Talk:Timeline of the Syrian civil war (September–December 2017)

Disingenuous

Disingenuous: not candid or sincere, typically by pretending that one knows less about something than one really does.

I still don't understand why the Syrian conflict needs a separate article that is updated daily. WP is not a newspaper. Rhadow (talk) 16:40, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

WP:JUSTDONTLIKEIT

Please read the current essay. Please avoid "emotion trumps logic" edits.
WP:JUSTDONTLIKEITMr.User200 (talk) 17:00, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

I am not sure if this is a reply to the disengenous point above or to my attempts to add "better source" tags to claims which are sourced to Al-Masdar. Al-Masdar has repeatedly been discussed at the Reliable Source noticeboard. There is strong consensus that it is not a reliable source, although some arguments that it can be used for uncontroversial claims or for Russian/Syrian government statements. This article is updated daily with whatever Al-Masdar reports, and that is an uacceptable way to create and edit a Wikipedia article. BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:05, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

Unexplained reverts

It seems every edit I make on this page is reverted, with no explanation. @Mr.User200: please can you at the very least give an explanation when you make your edits, and ideally discuss on the talk page. This is the latest batch of unexplained reverts:

4 Sept:

• Syrian Army force closes in to the besieged city of Deir ez-Zor.
  • I removed this as non-notable and my removal was reverted. Wikipedia is not a newspaper. "Closing in" cannot be a notable item. The actual battle for Deir Ezzor is covered later in the article, when it actually happens.
• The Russian Ministry of Defense stated that 10 commanders from various rebel factions defected to the Syrian Army.
  • I added a better source tag, and my edit was reverted. This is an extremely controversial claim, with only one source given - a source that has repeatedly been agreed in the Reliable Sources noticeboard as not reliable, and especially not for controversial claims, and absolutely not for opposition actions. Surely this needs additional sources before reporting here?

15 Sept:

• Over 1,000 rebels fighters have agreed to side with the Syrian Governent according to the Russian Defense Ministry.
  • My better source tag has been removed. Sott.net is surely not considered a reliable source by Wikipedia? This is a highly controversial claim, which surely needs multiple sources.
• The deal takes place amid unsourced reports in pro-government media that "around 9,000 militants" from Jabhat Fateh al-Sham attempt to wrest control from other rebel groups.
  • My edit to add "unsourced" to the reports was reverted. This is mentioned in Al-Masdar only, which is not reliable, and the Al-Masdar article does not give a source. 9000 militants is a remarkable claim, which needs multiple sources.

Can any of these reverts really be justified? BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:43, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

A report is a report. It doesnt matter if is unsourced or sourced by another source. Your edits only try to downplay any information given by that site, that by the way its the only one reporting territorial and military events. SOHR only focuses on death tolls.Mr.User200 (talk) 12:32, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

@Mr.User200: Are you responding to the second 15 Sept item with that reply? I think it does matter if a report is sourced or unsourced. This is Wikipedia, which is an encyclopedia, with standards about good practice in citation and sourcing. The "9,000 militants" claim is quite an extreme one. First, our article doesn't say what they are attempting to wrest control of; the al-Masdar article says Idlib. Second, JFS has merged into HTS, so I'm not sure it makes sense to talk about "JFS militants" here. Third, JFS had 5-10,000 militants in the whole of Syria in summer 2016, so the 9,000 in Idlib alone now claim needs more than a single unreliable source talking vaguely about "reports". I did not delete this item, despite these problems (and a question mark about whether it is actually a notable event to include in a timeline), but simply added the word "unsourced", which is surely uncontroversial. I am not trying to "downplay" information given by Al-Masdar; the fact is that WP's RS noticeboard has repeatedly ruled it not a reliable source, yet this article is heavily reliant on it, and that's a problem.

