User talk:Geo Swan/Combatant Status Review Tribunal trailer image and caption

Previous discussion
Previous discussion about the content of the caption at Talk:Combatant Status Review Tribunal/image and caption. -- Geo Swan 14:45, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

contining
I am not interested in the politics involved in this, I am more interested in the quality of the article images/description. While the politics are involved here, the problem remains that the picture text is as big as the picture. And even if it weren't I don't think the picture is the place to give this detailed treatment description. Almost all wiki articles have a see also section for related topics. detailed information about the trailer itself seems excessive, and a general overview of treatment of detainees should be covered in it's own article, while details ON SPECIFIC DETAINEES should be in their individual articles, unless it is notable for some reason.

Do what you want, but I think if you keep it in the format it is, it detracts from appearance of the article. The info is useful, but not well placed in my opinion. Good luck with your edit. I hope you take this as constructive criticism, and consider it. If not, well its not the end of the world...

Zotel - the Stub Maker 00:58, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Previous discussion?
I didn't realize, back on October 5, 2006, that Talk:Combatant Status Review Tribunal/image and caption would be deleted. I don't think I ignore Zotel. I think I offered my reasoning for the current wording.

I still don't see the length of the caption as a problem.

As to whether the venue is notable enough to be featured on every article of every captive who attended their Tribunal... well, I guess it is a judgement call, but I found the venue remarkable. The Guantanamo Base is regularly described as being like a small city, with lots of poasible venues for the Tribunals. So why I found the use of a poky little trailer, with bad acoustics, interesting, and by extension, notable.

The press generally didn't attend the hearings for a number of reasons:
 * They weren't always advised when Tribunals were occuring.
 * They were never advised whose Tribunal it would be. The captives were only identified by an ID number.
 * Because flights to Guantanamo have to avoid Cuban air-space, planes have to fly around Cuba's Eastern tip, and approach from the South. It is a five hour trip.
 * The important discussions were all closed to the captive, and the press, because classified material was discussed then.

There are only a couple of articles written by journalists who attended Tribunals. -- Geo Swan 19:03, 30 March 2007 (UTC)


 * ''In a press conference on March 6th, a "senior defense official" stated that members of the press attended 37 of the 558 Tribunals. Geo Swan 13:41, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Another contributor's concerns
Another contributor expressed some concerns about the image. I was going to respond on their talk page. But then I thought all the discussions should be in one place, and that should probably be here.

The other wikipedian, if I understood them correctly, felt the widespread use of the image was "heavy-handed", and they thought the caption was too long.

If the rest of this comment reads like I am addressing one person, on their talk page, it is because, when I wrote it, I was... ReadingCSRTNotice


 * I figured using a template, instead of cutting and pasting, in the the image made management of the image and caption a lot easier. This way all the articles that use the template have the same caption.  I don't own the image, or its caption.  If there is a good argument for using a different caption on one article, that argument would, I figured, apply to all the instances.
 * I am not sure if you are saying this, so let me ask for clarification, are you saying that you don't think the image should be used on every article about a guy we know attended his Tribunal in that cramped little trailer? If so, would you care to expand on this?  I use a different image for guys whose status was confirmed by a CSRT, for whom there is no record that they participated in their CSRT.  This does not always mean they didn't participate in their CSRT.  Some of them, like Abdel Hamid Ibn Abdussalem Ibn Mifta Al Ghazzawi, did participate in their CSRT, but the DoD withheld the documents for some reason.  In al Ghazzawi's case it seems to be because they deceitfully broke their own rules and convened multipled CSRTs, in Washington, which al Ghazzawi wasn't allowed to attend, until they got the result they wanted. There are several other missing transcripts.
 * I came across an image of the room where Administrative Review Board hearings are held. Image services, like AP and Getty, sometimes seem to have a bad habit of attributing their copyright on some images that are really PD government images.  When I came across it it looked like it was attributed to an image service, not the DoD.  Although I was skeptical of the attribution, I didn't put it up on the commons, and I didn't use it.  If I could I would like to put an image of the ARB room on every article where the captive attended his ARB.  FWIW it actually looked like a courtroom, with a gallery big enough for several dozen observers, a proper raised dias for the presiding officers, and a pair of spacious tables where the prosecution and defense could spread out their paperwork.  It lacked the cheap garden chair for the captive.
 * I don't know if you recall the various comments that emerged from Guantanamo following the apparent deaths by suicide of three men on June 10 2006. The commandant and a couple of other spokesmen called the apparent suicides "acts of assymetric warfare".  Personally, I think the choice of a noisy, cramped trailer, for what were actually incredibly important procedures, was made so that the captives wouldn't think that their cases were important, or considered worthy of the use of a lot of resources.  "Assymetric warfare" in other words.
 * I am not sure what you mean by heavy-handed. No, lol, I am not taking that as some kind of swipe at my efforts.  I just want to fully understand any concerns others have about my contributions.  So, could you expand on this thought?
 * I have another template I use for captives for whom there is a report that they were sold to the US for a bounty.
 * Thanks! Geo Swan 15:22, 25 August 2007 (UTC)


