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RFC: Is speculation by an unnamed official without any secondary sources encyclopedic material?

The result of the discussion was to keep the info concerning the statements by anonymous officials.-- FutureTrillionaire (talk) 23:00, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

This RFC is regarding this edit. The edit restores "speculation" by an "unnamed" official which states that the Obama administration's killings via drone strikes are necessary because there is no where to put prisoners due to the closure of CIA interrogation centers. Opposing editors (me) believe that this is a trivial violation of WP:UNDUE, WP:NOT#NEWS, and WP:FRINGE because it gives undue (any) weight to the speculation of someone who is neither an expert, nor notable; it gives undue weight to a news article which from a quick Google search, has received no mainstream coverage in any other sources; and it gives undue weight to a fringe conspiracy theory which WP:EXCEPTIONAL says requires multiple reliable sources. Supporting editors say that it has a cite. Should this speculation be included? 159.1.15.34 (talk) 20:05, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Oppose - I'm so fucking sick of stumbling on articles being held hostage by a small group of like minded editors. That you should try to pull this nonsense in violation of so many policies is an embarrassment for you and for the encyclopedia. Oh, here's another one: WP:BURDEN. This is disgustingly transparent. 159.1.15.34 (talk) 20:05, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

I can't see how "fringe," "undue," "not news," and "exceptional" all argue against inclusion of this material. What is the "conspiracy theory," exactly? Who is conspiring to do what? How does a senior defense official being quoted in a major paper fit into "fringe" theory categories analogous to creationism, especially when the quote is expressing an opinion that's well within the bounds of rational political discourse? If there are political issues at stake (e.g. if this claim is misleading because it wrongly suggests that Obama has been forced into this policy, or is misleading because there are sound legal reasons for drone strikes and prison space isn't an issue), those should be stated clearly.
One potential problem with this edit is that it may not faithfully represent the sum total of what's presented in the article: I'd say that from all the opinions presented in the reuters article, the "no space" opinion is a minority one. But that can be addressed.-Darouet (talk) 17:59, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
Lol, are you serious? Who is this "senior defense official"? How do we know he is a senior defense official? Where are other sources to report on this claim? It's absolutely exceptional to claim that the Obama administration is just killing people because of lack of prison space, have you completely lost your mind? So if we're going to "cover the controversy" about this, we require multiple reliable sources which have not been provided. We haven't even established that it's a fringe theory yet because there is generally more than one person need to claim a theory as fringe, and at this point we only have one "unnamed official" making this claim. And WP:NOT#NEWS applies by establishing that one newspaper or publication reporting on something does not automatically justify inclusion, and I quote, "Wikipedia considers the enduring notability of persons and events. While news coverage can be useful source material for encyclopedic topics, most newsworthy events do not qualify for inclusion. For example, routine news reporting on things like announcements, sports, or celebrities is not a sufficient basis for inclusion in the encyclopedia." Where has the enduring notability been established? Where are the multiple reliable sources that are required? How can you be wrong in more ways? Who am I kidding, no amount of policy will convince a POV warrior. Hopefully we can get some good faith editors in here who have not succumb to madness. 159.1.15.34 (talk) 22:47, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
Here is the relevant passage from WP:UNDUE, "Generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all". To completely put 2 and 2 together for you: one unnamed person whose notability and expertise have not been established is a tiny minority. Derp, reading or understanding policy is hard for someone with an agenda to push! 159.1.15.34 (talk) 23:01, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
This issue is written about and discussed regularly, for instance by Jo Becker and Scott Shane for The New York Times:

Yet the administration’s very success at killing terrorism suspects has been shadowed by a suspicion: that Mr. Obama has avoided the complications of detention by deciding, in effect, to take no prisoners alive. While scores of suspects have been killed under Mr. Obama, only one has been taken into American custody, and the president has balked at adding new prisoners to Guantánamo.

