Talk:Bensayah Belkacem

Documenting the duration of the captive's detention

I have reverted two basically unexplained edits.

This edit both contains an inaccuracy, is counter to the consensus arrived at back in January in a discussion at the WP:Help desk.

This edit uses the phrase "As of today". Strunk and White's Elements of Style strongly recommends avoiding the use of redundant phrases like this. Geo Swan (talk) 00:23, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Could you please explain and i have ask you before without getting an answer.

"As of today" refers to the time spent in Guantanamo. Where is the redundancy? Could you please explain.

As of today Bensayah Belkacem has been confined in the Guantanamo camps for 8 years, 3 months, and 26 days. He arrived there on January 21, 2002.

It is also to mention that the templates automatically updates daily so i think it is even important to point out that the time refers exactly to the current day. IQinn (talk) 00:41, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

When the article has already said the captive is currently in Guantanamo then when we state when they arrived and how long they have been held it is already clear that the duration is "as of today". As of today is an example of the kind of phrase guides to writing recommend against, as it adds no new information, and makes the document longer, for no benefit, imposing an unnecessary cognitive burden.

I replaced the version of this paragraph that did not include date calculation templates, with one that did, as per this discussion. "Bensayah Belkacem arrived at Guantanamo on January 21, 2002, and has been held there for 22 years and 10 months."

Of course other contributors are free to offer alternate wording. If they do so I think it is reasonable for them to be able to explain why the alternate wording is superior to the wording they replaced. You have not yet offered an explanation as to why you consider your wording superior.

WRT your query on Talk:Said Muhammad Husayn Qahtani -- I seem to have missed responding there. But I have offered you other explanations of my concern over your unnecessary phrase "As of today" elsewhere.

Let me repeat my puzzlement and disappointment over your reluctance to agree to have a central place to discuss the common issues that arise on the articles we both edit. Let me encourage you to reconsider your refusal. If we had a central place, you or I could ask our common questions of one another, or state our concerns over common issues just once. We could offer our responses just once. If we noticed subseqent instances of a concern, we would leave a brief note on that articles talk page to the central discussion. I suggested we do this on sub-pages of Wikipedia:Wikiproject Terrorism. And I remain mystified by your refusals. Geo Swan (talk) 16:27, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

I dispute that these three words are a cognitive burden and that these three little words have a significant influence on the length of the document.

The opposite is true as explained As of today refers to the time spent in Guantanamo and it is important to mention as the template updates daily. There is no redundancy and it takes away the cognitive burden of the reader to make sense of all the dates.

You haven't offered an explanation yet why your wording is superior. The time already spent in Guantanamo is the most interesting information in this context and that is well reflected in WP:RS reliable secondary sources.

As said before i do not think that this is necessary and your request reminds me a bit on WP:Ownership and past experiences have show that this would just end up in a non productive filibustering waste of time. No need, that's what we have talk pages for. I just think if you would show a bit more effort to work towards consensus things just would work out. I also will do my best in this direction. IQinn (talk) 17:08, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

• For the record, User:Iqinn was subjected to a series of blocks, of increasing length, for edit-warring. The individual or individuals using that wiki-id were eventually subject to an indefinite block -- which they tried to evade, through sock-puppetry. Geo Swan (talk) 10:16, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

As a courtesy to other contributors could we please discuss controversial edits on the talk page, not in the edit summaries?

Another contributor reverted several hours of my work, in this edit, with an edit summary of "rv back to 00:31, 17 May 2010 Geo Swan - The original quotes provide more value to the article than the poor summaries and interpretation of it".

As a courtesy to other contributors could we please discuss controversial edits on the talk page, not in the edit summaries?

I am reverting the edit. In my opinion the other contributor had an obligation to state their concern here, rather than simply revert my edits. Reverting an edit that another contributor has clearly spent a lot of work on, with a brief claim in an edit summary is a trigger to edit warring. I first explained this to this contributor, back in March, and several times since then, requesting, each time, that they explain their concerns on the articles' talk page(s), or some other fora that allows a meaningful exchange of views.

This other contributor has been opposing wikilinks to articles to topics referred to in the allegations used to justify the continued detention of the Guantanamo captives, that dates back nine months. This contributuor has offered close to half a dozen different justification for excising or obfuscating these wikilinks.

I honestly believe that this edit obfuscates valid and useful wikilinks to the allegations. I honestly believe that this wikilink removal erodes the value of this article, and the related articles, for our readers.

