Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Amir Yakoub al-Amir Mahmoud

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 no consensus. Please comment on the topic, not on the person. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 04:02, 21 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Amir Yakoub al-Amir Mahmoud

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Procedural nomination. User:Twhanna placed the AFD header on the article but did not create the AFD discussion page. On this page the user gave the reason as “This is clearly an article for the defence of the accused person. As an editorial of defence it does not make a ligitimite biography.” Abstain. •••Life of Riley (T–C) 21:55, 7 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep, if it were true that the page were just a "defence" then the page would need to be improved, not deleted. The subject, as a wrongly accused Sudanese terrorist who served years in the world's worst prison, seems notable. Sherurcij ^{(speaker for the dead)} 21:53, 7 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Hundreds of prisoners have passed through Gitmo and we don't have an article for every one except the most infamous. I see nothing particularly notable about this one.--Ptolion (talk) 14:16, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- During the 20th Century, and this first decade of the 21st Century probably something like 100,000,000 individuals have been held in extrajudicial detention. 99,999,221 of these individuals held by totalitarian dictatorships, such as Nazi Germany's concentration camps, the gulags of the old Soviet Union, its equivalent in Red China. And 779 were held in Guantanamo by the USA. Democratic countries holding individuals without charge in secret camps was unknown before the USA opened Guantanamo. Does this mean we should have an article about each Guantanamo captive? No, I don't think so -- only those for whom we can write policy compliant articles based on verifiable, reliable sources. Geo Swan (talk) 00:21, 14 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  - So you admit that you created this article to promote a political agenda ("policy complaint article"). I'm sure that every single person who has been imprisoned at Gitmo has a fascinating story behind them, but this does not necessarily make them notable. They're more notable than you or I, but not notable enough for Wikipedia.--Ptolion (talk) 10:26, 14 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - he said policy compliant article, not complaint. Big difference. Cocytus [»talk«] 17:34, 20 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep -- I agree with Sherurcij here. I believe that our nominator's concerns should have been raised on the talk page, and are not grounds for deletion. Geo Swan (talk) 00:21, 14 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Tim Song (talk) 00:18, 14 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete -- no significant coverage in reliable and independent sources, so a clear delete according to our policy. I see a lot of references in the article, but these are either primary sources (which cannot be used to establish notability) or sources that mention Mahmoud in passing (hence also not establishing notability). Pantherskin (talk) 06:25, 14 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment, User:Iqinn, who was chastised for the same thing on the last terrorism-related AFD (Amjad Mohammed Khan, kept after user was warned to stop removing footnotes and facts from an article he wanted deleted) has gone through the article removing the section detailing Mahmoud's own account of his life as gleaned from his tribunal proceedings...consequently leaving an incomplete version of the article for people to vote on. I have reverted it for now, but please be certain the actual article is the one, not the one that has facts removed in the middle of an AFD, we debate while we determine if we know enough facts to establish notability. For example I notice the "Delete" vote above this comment was cast during the period that information had been removed from the page (though I am not suggesting the user would necessarily have voted otherwise). Sherurcij ^{(speaker for the dead)} 16:10, 14 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Quite a lot of untrue facts and accusations against me. What can we do? I have friendly ask the user to strike his comment. And i have tried to calm him down and to stop further escalation. Instead he had choosen to intensity his behavior by extending this comment here with more bad faith accusations and false facts. So what can we do? I guess nothing. So bear with me for the needed explanation. I try to limit myself to the part that has at least a little bit to do with this article and this Afd. (there are other places for the other stuff)

The delete above had been done before i started editing the article at (06:37, 14 December 2009)

It is common practice to work on articles during AfD's.

I have made six edits to improve and clarify the article.

I have done the same edits to a lot of similar articles of Guantanamo detainees in recent days and weeks.

In five of the edits i clarified witch parts are quotes by using the {quotation} template and i removed the links inside the quotes. You may also compare these versions before and after. User Sherurcij now more or less accepts these changes. As everybody else so far on the other articles where i did the same. It is imported to show clearly what is a quote and what is not.

That leaves us just with one edit where there is disagreement. This one and you can see i did not removed footnotes. I haven't removed any footnotes from the article at all. That's wrong. Did i remove facts? That's also wrong. Let me explain this in detail. The part i have removed belongs to the 18 pages of CSRT and ART documents. But there is a very big difference here: The part i removed is not a quote as the other parts in the article. The one that i removed is a summary and interpretation created by an WP editor. Quotations from these articles are fine but any summary or interpretation is of topic for WP editors. The removed part is not a fact. It is simply the personnel interpretation of the WP editor. The interpretation of such documents is not up to us and this part needs to be removed. It may be possible to put more quotes on the article instead. In fact you would need to copy all 18 pages into the article. I have started a discussion about that on the articles talk page at the time i did these six edits.

To wrap it up: The one edit that is in question now has been reverted to the version that user Sherurcij favors. And I suggest the AfD should just calmly go on and just concentrate on the topic surrounding the article and the Afd. IQinn (talk) 20:07, 14 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep sufficient sources as it is. My personal view is that we will eventually be restoring all the individual pages on gitmo prisoners--to regard them as not being historically notable will seem a near-sighted blunder. DGG ( talk ) 03:44, 15 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Not sure I could agree with that, DGG. Are you saying that every one of those hundreds of prisoners who have been held at Guantanamo is a noteworthy person? •••Life of Riley (T–C) 05:39, 19 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Biographical POV only falls under the criteria for deletion if it is insurmountable which the nom has not even attempted to demonstrate. If you have a problem with the tone or perceived bias in an article then attempt to fix it. The article is a mess but its subject matter and scope is not inherently biased. TomPointTwo (talk) 19:25, 15 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - if one of the main concerns was content, not the subject of the article, then it probably should have been addressed on the talk page (WP:BEFORE, etc.). While the article needs some work, it is my opinion that the topic itself merits inclusion, as I feel the threshold for significance has been crossed. Cocytus [»talk«] 17:39, 20 December 2009 (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.