Talk:Periodic Report of the United States of America to the United Nations Committee Against Torture

POV

Just for starters:

We have made mistakes: of the detainees we have released, we have later recaptured or killed about 5% of them while they were engaged in hostile action against U.S. forces.

The use of the word "terrorist" is emotive and should not be used.

--Philip Baird Shearer 10:18, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Changes

The NPOV header was removed. I do not feel the use of the word terrorist in this document impinges on the article's neutral presentation of the US's stated opinion of the nature of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay. If you'd like to suggest specific modifications to the neutral presentation of the opinions in the Periodic Report of the USA to the UN CAT, please do so, but I'm positive that the Periodic Report references several of the detainees as terrorists. Surely you don't mean to suggest that it does not?

Additionally, the "Reaction to" section contained several dead-links and addressed a tangential issue entirely. It was removed. -- (unsigned comment from User:169.229.94.163 18:17, 2005 December 8 -- from the office of the President of the University of California)

Reinstating NPOV as of 06/01/31

I am re-instating the NPOV tag because this article makes no attempt to represent a balanced point of view whatsoever.

It presents the US government view, without any attempt at objectivity, even though many aspects of the official US position have been exposed as blatant falsehoods.

For what it is worth the IP number 169.229.94.163, the wikipedian who removed much of the limited attempts to introduce balance to this article, traces to the Office of the President, University of California, I wrote the following email to President Dynes.

"You may have read how Congressional staffers were recently detected trying to subvert the free encyclopedia, wikipedia, for partisan political purposes.

"The wikipedia allows anyone to contribute. They can log in, and be identified. Or they can make edits semi-anonymously, identified only by the IP address of their computer. That is what the Congressional staffers were doing.

"Someone from your office is using the computers in your office to introduce partisan political comment to the wikipedia's coverage of the US response to allegation that the USA has abused suspects in the War on Terror.

"Of course your employees enjoy the right of free speech -- on their own time. But, may I ask if you really want them to use your office to obfuscate their identities? If they want to express themselves, may I suggest you request they sign in, and do so, on their own time, on their own personal computers?

:Cordially," -- Geo Swan 15:34, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

My two cents - OH BURN! Guitar George 13:53, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Scope

This article is about the report - I think it needs to be decided what the scope is within that. At the moment it looks like a paraphrase/summary of the report (to an uniformed observer). That's fine, but it should be crystal clear that's what it is. Alternatively if the article is to include criticism of the report, it should be seperated from the summary/paraphrase, and well sourced. Having the sentence "Of at least two of them we know for sure they have been mistreated by US operational staff: Habibullah and Dilawar. See Bagram torture and prisoner abuse for full story." in the middle of the summary is almost surreal. It's also written in a way that ould barely be acceptable on a talk page. I'll change that - but I haven't the stomach for re-writing or re-organising the whole article. However if anyone can take it on and wants help with parts, just ask. Rich Farmbrough 03:28 7 March 2006 (UTC).

Personally, I think what this article needs a cheat sheet to help readers translate the blatantly POV euphemisms. For instance the article asserts that the Guantanamo detainees are in -pre-trial detention-. So far only ten of the detainees have been charged. And they have not been charged in a court of law. The wikipedia is supposed to present balanced articles. A bald paraphrase/summary of a deceptive Bush administration report fails WP:NOT. -- Geo Swan 22:09, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Transwiki

I went through the references last night, changing how they were presented. This article isn't so much a summary/paraphrase of the original report as a cut-and-paste inclusion of almost the entire original document.

If the works of the employees of US Federal agencies are in the public domain then this is not a copyright violation. But I believe it violates WP:NOT and should be transferred to wikisource. -- Geo Swan 16:05, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Transwiki questions

The text originally placed in this article was cut and paste from Update to Annex One of the Second Periodic Report of the United States of America to the Committee Against Torture.

The wikipedia contributor who first created this article didn't attribute the source of the article. Everyone who has contributed to it since then assumed that the article was a (long) summary of the report -- not the report itself.

I do not believe this article belongs in the main article space.

I believe that if it belongs anywhere on the mediawiki servers at all it belongs over on wikisource. Further, I am afraid the hours of work that I and other contributors put in to improving it have been wasted. If this is to be transferred over to wikisource it should be transferred without the editing improvements made here, in good faith, by contributors who thought it was an article, not a press release.

I believe that the work I did wikifying the references could fairly be transferred over a wikisource article -- except that it followed editorial improvements. And I believe those editorial improvements should not be transferred over to a wikisource article. I believe the wikisource article should contain the original US position statement, and nothing else.

Without regard to whether the original U.S. position statement belongs on the wikisource, I believe it should be removed from the main article space. I have no problem with an article that is a true summary. But I think it would be far easier to start over, than to try to excise all the material from the official U.S. position statements.

There is a tag that puts a prominent image on articles that directs readers to the wikisource of a document.

• Does this article belong in the main article space, even though it started out as an unattributed copy of a press release?
• As a work done by employees of a U.S. Federal agency this work is in the public domain, isn't it? And thus not a copyright violation for it to be copied here or on wikisource?
• Should this article be transferred over to wikisource?
• If it is to be transferred, should it be transferred over "as is", with the good faith editorial improvements, made by contributors who weren't informed the article was a copy of U.S. position statements?

Here are the instructions for how to do a Transwiki. -- Geo Swan 20:28, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up Geo Swan, I need to think about this one. But my first reaction is not to put a copy of this source on to wiki source. Instead we should go to town on this article by putting in quotes all the sentences which are copied from the report. That would at least highlight US Government POV. BTW this page was on my watch list but low on my priority list is has now moved up. --Philip Baird Shearer 22:04, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I was aware that it was a (99%) cut-and-paste, which is why I limited my edits. We can do three valid things:

1. Make it into a wikipedia article - with or without extensive quotes.
2. Transfer the original to wikisource (but why bother?)
3. Refer to the original source.

I favour 1 & 3. There is nothing special about wikisource. Anything where the wording is important should be quoted, to assist people using DVD, paper etc.. The rest can be referenced. Rich Farmbrough 22:12 6 April 2006 (UTC).

P.S. I will do some of the conversion if we agree to go that way. Rich Farmbrough 22:18 6 April 2006 (UTC).

Time to AfD this article?

This article started as a cut and paste job. It seriously detracts from the quality of the wikipedia, because it is so obviously biased. And because legitimate wikipedia contributors find themselves tempted to tune bits and pieces of it, not realizing that it was originally plagiarized from executive branch press releases.

Several of us discussed its drawbacks. No one suggested any redeeming qualities. Since then no one has felt motivated to rewrite it.

I think it is time for it to be deleted.

The ironic aspect is that the person who cut and pasted dozens of pages of press releases, verbatim, tried to chastise me for occassionally summarizing from the press releases of the defense attorneys of Guantanamo detainees. -- Geo Swan 21:20, 29 June 2006 (UTC)