Talk:US interrogators complain of "sickening" pressure for evidence on Iran

Single Source Story

This article doesn't quite conform to the recommendations as stated in the Writing An Article guide in that only a single primary source is quoted. The reason for this is that this is an Observer investigation, and it hasn't been picked up by other news agencies at all. A search on Google News at the time of writing using the search terms "interrogator Iran" for the past 3 days turns up only the Observer and Press TV articles, which also merely quoted The Observer as a source. The Press TV article appears to be sourced from three mysterious agencies, "CS", "HGH" and "RE", whoever they are. Any help on who these sources are would be appreciated, as then I can indicate them appropriately. Press TV is an Iranian government funded cable TV station, so presumably these agencies are Iranian and that could be why it is difficult to find any information about them. Dox96 09:09, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree, the Press TV is basically just a shortened version of the Observer story, the picture and entire paragraphs are copied from the Observer. --SVTCobra 11:42, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Cleanup tag

How unreasonable! Someone anonymous added the "cleanup" tag giving no reason whatsoever. Well I have removed it again. And I have to say if you don't want your cleanup tags simply removed, then try a little discussion. I will be complaining about this. Dox96 22:15, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

It does need work

The single source concerns are real however, also, it needs some help in other areas, I will begin to work on it. --SVTCobra 22:20, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

---

I have to say that I am unimpressed with the way this issue has been handled. At first you agreed with me in the way that I handled the story. Then, after I complain about an anonymous "cleanup" tag being added, suddenly you find fault with it and make major edits to it. Looking at your work so far, it appears that you have gotten around the single source problem by adding unrelated information surrounding the issue. My original article was about the fact that interrogators have complained about what they regarded as unreasonable pressure to find evidence on Iran when interrogating prisoners. This is not related to the story about the US denying that they are about to attack Iran. I feel that if you really need to add unrelated US propaganda to "balance" the story (as I saw in one of your edit notes), you can create a new article separate from this one.

I am particularly unhappy with the "cleanup" tag being on the article for 8 hours while I was asleep, effectively meaning that European visitors would have missed the article. News only lasts 24 hours before it becomes fish-and-chips wrapping. This is an important article precisely because it has not been widely publicised, despite being highly relevant to an extremely important international issue.

This is my first Wikinews article. Of course I don't expect it to be perfect and I welcome constructive discussion about how it might be improved. But my major motivation for even bothering to submit it was because, as I said earlier, I felt it was important and not publicised enough. I appreciate that the issue might be a little controversial, however I don't expect that I have to spend 24 hours being awake merely to defend my article from being simply removed, or having major edits adding unrelated US propaganda. It has taken a considerable amount of my time to do this, and guess what, I have to work and sleep just like everyone else. Wikinews hasn't exactly taken off like Wikipedia. I suspect that pissing off contributors like this ain't gunna help the cause. Dox96 00:21, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Alright, then, if you want me to restore your article as was, I will. If you think that US denying reports of an attack on the very same day as the Observer story is "unrelated" I am surprised. If you think that Joschka Fischer is spewing US propaghanda, I am stunned. --SVTCobra 00:36, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

I agreed with you that it was a problem that the article was single source. I saw that the article was started by an anonymous IP and thought you had raised concerns about it and inserted the stuff about not being picked up by major wires as you thought the story wasn't neutral. Besides, I am not the only one here and I can't be responsible for the story being left unattended. I thought I was doing you a favor by saving a story that could well be thought of as being in violation of NPOV. --SVTCobra 00:44, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

I have asked a non-US editor/admin to look at this and see if my edits were unreasonable. If either of you say so, I will happily extricate my edits. Well, I guess you already did, but you confirm that you want that, or the other editor sees a problem, then I will. --SVTCobra 01:16, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Ahh I see where I misunderstood you now. Actually, I was the original author, and I was basically trying to offer reasons at the top of this page where I felt that I veered from the writing guidelines, to defend what I did. I made a mistake creating the article anonymously - sorry about the newbie mistake. That's why I corrected myself by creating my user handle. But I can see how that must have created confusion as to who was doing what edits and for what reason.

