Talk:Critical Foreign Dependencies Initiative

A fact from Critical Foreign Dependencies Initiative appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 18 January 2011 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that information on the Critical Foreign Dependencies Initiative list leaked by WikiLeaks was stated by some companies on the list to be "out of date and full of errors"?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2011/January.

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Unjustifiable opposition

I was unhappy to see this,[1] as it is far out of keeping with the facts. I think it's debatable whether a cable is truly "Secret" when it's released to 400,000 to 500,000 people on SIPRNet who can read it apparently without any special authorization. But you need only do a web search for any one of the phrases below to see that any pretense of secrecy is pretty well blown off the hinges now. Everyone from Al-Qaida to schoolkids with OLPCs have access to this list already. It's fair game for the encyclopedia.

Now as for not having enough sources ... partly true. But there's definitely enough to make the article very notable. Most items on this list are already the topic of Wikipedia articles, and many, maybe most of them will now be renowned for being on this list. That's simply the world as it is. Wikipedia should be about describing reality, not pretending, uselessly, that it is something else. Wnt (talk) 01:20, 9 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"It's fair game for the encyclopedia." --That's a really unfortunate statement. That something once private is made public doesn't make it necessary to jump on and make an article. Wikipedia reflects third-party sources. Is this topic covered in those? Somewhat yes, but not very much. We don't have articles in hopes that there may be sources later. If that's the case, as it seems to be here, that would be a perfect example of reason to redirect until you can establish wide coverage. Grsz 11 02:06, 9 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

User:Wnt is mistaken. This article is based on a leaked, classified cable from WikiLeaks and not on secondary sources. Unfortunately, Wikipedia does not use leaked classified cables as primary sources for encyclopedia articles. Based on the lack of sources and the comments by Grsz11, I'm going to restore the redirect. I would ask at this time that Wnt take his concerns to the appropriate noticeboard for discussion, as I would be happy to join him. This was previously discussed on the parent article talk page and the result of that discussion was that there was no consensus to create this article. Wnt ignored that consensus and went ahead anyway. Viriditas (talk) 02:31, 9 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) First, I wasn't following the discussion at Talk:United_States_diplomatic_cables_leak#List_of_vital_sites very closely, as I felt I had no particular duty to do so.
Second, I see no consensus there not to create this or any other article.
Third, I categorically deny that a discussion on the talk page of one article counts as a vote to AfD another hypothetical article before it has ever been created. People at your talk page were talking about splitting off the contents of multiple cables, or just having a list and nothing else, or who knows what; my goal was to cover one specific topic.
Fourth, this article is not primarily about Wikileaks or diplomatic cables; it is about the Critical Foreign Dependencies Initiative. It simply happens to have an authentic source that is widely available which describes the contents of the sites listed under that initiative.
Fifth, the way I started this article was by looking at Critical infrastructure protection which had a redlink for the name of this article, so I view that as the "parent article", if there is such a thing.
Sixth, even if one of your various explanations for why the cables shouldn't be listed were correct, it doesn't justify replacing the entire article, including the general descriptions based on DHS publications, with a redirect to an uninformative Homeland Security article. I mean, you might as well have replaced the article with the word "PENIS" while you were at it. Wnt (talk) 05:14, 9 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OR, and Synthesis. AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:12, 9 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How can it be OR and based on a primary source? Wnt (talk) 05:18, 9 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hiya, popping in as an uninvolved admin, since my attention was drawn here from WP:ANI. Most of the sources on this article look fine, but let's please be careful to only use reliable secondary sources? Any primary sources (for example,[2]) should be removed immediately. Any editor who insists on adding primary sources back, may be subject to warnings and/or being blocked from the project. Hopefully that won't be necessary though! Just stick with reliable secondary sources, such as respected news and journal articles, and all should be fine. --El on ka 06:01, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That primary source is the only one used in the article and is only being used for the sentence "The 2008 CFDI list, as redacted by Wikileaks, listed the following infrastructures" at the beginning of the list. It is not being used to interpret anything, but is being used for a "straightforward, descriptive statement", which is that sentence. Thus, it does meet the requirements of WP:PRIMARY. Silver seren^C 06:55, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Primary sources are easy to misuse. If being used to source uncontroversial information, a primary source is occasionally appropriate. However, as soon as information is "challenged or likely to be challenged", sourcing requirements become more stringent. --El on ka 14:43, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sourcing the list content to the list is definitely a good use of primary sources. Challenged content does not exclude the use of a primary source; as the content of the list is prima facie. It's dubious lawyering to dispute that this is a poor source for the content of the list. TO reiterate; there is nothing wrong with primary sourcing content if done correctly (check), WP:V does not deny primary sources for challenged content (check) and you are (by argument) challenging the content of the list... ...as sourced to the list. Difficult to figure that one :) --Errant ^(chat!) 14:48, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) Information becomes controversial when it may not be true, not when certain politicians merely object that ordinary people shouldn't be allowed to know things like that, even when al-Qaida and every foreign government already has a copy. WP:CENSOR applies. There are many, many news sources cited here, none of which show doubt that the list as leaked is the true CFDI list. Wnt (talk) 14:50, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

