Talk:Full text of Ahmadinejad's letter to Bush made available online

Not sure if we need to add anything more to the article.

Do we have to NPOV summarise Ahmadinejad's letter? Can we NPOV summarise it without having a long NPOV battle? Do we quote selected analysts' comments (but some are already quoted in the previous letter when people didn't know where to find the text)?

In principle, we could copy/paste the whole wikisource text here - or do a mediawiki include if that's possible.

IMHO the best thing is simply to say the thing's published and encourage people to read it themselves and then decide.

Boud 15:44, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Well we could also ask one of our French collaborators to call the paper and talk to them...Maybe add a background/history of the paper and what it has done over the years or whenever. Jason Safoutin 15:50, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Summarizing it is indeed gonna be very complicated. You got Holocaust denial again, bashing of U.S. foreign policy, allusions of intelligence agencies being involved in 9/11, comprehensive analysis of the world as he sees it, an obituary to liberal democracy and a lot of pandering to Christians. --Deprifry|+T+ 15:52, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Its' going to be difficult to maintain NPOV with this. I think, however; we still should try the paper too. It wouldn't hurt. Unfortunately their English version of their website is not all free and limited in information, at least from what I can find. (Speaking of Le Monde) Jason Safoutin 16:06, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

i'm not quite sure what the great need is to talk to or about Le Monde - Reuters and AP (and others?) claim they have access to a full copy, so i don't think Le Monde got this through an Inspector Clouseau operation abseiling into Ahmadinejad's office into the night and sneaking a photograph of the document. (Even if they did, they probably wouldn't tell us.) Le Monde every now and then publishes full texts of various political leaders in its printed version - so despite its shortcomings, it does give readers more chance than many other newspapers to get to at least see what political leaders have to say in paragraphs or even structured texts rather than just one sentence of half-sentence sound bites.

If nobody is going to accuse me of original research, i would suggest we replace "Le Monde" by something like "In line with its frequent tradition of publishing full texts by political leaders and intellectuals, Le Monde". Boud 18:45, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

• Not enough content to constitute a full article. Develop tagged, expand tagged. --MrMiscellanious (talk) – 00:43, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

• • i don't see why publication of this source document is not in itself a major news item. People don't realise that the full document is available for them to read unless it's announced. That's what news is about. We could add comments by Western and Iranian and Asian and African commentators about the text, but IMHO this would be silly - it's adding unneeded content for the sake of adding content. Intelligent, sincere people would rather go to the source than have to listen to "Reader's Digest" sound-bite summaries/commentaries. IMHO unless someone feels there is some reasonably relevant newsworthy info to add, we should put it back to "published" status. Boud 21:19, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

wikisource link vs pasting the full text here

Is anyone in favour of copying/pasting the full text here into wikinews? (Is there a wikinews policy on this?) Or can/should we make the wikisource link more prominent, e.g. show the URL explicitly? Boud 18:45, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikinews is a news source, not a primary text source. We should link to Wikisource on this. —THIS IS MESSEDOCKER (TALK) 19:07, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

That's why i asked to be sure :). Boud 23:40, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

• Would not fit, per WN:NOT, "source documents" aren't news. --MrMiscellanious (talk) – 00:43, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
  • OK, but there's nothing saying that the fact of publication of an important source document is not itself a news item. And i mean publication in general (IRNA, Le Monde, etc.), not just on wikisource! Boud 21:19, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, actually. WN:NOT says that source documents are not news of themselves, so we shouldn't include them in our articles. But you're right, reporting about the publication of them is sometimes newsworthy. --MrMiscellanious (talk) – 19:45, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

OK, so i guess we've waited long enough and nobody seems to feel the need to add more. i'm putting it as "published". Boud 00:23, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I support the article being published. Neutralizer 01:58, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Published?

If this were any other article, this would be in development on the spot. 1 sentence is not an article. I reccommened stuff early on and no one paid the least bit of attention. So I will say it again: The article should include a short background of Le Monde and or any special things or whatnot it has done. There is a lot more that could be added here, I just think no one has been interested in doing so. But regardless, 1 sentence is not an article. Jason Safoutin 02:06, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I also said that someone should call Le Monde or write to them As I cannot speak french nor can I afford an overseas call, I cannot do it. Jason Safoutin 02:07, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Tagged as minimal. Jason Safoutin 02:12, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

i think i'll shift the title, since you seem to be overly focussing on Le Monde. If you want to know more about Le Monde in English, click on the wikipedia link. But AFAIK they haven't done anything special in this case except that they follow the rather obvious ethical principle that ordinary citizens should be able to have access to full documents, especially when it concerns political leaders who are involved in a major international crisis related to nuclear weapons. Anyway, WSJ and IRNA also were quick to publish online versions. Boud 23:57, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

What, exactly, is supposed to be the story here? Can we redirect this article to Ahmadinejad sends letter to George W. Bush? --Chiacomo ^(talk) 00:00, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Chiacomo, to us it may be no big deal; but for all the millions of citizens out there in small town USA; they are being censored blind; so to them, this is big news...the mere fact the letter has been published. I like this article and I sopport it and I can not figure out what harm it's doing to anybody. 67.71.123.148 01:57, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Mmmmm. Well, I happen to live in small town USA (population 2,500) and it was covered by our local television station. Is this article about the speed at which the letter was published (thanks to the internet, etc)? If so, the long list of topics (with wikilinks) is probably overkill and more could be added about internet news, the publishing process, etc... --Chiacomo ^(talk) 03:13, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Source material is just that. Take it and write about it, that's what makes it Wikinews. -Edbrown05 09:51, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

And hear MrM scream in your ear, "All my god! It's a weblog... it's a weblog!" No it's not if it is NPOV. -Edbrown05 10:01, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Chiacomo wrote: "Well, I happen to live in small town USA (population 2,500) and it was covered by our local television station." i don't quite follow. Do you mean to say that the full 18 page text was read out by an announcer? Or were the 18 pages of the scan slowly scrolled down the tv screen? Having access to an electronic version of an 18-page document that the wikinews reader can read for him/herself is quite different to simply hearing/seeing some commentator on television say that the letter exists. Rice and Bolton claimed that the letter does not at all respond to the US's concerns - shouldn't ordinary citizens be interested in being able to check this for themselves? Being able to check for themselves is what the news is. Boud 14:01, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I'm also wondering why there is any opposition at all to reporting that the entire text is available and letting people read the whole thing. Chiacomo, Did your local TV station somehow provide the entire text? I'd be curious as to how many people in your town of 2,500 have read the entire text and where they accessed it? Neutralizer 03:17, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Ahmadi Nejad or Ahmadinejad?

I had a question about the Iranian President's name. I notice that in the source he signed it as two words "Ahmadi Nejad". The media has been compounding it to one single word. Is this one of those Arabic characters to Latin characters issues, or should the world be spelling it like the man himself spells it? Sr.Wombat 15:20, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

{{editprotected}} Is it not worth mentioning that the letter also contains an invite to become a moslem? (As is customary to do in the three stage process stipulated in Islam.)

Not done - yes, it would have been nice to include it, but late edits are not appropriate to a news article. See WN:ARCHIVE. Blood Red Sandman ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 12:51, 4 January 2010 (UTC)