG). Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time. SpinningSpark 18:52, 3 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
If this guy's indeed held at Gitmo, think you can improve his article and fill it out a bit? Sherurcij(speaker for the dead) 17:18, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Here's the before: diff. I think I did okay with it. Best, Schmidt,MICHAEL Q. 02:56, 17 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
User:78.34.128.236
Dear Geo Swan
I read the message you posted at User talk:78.34.128.236. I believe that this user is a sockpuppet of a user who has been indefinetly blocked. I believe this is because another user, User:78.34.145.54, started up [1] an AFD for the Chesley Sullenberger article. This IP stated on his/her talk page, "Thanks, but I'm obviously not new to Wikipedia, what with making an edit like this one. Just (currently peacefully) evading an indef block here. Anyway, cheers."[2] I believe User:78.34.145.54 and User:78.34.128.236 are the same, because User:78.34.128.236 said on the AFD discussion page: "I have already withdrawn my AfD nom." [3]. Since I believed User:78.34.145.54 was a sockpuppet of an indefinetly blocked user, I reported that IP on the admin noticeboard: [4]. The general response was that the IP had done nothing bad yet, but keep a close eye and report it again if the user does cause trouble.[5] If you do feel this person behind the two IPs is causing trouble, please feel free to report User talk:78.34.128.236, and consider adding the evidence linking User:78.34.128.236 and User:78.34.145.54 together which I believe shows by extension that User:78.34.128.236 is a sockpuppet of an indefintely blocked user. Cheers for reading. Terrakyte (talk) 18:59, 17 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that the various posts from the IP addresses in the 78.34.xxx.xxx range are from a single individual. Due to DHCP it is not unusual for a contributor to post from a range of IP addresses, particularly if they are using a telephone modem, not broadband. Their ISP would issue them a different IP every time they connect.
Indeed, 78.34.x.x is me. And the dynamic IP address is due to my ISP (not Amsterdam btw, but fairly close to it). 78.34.129.171 (talk) 04:15, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
re grumpy comments
Re
Daniel Gottlob Moritz Schreber, Hermes Phettberg, Tom Liwa, Gert Postel. I don't claim to be the perfect contributor and I'm sorry if I come across as grumpy, but... I am. Somewhat, at least. I just resent certain trends that appear to become stronger as Wikipedia grows. Recentism or "newsfadism" is among those. Again, sorry for upsetting you. Please don't take it personally. It's the phenomenon I resent, not any editor. 78.34.129.171 (talk) 04:12, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply
]
Okay. Thanks for your reply. I won't resent it. But I will encourage you to do your best to curb the appearance of grumpiness.
Do you know what Benjamin Franklin wrote? He suggested that young men, who resented being more junior than older people, and those with more money, should merely pretend to be humble. Merely pretending brought the same rewards as actual virtues. Have you ever considered, well, merely pretending to not be grumpy? Geo Swan (talk) 04:31, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You mean a bit like in Malcolm Holds His Tongue? It got him a peptic ulcer! Also, that's just typical: The one time I'd link to some nn TV episode article, there is none! So typical! :D Cheers and see you around. (Seriously though, thanks for the impulse, I promise I'll try to keep it in mind.) 78.34.129.171 (talk) 04:37, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Let's play "Which agency fucked this up?", it's my favourite game! AM 770 is saying that it was Zarqawi, not
Abu Musab al-Suri who ran the safehouse/camp - which would seem to make some sense, except Zarqawi's Jordanian ("Abu Musab", Father of Musab, "al-Suri", the Syrian). Note that they're also saying the interrogation took place the day before Arar was renditioned. Not "several weeks' before...and Khadr didn't actually identify him until he was coerced/pushed into saying he did. Sherurcij(speaker for the dead) 15:59, 20 January 2009 (UTC)[reply
]
Proposed deletion of Zaid v. Bush
A proposed deletion template has been added to the article Zaid v. Bush, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process because of the following concern:
I contacted you, in any case, as I have before. I can't possibly admonish every other user on this site for every error they make; I can only remedy it by making the situation easier. I am very busy in real life. Bearian (talk) 18:48, 20 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
P.S. in this case, I thought that
merger was appropriate. Bearian (talk) 18:49, 20 January 2009 (UTC)[reply
]
I apologize if I handled this incorrectly. I put the PROD notice on one article I ran across, and figured that you and I would have five days to discuss, and Bearian interceded and merged. After Bearian interceded, I discovered there were 100+ other articles with identical concerns. I asked him how I should handle, and he suggested
WP:AN
.
