Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Yusif Khalil Abdallah Nur

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. No evidence that Nur meets the WP:GNG, nor a compelling reason not to apply the GNG. lifebaka++ 02:48, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yusif Khalil Abdallah Nur[edit]

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Fails WP:BIO. No independent reliable sources about him (the independent, non-government sources listed in the article don't even mention him). I wasn't able to find any independent reliable sources about him. Fram (talk) 10:09, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. We cannot have BLP's based entirely on templates and primary documents.--brew crewer (yada, yada) 11:59, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - subject lacks "significant independent coverage" in reliable sources under the general notability guideline. Bulk of the references are primary documents per WP:PRIMARY. Anotherclown (talk) 09:28, 11 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Guantanamo Bay detainment camp-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 14:10, 11 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 14:10, 11 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - lacks "significant independent coverage" perWP:GNG as primary sources can not establish notability. IQinn (talk) 23:38, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Keep Again and again, these Guantanamo detainee articles have been nominated and in many cases deleted, all under a misapprehension. I knew there was something fishy about it, but I only nailed down what was wrong, today. There appears to be a widespread misunderstanding of PRIMARY, that has leaked into other major WP rules: N, V, GNG, just to mention the most influential ones. For example, this sentence has been quoted often to support deletion. Read it carefully. It quite clearly supports inclusion. "Do not use trial transcripts and other court records, or other public documents, TO SUPPORT ASSERTIONS about a living person" (my capitalization). We can report what the Combatant Status Review Tribunal said, just as we do in its own article; making assertions about their statements are not a requirement of these articles, or any article that uses primary sources. And yet N and V all carry on as if PRIMARY did not exist, requiring independence and secondary sources. The only requirement in PRIMARY is that the sources are not interpreted in a POV manner (we must report what sources say, without bias). Independence of sources is only, and imo wrongly, required in GNG (Declaring sources independent or not is itself a subjective judgement. We should be reporting what sources say in an unbiased, not adding our bias by choosing which sources to report on and which not to). Independence is not a requirement in PRIMARY. And more importantly, secondary sources are not required; PRIMARY shows that quite clearly. Over and over in PRIMARY it is stated that primary sources can be used; editors to N, V, GNG and voters to delete and nominators alike have failed to see the narrow focus of what is actually excluded. Anarchangel (talk) 06:55, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - The interpretation of these primary sources is an interesting topic but it is almost irrelevant for this Afd discussion as primary sources can not be used to establish notability. "Sources," for notability purposes, should be secondary sources, as those provide the most objective evidence of notability." from WP:GNG. There is no "significant independent coverage" in of him in secondary sources therefore the article fails WP:GNG. IQinn (talk) 07:51, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Your "strong keep" does not address anything in the nomination, but tries to convince people that not only is PRIMARY contradicting WP:V, WP:BIO, etcetera, but for some reason PRIMARY is then the correct one and all others are wrong... Primary sources can be used, of course, and no one has said that they can't be used: however, they don't count towards notability, they shouldn't be the basis of articles, and certainly with court documents and the like, extra care should be taken. For e.g. this article, the main problem is the lack of notability, as defined in WP:BIO. WP:PRIMARY does not address whether a subject can have a Wikipedia article or not, it just describes how to use (and not use) primary sources in the case that we do have an article. So basically your strong keep is a big strawman argument, arguing against an imaginary reason for deletion. Fram (talk) 08:50, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I see that you do not refute the fact that PRIMARY on the one hand and N and GNG on the other are incompatible. Why is it that you believe N and GNG to be right and PRIMARY wrong? I believe PRIMARY is the correct one because it is the root of reasoning about source types, and that erroneous understanding of it has led to erroneous instruction creep in the others. And as for rules being only about article content and not about deletion, why thank you for bringing that up. I have long been a proponent of the possibility that WP:DEL alone should be considered as the basis for deleting articles. But that sort of leaves out N and GNG, doesn't it? Are you sure you want to go down that road?