With all deletions having been reverted, the Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring#User:Ohconfucius reported by User:Silver seren (Result: No action) discussion was closed with no action. Elonka said that Ohconfucius planned no more deletions. However, I am concerned that someone may still attempt to act on her statement above and start another edit war. I have discussed her views at User talk:Wnt#Critical Foreign Dependencies Initiative and we have very different ideas about what Wikipedia says about primary sources. I would make a general appeal that if anyone is considering a new wave of deletions, please take this to WP:Reliable sources/Noticeboard instead if you still think WP:Primary says we can't use primary sources. Wnt (talk) 16:24, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

When was it leaked?

Considering that the earliest sources i've been finding on the list are from the 6th, I presume that it was leaked either on the 5th or early on the 6th. Anyone know? It would be good to have the exact date in the lede. Silver seren^C 00:57, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The Wikileaks link lists the release date as 2010-12-05 21:09. Wnt (talk) 02:37, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Added. Silver seren^C 02:44, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The List

Clearly the topic is notable. But do we need the content of the list in the article? I have no real care either way; but it occurs to me that due to the tentative verified nature of the source it is possibly a little too much to include it. Also; this is quite a long unwieldy list which is available in the linked source. I'd tentatively suggest cutting the list out and providing a link to the Wikileaks source as an EL. --Errant ^(chat!) 12:03, 9 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The first purpose for including the list is to allow wikilinking to all the companies and facilities described; this is to be followed with the substantial task of tracking down news stories about each item on the list in reference to Wikileaks. The Australian reference about the list being "out of date" is an example of such a reference. Initially, I put such data within ref tags, and I see someone has started a Companies header, but I think the best way to handle this is to list all the items as they occur in the primary source, then add further text from secondary sources to each one, while somehow marking the original text as a quotation (in part due to the abundant "typos"). Perhaps a table, perhaps italics... some experimentation will be needed. Wnt (talk) 14:32, 9 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It might be best to, for now, move the list to a subpage that we can access, while keeping all of the referenced things on the list in the article. Thus, we would be able to access the subpage so that we can directly look for secondary sources on the subjects and move them back into the article once we've found a source for them. If everything is sourced, I don't think people will have much of a problem with it. Silver seren^C 19:17, 9 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Though, admittedly, after the reorganization of the article, the list isn't really that long. It might not be necessary. Silver seren^C 19:57, 9 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I just finished referencing Russia and all of the former bloc countries. Silver seren^C 20:37, 9 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Unsourced sections

Relevant discussion at

→ WP:ANI#Creation of articles from leaked classified documents
→ WP:RSN#Is Business Insider reliable?

First off, I can understand wanting to remove the unsourced items on the list. However, I am in the process of sourcing then at this very moment. So, give me a day or so. Second, removing the mines just because they "aren't specific" is not helpful. There is no way to confirm what mines are being spoken of, since the cable doesn't specify. Regardless, the mines are still discussed in secondary sources, so they should stay. Silver seren^C 07:39, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You will be quite welcome put them back as an when you manage to source them. The reference to mines I removed are all too non-specific, and if there is a reliable third party source which globalises the nature of the systemic threat, it may warrant a summary statement somewhere. As it is, it is entirely unsatisfactory. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 08:07, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

