Talk:Mohammad Fahad al-Qahtani

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A fact from Mohammad Fahad al-Qahtani appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 31 July 2012 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Saudi Arabian professor and ACPRA co-founder Mohammad al-Qahtani expects a "snowball" loss of control by the Saudi government?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2012/July. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Mohammad Fahad al-Qahtani.

Wikipedia

Paraphrasing[edit]

In this edit i just made, there are about 11 words matching between source and destination. This was sort of "detected" in the toolserver link given at Template:Did you know nominations/Mohammad Fahad al-Qahtani, but not all the words were bolded. Five words are (after my edit) an internal Wikipedia link. This 11 word length is more than the 7-8 word length i suggested in the Template:DYK discussion for using quotation marks if we include the link, but it becomes only 6 words if we exclude the link. I cannot see any simple, straightforward way to say the same information in a different style - we could use the word "universal" to describe human rights concepts, but not all readers are familiar with this - "everyone" is more common English. IMHO quotation marks are not needed. This is also the difficult case where there is ambiguity about whether quotation marks refer to the person's words or to the publication's words. Boud (talk) 11:56, 28 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've re-worded it to "Al-Qahtani believes that all people, even those suspected to have terrorism activities, have the right to a fair trial." I hope the meaning is preserved this time :) oh and sorry for the disturbance I seem to have caused to you! Mohamed CJ (talk) 22:27, 28 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No need to apologise :). Wiki, wiki, wiki! There is still a problem though, which is why i said it was difficult to say this in another way. WP:WEASEL - the word "even" implies that it is normal to exclude terrorism suspects from "all people", and suggests that al-Qahtani's point of view is an extreme POV. The word "including" is more of a disambiguation - since different people have different POVs for interpreting "all" (as in Animal Farm, "some people are more equal than others"). Another way of saying it: "including" is more neutral here than "even". This gets back to what i'm saying about a source that uses the simplest way of saying things - it's not easy if there is just one source and it uses rather neutral wording. I would also say that "all people" sounds a bit awkward, but i won't change that back. I'm just doing a minor change for "even" and for more natural English, other Wikipedians will edit further :). Boud (talk) 09:05, 29 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Snowballs?[edit]

"problems will snowball out of control" — is this really a translation of what he said, or is it a rather inappropriate paraphrase? This was an Arabian, talking to other Arabians. I wonder how many of them had ever seen a snowball. Maproom (talk) 21:57, 31 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I did actually wonder about that myself. Snowballs in KSA are probably quite easy to control - they melt and evaporate long before they grow big. However... First let's quote from this Wikipedia article: "Mohammad Fahad al-Qahtani has a PhD from Indiana University in the United States." Chances are he saw snowballs there. Even without seeing them, he must have become reasonably fluent in English in order to get a PhD. He could have picked up the metaphor and forgotten that it might sound odd in KSA. The source states that this is from "an e-mail message after the charges were filed." We don't know if it was sent to the author (Thomas Lippman) or someone else. But a quote from an email should be word-for-word. In any case, the responsibility for misquoting/paraphrasing - if that was done - would be Lippman's. Boud (talk) 22:56, 31 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Eh, a stereotype? Actually using snowballing example is common in the Arab world. Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and some more have snow naturally, while in other countries there are things such as Ski Dubai. Yes it's like an oven here in Bahrain during the summer and that gets worse due to humidity (40-60% of electricity is used on air conditioning), but we still can see snow in literature, TV... etc. Mohamed CJ (talk) 10:36, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Coincidentally, this is my current desktop background lol :) Mohamed CJ (talk) 10:45, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move[edit]

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved given the possibility of confusion and the likely primary meaning. In an average month, there are 3000 page views for Mohammed al-Qahtani and 650 for Mohammad Fahad al-Qahtani. DrKay (talk) 18:28, 5 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Mohammad Fahad al-Qahtani → Mohammad al-Qahtani –

Per WP:COMMONNAME, as this is the name most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources. BBC News uses "Mohammad al-Qahtani" here: [1]. French news agency AFP (Agence France-Presse) uses "Mohammed al-Qahtani" here:[2]; however the spelling with an "e" in Mohammed is commonly used by NYT and other reliable sources for the Guantanamo Bay prisoner. The English language Middle East publication, Jadaliyya also also uses "Mohammad al-Qahtani" here: [3]. Neotarf (talk) 22:51, 4 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support as the person originally requesting the move. Neotarf (talk) 23:01, 10 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. Muhammad_(name), including the various transliterations, is the most common given name in the world according to a source cited in that Wikipedia article. Al-Qahtani is also common enough: the present al-Qahtani disambiguation page has 9 entries, 6 of which are links to existing en.Wikipedia articles. Moreover, 4 out of the 6 existing ones concern four different people all called Muhammad (with transliteration variations) al-Qahtani; 6 out of the 9 full list are called Muhammad al-Qahtani. With 2/3 of the al-Qahtani's being Muhammad al-Qahtani, the risk of ambiguity is huge. Let's also think of Wikipedia long-term development. Notable people from the Arabian Peninsula are probably under-represented in the en.Wikipedia at the moment, so the number of en.Wikipedia Muhammad al-Qahtanis is more likely to increase over the next twenty years rather than decrease. As you say yourself, AFP uses the "e" rather than the "a" latin spelling. Instead, I think the real question is whether we need a separate disambiguation page Mohammed al-Qahtani (in one of the transliteration variations), with other spellings redirecting to that page, given that (at the moment), literally most en.Wikipedia-notable people called al-Qahtani are called Muhammad al-Qahtani (with transliteration variants and along with other names that disambiguate), or whether the al-Qahtani disambiguation page is enough on its own. IMHO it should be OK to create either Mohammed al-Qahtani (disambiguation) or Muhammad al-Qahtani as an attributed copy/paste of the al-Qahtani disambiguation page, with the 1/3 of non-Muhammad's removed. We would then proposed a requested move from Mohammed al-Qahtani to Mohammed Mana Ahmed al-Qahtani. Boud (talk) 23:51, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

