Talk:2017 Sinai mosque attack

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A news item involving 2017 Sinai mosque attack was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the In the news section on 24 November 2017.

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Attackers & authorities

What happened to the attackers? Were they all killed or did they escape. Were there any responding authorities resisting the attack or were the only resistors armed citizens? Curious as to the lack of news/information about this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.36.55.158 (talk) 13:38, 26 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Reactions

Articles such as these tend to have long "flag sections", as various governments condemn the incident. I'm going to BOLDly try to head this off by summarising the condemnations succinctly in prose form. --LukeSurl^{t c} 17:58, 24 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, even as I was adding the ones I put in I was starting to feel the list might not be the best idea. Gabriel syme (talk) 18:05, 24 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@LukeSurl: Would it make sense to remove the Muslim Brotherhood flag? Gabriel syme (talk) 18:09, 24 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Plenty of terrorist attack articles have flags, I don't see why this one shouldn't. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Walsak (talk • contribs) 19:07, 24 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Walsak: While that may be true, I agree with LukeSurl above that the article is better served by a summary in prose. Gabriel syme (talk) 19:10, 24 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

In these articles there are long lists of dozens of flags next to statements that are all condemnations of the attacks and concern for the victims. It's not that useful to write out the many different ways the same sentiment is expressed, and this can be summarized effectively with a prose list. These "flag lists" are often longer than the rest of the article. --LukeSurl^{t c} 20:37, 24 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

spelling of the name

I'll note it here as this article will probably get more attention: note the two articles: Bir al-Abed and Battle of Bir el Abd. Both seem to refer to the same place (though note that I linked them). Openstreetmap uses "Bir el Abd" as well. What should be the proper spelling? Tzafrir (talk) 19:14, 24 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This will be a transliteration issue, so there's no "correct" answer. The BBC go with "Bir al-Abed", though I imagine other English sources will vary. --LukeSurl^{t c} 20:52, 24 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Exact Location

The location of the incident at 31.016636°N 33.014330°E is not correct. The correct location is at: 31.039471°N 33.347818°E (which is outside the town of Bir al-Abed 30 kilometers further to the east, in a village called al-Rawda along the main coastal highway. The village itself does still lie within the borders of the Bir al-Abed municipality, so the name of the lemma is still correct.

The widely circulated picture (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-42110223) showing the al-Rawda mosque after the attack, clearly shows, that the mosque is square-shaped, has a dome in the center, a minaret to the side and a stair-like structure in the front.

These characteristics cannnot be found at the mosque at 31.016636°N 33.014330°E, as can be seen on satellite images (https://goo.gl/maps/BxNVr4ReFxJ2)

However, all those 4 characteristics can be seen at the mosque in the Village of al-Rawda (https://goo.gl/maps/2x7rYhg6s3P2)

I have changed the coordinates accordingly!

Which makes me wonder how to deal with this:

Samaan, Magdy; Raf Sanchez (2017-11-24). "Egypt mosque attack: Military 'launches air strikes' after at least 235 worshippers killed in Sinai massacre". The Telegraph. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
"The town of Bir al-Abed is home to around 2,500 people, all members of the Sawarka tribe. In conservative rural areas of Egypt it is usually only men who attend Friday prayers. With an attack so large it is believed that a significant portion of all the men in the village were either killed or wounded on Friday."

Wouldn't this really apply to al-Rawda and not Bir al-Abed as a whole? Should we contact writers Magdy Samaan and Raf Sanchez? WhisperToMe (talk) 19:42, 25 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Article title

Current title "Bir al-Abed attack" is far less common. A Google web search hits only 190. A Google News search returns zero hit. Also the location of mosque is far from Bir al-Abed, It is between Bir al-Abed and El Arish. More common name may be "Egypt attack" (247,000) or "Egypt mosque attack" (362,000). So probably the best title might be "2017 Egypt mosque attack". Thought?―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 05:04, 25 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. I was going to say the same thing myself, before I saw your post. 32.209.55.38 (talk) 07:33, 25 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm the founder of this article and I started this article with this name "2017 Egypt mosque bomb and gun attack" (4,750,000) but unfortunately this page moved to different names time to time.

