Talk:Targeted killing

Recent edits/deletions

I've restored the more logical paragraph split. It puts common concepts in common paras. I've also restored the reference, now in quotes and further edited, which is certainly not a copyvio (the original complaint of the deleter). It need not be "necessary"-- his more recent complaint. Futher, it was in the DYK, on the front page of wp, and went through the wp DYK vetting process as such. I am also restoring "w/out landing"--the deleter deleted that without explanation.--Epeefleche (talk) 06:53, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

I split a paragraph in the Lead because the first sentence described the operation of Predator drones, as they currently function, while the rest of the paragraph was devoted to "nano-drones" which are not yet used in the field. Therefore, the split went along the lines of what is currently used versus what is projected to be used.

The whole "killer bee" analogy is not applicable; it was made during an interview to hype the idea, and so does not belong in an encyclopedia entry. Actual killer bees do not target a single individual, nor do they navigate obstacles in pursuit of that individual (as per the "even through windows" qualifying phrase). As the article is about "targeted killing", the topic of research & development for one method does not really belong in the Lead section at all. The whole nano-drone reference should be removed from the Lead (but not the article) until such time as they are actually employed in the field. Boneyard90 (talk) 07:40, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Whatever. You two battle it out to make the article read better and be more informative. But it is not “plagiarizing”, as you suggested here with this edit, nor a copyright violation to adopt a two-word term for something. If it were, the Fred Hoyle would have died rich for coining the term “Big Bang.” Fortunately, Hoyle died 20 days before he could witness the 9/11 attack on the twin towers. I agree that nano-drone should be out of the leded; until it is employed in the field, it is undo weight. Greg L (talk) 15:17, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

I think the term Big Bang counts as "public domain". Anyway, we're building consensus here. Shall I edit the lead section, or would Epeefleche care to do the honor? Boneyard90 (talk) 05:25, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

I will give it a try in a couple of days, if there are not further comments. (If I don't get to it in a couple of days, feel free to do so Bone). Best.--Epeefleche (talk) 16:32, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Request for Article Protection

This seems like a really important article that is prone to edit wars. 142.35.235.22 (talk) 17:38, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

I agree. Can an admin put this under protection? That way all changes will be discussed firstBeefcake6412 (talk) 17:48, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Seems reasonable.--Epeefleche (talk) 19:50, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Copyvio claim

I don't see the copyvio that is claimed as warranted deletion of this article. Would it be possible for you to indicate to the community which specific sentences you believe are copyvio? That way, the community can consider and examine your assertion--and if you are correct in the eyes of any editor (or even if the editor does not think you are correct), that would afford the community an opportunity to address what you feel are copyvio concerns.--Epeefleche (talk) 00:50, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Why have you qualified the section header with the word "claim"?

As you wrote and then created the article at 00:21 on 30 September 2010, and as it was so quaintly described "shepherded it" for all these months, don't you remember which parts if any you copied? If you do then why don't you start by listing those pieces you copied from other sources? You have said that you want to cooperate in this task, so how about starting to cooperate, rather than casting doubts on the good faith of another editor? -- PBS (talk) 01:10, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

There are examples of removal of copyright violations in the history of the article. The whole of the article is presumed to be a copyright violation: the presumption arises because of your history and is confirmed by the examples. I will not, for a 130kb article, "indicate to the community which specific sentences [I] believe are copyvio". --Mkativerata (talk) 01:57, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

After all that effort, Mkativerata, I trust that your work product won’t have the effect of changing the balance and tone of the article to please you. Groking the mix at the ANI against you, it appears Epeefleche is indicating that you tend to water down points in articles that are critical of Islamic extremists. It will be interesting to see whether the sunshine of public inspection will avoid such an outcome here on this article. The proof will be in the pudding when you’ve finished with this. To Epeefleche: when he’s done, if you find he made major changes to the balance of the article were effected via heavy use of the [delete] key, just revise the excised text so it is no longer a “very close paraphrasing” (or even a “close paraphrasing”) and repair the article. Wikipedia exists not to please Mkativerata nor you, but to best serve the interests of its readership with properly balanced and fair articles that mirror the balance of the RSs. Greg L (talk) 02:32, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

@Greg L you wrote above "After all that effort, Mkativerata, I trust that your work product won’t have the effect of changing the balance and tone of the article to please you." Please assume good faith, which in my opinion seems to be missing from that sentence and many of the following ones in that paragraph. BTW I await with interest a reply at that ANI to the question I put to you there. -- PBS (talk) 03:36, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

This source [1] is being copied verbatim [2]. Volunteer Marek  04:54, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

There is a whole buttload copied directly from this source [3]. Now, that source is no longer available there, but if you type in the title of the article you can find another version on some blog and when you slap it into duplicate detector you get that strings of 90 words, 64 words, 35 words, 31 words, 27 words, 20 words, as well as a few shorter ones, were pretty much copy/pasted (yes I appreciate the irony of using a third party source which potentially violates copyright itself to track down copyright violations on Wikipedia).