 * The heavy-handedness I referred to was a reaction to the length of the caption, which seemed to be enumerating problems and questionable aspects of the tribunal procedure (limited press attendable, overall conditions and so on). I felt that a WP:POINT, or an appearance of one being made, was intended by the repetition of the claims made in that caption. That being said, I don't have any specific knowledge of the topics addressed by the template, nor any specific interest thereon. --Agamemnon2 15:43, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

POV
I edited the caption to alleviate POV concerns and removed the POV tag. -- But | seriously | folks   16:23, 11 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Sorry, no offense, but both the initial placement of the npov tag, and this note above, fall far short of the standards of responsible editing we should expect of one another here on the wikipedia.


 * In particular:
 * The npov tag was placed without any explanation of what the tag placer thought was a POV concern.
 * The rest of us aren't mind readers. We can't address a person's POV concern unless they specifically lay out what those concerns are.
 * When the tag is instantiated it directs readers to go to the talk page, to read the discussion as to why the tag was placed. I asked, yesterday, over on WP:AN/I, about the obligation the tag placer has to make the first entry to that discussion.  An administrator confirmed for me that the tag placer has an obligation to offer a meaningful explanation for their tag.
 * The note from the excising wikipedian is completely bereft of details as to why they made the excision.


 * Cheers! Geo Swan 18:10, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I've been doing tag removal lately - and it is true that this issue is a huge blight in the POV dispute list, which is why I'm here. Let me paste my typical statement here:

This concerns POV tag cleanup. Whenever an POV tag is placed, it is necessary to also post a message in the discussion section stating clearly why it is thought the article does not comply with POV guidelines, and suggestions for how to improve it. This permits discussion and consensus among editors. From WP tag policy: '''Drive-by tagging is strongly discouraged. The editor who adds the tag must address the issues on the talk page, pointing to specific issues that are actionable within the content policies, namely Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, Wikipedia:Verifiability, Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons. Simply being of the opinion that a page is not neutral is not sufficient to justify the addition of the tag. Tags should be added as a last resort.''' Better yet, edit the topic yourself with the improvements. This statement is not a judgement of content, it is only a cleanup of frivolously and/or arbitrarily placed tags. No discussion, no tag.

I have also pasted some pertinent passages from WP neutrality policy on my talk page. It is quite clear. I may backtrack and deal with this tagging later - for now I'm wondering what the fuss is, myself. BTW, I don't see anything POV in the explanation below. Writing style, grammar, etc., yes. POV, no. My own opinion is the tag is innapropriately placed, but for the moment I'm not doing anything about it. I'm not admin or anything, just a guy who's seen 100's of tags lately.Jjdon (talk) 19:19, 1 May 2008 (UTC)


 * It's not completely bereft of detail. I referred to POV concerns which I believe were obvious.  As I noted on your talk page, the caption read like propaganda.  Now it doesn't. --  But | seriously | folks   20:18, 11 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Comments left on my talk page are completely useless to any other wikipedians. Any explanation of edits you recommend or plan to make should occur on the article's talk page.  Explanation you leave on my talk page, or your talk page, will be essentailly useless to you or I in a month or two.
 * Nothing is obvious. In my experience when someone claims someothing is too obvious to require explanation, when pressed, it turns out they can't explain it.  I have  an essay I wrote on claims of obviousness.  Geo Swan 23:56, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

But comments left on your talk page are useful to you, and you are the only editor asking me about this issue. But since you asked, here is a more detailed explanation of my edit:

Combatant Status Review Tribunals were held in a small trailer, the same width, but shorter, than a mobile home.


 * I don't see a POV issue here, but if I'm reading an article about an individual detainee, why do I care how long the room is? It may arguably be appropriate to describe the room in an article about the CSRT's, but not the individual detainees, which is where this template is being used.

The Tribunal's President sat in the big chair.
 * Same comment. We're discussing detainees, and the caption is telling me where the "judge" sits.