May I suggest that instead of placing unreferenced, contentious information in the article, it is placed here, on the talk page instead pending the procuring of reliable sourcing? If it's a matter of a very long list that would appear rather obtrusive, collapsing it could be a solution. Then the editor working on adding referenced items to the article can remove items from it as they are being referenced and inserted into the article. __meco (talk) 10:02, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've already started a AN3 report on him a while ago. I was in the middle of referencing it before anyways. Most of the info on the list can actually be referenced, believe it or not. The only difficult things will be from Mexico. For some reason, there is little to no info on the places in Mexico. Silver seren^C 10:11, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And the overview section is still missing some stuff from before. Could you fix that? Silver seren^C 10:14, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think all damage is now fixed.[3] Wnt (talk) 13:19, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Collapsing is not the right way forward. How about your sandbox? Inadequately sourced, the overview section was. Find better sources, please, before you reintegrate. ;-) --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 10:18, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Then the proper action would have been to raise a discussion here on the talk page about the overview section, so we could see if more references could be found or find concensus on how it should be worded. The improper thing to do was what you did, which was to start a edit war over the inclusion of the material. I believe it would be in your best interest to make a response at the AN3 thread that I linked on your talk page and explain why you did what you did. Silver seren^C 10:21, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There are no unsourced sections. Nothing here is made up - it is all easily verifiable. WP:Primary fully respects the use of a primary source about itself - though as the 2008 CFDI list was compiled by the DHS and a number of other government agencies, it may actually be a secondary source being used about itself. Wnt (talk) 15:10, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Speaking of original research, how about "rem meaningless. you can't attack manganese - it's in the ground al over the world)"^[4] You say this based on what, your years of mining experience, your geology PhD? You don't like the CFDI list they published 2008 so you want to make some corrections to it? Wnt (talk) 12:53, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've added some comments about this to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring#User:Ohconfucius reported by User:Silver seren (Result: ). Wnt (talk) 13:13, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(seen this at ANI) the cables are primary sources. There is no need to indiscriminately list every single item in the primary material. This is not because of censorship or anything, this is because ee don't list every single items that appears at primary documents like court documents, scientific papers, etc. Even if we have a secondary source, we don't dump every list of items that it happens to have. Articles are supposed to be summaries. Please remove everything that doesn't have meaningful commentary in secondary sources (for example, explanations of why that particular structure appeared in the list). --Enric Naval (talk) 00:39, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

However, this article is about the list itself, so it should include the list in its entiriety. We have a secondary source that verifies the information on the list and the list itself also explains why each place is on the list (essentially, what it produces or what its strategic importance is). Silver seren^C 00:51, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This tautological retort is not supported by any policy, and is mere wikilawyering. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:48, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If you say so. I'm just gonna stay over here and keep referencing things on the list with secondary sources until everything is sourced. Then it won't matter. Silver seren^C 04:17, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Continuing

I'm going to get back to referencing the things in the article. I understand (and agree with) Wnt's point about the list being a secondary source, but I feel that if others are going to continue to disagree with this, it would be better if I just put a reference for each thing on there. Can others work on also finding other sources for the Overview sections? The sources are good, but anything to shore them up with other things would be helpful. Silver seren^C 19:35, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, my preference is to ignore the threats of deleted items and only use the references where they actually discuss or solicit reactions about an item on the list. As a result I've been using references like [5] in a more restricted way than you've been doing. Depending on the level of opposition this may have to be reevaluated, but it seems unnecessary to me to use a secondary source only to confirm the bare listing of items. Wnt (talk) 23:26, 11 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That's okay. As long as the references are in the article so they can perused later, that's all that matters. You think you can find anything on the Mexico sites? All i've been able to find is one article that says "dams in Canada, Mexico, and...", which obviously isn't good enough to be used for anything specific in the Mexico section. I'm quite surprised that there hasn't been any Mexican newspapers reporting on this that i've been able to find. Silver seren^C 23:31, 11 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Here's one.^[6] Wnt (talk) 01:00, 12 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How'd you find that? It wasn't on Google News as far as I know. Silver seren^C 01:04, 12 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've been using Yahoo News. It came up on a search of "Amistad" + "Wikileaks", I think. Wnt (talk) 00:40, 13 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

laughs maniacally (a.k.a. secondary sources found for list items)