Anyway, your argument that merger is inappropriate because one of the habeas cases "might" blow up contradicts
WP:CRYSTALBALL. There are already individual articles about individual Guantanamo detainees, and creating content forks about cases that are not yet notable (and may well be mooted in the next 24 hours) is a bad idea; the articles themselves are simply indiscriminately listing court filings without regard to the significance of the filing. THF (talk) 18:57, 20 January 2009 (UTC)[reply
]
Apology accepted. Thanks.
You misunderstand my argument. I don't think we should cover these cases because one of them might blow up -- and thus merit coverage. I think they already merit coverage, and are all in the slow process of blowing up now, as we discuss them.
Some contributors assert that the guidelines and policies require topics to have "significant press coverage" -- which some of these articles don't have. But no-where do the guidelines and policies say that. There are whole fields, serious fields, like the history of science, which will never have press coverage.
These cases are (1) unprecedented; and (2) remarkable. I don't know how many US citizens and US residents have writs of habeas corpus filed on their behalf every year. Let's pick an arbitary figure. Let's suppose it were 100,000. How are these habeas petitions remarkable, when almost all of those 100,000 aren't? Two reasons. The 99.9% of habeas petitions in the continental US that don't merit coverage merely reflect the standard, predictable and unremarkable functioning of the US justice system. The Guantanamo captives were held for years, without charge, without ever being told why they were being held. Many of them, like Bismullah (Guantanamo captive 968) I mention below, were the victims of mistaken identity, or of false denunciations -- mixups which could have been cleared up shortly after their arrival in US captivity if their detention had proceeded under the rule of law. Geo Swan (talk) 16:31, 21 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
TFH, I started to respond to your latest comment on WPANI, but it scrolled off. Response to that here...
TFH, I don't think any serious contributor has a problem with you, or I, or anyone else, raising our concerns, so long as we do so in a fair way, that complies with policy, common sense and common courtesy. I don't think anyone is trying to get you to stop trying to improve the wikipedia.
You asserted that only the cases that reached the SCOTUS aren't "problematic". No offense, but I suspect you would not have written this if you were more fully informed about some of the other cases, like
Muhammad Hamid Al Qarani, who for the last several years was the youngest captive, was recently ordered to be freed due to his habeas petition. His judge ruled that the US had captured this 14 year old boy based on nothing. The allegations against him were amazingly flimsy -- like that he had been Abu Qatada
's lieutenant, in London, in 1998, when he was an eleven year old schoolboy, who had never left Saudi Arabia. Senior DoD spokesmen, hinting at classified info, tried to defend this bizarre claim. Judge Leon found nothing to support it.
You ask: "Why focus on habeas cases that are going to be mooted by an Obama executive order in the next couple of weeks when it's clear that several experienced Wikipedia editors find them problematic?" Would you argue that we shouldn't cover slavery, in the US South, because Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation? Of course you wouldn't. Slavery remains an important part of US history, even once it was outlawed. Exactly how far are you going with your suggestion we halt our efforts to provide meaningful, comprehensive coverage of Guantanamo related topics, because you think Obama is going to render them moot?
Let me remind you, their cases aren't moot yet. Realistically, if Obama were to sign an order closing the camp today all these cases would remain worth covering.
Some of the captives are going to remain in US custody, even if the Guantanamo camp is closed.
As the release of Bismullah this week shows, the Bush administration failed to determine which captives were innocent bystander, victims of mistaken identity or false denunciations; which were ordinary combatants who should have been accorded POW status; and which were combatants who seemed to have stripped themselves of POW status by committing a war crime. Obama may feel he has to order the US military to redo making this determination all over again, from start, this time complying with the USA's Geneva Convention obligations.
Almost all of the captives who were set free remain saddled with the determination that the USA considers them "enemy combatants".
These cases are the first step for former captives who want to sue the USA for kidnapping them.
These cases will remain important, no matter what Obama chooses to do. And why am I working on them, rather than some other topic that you, personally, think would be more valuable? Because the topic interests me. I think it is important. And I want to understand it more fully.