The detainee sat with his hands and feet shackled to a bolt in the floor in the white, plastic garden chair.
 * Finally we get to the detainee. But unfortunately, it's just telling us where he sat during a hearing.  And all of the detainees are sitting in the same place.  So why is it worth mentioning?  The answer is that it's not, unless one is trying to make a point by contrasting the judge in the "big chair" against the shackled detainee in the "white, plastic garden chair".  But setting up such a contrast, i.e., selecting these particular facts and presenting them in this particular way, would be editorializing by trying to engender sympathy for the detainee.  So whether because of unimportance or POV concerns, this fact does not belong here.

A one way mirror behind the Tribunal President allowed observers to observe clandestinely.
 * Again, even if this fact is relevant to the tribunals, it is not relevant to individual detainees. Of course, "clandestine" itself carries a negative connotation.  It means more than "without being seen".  It suggests that specific measures are being taken to remain unseen.  This is irrelevant to individual detainees, but relevant to someone who is looking for aspects of the tribunals to criticize.

In theory the open sessions of the Tribunals were open to the press. Three chairs were reserved for them.
 * Also not relevant to the detainees. And "in theory" is a weasel term.  Either they were open, or they were not.  And who cares about their chairs.

In practice the Tribunal only intermittently told the press that Tribunals were being held.
 * Another editorial contrast. Again not relevant to individual detainees, unless the press was not informed of a specific detainee's tribunal, and unless that fact is significant to the article.  In reality, this amounts to a POV criticism of the tribunals.

And when they did they kept the detainee's identities secret.
 * The fact that this is irrelevant to the individual detainees' articles makes this more POV criticism.

In practice almost all Tribunals went unobserved.
 * A third editorial contrast. How is it relevant to the detainee's article that his tribunal was unobserved?  Almost all of them were unobserved, so it is nothing particular to that detainee.  Bringing this up in an individual detainee's article is an unnecessary criticism of the tribunals in general and therefore a POV statement.

The current version is factual and completely neutral, although tenuously relevant.

I hope you understand my position better now. -- But | seriously | folks   01:13, 12 September 2007 (UTC)


 * No. Frankly, I largely don't understand your position.  And I don't agree.  I had written a long, point, by point response.  But there were some points I didn't feel like fighting over...


 * So, instead, I replaced all the transcluded instances with inline text -- shorter than the text that triggered your concern. Geo Swan 13:08, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

What in the world is this dispute about?? Over half of the "A"'s in Category:NPOV disputes are there because of this. The talk page says the tag in in place per discussion at this page. I can't even tell from the above which of you supports which wording. Why tag dozens of pages instead of simply fixing it? We are not talking about a reams worth of text, it is an image caption. Instead dozens of pages are tagged, the problem is not even articulated coherently, and then discussion is just abandoned. So please tell me what is the objection what is displayed at the right.-- Birgitte SB  22:00, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Geo Swan replaced most, if not all, transclusion links with the link you provided, and then added a NPOV dispute tag. For each talk page, he linked to here, too.  I started to remove all the inlined links in favor of the transclusion images before I noticed this. I'm not sure of the logic to revert to the inline images, but seems to have introduced the problem you've mentioned.   Regards to the caption, I believe the original issue was less about WP:NPOV and more about WP:NOT in general.  Additionally, the current caption is a subset of a much larger caption seen here.  As stated, there's very little relevance of the environment of the trailer and the captive.  In my opinion, it should belong in the Combatant Status Review Tribunal entry.  There still the same issues with the new caption as with the old caption per the statements given by bsf.  However, neither one seem to care about the issue, or they've forgotten about it.  Retropunk (talk) 13:15, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Why inline, not a template?
Why did I inline this image, and its caption, not continue to transclude one template in every article I thought should have an instance?

Short answer: Policy. I didn't know any better when I started the template, and started transcluding it. But it was counter to policy.

During the discussion on Template:TalibanBounty I had it spelled out that the policy is that templates are supposed to have some element that changes. Templates that merely transclude an unchanging images, or block of text, are counter-policy. Period.

I think an argument could be made that there is a need for something like a template, where an unchanging block of text or image, that could be pasted into numerous articles. And I think I can see the counter-argument. It would set up an additional barrier for wikipedians who wanted to edit the transcluded text.

But, once I knew the policy, I set about addressing my counter-policy usage.

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 23:11, 22 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Please remove the pov from every image now as it is useless 137.22.15.42 (talk) 02:25, 10 February 2008 (UTC)