Talk:Sohaib Athar

Page Deletion
I do not think this guy needs his own wikipedia page simply for being at the right place at the right time. —Preceding unsigned comment added by SoloWing3844 (talk • contribs) 00:03, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree. With all due to respect to him, but he is totally irrelevant in a historical context. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.173.28.122 (talk) 01:05, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I disagree. He has the right to make an wikipedia page about himself. Beside the page is not harmfull. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nilem12 (talk • contribs) 02:02, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree, every Tom, Dick and Harry cannot make a Wiki page about himself just because he witnessed a military event and tweeted about it, not even knowing what it is about. This page must be deleted at once! Sub40Hz (talk) 03:29, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Don't delete iiiiiiiiitttttt!!!!!!!!!!!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by The Ganja Man (talk • contribs) 19:27, 3 May 2011 (UTC) He has the right to have a website using his own resources, but there is no "right" to have a wiki page about yourself. I just don't think he meets Wiki's notability guidelines. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.38.121.195 (talk) 02:41, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree, he was at the right place, at the right time, but not worth a page for his tweets. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.64.110.66 (talk) 03:37, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I believe this information should be merged into the Operation Geronimo page 68.9.237.26 (talk) 04:18, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I think this page should be deleted. I agree that he can be mentioned in the Operation Geronimo section, but not have a page of his own as he is not that newsworthy.Prwagner3 (talk) 14:52, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Comment. Sohaib Athar did NOT make this Wikipedia page about himself. I created it about him. He and I do not know each other. The way in which he became notable may be unusual and unintentional but does not alter the fact that he is notable. His name is now in countless reports around the world. He is notable, and he did not create a Wikipedia article about himself. Rammer (talk) 16:48, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Reply to Comment. This page still needs to be deleted, as it does not meet the Wikipedia notability requirements. Sohaib Athar is just an IT programmer who has done nothing noticeable in either the Information Technology field or in relation to Osama Bin Laden’s death, His name can be mentioned in Death of Osama bin Laden page as a man who tweeted about the event but nothing more as it is irrelevant. I expect that this page to be deleted shortly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by SoloWing3844 (talk • contribs) 03:00, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Reply to Reply to Comment. An allegation had been posted (above) that Sohaib Athar had made the article about himself. That simply was not true. The matter has now been responded to. Rammer (talk) 03:22, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Keep Every yahoo who ever appeared in a movie or strummed a guitar or spouted nonsense on a TV program has a wikipedia entry. Why not a guy who witnessed -- and was the first to report a historic event? Herbert Morrison, the journalist who witnessed the crash of the Hindenberg, has a long Wikipedia article. The whole basis of his fame is his two minutes of reporting on the crash. The killing of Osama bin Laden is obviously much more important than the crash of a blimp. So, why arent people up in arms that Morrison is the subject of a wikipedia article? Smallchief (talk) 16:40, 4 May 2011 (UTC)


 * I agree with you, Smallchief. Sohaib Athar attracted over 20K hits to Wikipedia in <48 hr, and the deletion police went ballistic. Contributors spend many hours writing well documented articles, and then their efforts get trashed while the encyclopedia contains many unsourced articles and doggerel. But maybe, on the point you raise, a consideration is that Sohaib Athar, unlike Herbert Morrison, is still alive. Rammer (talk) 01:29, 5 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Smallchief, Along with all other inhabitants of Abbottabad, Mr. Athar did not have any information on what exactly was going on. Nor did he give an accurate account of the circumstances, which could have been possible only if he was inside Osama's house. He is not a journalist and his tweets did not constitute anything close to journalism. He is just a witness to the noises made by helicopters and explosives. So this page must be deleted. Sub40Hz (talk) 20:54, 5 May 2011 (UTC)


 * But his story is too good to omit from any history book (and many will be written) about this event. And one can picture him as a character in the numerous movies that will feature this event --the slightly comical coffee shop owning geek with the wonderful line, "there goes the neighborhood."  No novelist, historian, or film producer is going to resist that line.  Deleting the article is short-sighted.  Like it or not, Sohaib surely has a secure niche in the popular history of the world.  Smallchief (talk) 21:05, 5 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Sohaib Athar's name can go into the Wall Street Journal but not Wikipedia? Rammer (talk) 03:04, 6 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Though I'd changed from a delete to keep I'm fine with how the AFD went. If the name Sohaib Athar gets well known in history then the odds are the article can get recreated. I participated in a similar AFD for Miss Vicki who also started out as WP:BLP1E material. Decades of continued coverage because of that one event pushed her into "keep." Four days later Sohaib Athar is still some getting coverage such as here as people try to sort out the line between tweeting and journalism. If Sohaib Athar ends up being a new meme then that'll definitely improve the odds of a Wikipedia article. --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 08:31, 6 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Good points, Marc Kupper. But at present Sohaib Athar has been wikied out entirely. His name isn't even in the Death of Osama bin Laden article. It was in-out-in-out and has stayed out. The redirect from Sohaib Athar points to the section Death of Osama bin Laden, but in that section Sohaib Athar per se has vanished, or was banished. Rammer (talk) 19:45, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep putting him back then. There's no reason he can't be mentioned under local accounts; indeed he should be mentioned as perhaps the most reported local account.  There was really no reason to close the AfD early, in my view, because if it drug out we'd be more likely to agree on his notability in a week or so.--Milowent • talkblp-r  21:36, 6 May 2011 (UTC)


 * I saw that his name was not mentioned on the Death of Osama bin Laden article. I'm fine with that for now. He was mentioned in over 3000 news articles in the past 24 hours and so it's not like he's been banished from the planet.


 * The guy was over 1.5 miles (2.5km) from the compound. All he reported hearing was some helicopters, one explosion, and he relayed reports from others. He saw nothing and had no idea what was happening. His presence, or rather, absence, had no bearing on the event itself. He became useful as he writes well in English, was available for media interviews, and his message plus their time stamps corroborated what the U.S. government was saying. Hopefully he's now selling gallons of coffee every hour to all the media and others that invaded the town. I'm also aware of how fast things fall off the news radar and it seems 99% of the things reported one day never get reported on again. Thus I'm taking a wait-and-see about this to see if there are follow-up interviews months and years from now. --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 09:38, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Cached version
Bing currently has a cached version of Wikipedia's deleted article on Sohaib Athar, at http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=Sohaib+Athar&d=4696297823734080&mkt=en-US&setlang=en-US&w=ce31723,d9695df0. It's the version which "was last modified on 3 May 2011 at 12:28." Wikipedia's loss, Bing's gain. Rammer (talk) 02:26, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
 * There's no need to get that elaborate as the page was not deleted. Go to the [page history and you can see any version of the page. The version from 14:00, 4 May 2011 would be immediately before the redirect was added. --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 09:03, 7 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, of course. That one is at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sohaib_Athar&oldid=427544179. My point was that the 3 May 2011 12:26 version is the one that came up in Bing's search engine. Rammer (talk) 05:16, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
 * What's so remarkable about that? Are you stunned that Google randomly sampled and happened to index the 5 May 2011 at 06:15 version of the page which was the first attempt to undo the redirect? That version only existed for 20 minutes. Eventually, both search engines will check the page, see the redirect, and will either drop the page from their index or fie the redirect. --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 09:49, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

CNET interview
See Declan McCullagh's interview of Sohaib Athar on CNET News.

Fully protected edit request on 23 September 2020
Could someone change the target to Killing of Osama bin Laden? Death of Osama bin Laden was recently moved to Killing of Osama bin Laden. Maka (talk · contribs) 22:54, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:20, 24 September 2020 (UTC)