“Their policy is to take out high-value targets, versus capturing high-value targets,” said Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the top Republican on the intelligence committee. “They are not going to advertise that, but that’s what they are doing.”

Mr. Obama’s aides deny such a policy, arguing that capture is often impossible in the rugged tribal areas of Pakistan and Yemen and that many terrorist suspects are in foreign prisons because of American tips. Still, senior officials at the Justice Department and the Pentagon acknowledge that they worry about the public perception.[1]

Or by The Christian Science Monitor:

Some of Obama's harshest critics suggest that one reason he has embraced the drone-strike approach to high-profile targets is that it avoids the controversial issues of long-term detention and methods of interrogation.[2]

Or by The Washington Times:

In Mr. Obama’s defense, killing suspected terrorists is far less messy than capturing them and increasing the detainee populations at installations such as Guantanamo Bay, which the president promised to shutter years ago. Killing them also mitigates the risk that “inhumane” interrogation techniques employed by superpatriots that the president’s team have depicted as thugs might end up tarnishing Mr. Obama’s record.[3]

And within this context, the opinions of unnamed U.S. officials quoted in the Reuters article are neither "fringe" nor "exceptional," but rather a part of regular political discourse in the United States:

By some accounts, the growing reliance on drone strikes is partly a result of the Obama administration's bid to repair the damage to America's image abroad in the wake of Bush-era allegations of torture and secret detentions.

Besides putting an end to harsh interrogation methods, the president issued executive orders to ban secret CIA detention centers and close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

Some current and former counterterrorism officials say an unintended consequence of these decisions may be that capturing wanted militants has become a less viable option. As one official said: "There is nowhere to put them."

A former U.S. intelligence official, who was involved in the process until recently, said: "I got the sense: 'What the hell do we do with this guy if we get him?' It's not the primary consideration but it has to be a consideration."[4]

You might also consider that half of what's written on these topics by mainstream sources is taken from "unnamed officials," because they're probably unauthorized to present their views on essentially classified procedures. So while I didn't introduce this material, am not sure or deeply invested in the extent to which opinions from officials published in the press may be correct, I don't find any merit in the arguments made here to remove the text altogether. Actually, since I've been forced to look into it a little more, I now think that someone could easily decide to spend time expanding on a section investigating this more thoroughly. -Darouet (talk) 03:52, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
 Done 159.1.15.34 (talk) 17:48, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Information in the wrong sections

I think the article needs to be re-arranged. For example, the section named "Pakistan response" includes much information where the only citations are from UK sources. I would argue such information should be under a different section, as reports from the UK do not constitute responses from Pakistan. Perhaps if the heading was "alleged responses from Pakistan" then it wouldn't matter so much, but in order to keep the article factual, I think doing this would be failure of responsibility... --Rebroad (talk) 13:14, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi Rebroad, I understand your point about foreign news coverage of events in Pakistan, but I'm not certain that foreign papers are less reliable when describing events inside the country. Many powerful histories of the American Revolution have been written and printed in England; Pakistani and Indian papers often publish fascinating coverage of American foreign policy; the origin and mechanics of the SARS outbreak in southeast Asia was perhaps best described by academics writing and publishing from the United States. So, while the section "Pakistani response" largely describes a phenomenon within Pakistan, coverage is global, and that's a good thing. If sources present conflicting information, we should work here to evaluate them, and act accordingly. We might remove obviously unreliable material, qualify dubious material, or present multiple perspectives as necessary, in order to inform readers. What do you think? -Darouet (talk) 19:53, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

NYRB article

"If there is any misconception that the drone strikes are primarily counterterrorist in nature, aimed at key leaders of international terror networks, this can be dispensed with. The report from Stanford and NYU highlights research separately conducted by Reuters and by the New America Foundation that comes to similar conclusions: the elimination of 'high-value' targets—al-Qaeda or 'militant' leaders—has been exceedingly rare—fewer than fifty people, or about 2 percent of all drone deaths."

