Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Al Qaida guest house, Kabul




 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Casting vote: Keep Anthony Appleyard (talk) 09:23, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Al Qaida guest house, Kabul

 * ( [ delete] ) – (View AfD) (View log)

This is a textbook example of WP:INDISCRIMINATE - a list of people who are alleged to have stayed in an Al-Quaeda safehouse. It fails WP:N, which requires "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject". The only sources for this are brief mentions in internal US intelligence documents, which do not fulfil the requirement. safe houses are not an automatic pass of the WP:GNG, and more evidence needs to be provided before the inclusion of this article is acceptable.Ironholds (talk) 12:23, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep per Snowball Keep of Articles for deletion/Abdullah Abu Masood camp; these seem to all be nominated by the same person, attempting to perform Damnatio memoriae and introduce deletionist censorship into WP, not for the purpose of maintaining a higher-standard encyclopaedia, but because they bear a personal dislike of the article's subject and feel it is "unworthy" to merit an article - while they have never suggested (per this example) that one of the ~40 USMC bases, or any of the Category:United States military bases of the Vietnam War merit deletion; instead they just find the military bases, military leaders and military history of their ideological "enemies" and suggest they all be deleted. WP:NOTPAPER assures us that there is no limit to the number of articles that can exist, and an article like this one - although a stub right now - will one day include information on who started the base, when the Americans (or others) attacked it, how many died, whether it affected the outcome of any battles, and the like. It merits patience in waiting for future revelations about the camp. It is notable now, and the article will be complete in the future...just like millions of other stubs. Here I find 32 different people accused whose detention in Guantanamo Bay is justified by the United States on the basis they stayed in this waypoint house...it is no more an "indiscriminate" list than List of charities accused of ties to terrorism. Sherurcij (speaker for the dead) 15:20, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Or, and here's an idea, you can withdraw your unwarranted personal attack and accusation of bad faith. Other stuff exists is not a keep reason. Nominating multiple articles for deletion is not a keep reason. "It may be important in future" is most certainly not a keep reason. Articles for Deletion do not work on precedent. Unless you can provide third-party, reliable sources as required by WP:N, you can shut it. I have no particularly strong ties to the US military in any way, shape or form, and would not describe myself as an idealogue - I'm not a crazy, frothing-at-the-mouth right-winger attempting to strike all references to Al-Qaeda from the internet, and having spoken to you about it off-wiki I would have hoped you'd have seen that. Indeed, it was that discussion which resulted in the difference between my previous nom and this one - you will notice that the nomination is far more complete and detailed now. Of course you obviously haven't chosen to read it, or if you have have chosen not to actually answer any of my points, preferring gratuitous personal attacks (and confused ones as well - one minute I'm tagging it as part of some wider deletionist campaign to censor the wiki, the next minute I'm a crazy, stars-and-stripes-waving patriot looking to destroy evidence his "enemies" existed? I'm not even American). I would be quite happy to nominate those bases for deletion if they also prove to be completely unimportant and have no references available as required by WP:N once this thing is done; now stop acting like a child, answer my points and withdraw your personal attack. Ironholds (talk) 16:35, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Additional: after looking at your userpage I'd say you're the one with a bias here - my tagging of these articles conflicts with your desire to document the worlds arseholes on Wikipedia. 16:37, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
 * lol, I think the defence rests its case now, thank you. Sherurcij (speaker for the dead) 16:53, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
 * No withdrawal of your personal attacks, no argument based on either guideline or policy, and no statement that doesn't constitute a steaming pile? Nice "case". Ironholds (talk) 16:55, 22 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Utterly misleading name. Apparently any house in Kabul ransacked by NATO soldiers fits this description. Delete unless exact location of the "guest house" is properly referenced (grin). NVO (talk) 20:52, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Clarification please. Are you saying that if this article was entitled Al Qaida guest houseS, Kabul, you would have voiced a different opinion?  If your problem is the name, wouldn't the obvious solution be a rename, not deletion?  I contributed most of the material in this article.  I didn't intend it to be about a single, particular guesthouse.  I intended it to be about the limited number of guesthouses that intelligence analysts termed suspicious.  Kabul, the capital of Afhganistan, is a large city.  I am sure it has hundreds of guesthouses, possibly over a thousand guesthouse, but the number of guesthouses the intelligence analysts are interested in is a much smaller group. With regard to "exact location" -- we cover topics, in other fields, where we have less than complete knowledge.  Consider the physics of sub-atomic particles, and string theory.  You wouldn't argue that we shouldn't cover string theory because we have more questions than answers?  We have verifiable information on some of the conventionally accepted aspects of string theory.  For those important topics we should cover what we know, even when our knowledge is incomplete.  And I think we should do the same here.  Geo Swan (talk) 19:39, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
 * No, plural will be just as useless and unencyclopedic. Providing encyclopedic content will need an in-depth look at how the system operates - don't list those connected to the subject, explain the subject. An article on Nazi concentration camps, for example, does not start with a list of inmates; there are plenty of RS that back up a proper description. Perhaps, in the absence of reliable sources on the topic, it wasn't worth working on, was it? NVO (talk) 08:21, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep but  retitled to make it clear we are discussing a network, not an individual house. Possibly expand, to the network for all their safe houses in the area, not just those in one city.  Major military bases such as their training camps are notable, but probably not individual houses.    DGG ( talk ) 06:31, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Can you provide any kind of policy- or guideline-based rationale in your comment? Ironholds (talk) 09:06, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