Meanwhile, can you also try to justify your 3 other unexplained reverts of my edits. Wikipedia works by consensus, so please use this talk page instead of deleting all my edits. BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:36, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

@Mr.User200: You keep on ignoring my comments here and reverting my edits. I'll go into more detail later, but for now can I point out that your source for the 1000 rebels defecting (15 Sept) is Sott.net, the website of the Cassiopaean religious cult - see this for background. Meanwhile, can you justify your 15 and 22 Sept edits, responding to my comments here and below, which are a month old now? BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:37, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

References

Saudis say Assad has a role; Russian source says US ready to leave al-Tanf

The 15 Sept section says Saudi authorities consider that Bashar Assad can ´play an important role in the political future of his country´ according to a Russian newspaper Izvestia. This is sourced to Al-Masdar[1], which is of course not a reliable source, which says "The Russian newspaper Izvestia quoted diplomatic sources as saying that the Saudi authorities consider that the Syrian President Bashar Assad can play an important role in the political future of his country. Sputnik news agency published the report." I've searched Izvestia and Sputnik as best I can, but can't find the original. It seems to contradict this story a couple of days later. Can I propose we delete it, as anyway insufficiently notable to go in this timeline? The 20 September section says A "military-diplomatic source" told Russian state-sponsored media Sputnik that US forces were ready to leave its military base in al-Tanf. Again, this cites Al-Masdar as a source; again, I can't find the original on Sputnik, and it seems a little tendentious and non-notable anyway. This is a timeline and not a breaking news aggregator - can't we wait until US leaves al-Tanf (assuming it does) and then include this item. Again, can I propose deletion? BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:08, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

I added a better source tag to the Al-Tanf claim, but this was reverted by Mr User without any explanation in the edit summary. Can we discuss this please? Does anyone else think a third-hand report of what a Russian said about American intentions is robust and notable enough to go in this timeline? BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:35, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

This material has still not been discussed here after a month, so I have restored the better source tags. I have also deleted the claim about some unnamed Russians saying America was ready to leave al-Tanf as that really isn't an event that should go in a timeline; the timeline should consist of things that have happened not reports of things that might happen. Please justify edits here and reach consensus before reverting again. BobFromBrockley (talk) 09:48, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Scope of this article

I have serious concerns about the content of this article. What is it for? What should be included? In my view, it should include particularly notable events, e.g. major turning points, major territorial advances, major war crimes, major peace talks, etc. Wikipedia has fairly straightforward policy on what makes events notable. Crudely, a notable event will have multiple reports in mainstream sources. If it has one or two reports in marginal sources, it is by definition not notable. So, anything listed in this timeline should be easy to source; there should be multiple obvious citations. Secondly, the best sources, according to Wikipedia policy, are rarely the sources published closest in time to the event. Wikipedia cautious against using "breaking" news sources, and urges replacement of these sources with later, more informed reports: "Breaking news reports often contain serious inaccuracies. As an electronic publication, Wikipedia can and should be up to date, but Wikipedia is not a newspaper and it does not need to go into all details of a current event in real time... Claims sourced to initial news reports should be replaced with better-researched ones as soon as possible, especially where incorrect information was imprudently added. All breaking news stories, without exception, are primary sources, and must be treated with caution per WP:PSTS." The speed with which we add events to this timeline to keep it up to date is therefore a problem: it's better to wait and see what is consequential rather than adding the latest news from our chosen news source.

Here are some examples of entries which I don't think live up to this standard, and which I think should probably be deleted. Some of them I have already raised above, but my comments have generally not received replies, and my edits based on them have been reverted within little or no explanation. I would be really grateful for views from other editors.

2 Sept: British troops left three months ago

• The British Ministry of Defense confirmed to The Daily Telegraph that British troops had left Syria in late June 2017 and halted their FSA training program.

This happened in June, so why is it in the timeline here? Is its confirmation a notable event?

4 September: an advance continues

• Syrian Army forces continue their advance towards the besieged city of Deir ez-Zor. 2 Russian soldiers escorting them have been killed by ISIL shelling.

A continued advance seems by definition not notable; it's not a major event in any sense. 2 soldiers killed also seems insufficiently notable in a bloody war - unless it is significant because they are Russian?