Forgive me for pointing this out, but I don't think what you have written is internally consistent. You would be totally correct to resent if other contributors tried to order where you made your contributions to the wikipedia. But when you question my working on this topic because "it's clear that several experienced Wikipedia editors find them problematic" -- isn't your comment exactly the kind of order you thought you perceived, and you resented? I am an experienced contributor too. And I expect wikipedia contributors who have a concern over my contributions to engage in reasoned civil dialogue, without regard to whether they consider themselves more experienced than I am, or lesss experienced; and without regard to whether the community has entrusted them with administrator authority.
In your third point you expressed some vague criticism of these articles. I'll acknowledge these articles would have been a better if I had tried to create fewer in the time available to me, and spent more time on each one. But if the topics remain worthy of coverage, they remain worthy of coverage, even if the current instance of the articles need work. I do my best to followup on every serious, civil, specific concern I see expressed about my contributions. I followup on some of the vague or rude concerns too. If you are really serious, I would appreciate you being specific about your concerns. Geo Swan (talk) 16:10, 21 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'll copy your remarks and respond at
Wikipedia:AN#Category:Global_War_on_Terror_captives.27_habeas_corpus_petitions. THF (talk) 16:17, 21 January 2009 (UTC)[reply
]
WP:AN
Happy to move the discussion to the wikiproject, but wanted to address between the two of us something you complained I didn't address:
I am going to repeat one of the points you avoided acknowledging, clarifying, or refuting. You seemed to be expressing the view that other contributors were trying to order you around. I agree you would be totally justified resenting if other contributors here tried to order you to work on topics in which you had no interest, or to stop working on areas you were interested, with vague justifications. Yet you are suggesting I should stop working in this area because "...several experienced Wikipedia editors have a (vague) concern."
The reason I didn't address that was because I suggested no such thing, and I didn't want to embarrass you or sidetrack the discussion to point out how badly you misread what I said. My point was simply that Birgitte's argument against my complaint suffered from
WP:KETTLE problems because it was equally applicable to her working on the articles in the first place. Hence my preface your argument works both ways. THF (talk) 01:01, 22 January 2009 (UTC)[reply
]
Tagging
Well, the article doesn't establish notability (as Wikipedia isn't news). However, I apologize for tagging it, I did not know you were working on it (and there was no {{
inuse}} tag). I'm apologize. TheAEtalk/sign 04:52, 23 January 2009 (UTC)[reply
]
DYK for Chesley Sullenberger
On
Chesley Sullenberger, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page
... of the tora bora coordinated on my talk page. Sorry I took a while to answer, my wikipedia editing is rather sporadic nowadays. ¨¨ victorfalk 01:44, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I owe you thanks
Stumbled across Tariq al-Sawah's weigh-in numbers this morning, had a good morning laugh at the...incompetence of somebody registering that number (were there perhaps three guys standing on the scale at once? Was al-Sawah smuggling a golfcart in his pants?) without noticing. Cheers. Sherurcij(speaker for the dead) 19:06, 30 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, Geo Swan. You have new messages at Auntof6's talk page. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.
k
Renamed it while working on User:Sherurcij/Gitmo; the list of the January arrivals as much as I can make it, going to keep digging around, your weigh-ins were a great help. I notice you have ten weigh-ins on the 12th, and ten two days later...wondered if there was any chance they were the same batch of twenty weighed over two days, or a separate shipment. *shrugs* Sherurcij(speaker for the dead) 18:12, 9 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Orphaned non-free media (File:Mohammad Golab Mangal, Laghman Province, Afghanistan.jpg)
You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that media for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media
).
If you have uploaded other unlicensed media, please check whether they're used in any articles or not. You can find a list of 'image' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "Image" from the dropdown box. Note that all non-free media not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. BJBot (talk) 05:11, 11 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Assistance needed
Geo Swan, In response to your question, I work in Helmand and spend a lot of time with local Afghans and have dozens of great pictures I'd like to share. Unfortunately I don't have the time to get up to speed using wikipedia and find it resource intensive at the moment. My current challenges are (i) is this the right way to correspond with you or is there some email-like system on wikipedia? (ii) I uploaded two photos (Mangal in a bazaar and a girl with water can) and thought I'd completed the licencing section properly. But one has just been taken down. What didn't I fill in correctly and how do I undo it.