Mwahahaha. Here you go. A list of every single thing on the list, as represented by a secondary source. Silver seren^C 20:16, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, a copy-paste hardly counts as non-trivial secondary coverage. Grsz 11 20:56, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's a verification of the items on the list. Realistically, a direct copy of the list should not be needed to be sourced to a secondary source anyways. This would be one of the situations where the primary source works, since it is sourcing the factual info that is directly from itself. Per WP:PRIMARY. Silver seren^C 21:01, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Business Insider is more of a blog, not a reliable source "with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy". I recommend that you keep looking for better sources. --El on ka 21:17, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Just because they are a blog doesn't mean that they aren't reliable. Considering that they are referenced by the New York Times and NPR, why would you say that they don't have a "reputation for fact-checking and accuracy"? Silver seren^C 21:23, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Trivial" coverage comes from WP:Notability, which says "Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention but it need not be the main topic of the source material." It does not mean that the source, in the deletionist's humble opinion, does not do a thorough enough analysis of the material. Honestly, I should say that in my experience, offering more sources in a case like this is not actually useful - if someone doesn't want something published in Wikipedia, that is all that matters. But even so, it was good work! Wnt (talk) 02:04, 11 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I would also like to point out in a more affirmative sense that the primary source should be all that's needed in terms of the list, since the list is interpreting nothing or making any analysis, but is just a list o factual places. Per WP:PRIMARY, "A primary source may only be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements that any educated person, with access to the source but without specialist knowledge, will be able to verify are supported by the source." Anyone can verify the information in the list from the primary source. Silver seren^C 22:19, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The idea of NPOV was that we should generally reflect the editorial judgment of the best sources out there. The problem is that more often than not, editors are not interested in doing so. If 450 reputable sources do not mention something as a matter of editorial judgment, and one source does, in the WP article it goes, cited to that source, and is thereafter defended under WP:NOTCENSORED. It's the bed we made ourselves. --JN 466 16:13, 12 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This is fallacious on several levels.

Many, many sources chose to mention some specific items from the list within their own region. If they truly believed that "editorial judgment" required them to censor list items, why would they name some. And why wouldn't they at least name items in some other part of the country...?
The editorial judgment of a newspaper involves making articles a certain length, for a certain audience, and covering breaking news. We have more space available, a broader audience, and an encyclopedic focus. So how can we possibly base our editorial judgment on theirs?
Wikipedia has an educational mission. A newspaper's mission is to maximize its ad revenue by appealing to a broad audience while not offending corporate sponsors. That's why our NOTCENSORED policy trumps their "editorial judgment".
The purpose of appealing to sources in general and secondary sources in particular is to get reliable information. It is not to gather votes about what to censor. This is based on the admittedly controversial idea that the purpose of a journalist is to report the news, not to censor and skew the news. Wnt (talk) 17:00, 12 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Refactoring this section of the talk page

I've combined these sections that deal with "the list" itself in the article. The actual edit is here - brenneman 04:55, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Appearance of the list

I find the current lay-out to be a sub-optimal laundry list. I'd like to that it be made smaller and more concise. There is, however, some opinion that all these items are non-negotiable for inclusion, correct? - brenneman 04:55, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm in the process of referencing them, but it seems like practically all of them will have been discussed in a reliable source somewhere. So, yes, they are all necessary. The removal of any of them is giving undue weight to the others and gives me fear that we would only be propagating a systemic bias. However, if you have any opinions on a different formatting scheme, we would love to hear them. There have been proposals for some sort of table system being set up or something to that effect. I'm not sure what method would be best though. Silver seren^C 05:20, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for that input, I was fairly sure that was your opinion but I wanted it to be explicit vice tacit. As was implied in my "smaller" comment, I do not believe that every item merits inclusion, independant of any sourcing questions. Some appear indiscriminate in a copy/paste manner. With respect to "more concise," for example under Critical_Foreign_Dependencies_Initiative#East_Asia_and_the_Pacific, "Australia" can be made prose-like:

Australia's list includes Southern Cross Cable landings at Brookvale and Sydney,^[1]^[2] ore production facilities including Manganese^[3] and Nickel^{[citation needed]}, and bio-medical facilities for Midazolam^[1] and Antivenin^[2] production.

Would there be objection to material being compressed in this manner? - brenneman 05:52, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Since that seems to be keeping all of the information, I think that would work handsomely in the article and would certainly look better. I'm going to be gone for the next two days, but I should be able to get on that during this weekend. If you want to take a stab at it yourself, feel free to. Silver seren^C 18:32, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that any "citation needed" tags are required. Every item is sourced to Wikileaks and several other news sources that published it --- I just found Yahoo Finance, which oddly enough published this back on December 6,^[7] but they didn't index it in their own news search!

I was originally thinking more of a table than a text format myself. In any case, I believe it's vital to stick to the list as published. A model here is the U.S. State Department list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations - you don't go through and delete a few organizations off the list. The same applies here.