 * WP:V, and WP:N for not having separate articles.  WP:N and WP:V, for the existence of these houses as a group & there being enough sources in the aggregate.    DGG ( talk ) 23:57, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
 * WP:N doesn't cover it. WP:N requires significant coverage of the subject, what we've got here is brief mentions. Ironholds (talk) 02:29, 24 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete: I'm taken aback at the vehemence of Sherurcij's Keep argument, which throws up a good deal of rhetoric flying in the teeth of WP:AGF without actually addressing the nom's argument. I am astonished that an editor of longstanding has racked up over 30,000 edits without being aware that Wikipedia is not a publisher of first instance, or that - far from being optional - WP:V is the fundamental, irreducible value of the encyclopedia. It is not remotely enough, as Sherurcij ought to know, to assert that someday reliable sources might exist which satisfy the requirement of multiple, third-party, reliable sources discussing the subject in significant detail.  They must be present now, and so far they are not.  Failing that, policy holds that an article cannot be sustained.    Ravenswing  17:10, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment -- There are currently over half a dozen active afds on articles on suspected safehouse/guesthouses, and Afghan training camps. As I noted in this afd I started most of these articles -- over three years ago.  While I started them in good faith I now think some of the smaller ones should be merged and redirected to a larger article.  But others require their own unique article.  I think this is one of those.  In the interest of brevity I won't repeat my arguments for selectively merging and redirecting some, while keeping others.  Geo Swan (talk) 18:48, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment -- This nomination asserts the article is: "a textbook example of WP:INDISCRIMINATE". I just checked WP:INDISCRIMINATE, and I found it had list five different classes: Plot-only descriptions, Lyrics databases, Excessive listing of statistics, News reports, FAQs. No offense, but I don't see how this article could be described as any of those classes.  Geo Swan (talk) 21:01, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment -- This nomination challenges the references used in the article, apparently challenging whether they are reliable, or independent. The "independence" requirement is that the references be independent from the subject of the article.  If the documents we were citing were written by al Qaida, then our references would not be "independent", as per the wording of the policy.  Documents written by anyone else ARE independent of the subject of the article.  So, I suggest that this aspect of the nomination is based on a misunderstanding of policy.  Geo Swan (talk) 21:01, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
 * No, I've challenged it under the "significant coverage" requirement of WP:GNG. Ironholds (talk) 02:32, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I have added additional material on claims made in late 2001 and early 2002 that documents abandoned in Al Qaeda safehouses in Kabul shows the progress Al Qaeda was making in acquiring weapons of mass destruction. Geo Swan (talk) 18:09, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Those are coverage of the documents and the WMDs, not the safe house. Holy shit, look, the references mention the name of the guy who typed up the report! Shall we have an article on him now? After all, he's mentioned 100 times, which is all the "significant" coverage we need according to you. Ironholds (talk) 18:12, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
 * And Los Alamos is only the lab where atom scientists worked on the first atom bomb. Yet we cover the lab where they did the work.
 * Yes, in some cases we cover the author of a report. How many reports are known by the name of the primary author?  Answer?  Lots.  In some cases those authors merit coverage.  Whether we cover the author depends on the the author's mandate, how much scope and initiative they were called upon for, whether the conclusions were controversial, whether they had been called upon to draft other controversial reports.  But, since we are discussing Al Qaeda's Kabul safe houses here, let's have a discussion about when the authors of reports merit their own articles at some other time and place.  Geo Swan (talk) 16:25, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment -- I find the nominations challenges to the reliability of the references illustrates a very different understanding of the wikipedia's policy on verifiability than my own. If a non-notable blogger makes assertions about someone -- that is unreliable.  When a government agency makes an assertion it is reliable that, at least, that this is the government agency's official position.  WP:VER says we aim for what is verifiable, not what is true.  It seems to me that what our nominator is really challenging is whether the government's assertions are accurate.  Determining whether the assertions in a official government document are reliable is not our role.  During the last American administration some politically appointed officials were criticized for politicizing science.  They were criticized for reinterpreting the scientific conclusions of professional scientists.  The one I remember best was the re-interpretation of the professional conclusions of professional scientists, on global warming.  The documents this political appointee rewrote were widely regarded "unreliable" from a purely factual point of view.  But, IIRC, what was not in dispute was that while the appointed official lacked the expertise to reliably rewrite the conclusions of professional scientists, he did have the chart of organization authority to rewrite those documents, and that his rewrites had become the official position of those agencies.  I suggest we would then, and still would now, state that, at the time he rewrote those conclusions those were the official positions of his agency.  We would not suppress the appropriate neutral and referenced coverage of this official position, no matter how widely doubted its factual reliability was.  We would not suppress the appropriate neutral and referenced coverage of this official position, based on our own personal doubts over its factual reliability.  To do so would be to lapse from WP:VER and WP:NPOV.  Suppressing neutral material over our own personal doubts over its factual reliability is, IMO, a form of editorializing.  Geo Swan (talk) 21:01, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