Blanking's fully justified. Volunteer Marek  05:00, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

And this one [4] -> DD: [5]. It's sort of hard NOT to find copyright violations in this article but here's one [6] - it duplicates, but at least it's in quotes. Volunteer Marek  05:05, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

@Marek You do realise that nearly all of the big examples you've provided here are direct quotes taken from primary sources and only repeated verbatim because they are quotes of those primary sources? It's probably not a question for here, but at what point does a quote from a primary source correctly attributed to the primary source both in the secondary source and in wikipedia become a copyvio of the secondary source? WP:INTEXT is clear that it doesn't and surely copyright if any lies with the primary source (even if the secondary paraphrases slightly it still does not cross the originality threshold) and use in this manner is squarely fair use and essential to construction of any encyclopaedia that has to attribute and weigh up sources? If anything the only concern here is to ringfence these quotations with either quotation marks or a quotation template to clarify the fact that they are quotations (although the attribution should already do that). This is the problem I raised both at CCI and at ANI with Epeefleche - he likes to back up his information with direct quotes but uses secondary sourcing to identify those direct quotes the CCI process simply compares whether sentence A is the same or similar to sentence B and makes no consideration of the fact that perhaps both sentence A and sentence B are both fair use copies of sentence C. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 10:07, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

No. While the first example with the duplicate detector includes some quotes, there's lots of non quotes in my examples as well.

"Espousing violence or providing financial support to al-Qaeda do not meet the threshold, officials said, but providing training to would-be terrorists or helping them get to al-Qaeda camps probably would" is not presented as a quotation in the text.

This passage "Reisner was often consulted at the target killing planning meetings, which he described as "very, very trying. Especially when I said it's okay. I'd go back to my office and ask my deputy, 'Do you agree?' It's a frightening process to be involved in, sitting in a room and talking about killing someone. It's enough to make your skin crawl."[67] But once the evidence was presented, Reisner said, when they identified the cafe the terrorist was planning to blow up, or the movie theater he hoped to destroy, "you're reminded of what you're trying to avoid."" includes some quotes, but the quotes are in the original - it's a copy paste.

Likewise, this isn't a quote: "Reisner concluded that they were legal, with six conditions: that arrest is impossible; that targets are combatants; that senior cabinet members approve each attack; that civilian casualties are minimized; that operations are limited to areas not under Israeli control; and that targets are identified as a future threat.[67] Unlike prison sentences, targeted killing cannot be meted out as punishment for past behavior, Reisner said.[67] In 2002, a military panel confirmed that targeting cannot be for revenge, but only for deterrence." (the word "established" was changed to "confirmed" and that's it).

Sorry, these are straight up copyvios, not sloppy quotations. Volunteer Marek  22:33, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

1. You are right this isn't presented as a quotation, it's presented as close paraphrasing on the part of the "officials" in question - the problem is we don't have access to the primary source of the officials saying it so we can't present it a quotation and we can't paraphrase it further without changing the meaning of what the officials actually did say - unless you suggest a double attribution

The Los Angeles Times claims that officials said that "Espousing violence or providing financial support to al-Qaeda do not meet the threshold, ..."

WP:INTEXT seems to suggest that this can mislead (as though the LA times alone noted that the officials said this or possibly that the LA times said it themselves).

2. It doesn't matter that the quotes are in the msnbc article, they are still quotes and copyright lies with whoever said/wrote it originally - in this case Daniel Reisner - there may be some small argument that msnbc's words are an issue here but again a lot of these are Reisner's indirect speech and again attribution needs to be made to him not to msnbc who have paraphrased them. There is very little room for reworking them without again changing the meaning of the quotes they are designed to contextualise.