However, I stand by my original comments regarding the adding of unrelated content. I do not feel that the US commander was responding to the Observer article - it got no coverage elsewhere. He was responding to escalated coverage throughout the worldwide media in the past week regarding speculation of an attack. I also didn't feel that the Observer article was implying that the US was going to attack Iran in the immediate future, just that they seemed to be constructing a "case" for it using unreliable intelligence gathering methods. I think the first paragraph now reads extremely awkwardly, trying to piece together two unrelated facts. I also think it's now highly unbalanced, with 3 quotes (and photographs) of senior government figures denying an imminent attack, and one unrelated quote from Fischer. I still think the "US denies plans of attack" story should be a separate article. I have more to say, but I have to get back to work now :-/ Dox96 01:39, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Funny, I fixed that "responding" sentence even before I read this. We can't use the Observer's photos of Brose and I'm afraid no free ones are available. But I will gladly look for recent comments by Ahmadinejad to rebalance, or I could seperate. --SVTCobra 01:45, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Extricated

Dox, I have extricated and restored your article from the work that I did. Although, I did not publish, I marked it 'Ready' for the immediate attention of other editors. You may persue your problem of the single source with them. --SVTCobra 02:36, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Minor edits done

Alright, I've done some minor edits to wikify it. Can't think of any really relevant images, so I'd rather leave it as it is than add irrelevant ones (such as maps of Iran or some such). I understand the Observer photo cannot be used for copyright reasons. I even added your article as a link SVTCobra! Just to say thank-you :-) No, I mean it :-) If no one has anything further to say about this article before I wake up again tomorrow morning (8 hours from now), then I'm going to re-publish it myself. Feel free to republish it in the meantime though! --Dox96 12:47, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Published

As there have been no further comments, I am republishing. It's been hanging around long enough now. I do not think that this article violates NPOV, and I think the reason given for having a single source is reasonable. I have not been able to find any more information about information-gathering techniques on Iran. Please feel free to add anything that you (meaning, anyone) find on this topic. And please - state on this page specifically what problem that you have before adding "cleanup" tags. That also means saying why you think it's a problem. --Dox96 22:54, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Published elsewhere

Well it seems that I have got at least one vote of confidence - those naughty guys over at HULIQ have copied my work word-for-word! Yes, it appears to be another "citizen journalist" site, but a) I didn't submit it, and b) they're on Google News! Well the whole purpose of me doing this on Wikinews was to publicise something important, and it appears that I have done so. Guess I may bother doing this again. My eyes will be wiiiide open next time :-) --Dox96 23:36, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

That is the result of publishing under CC-BY-2.5. They are free to use it as long as they say it came from Wikinews, which they did. But they just mirror stuff from here, so I would take the "vote of confidence" lightly. They are on Google because they qualify as a "blog". Don't ask me why but Google has made a deliberate decision to exclude Wikinews from their search. Afriquenligne is another site that mirrors us and listed by Google. For more about our relationship with Google, please see this discussion. Cheers,--SVTCobra 00:17, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Oh I fully understand the nature of the license, don't worry. Actually I was very pleased, how does that saying go? Mimicking is the highest form of flattery? :-) And they don't appear to simply "mirror" stuff from Wikinews, they certainly don't have every article on here, and they include news from all sorts of other sources, so someone must have made a deliberate decision to publish, rather than a computer automatically putting it onto their site. Hence my "vote of confidence" comment. Anyway. As I said, I've achieved what I set out to do, so I'm happy. And I really mean it when I say I'm grateful for all the effort that you've put in this yourself SVTCobra. You really have given me a better understanding of the issues concerning publishing and hence next time I'll be much better prepared :-) --Dox96 02:34, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Repeat

What is in this article that isn't in the US denies plans for attack on Iran amid report of hunt for evidence against Iran article??? Contralya 00:55, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

The answer to your question Controlya is: nothing. See the above for a looooong discussion of how this happened. If you still have a problem with the information being repeated, then please remove it from the "US denies plans for attack on Iran amid report of hunt for evidence against Iran" article rather than doing anything to this one for this reason. Thanks, --Dox96 02:34, 14 November 2007 (UTC)