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/may/23/pakistan-why-drones-dont-help/

86.180.158.124 (talk) 02:04, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Dubious Peswhar Court data.

I cut "According to the statistics presented to the Peshawar High Court by the Government of Pakistan in response to a petition filed in June 2013 - in 333 drone strikes during the last five years, 47 militants and 1500 civilians were killed while 330 were left maimed.[26]" It was single sourced to the online Daily Mail to an argument by the leader of a political party. Bad sourcing for an outrageous claim. If someone can find multiple sources to show that a policy that was 3% effective was continued, we might consider putting it back.  Tedperl (talk) 15:09, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Now if someone would just go through the rest of the article and pull all the non-objective stuff. At the very least the article should be marked as controversial for creating an anti-drone strike narrative. It makes it sound like the Pakistani military doesn't want the US drone strikes, when there are articles and evidence available that say quite the opposite. 67.208.148.22 (talk) 20:48, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

[5]>> Pakistan anti-drone campaigner missing>> Pakistan pressed over missing drone activist >> Abducted Pakistani drone activist freed(Lihaas (talk) 19:15, 23 November 2013 (UTC)).

Maybe someone can explain how this "Closing" process works when all of the editors themselves do not sign in and remain anonymous....

Honestly, in a discussion about the quoting of anonymous but supposedly authoritative sources, the people we find who are arguing it AND closing it are deliberately choosing to remain anonymous by not signing in. Money for Wikipedia? Not one dime in support of such anarchy. QuintBy (talk) 09:45, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

I'd like to address your concerns, but there seems to be some confusion. The last discussion "closed" here was this one, almost a year ago, closed by a registered editor. Is that the one you mean? As this is your first edit to this talk page, did you mean a different article?
As for anonymous editors, yes, Wikipedia accepts contributions by anonymous editors. In fact, most editors are anonymous, including you. Yes, all of your contribs are connected to the user name "QuintBy", but that doesn't tell anyone who you are. Maybe you're a senior government official pushing the government's agenda, maybe you're a lonely crank in a cabin in the remote wilderness pushing your pet theory. More likely, you're somewhere in between. At least with IP editors we can tell something about where they are editing from.
Money for Wikipedia? Yes, Wikipedia runs on donations.
Anarchy? Wikipedia has a metric fuckton of rules compared to most anything anyone would call "anarchy". - SummerPhD (talk) 16:44, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
Also, remember that the sources are not really anonymous. The reporter's name is usually stated, and the editorial staff of the publication is usually publicly available. Furthermore, if the names of the sources quoted in the article are not given, they are still presumably known to the reporter, which is why they are considered "unnamed" but NOT "anonymous." Cla68 (talk) 23:39, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

CFR update

http://blogs.cfr.org/zenko/2013/12/31/tracking-u-s-targeted-killings/

86.129.4.149 (talk) 18:10, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Legality

Shouldn't there be a section on the legality - or rather otherwise - of these assassinations?101.98.175.68 (talk) 07:09, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

The introduction discusses this. Uhlan talk 06:56, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

It violates international law quite flagrantly. The intro states that the court in Peshawar has stated this, while the U.S. disagrees. I'm not shocked that it's presented that way, but there's not much of a "discussion" to be had. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.222.159.20 (talk) 20:06, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Statistics section

In May 2013, the New York Times reported that, "...Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent." [6] Narrowing the definition of civilian seems pretty important when evaluating statistics. -- Paid Editor -- User:009o9Talk 21:03, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

The Johnston and Sarbahi study

Wouldn't it be better to cite the peer-reviewed version of this study, as opposed to the pre-publication version? It's also iffy to say that this is an "analysis by the RAND Corporation" just because one of the two authors works at RAND. It would be equally iffy to call this a 'University of Minnesota' (the affiliation of the co-author) study Snooganssnoogans (talk) 17:09, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

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