WRT the comment "The original quotes provide more value to the article than the poor summaries and interpretation of it." I started this article, and most of the related articles. And I have done a very large fraction of the edits to maintain them. I always do my best to conform to all the wikipedia's policies and established conventions. I never thought I would succeed 100 percent of the time. I have never doubted that other good faith contributors would have good faith concerns with my original good faith contributions. Since I started my understanding of the wikipedia's policies has evolved, and the policies themselves have evolved.

One of the weaknesses in this material -- material I originally contributed, is that too much of it is quoted material. Entire publid domain documents can be quoted, on wikisource.

Back in 2006, when I started working on these topics, the 2006 and 2007 memos, and most of the 2005 memos had not yet been published. The 2004 memos were short, so quoting them in full wasn't much of a problem. The 2005, 2006, 2007 memos are all much longer -- even though they are less important. And they are highly repetitious.

So about a year ago I started rewriting these sections, replacing the quotes from the allegation memos with summaries -- summaries that only mentioned allegations that were new, or that had been significantly modified. This significantly shortens the articles -- which I think improves the articles.

Frankly, I think the wording used by the original OARDEC authors was often awkward, and hard to read. The original OARDEC wording was often opaque to readers who were unfamiliar with military terms -- or even to those with a familiarity with military terms. I honestly believe my summaries are easier to understand than the original quoted material.

I think if any other contributor who has read the original memos, has concerns over specific passages in these summaries, then I think the appropriate choices are to raise their concern on the talk page, or to offer new drafts of those specific passages, that they are then prepared to defend in a civil, serious, collegial, respectful manner.

Candidly Geo Swan (talk) 20:13, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Please do not revert back again until things have been discussed. I always discuss edits on the talk page and not in the edit summaries. This is a large scale change and we have more than a thousand of these quotes and there are severe problems with this change. I know you are a good faith editor and i do not doubt your good intention but this change is highly problematic and erodes the quality of the article.

These quotes are summarized documents from the tribunal of Bensayah Belkacem prepared by OARDEC a United States military body. They are not a court and they are not a media outlet. A large number of Wikipedia editors including me see them as primary sources for various reasons. I know you personally think they are secondary sources and you have your reasons for that and i think for the moment we can spare another discussion about this on this level. For the sake of the argument i think it would be fair to say that these documents are quite unique in their nature. Can we agree on that?

So as they are so unique in their nature i am very surprised to see an editor trying to produce an interpretation and summary of them. I know you are a good faith editor and i do not doubt your good intention but how could that be possible to do?

Could you please tell me what OARDEC means by Commitment or Connections/Associations and the other terms they use?

We do not know this and we do not know what they mean by primary factors favor continued detention or primary factors favor release or transfer.

And how do you select the factors to mention and witch one should we skip?

To summarize factors and to change the wording of them ultimately changes their meaning.

We do not know how to interpret these documents and we can not summarize these factors without changing the meaning and any attempt to do so will end up in something thats maybe misleading but for sure from poor quality in comparison with the original quote.

As i said i do not doubt your good intention but it is impossible to interpret and summarize these summaries and it erodes the quality of the article, considering the unique nature of these documents it is just fine to have some of them as quotes in the article.

As a courtesy to other contributors i am posting a small example of the changes:

This

a. Commitment

1. The detainee supported himself and several other naturalized former Bosnian mujahidin and their families.
2. The detainee planned to coordinate and assist with the travel and arrival of a number of travelers from Afghanistan.
3. The detainee was identified by a foreign intelligence service as being suspected of terrorist activities.
4. The detainee has been identified as a primary al Qaida facilitator in Bosnia.
5. The detainee was one of several Mujahidin Fighters who remained in Bosnia and was known for his ties to the Chechen Movement.

b. Connections/Associations

1. The detainee was arrested and possessed numerous phone numbers that linked him to Usama bin Laden's operational network in Afghanistan and the global Sunni Extremist Network.
2. The detainee denied ties to a senior al Qaida member whose phone number was found in a book in the detainee's possession.
3. A senior al Qaida member reported he has known the detainee since 1993 when the detainee went to Afghanistan from the war in Tajikistan.

c. Other Relevant Data

1. According to a news article, the detainee was supposed to be in charge of coordinating terrorist attacks to take place after 11 September 2001 and was to become the chief of operations for al Qaida.
2. The detainee was discovered to have 3.5 million marks in Bosnian currency deposited in a Bosnian bank.

a. The detainee was adamant that he is known by an alias that is associated with Abu Zubaydah.

b. The detainee adamantly denied involvement in the plot to blow up the United States Embassy in Sarajevo, Bosnia. The detainee reported that he was told that there was no case against him and that he would be sent back to Algeria.

c. The detainee stated he never associated with any terrorists or anyone who want to hurt the United States. He never worked with al Haramayn or al Furquan, although he has heard of al Furguan.