A specific example of the sort of question I'd like to know more about is that one of introductory sources said that there were over 300 items on the list, but as listed there are just over 280 if I recall correctly. The conclusion is that there is actually a substantial category of sites that ended up getting redacted entirely at Wikileaks. Of course, I know that's original research and we can't put it in the article. But a good article with proper detail lets the reader make his own original research. Wnt (talk) 00:22, 15 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

{{fact}} was simply an editorial fillip for the example, as the others were all conspicuously annotated. That aside, I'm not convinced that every item is worthy of explicit mention. The list you've mentioned is not a good analog to this list: The FTO list is legislated (with all that that implies), and every member of the list has a strong case for encyclopaedic inclusion; this list is a patchwork of opinions with no definitive metrics for inclusion, and (for example) individual undersea cable landings are unlikely to have their own articles.

In fact, given that the existing list of items from the list has a large number of cable landings, I'd like to purpose as a first step that all these entries be collapsed.

brenneman 02:04, 15 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

28 December

I'm going to "make prose" these entries. - Aaron Brenneman (talk) 05:56, 28 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Just be careful you don't mix up or lose any of the references in the process. And good luck, that's a long project you've just signed up for. @_@ Silver seren^C 06:14, 28 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The list has now been combined by theme. Nothing removed at all, just moved around. - Aaron Brenneman (talk) 03:59, 31 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In case it's not clear, I'm going to first lump everything together thematically (cable route, port, etc) then start to write out paragraphs. This lets people revert back to a "middle" version if they object to something. There will rpobably be three more themes to come: medical, power, other. - Aaron Brenneman (talk) 05:07, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

08 July

Sorry, I nipped out for a coffee, now back to it... but just confirming that there are no objections to continuing the prose-ification? So far it's been machanical, but there may be some reduction in content when making paragraphs. - Aaron Brenneman (talk) 02:46, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What sort of loss of content? As long as the entries on the list and the sources remain the same, that's fine. Silver seren^C 06:07, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that sounds a bit ultimatum-like, I'm sure that not what you meant? There's a lot of "data" in this section (for lack of a better word) and typically data->information is not lossless compression. See below - Aaron Brenneman (talk) 06:33, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's not an ultimatum, I was just concerned that some of the things on the list would end up removed entirely. Your example looks fine. Just make sure that for things related to companies and such, you'd be better off finding a way to keep the company names in there. Undersea cables are okay being shortened because no one really cares about their names and there's no place to wikilink them to anyways. Silver seren^C 06:39, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm pretty sure that somewhere up the line we're going to find a spot where my reductions do removed something like company names. How are we going to deal with the editorial difference of opinions when that happens? More representative example below. - Aaron Brenneman (talk) 06:48, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

We'll just have to discuss it. And if there's a fundamental disagreement between the two of us, then we'll have to get a third opinion. Your second example looks fine. You kept the important things, which was the links to the four ports. The generators and power plants don't need to have any of the extraneous info included. Silver seren^C 06:53, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Good good, I think I misread some of your earlier comments and was trying to feel out the borders. Over the next few days I hope to (finally) get some article work done. Rather than bringing every change here, I'll just keep going... Once (if!) anye sees me go too far for thier comfort, please just revert. I'll stop, we'll talk. Please do note, though, that I sometimes have two (or six, in a long article) sections open at once when doing a big restructure, and have at times unintentionally re-saved over a change without realising it. If that happens, please (all editors, not talking just to SS) don't re-revert. Wait three minutes I'll usually figure it out and rollmyselfback. I'll start with the least controverisal and work upwards. Fine with that? - Aaron Brenneman (talk) 07:01, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That's fine. I obviously can't control what other editors do, but i'm going to wait until you're completely done and open up an old version before your edits in a separate tab and go down both versions and compare them. If there's any change you ended up making that I think should have stayed as it was before, i'll bring it up here on the talk page, but it would probably be easiest to wait until you are completely finished. Silver seren^C 07:16, 8 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Example

Existing version

Venezuela - Americas-II undersea cable landing Camuri, Venezuela;^[4] GlobeNet undersea cable landings at Punta Gorda, Catia La Mar, and Manonga^[4]

Prose version

Four cable landing sites in Venezuela.^[4]

Example 2

Existing version
Japan (As a section header)

Hitachi, Hydroelectric Dam Turbines and Generators
Ports at Chiba, Kobe, Nagoya, and Yokohama
Metal Fabrication Machines Titanium
Metal (Processed) Biken, Kanonji City, Japan
Hitachi Electrical Power Generators and Components Large AC Generators above 40 MVA

prose version

Japan's entrries included four sea ports (Chiba, Kobe, Nagoya, and Yokohama) as well as several power stations and metal processing/fabrication plants.^{[citation needed]}

