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 on a Votes for Undeletion nomination). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was keep. Eugene van der Pijll 11:54, 2 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

No assertion that this is a notable person. According to the article on Guantanamo Bay there are currently 520 prisoners held there. It might be useful for someone to compile a list of them and put it all on one page, but I see no reason for each prisoner to have his own article. Brandon39 16:07, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete Jwissick 17:45, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge and redirect to List of Guantanamo Bay detainees (soon to be created) as per this AfD. --best, kevin ···Kzollman | Talk··· 23:12, 23 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete, no more notable than any other prisoner in the world. Do not create article as suggested by Brandon39, as that is also nn. User:Zoe|^(talk) 05:14, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. I created this article, and a few others, when I came across a few transcripts of the proceedings of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals. The detention of the detainees, outside of the Geneva Conventions, is highly controversial. The procedure for determining their illegal combatant status was highly controversial. -- Geo Swan 13:24, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

• That seems like it might be the basis for a good umbrella article. You could call it something like Guantanamo Bay Detainees, and link it to the main article on Guantanamo Bay. That's a much more likely search term than the individual names of prisoners.Brandon39 19:13, 24 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Listing all the known Guantanamo detainees in one place is a good idea. It is overdue.

Trying to confine all the information about all the detainees to a single article -- that is what you are proposing, isn't it? This would be unworkable, in my opinion.

Have you considered how many Guantanamo detainees already have substantial articles? Here are some of them. Abdurahman Khadr Benyam Mohammed Jose Padilla Omar Khadr Mohamed al Kahtani Mamdouh Habib Martin Mubanga Murat Kurnaz Salim Ahmed Hamdan Shafiq Rasul Ahcene Zemiri Ali Hamza Ahmed Sulayman al Bahlul Asadullah Rahman Bisher Amin Khalil Al-Rawi David Hicks Feroz Abbasi Fouad Mahoud Hasan Al Rabia Fouzi Khalid Abdullah Al Awda Hisham Sliti Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi Jalal Salam Bin Amer Jamal Muhammad Alawi Mar'i Jarallah al-Marri Jumah Al-Dossari Mehdi Muhammed Ghezali Moazzam Begg Mohamed al-Kahtani Mohamedou Ould Slahi Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef Mustaq Ali Patel Omar Deghayes Richard Belmar Sabir Mahfouz Lahmar Yaser Esam Hamdi

I believe a case can be made that each of these detainees merits an individual article.

This is merely a selection of the existing articles you suggest merging into one union article.

Let me direct your attention to the article 108th United States Congress. Note there are approximately as many members of the US Congress as there are detainees in GITMO. No one is suggesting that all the information about US Congressmen should be confined to a single article. Look at the article for Jim McCrery for instance -- it is hardly longer than the articles on GITMO detainees were when you proposed deleting this one.

Am I saying GITMO detainees are more important than members of the US Congress? Nope. However, would you disagree that some GITMO detainee are more important than the least active, most junior members of the US Congress?

Zoe seems to be saying that any articles about these detainees would be "America bashing" -- no matter how factual they are. I hope that they didn't really mean that comment the way it sounds. There is absolutely no way the wikipedia should shy away from factual articles, that avoid inflammatory language, just because some Americans find them embarrassing. I don't see anything inflammatory or biased in these articles, so far. And if there is something biased of inflammatory, thatI am overlooking, why shouldn't that prompt a discussion about how to improve the article, instead of the complete suppression Zoe seems to be suggesting?

Several wikipedia contributors have said here that it would be a mistake to make 500 articles, one for each detainee. Well, who is suggesting that? I didn't suggest that. I don't see anyone suggesting that.

On Friday I found a site where approximately ten percent of the documents generated during the Combatant Status Review Tribunals are available for download. I started writing articles about them. Perhaps I grew over-enthusiastic. I defended three of them here. I didn't defend the one on Adil Said Al Haj Obeid Al Busayss. One has to pick their battles, and once I had really read through his dossier there wasn't anything I wanted to try to defend as notable, before a hostile audience.

I have created dozens of articles over the last year or so. Lots of them started out as stubs, no larger than these four. None have ever been tagged for deletion before. These four articles on Guantanamo detainees however, were tagged for deletion within a few hours of their creation. This gives the unfortunate appearance that, whatever justification is being offered for their deletion, a hidden reason is that reporting of events that reflects poorly on current US policies offends some American contributors, even if it is reported accurately, and without the use of inflammatory language.. -- Geo Swan 12:54, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge to Guantanamo Bay detainees, with a small d. This vote applies to any other articles in AfD which relate to Guantanamo Bay detainees, unless I must vote on them individually. Alf ^melmac 10:06, 25 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, it's verifiable and wiki isn't paper. It doesn't come under any point at What Wikipedia is not. ··gracefool |☺ 16:50, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete and do not merge with anything. NN. Groeck 17:00, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, Anne Frank was just a girl - but history records what she said about her time spent hiding in an annex. I agree the article should be expanded to fit perhaps a more biographical tone if such information can be found, but it seems odd to class an entire 'enemy' as not allowed to have articles on their individual soldiers, look at Georg Konrad Morgen, he was 'just some Nazi', but we detail what he did during the war. Also worth noting that Wikipedia does not consider notability a requirement[1]. An excerpt would read Notability is not needed as long as the verifiability rules are strictly applied - and then also mentions this doesn't apply to vanity/wikimemorial articles. Sherurcij 17:48, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

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 an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.