11 September: rebels allegedly defect

• The Russian Ministry of Defense stated that 10 commanders from various rebel factions defected to the Syrian Army.

This article, in a pro-government outlet, says "Information on the specific groups to which the ten defecting commanders belong, the names of the battlefield leaders themselves and the time period of which the claimed event has occurred was not clarified." As far as I can see, none of that has been clarified; we don't know when it happened; and no other mainstream news outlet has reported this story. It is too vague and too uncertain to be included here.

15 September: same or different rebels allegedly defect again

• Over 1,000 rebels fighters have agreed to side with the Syrian Government according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

This would be notable if we were certain it had happened. SOTT is not a reliable source - it's a website of an obscure religious cult. They source it second hand from Sputnik, which is a reliable source on what the Russian MoD claims. The date of both articles is not 15 Sept but 14 Sept, but the report doesn't say when it actually happened. It is not unlikely it is the same story as the one from 11 September. As the rebel groups and commanders are not named, and as no other reliable source has picked up this story, I think we can rule it out of being worth including in an encyclopedia timeline.

15 September: Saudi opinion

• According to a source Saudi authorities consider that Bashar Assad can ´play an important role in the political future of his country´ citing to a Russian newspaper Izvestia.

I'm not totally sure what this means. The article is very vague; it cites Izvestia and Sputnik but (as I said above) those reports don't seem available, and attributes their comments to "diplomatic sources". If this were true and notable, it would have been picked up and reported by multiple mainstream sources.

22 September: someone says Americans might do something at some point in the future

• According to media close to the Syrian government, a military-diplomatic source told the Russian state-sponsored media outlet Sputnik that US forces were ready to leave their military base in al-Tanf.

Again a single non-reliable media outlet, again quoting vague sources second-hand, and not even an event that has happened. The article is three sentences long and reads as follows: "A military source told Sputnik that the US forces were ready to leave its military base in Syria’s al-Tanf. The US is ready to leave Syria’s al-Tanf, where the US-led coalition is currently located, but it has not outlined any time frames, a military-diplomatic source told Sputnik. “They say that they will [leave At Tanf], but we do not know when,” the source said." A military (or "military-diplomatic", whatever that is) "source" from which country? Told another newspaper, quoted second hand, that US forces are "ready" (doesn't say how s/he knows this) to leave a place, i.e. reports on something that might happen in the future, and the article even concludes "we don't know when". This is vague to be point of meaningless, plus is basically a rumour. Let's list the US leaving the base when they leave the base, rather than list speculation that they might.

3 October: an Israeli politician comments

• Avigdor Lieberman the Israeli Defense Minister called Assad the ´victorious´ of the Syria’s civil war and recalled that former enemies now "court" him. The Israeli Minister made this remarks at the Israeli news website Walla!.

I'm willing to be persuaded of this one if it can be written a bit better, but I don't think this is really notable - a politician in another country expresses an inconsequential opinion on the conflict doesn't seem like a notable event to me. If it is significant, we should maybe say why?

BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:40, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

It's coming up to a month since I made these proposals, and nobody has defended the material, so tomorrow I will get to work on trimming this stuff. BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:53, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

So, more than a month after I asked for opinions with nobody defending any of the items I proposed deleting, and a week after my last message above, I finally did the edits I proposed here, and Mr.User200 immediately reverted the 3 October one about Lieberman, with no explanation. Mr User, please can you explain why you think a foreign politician expressing an opinion on the conflict is notable enough to be in this timeline? And if you think it really needs to be in the article, can you write it in better English so that it makes sense? BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:53, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

Per Israeli involvement in the Syrian Civil War.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr.User200 (talk • contribs) 21:35, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the response Mr.User200. I don't really understand what you mean though. You mean it is notable because it relates to that? Is that enough to make it notable? I see it is not mentioned in that article, maybe because not considered notable enough - perhaps, if it is notable, it should be mentioned there instead of here? BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:00, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

References