If you place it in quotes like Phoenix7777 did you get 2. --LukeSurl^{t c} 14:42, 25 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

reaction section

Is a list of countries, cited but without quotes, really necessary?--Kintetsubuffalo (talk) 07:12, 25 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

the negative reactions to such events are pretty obvious - are they necessary at all?--93.137.179.33 (talk) 16:22, 25 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

And goddamn that current list is ugly as hell and takes up half the article! We had list with flags which was hideous, then @LukeSurl: formatted it into prose which I thought was good at first, then that got frankly unwieldy after a point, then someone came and changed it all to something like "condemnations and condolences have poured in from countries and organizations across the globe," which at the end of the day I feel serves the encyclopedia best. Is there a good encyclopedic reason to list them all? Gabriel syme (talk) 15:40, 26 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

People would read your posts with more interest without the profanity. You are being purposely offensive.104.169.28.113 (talk) 07:12, 27 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Move to 2017 Sinai mosque attack

As per common name and and WP usual practice in attacks on mosques, churches and similar.E.M.Gregory (talk) 11:36, 26 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Done. It's now closer to the titles found in Mass shootings in the United States. Some of them also list the specific name of the place attacked, so maybe something like Al-Rawdah Mosque attack would be even better? --Posted by Pikamander2 (Talk) at 12:32, 26 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think so; it is not an individually famous mosque, and we don't have many (any?) other pages on attacks on mosques in the Sinai.E.M.Gregory (talk) 14:19, 26 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There are several articles on attacks in Sinai; none of the others have in the title the type of venue - they're disambiguated by year/month. What reason is there to have a different format of title just because it happened at a place of worship? Jim Michael (talk) 12:44, 26 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It is our usual naming convention for pages about attacks on houses of worship.E.M.Gregory (talk) 14:18, 26 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Is that stated anywhere as policy or a guideline? Jim Michael (talk) 16:04, 26 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

WP:COMMONNAME: News reports mostly have headlines with the words: mosque attack. WP:PRECISION: "Mosque" is a useful search term to efficiently distinguish this among the several recent attacks in Sinai. And the fact that we have such a (sadly) large # of articles called: Charleston church shooting, 2004 Iraq churches attacks, Wisconsin Sikh temple shooting, Akshardham Temple attack Bahawalpur church shooting, 1981 Vienna synagogue attack, 1982 Great Synagogue of Rome attack, Peshawar church bombing, Menarsha synagogue attack, 2014 Larkana temple attack, Palm Sunday church bombings... Presumably because it is such a common usage in headlines and such a useful search term. I see that this was at one point called Bir al-Abed mosque attack, and started life as 2017 Egypt mosque bomb and gun attack. I think that 2017 Sinai mosque attack manages to be both brief, precise, and use likely search terms. E.M.Gregory (talk) 20:22, 26 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Empty Motive Section?

Is there a reason this section header is there, but left empty? I'm going to delete it for now. 207.222.59.50 (talk) 15:26, 1 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

For the number of people killed in this event and the number of people supposedly involved in this attack there are almost no images anywhere. This article is in need of someone that is local to translate the news. Jeff Carr (talk) 11:56, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Jeff, were you intending this to be a general comment or did it pertain to the Motives section specifically? I'm reading sources now, but most of them do still lack detail. 207.222.59.50 (talk) 20:35, 4 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The ascribed motives are anti-Sufism and also conflict with the Sawarka tribe (the tribe actually declared war on Sinai Province a few months ago), which is driven by anti-Sufism.--Pharos (talk) 20:38, 4 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, so in your view is the Responsibility section (which describes the general threat issued by the Islamic State) detailed enough? 207.222.59.50 (talk) 21:02, 4 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]