Talk:December 2014 Sinjar offensive

WARNING: ACTIVE COMMUNITY SANCTIONS

The article December 2014 Sinjar offensive, along with other pages relating to the Syrian Civil War and ISIL, is designated by the community as a contentious topic. The current restrictions are:

Limit of one revert in 24 hours: This article is under WP:1RR (one revert per editor per article per 24-hour period)

Editors who repeatedly or seriously fail to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, any expected standards of behaviour, or any normal editorial process may be sanctioned.

Remedy instructions and exemptions

Enforcement procedures:

Violations of any restrictions (excluding 1RR/reverting violations) and other conduct issues should be reported to the administrators' incidents noticeboard. Violations of revert restrictions should be reported to the administrators' edit warring noticeboard.
Editors who violate any listed restrictions may be blocked by any uninvolved administrator, even on a first offense.
An editor must be aware before they can be sanctioned.

With respect to any reverting restrictions:

Edits made solely to enforce any clearly established consensus are exempt from all edit-warring restrictions. In order to be considered "clearly established" the consensus must be proven by prior talk-page discussion.
Edits made which remove or otherwise change any material placed by clearly established consensus, without first obtaining consensus to do so, may be treated in the same manner as clear vandalism.
Clear vandalism of any origin may be reverted without restriction.
Reverts of edits made by anonymous (IP) editors that are not vandalism are exempt from the 1RR but are subject to the usual rules on edit warring. If you are in doubt, contact an administrator for assistance.

If you are unsure if your edit is appropriate, discuss it here on this talk page first. Remember: When in doubt, don't revert!

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the December 2014 Sinjar offensive article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Kurdistan Low‑importance

	Kurdistan portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Kurdistan, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of articles related to Kurdistan on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.KurdistanWikipedia:WikiProject KurdistanTemplate:WikiProject KurdistanKurdistan articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Iraq Low‑importance

	Iraq portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Iraq, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Iraq on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.IraqWikipedia:WikiProject IraqTemplate:WikiProject IraqIraq articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Military history: Asian / Middle East / Post-Cold War

This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.Military historyWikipedia:WikiProject Military historyTemplate:WikiProject Military historymilitary history articles

This article has been checked against the following criteria for B-class status:
Referencing and citation: criterion met Coverage and accuracy: criterion met Structure: criterion met Grammar and style: criterion met Supporting materials: criterion met

Associated task forces:
/
	Asian military history task force
	Middle Eastern military history task force
	Post-Cold War task force

Update

§2.1.2 (18 December 2014): corrected, from given ref source ‘Independent’ 19 Dec. (‘Retaking Mount Sinjar’);
§2.1.3: correcting in accordance with corrected §2.1.2 (retaking of Mount Sinjar); adding the Peshmerga offensive on to Tal Afar (19–21 Dec);
§2.1.4: some details on the stalling of the Tal Afar advance; adapted the subsection heading accordingly. --Corriebertus (talk) 16:13, 26 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Source makes no mention of a retaking of Mount Sinjar. The source actually says, as its title, they broke the siege of Mount Sinjar. Saying they retook Mount Sinjar implies ISIL was in control of it, which they weren't, they only surrounded it. EkoGraf (talk) 19:18, 26 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

‘Fought their way’ from Zumar to Sinjar mountain

EkoGraf, in his edit of 26 April, wrote that Peshmerga on 18 December ‘broke the siege of Mount Sinjar’. As motivation/explanation in his posting here on Talk page on 26 April, he referred to source The Independent 19Dec, which says that (A) peshmerga “fought their way” from Zumar to Sinjar mountain, (B) freed people trapped there by ISIL according to a Kurdish leader, and (C) calls that: ‘breaking the siege of Mount Sinjar’. Part (A) is a straightforward presentation of battlefield events. Part (B) is dubious: we have no previous information of ‘people trapped there by ISIL’, but nevertheless we can harmlessly enter that in our article if we clearly specify that it was a statement of ‘a Kurdish leader’. Part (C) is really a problem: for a siege to be broken, it would first have to really exist, and our article does not yet say or show that a siege existed there in December. (It says in § Background that in October ISIL surrounded those mountains, but while they did not have an apparent plan to conquer them, that situation was no ‘siege’.) I don’t know why The Independent would want to pretend or contend that a siege there had existed, but frankly that is their business. Our business is that our Wikipedia article should be consistent. And as long as our article doesn’t state that before 18 December a siege existed, it logically can’t contend that it got broken on 18 December. --Corriebertus (talk) 13:16, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

First, its not just the independent, you have multiple other sources that clearly say [1][2][3] they broke a siege. Your personal interpretation of what a siege is does not count if that's what reliable sources call it. A new siege had already been instituted since October of that year per the sources [4][5]. EkoGraf (talk) 17:01, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough, source McClatchy 22Dec2014 calls the situation since October 2014 a 'partial siege'. I can agree to copy that term of his in our article (I've given the renewed web address for it in our article, now), provided it is put in inverted commas, because (1) he is the only one calling it so, and (2) we all know and agree that 'partial siege' is a contradiction in terms. --Corriebertus (talk) 13:26, 11 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Combination of Peshmerga and YPG offensives

The article, in section 2 ‘Offensive’, clearly covers offensives of both the (Kurdish) Peshmerga and the (Kurdish) YPG (People's Protection Units). Also the Infobox already clearly summarizes offensives of those two Kurdish groups. The lead section should always summarize the main lines of the article, so in this article it should accordingly speak of ‘…a combination of operations of the Kurdish Peshmerga forces and the Kurdish YPG forces…’, et cetera. --Corriebertus (talk) 13:17, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Barzani in section 2.1, not in lead

The Peshmerga offensive was reportedly directed by Barzani (but ofcourse not the YPG offensive). I’ve added that information to section 2.1: ‘Peshmerga offensive’. Also, I’ve removed mentioning Barzani from the lead section. Firstly: the lead must display, shortly, only the main line of the topic, and I see no reason why mr. Barzani – I have nothing against him, by the way – should be mentioned in this lead. Secondly: if colleagues see inexorable need to mention Barzani in the lead, then please do it in such a way that it pertains only the peshmerga offensive and not also the YPG offensive. --Corriebertus (talk) 13:18, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Merge

Clear consensus against merging at this time. -Kudzu1 (talk) 19:48, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The November and December offensives' pages are not too large to just have different sections for it. The infobox can highlight the different dates too. Not much of a difference per se, except the outcome.Lihaas (talk) 08:19, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, sorry. They are not too long, but are distinct enough to be kept separate. Note that the one is in December 2014, the other in November 2015. Rather than merging the articles I would create an umbrella article covering the whole Battle of Sinjar though (compare fr:Bataille de Sinjar) with the two offensives as specific sub-topics. PanchoS (talk) 13:12, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose They're distinctly different events. Make an umbrella or disambiguation page that includes the 2 offensives, the Northern Iraq offensive (August 2014) & possibly the Sinjar massacre. Blaylockjam10 (talk) 22:59, 14 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Update - I converted "Battle of Sinjar" to a disambiguation page for now. Umbrella article suggestion is still open. George Ho (talk) 00:45, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose They are different offensives and thus need separate articles. EkoGraf (talk) 17:25, 15 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 5 external links on December 2014 Sinjar offensive. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{Sourcecheck}}).

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 22:40, 9 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 4 external links on December 2014 Sinjar offensive. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 19:27, 7 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]