Talk:Ali al-Shemari

Notability
This guy is was the health mininster of a country of 27 million people and you really think that the reason he is notable is a survey he did of how many Iraqi have died since the invasion is of interest to American politicians?

I really dont think so. We need to counter the systemic bias here. All the information you have reverted is on the main article to which it is primarily relevant. There is no need to repeat it here. AndrewRT(Talk) 23:18, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

As this article has only been edited by two users in the past year, can we go to Third opinion if you cant agree to reduce this content? AndrewRT(Talk) 23:22, 11 March 2008 (UTC)


 * He is notable in English-language media due to his casualty estimate which was major news at the time. He is, of course, notable in Arab-language media too for more reasons. This is a stub article. Content needs to be added, not removed. --Timeshifter (talk) 04:29, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Third Opinion
As we've been unable to resolve the content disagreement I've listed it at Third_opinion.

Only two editors have changed this article in the past year - myself (User:AndrewRT) and User:Timeshifter - hence the need for a third opinion.

Timeshifter would like to keep the current revision which has four paragraphs on the Iraqi Health Ministry casualty survey (which are largely identical to this section in that article), arguing that this is the principal cause of notability in the western media.

I would like to cut this revision down to a single sentence, linking into the article on this subject. I see his actions as Health Minister - particularly the death squads issue - as much more directly relevant to the subject of this article than the survey, which are better placed in that article. I also want to delete all the current "see alsos" which are either repetitions of links already in the article or matters (Iraq War) which are pretty irrelevant to the subject matter. The revision that most closely reflects this is here:

I see this as a prime example of systemic bias. Timeshifter - please add your views below if I haven't summarised it adequately above AndrewRT(Talk) 22:09, 14 March 2008 (UTC)


 * See my previous replies higher up. Also, Ali al-Shemari made an estimate of Iraqi violent deaths due to the war. His estimate was not based on a survey. I corrected the relevant section heading in the article. It would be biased to remove notable, sourced info from a stub article. I am a member of WikiProject Countering systemic bias. --Timeshifter (talk) 04:23, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Third opinion; I'm with AndrewRT on this. IMO this gives too much weight to one event (+there's the potential copyvio issues with that much quoting) while this seems about right. It also contains a link to Iraqi_Health_Ministry_casualty_survey for those who want further information. I understand that this is a stub, but I don't think quoting massive bits of text is the best way to change that. dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 07:55, 15 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Quotes from a couple articles is not "massive". --Timeshifter (talk) 11:31, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't see a problem in quoting, but why do it three times? All three quotes are saying just about the same thing. IMO, use one quote and its enough. Chaldean (talk) 01:55, 22 March 2008 (UTC)


 * The 3 quotes from 2 articles cover what he said from different angles. None alone give the whole picture. Stub articles need more info, not less. If the article becomes too long (highly doubtful) then we can worry about condensing material, or spinning off the readers to other articles that cover a particular point in more detail. Iraq War casualties are of great interest to many readers. It was very hard to find the whole picture concerning what he actually said. I edit Casualties of the Iraq War. People will go to this bio page to get the full picture concerning what he said. --Timeshifter (talk) 14:27, 23 March 2008 (UTC)