d. The detainee denied that he ever had a bank account in Sarajevo nor in Bosnia.

e. The detainee denied being involved in the facilitating of fraudulent passports for other; the only involvement the detainee had with fraudulent passports was that concerning his own fraudulent Yemeni Passport.

f. The detainee denied any knowledge of the al Farquan [sic] and Haramay organizations. He stated the Saudi High Commission could not be a bad organization.

g. The detainee reported he heard of al Qaida and that Usama bin Laden was the leader but he knew this from the media reports

changed to:

• Bensayah was alleged to have supported himself and several other naturalized former Bosnian mujahidin and their families.
• Bensayah was alleged to have was identified by a foreign intelligence service as being suspected of terrorist activities.
• Bensayah was alleged to have been known for his ties to the Chechen Movement.
• Bensayah was alleged to have possessed numerous phone numbers that linked him to Usama bin Laden's operational network in Afghanistan and the global Sunni Extremist Network.
• Bensayah was alleged to have denied ties to a senior al Qaida member whose phone number was found in a book in the detainee's possession.
• A senior al Qaida member is alleged to have claimed he has known the detainee since 1993 when the detainee went to Afghanistan from the war in Tajikistan.
• Bensayah was alleged to have been named in a news article as in charge of coordinating terrorist attacks to take place after 11 September 2001 and was to become the chief of operations for al Qaida.
• Bensayah was alleged to have 3.5 million marks in Bosnian currency deposited in a Bosnian bank.
• Bensayah adamantly denied involvement in the plot to blow up the United States Embassy in Sarajevo, Bosnia.
• Bensayah stated he never associated with any terrorists or anyone who want to hurt the United States.
• Bensayah stated he never worked with al Haramayn or al Furquan.
• Bensayah denied that he ever had a bank account in Sarajevo nor in Bosnia.
• Bensayah denied being involved in the facilitating of fraudulent passports for other.

the only involvement the detainee had with fraudulent passports was that concerning his own fraudulent Yemeni Passport.

---

The original document can be found here. IQinn (talk) 00:44, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

• I've left a request on the talk page of the contributor who left the comment above requesting that they replace the long cut and paste with a diff. Geo Swan (talk) 07:34, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

• The copy and paste example is just fine here because it makes it easy for other contributers to compare the two versions. Not easy sources here. Please concentrate on the content issue. IQinn (talk) 12:02, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

• I am going to number the paragraphs in the comment above, and respond to them in order.

1	I am not going to respond to most of the first paragraph above, because much of it doesn't seem related to the content of the article. It would be very useful if you were specific about how these changes I introduced were "problematic". Long quotes are discouraged, in general. Over and above long quotes being discouraged, in general -- these quotes contain the same allegations, repeated multiple times. So, my recent changes not only improve the quality of the article, they bring it closer into compliance with our usual conventions.
2	I am not going to respond to most of the second paragraph, because much of it doesn't seem related to the content of this article. You assert above that the quoted documents are "unique in their nature". OK -- maybe; possibly; I can't agree without knowing what you mean by "unique".
3	Why is a good faith contributor summarizing a "unique" WP:RS? Long quotes are discouraged. WP:OR explicitly encourages contributors to summarize our references.
4	What does OARDEC mean by "Commitment", "Connections/Associations", "Training" and the other terms they use? I think I came across a document that was a guideline for the authors of the memos. Sorry. It is not in my notes. In the meantime, why don't we just assume the OARDEC authors used the ordinary, routine, surface meaning of these headings?
5	I dispute we don't know the meaning behind the two subheadings of factors. And even if, for the sake of argument, we didn't know the meaning of the subheadings, I would argue that we should then base our summaries on the surface meaning of the phrases: "factors favoring continued detention" and "factors favoring release or transfer".
6	As I wrote above, I usually include factors new to that memo in the summary for that memo. I leave out allegations that had already been summarized from the memos of earlier years; I leave out allegations that I didn't understand; I leave out allegations where I didn't understand the relationship between the allegation and the captive. If there specific instances of allegations you think should have been included, or specific instances of allegations I summarized that you don't think should have been summarized, why don't you offer them up?
7	You write: "To summarize factors and to change the wording of them ultimately changes their meaning." Sorry, I believe we have addressed this before. As I wrote above WP:OR explicitly encourages summarizing the material in WP:RS. Other contributors have pointed this out to you as well.
8	WRT your concerns about wikipedia contributors interpretating WP:RS. All of our WP:RS have been interpreted by wikipedia contributors. I do not understand why these WP:RS should be uniquely treated as if they shouldn't be subjected to the kind of interpretation we routinely apply to all WP:RS.
9	The length of the quotes overwhelm the articles, and they are highly redundant.
10	Finally, at the end of your post, you called the version of the document supplied by the New York Times the "original document". Sorry, the NYTimes is mirroring the DoD documents. The DoD's page for downloading original versions of the documents is here. Multiple revisions of many of the OARDEC documents have been published, sometimes those different versions are inconsistent with one another. Since the NYTimes does not state which revision they are mirroring I would prefer you not refer to the NYTimes mirror as "originals". Thanks.