Delete - The above-argument makes the case rather than opposes it. When one uses primary sources as the basis for an article, one is engaging in original research. This is the very reason Wikipedia has its secondary source requirements. As it stands, these are primary sources, the research is original, and the subject, who has not been the subject of secondary source coverage, fails notability.--Yachtsman1 (talk) 19:13, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hopefully there is more measured and complete reasoning at the heart of the erroneous exclusion of primary sources in N and GNG. But if not, it would explain a lot. How on earth could putting <ref></ref> around a URL be original research? Anarchangel (talk) 02:33, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Has some notability due to his stay in Gitmo, but the relevant information could be mentioned in an article about Saudi people detained at Guantanamo Bay, I suppose. I don't see enough specific coverage of him to merit a stand alone article. Qrsdogg (talk) 04:41, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep As a preliminary, the material is verifiable--even the NYTimes republished it. , [1] . Agreed, it's a reprinting of a primary source, not a secondary source. Now, the fact that they chose to republish it and all the other Gitmo documents shows that they regard it as worth publication in full. They're a paper of record, and are known for republishing documents of importance. That they chose to reprint these documents shows of course their overall importance. That the chose to index it rather elaborately by the name of each individual, and reprint the material for each individual in full detail,shows that they regard each of the individual as of importance.

I apologize for not realizing this earlier, for it applies to essentially every one of the articles on the Gitmo prisoners. They did not do this for POWs in earlier wars; even for US casualties, they normally gave only a list, not the relevant documents in full. It follows they they judge each of this particular set of people as individually important--as far as I can tell, beyond any precedent. . We differ here on our own judgement of the individual notability , and are apparently not going to settle this by argument. Therefore so we must do what we normally do, and see how the sources handle it. We see how the NYT does. I trust their judgement over everybody here, including myself. I even trust their judgment more than our collective wisdom. This is the point of WP:V and the principle underlying WP:N and WP:NPOV and all our content policies: we follow the sources. Wikipedia, as has been said frequently and unanimously at AfD by everyone involved in this and other discussions, is not a place for original research or original interpretations. We follow the sources. We have always said that we consider the NYT such a RS that their publishing a substantial article is enough to meet the GNG. I think it follows that their publishing such a substantial amount of documentation about a particular individual shows exactly the same. And at the very least, it can be merged into a combination article, as Yachtsman suggests, so deletion is not appropriate. DGG ( talk ) 16:09, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment You are right the NYT's is a reliable source. (your source). The NYT's reliable provides an archive of primary source documents. That does not change the fact that they are primary sources unless the NYT's would start interpreting the documents about Yusif Khalil Abdallah Nur what they have not done as far as i know. Primary sources do not count towards notability under WP:GNG. "Sources, for notability purposes, should be secondary sources, as those provide the most objective evidence of notability.". There is simply no "Significant coverage" about this individual that is needed to establish notability. IQinn (talk) 16:34, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