References

^ ^a ^b Cite error: The named reference HS was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ ^a ^b Simon Benson (December 7, 2010). "Australian terror targets leaked by Wikileaks". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 9 December 2010.
^ Cite error: The named reference Stampa was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ ^a ^b ^c "WikiLeaks revela lista de sitios vitales para intereses de Washington". El Universal. 7 December 2010. Retrieved 13 December 2010. (English)

Time to think up a DYK hook :)

This article was started 05:45, 8 December 2010, giving us a bit over a day to think up a good DYK hook. First stab:

... that the leaked 2008 Critical Foreign Dependencies Initiative list included communications cables, major port hubs, critical sea lanes, oil pipelines, mines, dams, and pharmaceutical facilities?

Alternate: ...that the 2008 CFDI list published by Wikileaks included submarine communications cables, major port hubs, critical sea lanes, oil pipelines, mines, dams, and pharmaceutical facilities? Wnt (talk) 01:37, 12 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Any other ideas before we take it to T:DYK? Wnt (talk) 01:21, 12 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

... that information on the Critical Foreign Dependencies Initiative list leaked by Wikileaks was stated to be by some companies on the list as "out of date and full of errors"?

I changed the word leaked to link to Information published by WikiLeaks because I think having the actual name Wikileaks in the hook will get more attention. Silver seren^C 01:25, 12 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I worry about making that generalization. Some companies said it was out of date, but I don't know if any one source clearly states that the entire list was out of date. I was very close to the 200 character limit in the first hook, I think, making it hard for me to use the name Wikileaks in mine. I could play with turning the main link into "CFDI list", but I'd also like to keep the article name intact. Wnt (talk) 01:30, 12 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I removed the, so now it is just generally referring to some information on the list and not all of it. And I added some, so it says some companies. I think those qualifiers are good enough to say what needs to be said. I just don't think listing things on the list will hook very many people into looking at the page. Silver seren^C 01:35, 12 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm - I like that better. I would say "stated to be" rather than "stated as being". Wnt (talk) 01:38, 12 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Changed. Better now? Silver seren^C 01:44, 12 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm, if we really want to turn up the punch we could say

... that the leaked 2008 Critical Foreign Dependencies Initiative list likely referred to a hydrofluoric acid plant in Juarez, a leak from which could kill or maim thousands of people? Wnt (talk) 01:56, 12 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Likely referred to is a bit too speculative. And I think referring to a single place on the list is a bit too specific as well. Silver seren^C 01:59, 12 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm. Well, yours wasn't bad. Do you want to take that hook to T:DYK or wait a while here for further ideas?

Since it probably won't get reviewed on DYK for a few days anyways, we might as well take it now. It's better to do it now than to risk being too late to do it at all. I'll go ahead and move it over. I guess it's just the two of us that should get the nomination credit, since we're the ones that have been working on it for so long. Silver seren^C 02:06, 12 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You can find it here. Silver seren^C 02:11, 12 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

General note to anyone reading: Feel free to offer alternative hooks. Up until the DYK nomination gets approved (and really, up until it gets moved to the Queue), feel free to suggest other kinds of hooks to use instead. Silver seren^C 02:12, 12 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, phooey - I just looked at that again and had a revision in mind:

... that information on the Critical Foreign Dependencies Initiative list leaked by Wikileaks was stated by some companies on the list to be "out of date and full of errors"?

is it too late to change it without creating an "ALT"? Wnt (talk) 02:23, 12 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No, you're free to change it if it's something that minor. Go right ahead. Not much experience with DYK, huh? Silver seren^C 02:26, 12 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OK, all set. Now we can watch what happens. ;)

P.S. I remember proposing two, one on Omar Osama bin Laden and one on Huáng bǎi. But I wasn't working with anyone else then, so it all stayed a bit mysterious. Wnt (talk) 02:40, 12 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This one will end up being my 21st. My 19th is currently in the Queue and the 20th is listed on the ones from the 7th. :3 Silver seren^C 02:44, 12 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Considering the disputes about article sourcing, I do not think that this article is a good candidate for DYK at this time, since putting it on the mainpage of Wikipedia could reflect negatively on the project. I have offered a comment to this effect at WT:DYK. Other editors involved with this article are welcome to comment as well. To see standards for DYK, check here: Wikipedia:DYK#DYK rules. --El on ka 04:46, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Non-English sources

