Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Osama bin Laden bodyguard


 * 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   Keep and the title has been changed to plural (non-admin closure) → TheSpecialUser TalkContributions 15:30, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Osama bin Laden bodyguard

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This article cannot be encyclopedically expanded without synthesis. It is sourced largely from one primary source, so I prodded it; GeoSwan (the initial creator, who also has not touched the article since April 24, 2010) removed the prod because he found 800 Google News hits. This is true. However, dead links aside, these articles are all about different (and sometimes "alleged") bodyguards of bin Laden, the legal cases against them, and generally not about their employment. Even the section on Ghailani is very evasive in terms of what he told interrogators he did. In short, we can write about the individuals (and that's a stretch for WP:N), but we cannot write verifiably about their job(s) in general without taking info from various sources and creating a composite - even the news sources come from at least three different people. MSJapan (talk) 16:52, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 22:51, 30 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete Clearly not a notable topic. JDDJS (talk) 00:35, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete for lack of notability. There might be bits and pieces of fact in here that might work well elsewhere, but there does not seem to be a core that would be merge-worthy. I'm certainly open to ideas, though. UltraExactZZ Said~ Did 15:29, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep The argument that article title Z should not have "different" (oh noes!!) examples of Z in it is ludicrous. No one on the deletionist team ever seems to understand SYNTH (or want to when it is explained to them, either, but that is another story that hopefully will not be repeated here). Evidence that one man wore purple hats and was a bodyguard, and that another man wore purple hats, could not support the statement that the second man was a bodyguard. Simple as that. That's SYNTH. Evidence that A=bodyguard and B=bodyguard most certainly can support the statement that they were both bodyguards. Not that this article claims that anyway; it gives the separate evidence of A and B.
 * One of the great things about being on the deletionist team is that you can actually work towards making the article unfit for Wikipedia, by deleting a little bit here and there until it is a sub-stub. Hence, the article was actually near its best two years ago, where Geo Swann left it, and has declined since then. I restored the table, which was the heart of the article and deleted without discussion over a year ago. Anarchangel (talk) 22:29, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment: I !voted keep below, but could you please leave out things like "deletionist team" as a courtesy? I'm not saying you're wrong, and I may just be being oversensitive, but classifying people into "teams" implies WP:BATTLEGROUND even if you're not actually in that mentality. - Jorgath (talk) (contribs) 19:02, 7 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep -- This is a clear keep. I am afraid this nomination was filed without sufficient consideration of the notability of the topic.  9-11 hijackers were reported to have been former OBL bodyguards.  Senior members of al Qaeda's leadership circle were former OBL bodyguard.  Ahmed Ghailani, for instance, is regarded as a former OBL bodyguard.  On the other hand, there are lots of references that discuss the credibility of assertions of intelligence analysts and torture apologists that individuals can meaningfully be characterized of OBL bodyguards when the only evidence that they were was a confession or denunciation that relied on torture or other extreme interrogation techniques.  Geo Swan (talk) 13:44, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:03, 7 May 2012 (UTC)




 * Keep but change title to ...bodyguards. This is one of the fairly rare instances where our use of singular in the title is confusiing--it certainly has confused the nominator. It describes an occupational role that has been of major historical importance.  DGG ( talk ) 02:07, 7 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep - Topic strikes me as encyclopedic, so long as the list is sourced out, which this is. Probably needs a bit of a title tweak, but that is an editing issue. Virtually everything at WP involves so-called "synthesis" to one extent or another, particularly in the field of biography. The key things are factual accuracy and verifiability through published sources, which this seems to meet, at a glance. Carrite (talk) 03:03, 7 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep per User:DGG and Carrite - this needs to be about multiple people, not one person. - Jorgath (talk) (contribs) 18:58, 7 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep - There is some importance to this article. Vincelord (talk) 16:02, 10 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep As per DGG.The title needs to be changed to bodyguards.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 15:12, 11 May 2012 (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.