Category talk:Irregular military

Terrorist Organizations
Terrorist organizations should be in their own category and not part of Irregular Military. Irregular Military should be reserved for non-standard military units fighting a conventional war as understood over the last couple of centuries and defined under the Genevar Convention. Terrorist organizations do not fall into this catagory. Further, everyone clearly understands what a terrorist organization is, as noted by the actual organization names. Thus trying to put them in some other category is doing so for someone's POV.

--Noitall 22:30, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

This is trarted from "categories for deletion" discussion about terrorist organizations, see Categories for deletion/Log/2005 May 20, which basically amounts to the opinion that definition of who is terrorist is a POV in many cases. I proposed to introduce a category with neutral title category:Violent political organizations with an objective criterion IMO: organizations that declare or de-facto use violence (not necessarily armed) as an instrument in pursuing its goals. What do you think about this idea? mikka (t) 17:20, 29 May 2005 (UTC)


 * "Violent political organizations" includes every government that I can think of. That is why I put Cat:Terrorist organizations up at CFD originally; the definition in the terrorism page it was impossible to keep any organization out.  People were forever throwing the terrorist organization cat on the African rebel group articles I watch, clearly with very little thought.
 * Back in the original discussion, I suggested something along the lines of "Non-governmental armed groups using uncoventional tactics" or something similarly long-winded to get across the idea that people seemed to want. A Category:Organizations labeled "terrorist" by the U.S. State Department would seem to be the most useful category, but people seem resistant to the idea, perhaps because they want to believe that "terrorist" is an objective term that everyone can agree on. -   BanyanTree 18:14, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

The following is the entire list of Subcategories in this area:


 * Islamic terrorist organizations


 * Leftist terrorist organizations


 * Palestinian terrorist organizations


 * Terrorist organizations based in the United States


 * Terrorist organizations in Northern Ireland


 * Zionist terrorist organizations

Those organizations organized for terror and not organized according to centuries of norms and the Geneva Convention are pretty clear. The fact that some people try to insert their POV and/or dislike the fact that an organization whose objective they may support is in fact a terrorist organiztion should not stop accurately labeling such an organization. Wiki should be accurate, not politically correct (unless they are one and the same), and thus coming up with a new organization title is not appropriate. I believe in accuracy, even if it means that vandals or POV people cause problems.

--Noitall 19:09, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
 * See Category talk:Terrorist organizations and Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Category: Terrorist organizations for the extensive discussion on this isssue. -  BanyanTree 19:15, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

Your link to the talk page is useful for the past history. Most of the editors entirely miss the point and all the crazy assertions from Green Mountain Boys to the Catholic Church to the U.S. just demonstrate some editors' POV. Help me with Wiki policy, if something has been deleted, is it forever deleted? Or can we start over correctly, saying the term is controversial but talk about the generally accepted definition, which is entirely based in modern times. To fail to do so is to inaccurately describe things and events all because of some misguided POV.

--Noitall 00:57, 30 May 2005 (UTC)


 * I have never heard of a category being reinstated after there was consensus to delete, but I am not particularly familiar with the history of Category policy. There is certainly no "undeletion policy" (as there is for articles) on Categories for deletion policies.  You may want to ask at the talk page of that policies page what they would think about holding another vote to undelete.  If there is a lack of response, or you are not satisfied with the responses, the next option would be to post the question at the Village Pump - probably the policy section.  Simply recreating the category is clearly prohibited by policy and it would be speedy deleted.
 * Much of the ambiguity comes from the terrorism page itself (last I read it), which is so vague that it appears to encompass almost all forms of violence. This itself is probably a result of arguments about definitions among editors.
 * I would also like to say that, while it appears that we disagree completely on the merits, it was refreshing to see a request about policies and procedures. I see far too many disagreements immediately flare up into edit wars.  Cheers,   BanyanTree 01:28, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll have to think about whether to spend the time and effort in that endeavor. Perhaps some topics are too current and too hot to develop a proper perspective. See you.

--Noitall 01:51, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

A number of the articles in this category should probably be moved to Category:Guerrilla organizations, which is a subcat. --71.191.135.128 (talk) 20:32, 13 April 2008 (UTC)