A good portion of this article seems to be being sourced to non-English sources. For example, about 10 items are sourced to this article in Chinese.[8] Per WP:NONENG, please ensure that translations are provided of these sources, so that other editors can verify the information? Thanks, --El on ka 04:30, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There should be a translation for each one at the end of the reference. Are there some that do not? Silver seren^C 05:00, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Per WP:NOTENG, standard practice that I have seen is usually to provide a translation of the referenced portion in the citation itself. Further, translations are preferred to be from reliable sources, not from Google-translate or a Wikipedian's best guess, but that is more of a guideline than policy. Citations should also include the language that the source was written in, and a translated title of the article. Ultimately though, English sources are preferable. If the only possible source is in Chinese, perhaps the information is not notable or relevant enough to be included on the English Wikipedia? --El on ka 15:59, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think you need to read WP:BIAS, which is what you seem to be advocating with that last question. I agree with the rest though, of adding in an english translation of the title and noting what language the source is in, which I will get to doing, but the actual format of the references is more a means of the Manual of Style and it's something that can be worried about later. For now, i'm just working on finding references for everything. Formatting them in a specific manner can be done after that and really should, so it doesn't have to be repeated for each new reference I find. Silver seren^C 18:30, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

See WP:UNDUE, which says in part, "... discussion of isolated events, criticisms, or news reports about a subject may be verifiable and neutral, but still be disproportionate to their overall significance to the article topic. This is a concern especially in relation to recent events that may be in the news. Note that undue weight can be given in several ways, including, but not limited to, depth of detail, quantity of text, prominence of placement, and juxtaposition of statements." Which ties back to the concerns that are being expressed by multiple editors here, which is that this article may be giving undue weight to too much detail from primary or questionable sources. To address these concerns, it would be best to focus on using only reliable secondary sources, and, where there is dispute as to whether or not something is significant, perhaps focus only on things which have received coverage in multiple sources. If there is something which other editors object to, and the only secondary source that anyone can find for it is one single brief news report in Chinese, then it is reasonable to question its relevance, and whether or not it is significant enough to include. --El on ka 18:54, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Are you seriously calling CNA News and Apple Daily unreliable? If you believe that some of the sources being used are unreliable, feel free to take them to RSN to check. And these "other editors" that you are referring to were making their comments of undue weight before references were found in the article. At this point, just as many editors, if not more, believe that this subject is notable and the information in it. Your misunderstanding of how our policies work is quite disconcerting and, indeed, fairly worrying. Silver seren^C 19:12, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I never said that CNA News was unreliable. Where are you getting that from? --El on ka 19:20, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The link you first gave when you made this section is the one to CNA News. And since you've been talking about questionable sources and again mentioned the Chinese ones, I assumed those were the ones that you were speaking of. Which ones were you talking about then? Silver seren^C 19:33, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The policies say that English sources are to be preferred to non-English sources. There's no way that that can be interpreted to mean removing sources entirely. I am surprised that Silver seren hasn't yet realized that providing more sources to forestall a deletionist is absolutely a pointless endeavor - but as long as he's gotten them together, they're a resource worth keeping. Wnt (talk) 20:50, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, i'm completely aware that adding more sources isn't going to do anything to change the minds of users who want it deleted anyways. But the references are beneficial to our readers, since they go into more depth about the individual places and their importance. The region specific papers also give more information that is of importance to people of that region. And it'll all be useful when we convert it into a prose format later. It'll give us more info to work with. Silver seren^C 20:56, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I note that Elonka was careful about Apple Daily above. I'll caveat what I'm saying by prefacing that, like all newspapers, we ought not to blindly follow their reporting, for well established reasons. Yes, for the most part, it's reliable enough for our purposes. It's a very popular journal with tabloid-style and very broad reporting (like most HK Chinese newspapers), at its best with coverage of showbiz gossip (such as Edison Chen photo scandal) and pro-democracy issues (such as December 2005 protest for democracy in Hong Kong), but people generally take the reporting reservedly. See Newspapers_of_Hong_Kong#Relative_credibility --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:25, 15 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I do not see how the material at Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view#Due_and_undue_weight applies to this discussion. Also, for ease, if we're talking about a reference, can we please use the Critical_Foreign_Dependencies_Initiative#cite_note-CNA-33 formation to indicate it, I found it difficult to isolate to what we were referring. - brenneman 02:50, 15 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Request for comment