3 Nearly exactly the same issue as #1, with a bit of #2 - Reisner has said this and been attributed as saying this MSNBC has summarised the 6 points into as few words as possible. The 6 points remain the same but again without access to Reisner's original words we can't re-expand them or reorder them without changing Reisner's meaning again is a double quotation they way to resolve this? I don't think it does and in this case I think it would be even more misleading than the LA Times double quote in #1.

As I say this might not be a discussion for here, perhaps the Village Pump on Policy might be a better choice of venue to debate how editors should handle situations like this, but its something that possibly needs to be addressed to correct epeefleche's work which consists of a lot of these secondary sources quoting primary ones. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 07:24, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

How do you present something as a "close paraphrasing"? Put half a quotation mark around it? And of course you can paraphrase it without changing the meaning of what the officials actually did say - that's what the word "paraphrase" actually means, and that's what good, non-copyvio, writing entails.

Re #2 - again, it's a copy/paste from the original article, which includes some quotation. It's pretty clear cut. Re #3 again to "paraphrase" means to "paraphrase" and it's not nearly as impossible as you're making it out to be. In cases where there's a specific list or something, THEN you quote it and make sure it's labeled as a quote from a source. Volunteer Marek  07:31, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

And WP:INTEXT deals with how to use and cite sources without inadvertently violating NPOV - that's a different issue than copyvio. Volunteer Marek  07:34, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

1. You present something as a "close paraphrasing" when you attribute them as actually having said it even though you actually use your own words to express it - it's the attributing that is presenting their meaning. And yes if you have access to what the actual officials did say then you can paraphrase it without changing the meaning. However if all you have is already paraphrased then errors may occur when paraphrasing again (particularly if you don't know the distance between the primary and the source you are citing). I assume you are aware of the game Chinese whispers in some form or other? where "helping them get to al-Qaeda camps probably would" becomes "helping them get to their camp probably would" becomes "giving them directions to their camp probably would" becomes "giving them directions probably would" which isn't the intent of what the actual officials said. Avoiding this type of error is key in maintaining verifiability, and neutrality
2. It doesn't matter if it's a copy and paste - it's a quote. If I copy and paste "Ich bin ein Berliner" from a New York Times article about Kennedy (April 30th, 1988?) - It doesn't become a copyright violation of the New York times because the text is not original to the Times. The fact that the times might have added on the word "Hence" before the quote still doesn't make it a copyvio if we also include the word "hence" before our use of it because it still doesn't add any significant originality to the new sentence.
3. The problem is not in paraphrasing, the problem is the compound error of repeated paraphrasing. In reality you should only be paraphrasing original Analysis or paraphrasing a direct quotation not paraphrasing a paraphrase of either.

WP:INTEXT deals with more than neutrality issues since it has two examples of neutrality then goes on "Neutrality issues apart, there are other ways in-text attribution can mislead" and gives other examples which are applicable here. Like I said though, this isn't a discussion for here - I'll have a think about a wider community discussion or RFC on the subject. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 12:43, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I can see that there is no point in continuing this discussion any longer. Volunteer Marek  09:39, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Proposed working replacement

Unless Talk:Targeted_killing/Temp, which is a complete copy of Assasination#Targeted killing, also deserves to get blanked, it could serve as content while you guys sort things out. - 67.224.51.189 (talk) 22:15, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

First a deceleration so that no one can accuse me of hiding anything. I have already made it clear that I think that this article is a POV fork of Assassination. (see Talk:Assassination/Archive_2#RFC: Should there be a separate article called Targeted killing. What you are proposing is a content fork. So I suggest that at the moment if that is all that is on offer we go with a redirect as existed before a copyright violation was placed on top of the redirect. -- PBS (talk) 11:11, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

• Targeted killing is quite notable and there are numerous books about it such as Targeted killing in international law. These distinguish the practise from assassination and so it seems quite reasonable to treat this separately. As the assassination article is quite long (52K), it would be sensible to put that section here per WP:SPLIT, as the OP suggests, and truncate the section in the assassination article. The older version of this article, which is tainted by the copyright issue can be folded back in over time. Warden (talk) 11:43, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

  There are lots of books on terror bombing, and lots on strategic bombing, what is the difference other than we use strategic bombing and the enemy terror bombs us? Similarly what is the difference between assassination and targeted killing? -- PBS (talk) 13:32, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

  OLC declared it not to be assassination in a classified memorandum: a DoJ lawyer reasoned targeted killing legal. - 67.224.51.189 (talk) 13:20, 6 December 2011 (UTC)