DGG, you are really grasping at straws here. "As a preliminary, the material is verifiable". Duh, that was never disputed, so bringing it up now is hardly a revelation. Furthermore, let's be clear, they republished all the info, indiscriminately, on their website, not in the newspaper. It follows that they consider the detainees (or the process that gave us these documents) important. If they considered all individual detainees important, you would expect them to give some individual attention to them, interviewing those that are released, interviewing their family, doing some journalistic work instead of just reprinting these documents. They haven't done this for this person or for the vast majority of them. Reprinting documents is something that the Wiki does at Wikisource, not at Wikipedia. The NYT has, contrary to your assertion, not published a substantial article on this person at all, they have simply republished, on their website, hundreds of documents. Deletion is perfectly appropriate, we already have multiple combination articles, both as a list of all detainees and lists of detainees per country. There is nothing left to merge, and thus nothing to keep. We have ample precedent for this in the countless previous AfDs on Guantanamo detainees with similar NYT webpages which were deleted nevertheless. Fram (talk) 19:26, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have no problem with pointing out empirically observable facts such as the fact that NYT covers things in a certain way, but speculation about why they do so is just not within our purview, until logic and deductive reasoning become accepted at WP as no longer subservient to rules such as AGF, OR, SYNTH, etc. Anarchangel (talk) 02:33, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, on the basis of my argument above, I think all the previous AfDs that led to deletion were wrongly decided, even the ones where I myself may have voted other than keep. In fact, I had written an opinion for merge on this one, when I realized the strength of the argument and rewrote. I had not realized the degree to which the NYT reprinting not only validates the material--which was a vefy frequent objection in some of the earlier AfDs--but indicates that the material is important. I don't think you really understand my argument, which is that if they publish documents, the documents are important and the subjects primarily treated in the documents are important. If they had merely published summary documents on gitmo naming the detainees, it would just show the importance of gitmo, which is not in question. But that they reprinted documents in full detail on each one of the individual detainees, indicates their view that the individuals are each of them important enough to have the documents in their particular case published in the most important international newspaper of record. I know it's a novel argument--I did not make it before this way because I did not realize the implication myself. It changed the way I think about how we show notability and the meaning of WP:RS, & I'll be proposing a rewording of some parts of the guidelines. Perhaps you will too, if you reconsider it with an open mind, not trying to prove your views, but thinking as if it were something unrelated coming here afresh. Sometimes I've been wrong; I was wrong before when I failed to understand the importance of how the primary sources are published and by whom. You compared with Wikisource: but if Wikisource reprints material, it means very little about their importance. Wikisource has no authority in judging importance the NYT does. That's one of the good things about working here in a environment of mutual questioning--considering the material can lead to new insights. DGG ( talk ) 19:57, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

They consider it so important that they haven't spend any journalistic work on it, and even don't link it in their archives[2]. They are still primary documents, republished on a secondary source. We don't have sufficient secondary source material to base the biography on, which is a requirement for all articles and certainly for BLPs. Fram (talk) 20:28, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"They are still primary documents, republished on a secondary source." That is all that any secondary sources do: republish information from primary sources. You appear to have argued yourself into doubting something universally accepted at WP. See also my replies above; PRIMARY continues to exclude only OR based on primary sources, not the use of sources themselves to verify information; neither does it represent primary sources as unreliable. Therefore, since Notability is established by the use of Reliable Sources to provide Verifiability, and the article provides no less than 17 RS to provide V, the article's subject continues to be Notable. Anarchangel (talk) 02:33, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Even if we accept the NYTs reprinting of this material as being a secondary source, a single reliable secondary source does not constitute "significant coverage". There needs to be much more than this to meet the required level of coverage under WP:GNG. Anotherclown (talk) 06:48, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions. —Anotherclown (talk) 07:22, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

@Anarchangel: Primary sources that are hosted on the server of secondary sources are still primary sources as the NYT's has has not published any interpretation of these documents and i am sure you can find these primary sources on other servers as well. The bottom line is: They are primary sources. Not only that. They are one of the most unreliable primary sources that exist on the planet earth.

Not much more to say primary sources do not count towards notability what's however.

17 RS? There are no 17 RS in the article about the subject of this biography. Not true. Well i just checked all of them in detail and reduced the article to what has been verified about this individual by reliable secondary sources. See also WP:BLP, WP:BLPPRIMARY, author=OARDEC. IQinn (talk) 07:27, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

See also:Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_84#Reliability_of_US_military_summary_reports. Any claim that these documents are either secondary or reliable is just laughable. IQinn (talk) 07:42, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

When one shows up late to a discussion, one has to catch up. Turns out N and GNG have been wrong, for years. It is you who needs to read PRIMARY again. Anarchangel (talk) 16:48, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The time stamps verify that i showed up at this discussion earlier than you and it turns out that our basic policies N and GNG are well established and valid. IQinn (talk) 20:22, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delete: it doesn't appear like there is enough coverage to satisfy the requirements of the WP:GNG for this to be a stand alone article. AustralianRupert (talk) 13:41, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.