Talk:2004 Madrid train bombings

• /Controversies about 11M-2004:Sources in english
• Controversies about the 11M-2004:Proposed article
• New proposed core article
• /Proposed additions

New section on "police surveillance and informants"

I've removed the material relating to the police surveillance and informants to a new section. This way that controversy can be fully explored in a section of its own, without implying - as would happen if put high in the article - that the cops were behind the bombing or knew about it and didn't stop it. I would suggest that some good quotes and material be removed from the footnotes and placed in this section, as I did with the Guardian article. --Mantanmoreland 15:00, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Good work, the introduction looks much better now. As a follow-up I think the issues of police surveillance and police informants should perhaps be separated - there is no evidence that I have seen that suggests those doing the surveillance were in anyway connected to those in Asturias dealing with police informers. I think the question the surveillance issue raises is why it didn't work. I have one important objection, the Guardian article you quote from is not written by a Guardian journalist, this is an opinion piece written by El Mundo's deputy editor and printed in the Guardian - not the same thing at all and not representative of the Guardian's position. I have argued with Randroide before about this source being wrongly presented and I do not think it is at all legitimate to cite this article without making clear what it's real origin is. As an opinion piece it actually adds no facts. Southofwatford 15:30, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

The new intro looks good as far as I'm concerned. I would agree with Southofwatford on the separation of the surveillance and police informants as independent and unconnected facts. I also agree that the question of surveillance is why it didn't work, and why intelligence sharing apparently wasn't very well implemented, even almost 3 years after the 9/11 attacks demonstrated the dire need for such cooperation. I see no problem with clarifying the original source of the guardian editorial piece. Parsecboy 15:49, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm afraid this El Mundo piece printed by the Guardian also makes a completely unfounded assertion - there is absolutely no evidence other than hearsay/wishful thinking that says the Asturians had ever sold explosives to ETA. The Spanish police have said that ETA do not buy their explosives from common criminals, they tend to either steal it themselves or when they cannot do that they have "homemade" recipes. Southofwatford 16:05, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the comments above. Please fix.--Mantanmoreland 17:21, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the removal of the Guardian quote from the main text. Unfortunately I had not gone to the Guardian itself and did not know that it was an opinion piece by an editor of El Mundo, and needed to be identified as such and not as being said by the Guardina. However, I think that generally the quotes in the references should be moved up to the main section. The footnotes are too long, and have quotes and information that should be placed int he body of the text.--Mantanmoreland 14:59, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I have moved the new section to the Controversies page - I think that is where it belongs. It still needs some work but I have put everything under the same heading on whether the bombings could have been avoided for the moment. I have also added new, but brief, introductions to the sub-articles on Controversies and Reactions to the bombings. On the footnotes I think the quotes should be removed so that we use a standard format for all footnotes - whether the quotes should be included in the main article should perhaps be discussed on a case by case basis, some of these quotes are extremely unrepresentative of the article from which they are drawn. Southofwatford 19:41, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't know about that. I can see not having it in the first few paragraphs, but removing from the article entirely strikes me as going too far in the other direction.--Mantanmoreland 21:12, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Well it hasn't been removed from the article, it has been placed in an appropriate sub-article together with other issues that have provoked controversy. The problem is that otherwise we will be splitting controversies into two, with some issues in the sub-article and others in the main one. The result of that will be to make the Controversies article virtually worthless. I personally believe that there are other issues already in the sub-article that are equally if not more worthy of the attention that the police informers issue has received. These are sections that can expand rapidly and end up dominating the main text, bear in mind that the section on the trial may be small at the moment but also has the scope to become larger as developments emerge. Doing things this way leaves us the possibility of having the main article for relating events, which I think is what most readers would want to see before being plunged into discussion of whether the fact that two people were police informers has any bearing on the case. Southofwatford 06:10, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I reverted you edit, Southofwatford. See rationale at User_talk:Southofwatford#POV_edit.Randroide 13:19, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the section should remain. This material belongs in the article, but in an appropriate place.--Mantanmoreland 14:29, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Please do not remove this section

The purpose of this section was to remove material concerning the police from the opening paragraphs, in order to not give the impression that there was police involvement in the bombings. However, this section should not be removed entirely from the article. --Mantanmoreland 14:41, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I will leave it although I continue to believe that it should be moved. I also reject the bogus pretext which Randroide has used for reverting the change - something is controversial if there is disagreement on the interpretation of what it means, and in this case there is clear disagreement between those (like Randroide) who think it "proves" (in the very loosest sense of the word) police involvement in the bombings, and those who do not accept such an imaginative interpretation. That is enough for something to be controversial. On POV, I will happily accept lectures on the subject from those who observe it themselves, Randroide does not even get close to membership of that group. Southofwatford 14:59, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I thought it was wrong to have stuff about informants and surveillance in the very opening paragraphs, as that skewed the article and gave a kind of innuendo. But surely it is important enough to belong in the article at an appropriate place. Right now it is down at the bottom. Omitting it from the article entirely is overkill. Remember that if this ever goes to arbitration, unreasonable edits get counted against you.--Mantanmoreland 15:16, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I have not omitted anything - I moved it a sub-article of the main article where controversial issues are dealt with. I didn't make any change to the content of the section. Southofwatford 15:19, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I have a problem with removing entire sections to that subarticle, leaving nothing behind.--Mantanmoreland 15:23, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately if we don't do that then what gets left behind either expands where the other section doesn't, or becomes a parallel and different version. Also, we end up without narrative flow in the main article, one of the principal problems that it now has. Southofwatford 15:29, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

That is a genuine danger, but there are ways to guard against that.--Mantanmoreland 18:34, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

You can avoid it in situations where there is general agreement on where things should go and the overall structure of the article - we do not have that situation here. Southofwatford 19:00, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

True there does not seem to be agreement on anything. But there is actually less edit warring than I would have expected.--Mantanmoreland 21:28, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Plase read Wikipedia:Content forking, Southofwatford. Randroide 15:31, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

This is soooo repetitive Randroide, read it yourself - at no point have I suggested parallel articles on the same subject, in fact my comment is precisely against that sort of thing. Please read properly other editors comments before responding, otherwise it is disruptive of an otherwise constructive discussion. Southofwatford 15:35, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi, These days and due to Christian holidays I do not have normal accesss to my computer but I managed to grab a keyboard to say something. The strategy of separating "controversial" issues for me was an eufemistic way of creating two different playgrounds : one for conspirationist and another for raw and boring truth. This part of the police neglicence can be documented as truth so I do not see why must be in a separate sub-article.

What must be in a separate article (or better in a "reactions" subsection) is the speculations about "the grand mother of one of drivers of one of the trains spent her holidays in the same hotel than the second cousin of the wife of a traffic policeman who was on shift the day that the hindus -who sold the cell phones to the terrorists- celebrated the wedding of a niece..."

So for me the correct thing would be to say in the "reactions" section that some people reacted crying and some other reacted inventing far fetched stories and then include some examples. Another was more post-modern and wikipedian is to set a subsection called either controversial or alternative or conspirationist and let Randroide unleash there his vivid imagination coupled with his no-ending working capacity. Not to say, I prefer the first option but I can live with the second.--Igor21 11:10, 4 April 2007 (UTC)