 * My nomination is based on WP:N, not WP:V. I accept that we can verify the information that we've got, the problem is that the sources, while good enough to verify this, don't cover the subject enough to pass WP:GNG. Ironholds (talk) 02:31, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * "Suppressing neutral material?" Material about what?  These sources do nothing more than assert that safe houses exist.  No sources have been proffered doing anything else.  Since when is  WP:ITEXISTS a valid argument to Keep at AfD?    Ravenswing  02:58, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment, I would encourage people to take a brief look at Najim Jihad, a similar article dealing with a safehouse in Jalalabad; through piecing together different reports - none of which acknowledge the other's existence, and some of which refuse to use the "accepted" name of the safehouse, we are able to host an article that sources FBI affadavits, CSRT/ARB tribunal proceedings, CNN, TIME Magazine, the Toronto Star, and other sources. While this article is not yet at that level of completeness, it is on its way there, even if it takes six months or six years to reach that point - we do not delete WP articles because they are "incomplete" - the subject is notable, even if we are currently lacking secondary sources. Take for example, the issue of if a previously-unknown lawyer is suddenly announced to be appointed to the Portuguese Supreme Court of Justice; now there may not be any secondary sources we've yet been able to find giving his biography, but someone may add a WP article piecing together what can be found in primary sources about him - as long as the article is neutral and referenced - we will simply have to wait for a book about the man to be published in five years..but we won't delete the article in the meantime as he meets the threshold of notability. An article's subject is either notable or is not notable, the amount of secondary sources is irrelevant - if I were to publish my memoirs and devote a chapter to my next-door neightbour growing up...he is not suddenly notable and worthy of a WP article even though there are "secondary sources" - likewise if an article is created about Crispin Sorhaindo, the former President of Dominica in the 1990s...the fact there are no "secondary sources" about his life would not mean his article merits deletion since he is notable. Again, these articles will incorporate details about who stayed at them, when they were destroyed, whether people were killed in the bombing/raid, and similar details - but the details do take time to filter out of places like Guantanamo into mainstream press. Sherurcij (speaker for the dead) 16:28, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * The subject is by definition not notable because it fails the most basic test of notability. "it will be notable in six months or six years" is directly addressed in "arguments to avoid", and should not be used as an argument in a deletion discussion. Ironholds (talk) 16:30, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Frankly, that's a WP:CRYSTAL argument, Sherurcij. You speculate, without a shred of evidence to support that speculation, that after three years sources which discuss these particular guest houses in detail will emerge.  Muddling the issue with irrelevant parallels - the former president of a sovereign nation is prima facie notable, whether there are fifty sources or none - doesn't much help.  When all is said and done, your arguments aren't, as they should be, about whether or not these articles meet the policies and guidelines for inclusion.  You're arguing why the policies should be interpreted to permit the articles you like to stick around, and this isn't the proper venue to debate that.    Ravenswing  08:11, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Guantanamo Bay detainment camp-related deletion discussions. Thryduulf (talk) 08:47, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Afghanistan-related deletion discussions. 08:47, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Terrorism-related deletion discussions. Thryduulf (talk) 08:47, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete. Fails WP:GNG and WP:SYNTH. Niteshift36 (talk) 16:43, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Could you please be specific about which of the five points in WP:GNG you think this article does not satisfy? WP:SYNTH bars the tying together of WP:RS to introduce novel interpretations not present in the orginal WP:RS.  Since no novel interpretations have been introduced here I believe you are incorrect to name SYNTH as a problem here.  Geo Swan (talk) 19:19, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
 * You've generally asserted through the article that there's a single guest house in Kabul, and done this by tying together dozens of one-sentence references. Synthesis. Ironholds (talk) 20:33, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I trust that this is honestly how you read the article. I don't believe that there was just a single al Qaeda guest house.  I don't believe that I wrote that there was just a single al Qaeda guest house.  "Guest house" and "safe house" are always referred to in the plural, or specific instances are referred to as "a guest house".  But if you honestly read the article as if it asserts that there was just a single al Qaeda guest house, this is an editorial concern that I believe you should have raised on the talk page instead of nominating the article for deletion.  Geo Swan (talk) 07:35, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
 * And I would have done that if it was my primary concern, but as I've told you multiple times, it was not. I'm not raising that issue here, simply predicting what Niteshift's response to you would probably have been. Ironholds (talk) 11:17, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
 * (1) WP:NOTCRYSTAL -- could you let other contributors speak for themselves? (2) If you are going to be making nominations for deletion, would you consider clearly placing your primary concern in your initial nomination? Every time I spend my time countering some point of yours, you say: "Yeah, but that was never my primary concern."  Geo Swan (talk) 19:03, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, I cunningly hid my concern in the sentence "It fails WP:N, which requires "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject"". I understand that such a complex and difficult enigma is hard to puzzle through. Ironholds (talk) 20:00, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.