According to WP:CRYSTALBALL, Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. "While scientific and cultural norms continually evolve, we must wait for this evolution to happen, rather than try to predict it." In fact, there are only two individuals named Mohammed/Mohammad al-Qahtani who currently have Wikipedia articles. They are:

Mohammed (Mana) (Ahmed) al-Qahtani (Guantanamo Bay prisoner)...... currently at Mohammed al-Qahtani

Mohammad (Fahad) (Muflih) al-Qahtani (economics professor and human rights organisation co-founder)...... currently at Mohammad Fahad al-Qahtani

There is also a redirect at Mohammad al-Qahtani ~~that unfortunately points to the prisoner~~, who I think we can agree is not the primary topic here.

WP:TITLE policy is clear that "Wikipedia does not necessarily use the subject's "official" name as an article title; it prefers to use the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources." Adding the father's and grandfather's names may be more formal in Arab culture, but the English-language sources are not using it for either of these individuals.

Let me just add that although I am interested in title policy, this is the first time I have ever requested a move myself. I do not usually bother to try to rename articles. This one however I have been using to create a new article, and I had a lot of frustrations trying to find it. If you read the BBC article, then google "Mohammad al-Qahtani" (as the article refers to him), the only Wikipedia article you come up is about the Guantanamo Bay prisoner. If someone like me who is somewhat familiar with Wikipedia and already knows an article exists has so much trouble finding it, how much more difficult will this be for an ordinary reader who sees the BBC piece and just wants more information.

Neotarf (talk) 08:56, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You seem to think that this is the primary topic, however the other has more views. If neither of them are primary we should make a disambiguation page that links to both of them. The main point of discussion here is whether there is a primary article or not and based on that we can create disambiguation page, move pages and/or add hat notes. Mohamed CJ (talk) 09:29, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Google is a powerful determinate of page views, and Google is sending all requests for Mohammad or Mohammed al-Qahtani to the article about the prisoner. I'm surprised that anyone at all has been able to find the activist's article.

In fact, the prisoner seems to be a "low profile individual" and a "subject notable only for one event". (See WP:BLP1E)

Going back in time, before the beginning of the trial in Riyadh, we find the following pageview stats for Mohammed al-Qahtani (the prisoner):

March 2012 — 2494 [4]

March 2011 — 1802 [5]

March 2010 — 67 [6]

March 2009 — 49 [7]

March 2008 — 41 [8]

I suspect a lot of the recent page hits were people looking for Mohammad al-Qahtani, the activist, instead.

BTW, there is no technical need to disambiguate. Since the software recognizes differences in spelling, they are technically not at the same title, and therefore no need to determine "primary topic".

Neotarf (talk) 11:00, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. Per Boud. I think we need to disambiguate the other Mohammed al-Qahtani and add a hat note here leading to Mohammed al-Qahtani (disambiguation). Mohamed CJ (talk) 03:31, 6 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)Both articles already have a hatnote pointing to the other; according to WP:TWODABS a disambiguation page is not necessary if there are only two articles with the same title. I certainly wouldn't object, but it seems like unnecessary work.

Neotarf (talk) 09:44, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Additional names[edit]

There is a new article today from Al Arabiya News that identifies al-Qahtani as "Mohammad bin Fahad bin Muflih al-Qahtani" (son of Fahad, son of Muflih). [9] Accordingly I have changed his full formal name in the article to "Mohammad Fahad Muflih al-Qahtani". Also I have changed the redirect, but I doubt if that will help much. BTW, has anyone else noticed he doesn't seem to have an article in the Arabic wiki? Doesn't that seem odd? Neotarf (talk) 18:48, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Same person?[edit]

Is it really the same Mohammad al-Qahtani who died? Could he have attended that conference? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.249.47.194 (talk) 04:47, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This Fahad al-Qahtani was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment in 2013, effectively because of human rights activism BBC; it is extremely unlikely that he is "Chairman of the Board of Directors of Al-Salam Holding Company", and quite absurd to believe that he "described Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi," an authoritarian leader under whom dissidents are imprisoned and tortured on a massive scale, "as the dean of humanity and a man of peace". Boud (talk) 10:03, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I put a red link ~~Mohammad Fahad al-Qahtani (businessman)~~ for anyone wishing to create an article on the businessman who died live on camera. See WP:BLP1E to decide if the businessman is worth a Wikipedia article. Boud (talk) 10:13, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Csurla, Mohamad Darilin, TDKR Chicago 101, Jumpmed, and SilentHill 333: Please look at ALQST and European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights for currently active Saudi human rights organisations and check if they have updates on Mohammad Fahad al-Qahtani's current situation. It would be great if there were some more updates. Boud (talk) 10:29, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

No. The man who died is Mohammad bin Nasser al-Qahtani. The activist is Mohammad Fahad al-Qahtani. DrKay (talk) 16:36, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

So M bin Nasser al-Q could be created and linked to from Mohammed al-Qahtani (disambiguation) if someone felt that a page in the person's name were justified by the sources. Again, anyone thinking of creating Mohammad bin Nasser al-Qahtani should get some good (old) sources first and read WP:BLP1E first. Boud (talk) 19:11, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]