The wikilinks to other related articles are important, relevant, useful. When a captive is alleged to have served under Abdul Hadi Al Iraqi, Abu Zubaydah, or some other individual described as a senior al Qaida lieutenant I think it is an important service for our readers for our article to contain a wikilink to Abdul Hadi Al Iraqi, Abu Zubaydah, or whomever. The allegations against practically every captive contain allegations that mention topics that we have articles about. I believe it is an important service for our readers for the articles to contain wikilinks to the topics mentioned in the allegations.

When I drafted this material I honestly wasn't aware that wikilinks were generally discouraged within quotes. Replacing the quotes with summaries allows the appropriate linking to related content on the wikipedia. I was already rewriting these sections of the articles, to replace the quoted material with briefer, less redundant summaries, summaries that would be clearer for general readers, who don't have a military background. Now that the discouraging of the use of wikilinks within quotes has been drawn to my attention I plan to put more emphasis on this effort. Geo Swan (talk) 14:54, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Long blocks of quotes? Or wikipedia contributor drafted summaries? A summary

I'd like third party input on the basic question addressed in the section immediately above this one. Should articles on the Guantanamo captives contain long blocks of quotes from the memos that contain the allegations against the captives, or should they contain wikipedia contributor drafted summaries of those allegations?

My position is that:

1. Articles that consist largely of long blocks of quotes are discouraged.
2. In January 2009 the DoD released additional, more recent allegation memos. We have four years worth of memos now, and they are highly repetitious. The original memos, from 2004, published in 2006, were brief. Subsequent memos are much longer, and usually repeat the allegations present in the earlier memos. Summarizing the memos, and only reporting the changes, makes the articles easier to read.
3. Almost every allegation memo has multiple allegations that include other topics on which we have articles. These articles should contain wikilinks to those articles. However wikilinks within quotes are discouraged.

My best good faith paraphrase of the current objections of the contributor who disagrees with me is that they think the OARDEC allegation memos are somehow unique and that they are unique in a manner that means no summary of them can be neutral, and that any summary of them will necessarily be misleading.

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 16:32, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

As a courtesy to other contributors could we please discuss controversial issues on the talk page, not in our edit summaries?

Another contributor removed File talk:Andrew purvis's sidebar -- 'The Suspects- A Bosnian subplot.png from this article, even though it is relevant to half a dozen paragraphs in the article.

This contributor performed this excision with the one word edit summary "useless". This concerns me as one word edit summaries should be used with care, they should not be used to obfuscate controversial edits. Geo Swan (talk) 18:03, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

As a courtesy to other editor could you just address the content issue instead of wasting out time with ad hominem attacks? There was nothing controversial in my edit and you are welcome to explain the value of this image. Unfortunately you simply reverted without satisfying explanation and you violated WP:BRD what if troublesome and can easily spark an edit war. So i am waiting for you to explaination and i will wait a few days and if you do not provide a sufficient explanation and you do not engage in a content focused debate without filibuster and ad hominem then i am going to bring you to the attention of the administrators again for disruptive editing. Cheers - IQinn (talk) 21:56, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Geo Swan and please do agree to be mentored when working on BLP's as suggested. Thank you. IQinn (talk) 14:37, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

• I initiated a discussion over this image at Wikipedia:Possibly unfree files/2011 May 11#File:Andrew purvis's sidebar -- 'The Suspects- A Bosnian subplot.png. I restored the article to prior to the removal of the image. Geo Swan (talk) 14:48, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

You are edit warring and a copyright status discussion does not decide the value of the images for this discussion here. You still fail to explain the value of this images for the article the more troublesome is that you have reverted multiple other edits including the removal of primary sources that are against BLP. What is wrong with you? IQinn (talk) 15:04, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

• COMMENT - Geoswan, you know precisely what you are doing here. The issue with these articles has been, and always will be, the fact that you continue to re-add primary source materials to these articles, and each correspondingly suffers from original research. Please stop. Thank you.--Yachtsman1 (talk) 17:58, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

I have removed the primary source materials from the article, which corresponds to the community's overwhelming sentiment on this issue. Thank you.--Yachtsman1 (talk) 18:04, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

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