Talk:The Al Qaida Plan (film)

To do. Please write a brief definition or description of this article at The Al Qaida Plan (film)/Definition.

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References

The first two references no longer exist. And, is it really "Al Qaida" and not "Al Qaeda"? Was the film maker so ignorant as to get the spelling wrong? What does this spelling difference mean? Pat Palmer (talk) 11:51, 11 October 2023 (CDT)

1. The mere existence of references used to be seen as sufficient, due to basic trust of other good faith contributors. It used to be argued that the really aggressive reference challenger could always go to his or her local library, and ask his or her reference librarian to find the original articles on microfiche, or reasonable equivalent.

   I added these references. They existed at the time I added them, and I think they backed up they points I use them to back up.

   Pat, you could choose to trust my intellectual integrity, and let them continue to be used.

2. For Chinese there is the Pinyin transliteration scheme. Every chinese word has an unambiguous transliteration. Pinyin replaced Wade-Giles, and earlier unambiguous transliterations.

   Chinese is the exception. There is no standard scheme for transliterating Arabic into English, or other European languages. Same with Russian, and other slavic languages, that use Cyrillic.

   In 2006, when the DoD dropped its secrecy over who had been held in Guantanamo, I found I had references to over fifty individuals whose existence had been revealed, before the secrecy had been dropped, who weren't on the official list.

   I worked on them, and, after a lot of hard work, I determined most of the confusion was due to different transliterations. One of the holdouts was a guy named Ahcene Zemiri. He was an Arab from one of the North African countries once ruled by France. It took me a year and a half to determine that he was on the official list, as Hassan Zumiri. Ahcene is the francophone transliteration of Hassan.

   So, no, the different name used by the film-maker is not due to ignorance. He was a grad student, prior to the 9-11 attacks, who did a thesis on OBL. After 9-11 he made a career for himself as a kind of non-governmentla professional alarmist, starting with his academic expertise on OBL. George Swan (talk) 10:20, 21 May 2024 (CDT)

Should this article be kept or deleted?

Should this article be kept or deleted?

IMO, the suggestion that this article, on the topic of this film, should be shoehorned into the article on the film-maker is a fundamental error.

If Evan Kohlmann was the only article-worthy topic related to the film, this shoe-horning would not be a problem.

But the film was used at Salim Ahmed Hamdan's Military Commission. So, that article should link to it.

The Court of Military Commission Review relied on it, when they reviewed and overturned Hamdan's conviction, so that article should link to it.

The 2019 link shows that, if Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four co-accused ever get their day in court the Prosecution plans to use the film, again. So, those articles should link to the article on the film.

Can't those other articles link to a subsection, Evan Kohlmann#The al-Qaida plan? IMO, this is a very bad practice.

1. Chaos can result, for any article that is redirected to a subsection of a related article. Good faith contributors have no way of knowing they will break links with even minor, trivial copy-editing of the subsection name.

   If The al-Qaida plan redirects to Evan Kohlmann#The al-Qaida plan, and a good faith contributor changes the subsection heading to #The Al-Qaida plan or #The Al Qaida plan the redirect silently breaks.

   People think they are clicking on a link to an article on the film, and they end up at the top of a BLP. That is bad.

2. Clearly, you don't want

   Court of Military Commission Review#The al-Qaida plan

   Salim Ahmed Hamdan#The al-Qaida plan

   Khalid Sheikh Mohammed#The al-Qaida plan. But aspects of the film that would be relevant to one of those related articles will not be relevant in other related articles. The only real practical approach is to retain that small but adequately referenced stand-alone The al-Qaida plan article, and have all the related articles link to it.

3. So long as The Al Qaida Plan (film) is a standalone article it can sit on contributor's watchlists.
4. So long as The Al Qaida Plan (film) is a standalone article it shows up when you click the What links here button. George Swan (talk) 10:44, 21 May 2024 (CDT)
5. I am shocked John Leach deleted the article on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. George Swan (talk) 10:44, 21 May 2024 (CDT)