An RfC has opened regarding the use of classified documents as sources. All editors are encouraged to participate, at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Use of classified documents. --El on ka 18:19, 15 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

CFDI as an external link

I moved the CFDI to an external link because it was unnecessary to be used as a reference proper and that got rid of all of the issues of using a primary source as a reference. I also formatted it the way I did, in order to reflect the format of external links in similar Wikileaks articles, such as Iraq War documents leak and Afghan War documents leak. Converting it to a Cite web format doesn't look proper and is entirely unnecessary, considering it is not and will not be used as a reference. Silver seren^C 06:31, 26 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There's no major issue with that for me (although, please remember there is no issues using a primary source as a reference). It's probably reasonable to presume as obviously accessible knowledge, and especially available as an EL. However, if someone challenges the list contents we'll have to put it back inline. --Errant ^(chat!) 14:49, 26 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I know, I know, this section isn't really about that though. It's in response to this edit, which had changed the EL to a cite web format, which looked pretty ugly. Silver seren^C 19:15, 26 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Heh, yes I agree the format you changed to is better :) --Errant ^(chat!) 19:22, 26 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The citation template added important data and metadata that the current format (a raw link) lacks, however. What was "ugly" about it? The all-caps title? Bryan Derksen (talk) 17:46, 27 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

For one. That sort of metadata is unnecessary for an EL and is even discouraged. The formatting of ELs is described here in the How to Link section of WP:EL. ELs are not supposed to be formatted in the way references are. ELs are meant to be a simpler and more bare bones description of themselves, which I have it as currently. The metadata should not be used for them.

For clarity, the specific section I am referring to says "Most external links should present different details from citations. For instance, a concise description of the contents and a clear indication of its source is more important than the actual title of the page, and access dates are not appropriate in the external links section. Because citation templates were not designed for use in the External links section, editors that use citation templates in this section should be careful to ensure the resulting description is appropriate for an external link."

So, the use of a citation template, I believe, is not necessary for this EL and the current descriptive, simple format is good enough for it and reflects the format used in Iraq War documents leak and the Afghan War documents leak. Silver seren^C 21:03, 27 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That seems reasonable. - Aaron Brenneman (talk) 05:49, 28 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose it's unlikely that, should the link go dead, there will be any difficulty in finding a replacement in this specific case. Bryan Derksen (talk) 03:17, 29 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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Blanking of article content

The descriptive content in the article that details what's in the list was fully referenced and beneficial to the reader for showing what is in the document in question. And was a thoroughly discussed addition to the article over a decade ago. What exactly is your argument for removal of said content, Softlemonades? Saying that you think it's long is not an argument for removal. Silver seren^C 14:35, 31 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

1 Blanking means editing a page and removing its content to leave it completely blank, or without any substantial content. Thats not what I did, I left lots of content. If Id blanked it, someone would have noticed in the last three and half months. Object to removing it if you want, but dont call it something its not.

2 Like I said in my edit summary excessive amount of intricate detail, if any can be re added in the narrative or main body with context it should but relisting the entire cable contents isnt what wikipedias for see WP:NOTEVERYTHING Softlemonades (talk) 14:49, 31 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Section blanking is also a thing, you shouldn't get hung up on the term blanking.

Said detail is the literal subject of this article. This article is about the document and what it contains. And the content was already significantly altered from the source document and organized in this article, along with proper secondary sourcing for its inclusion here. Nothing in WP:NOTEVERYTHING applies to this subject. If you want to re-write the list into more prose-focused content, then feel free. But, again, that is not an argument for removal. Silver seren^C 15:00, 31 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Section blanking is also a thing Ok but you said Reverting blanking of article

Nothing in WP:NOTEVERYTHING applies to this subject. See the part that says The examples under each section are not intended to be exhaustive. and the section Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information Softlemonades (talk) 15:28, 31 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

And this isn't an indiscriminate collection of information, it is the information that this article subject is specifically about. Unless you're making the claim that the subject isn't notable as a whole? Silver seren^C 15:40, 31 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have a problem with returning the information and working on converting the sections to prose instead of a list? Silver seren^C 18:52, 31 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Convert it to prose and then re add it Softlemonades (talk) 23:32, 31 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

[HS-1] Cite error: The named reference HS was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[Daily-2] Simon Benson (December 7, 2010). "Australian terror targets leaked by Wikileaks". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 9 December 2010.

[Stampa-3] Cite error: The named reference Stampa was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[EU-4] "WikiLeaks revela lista de sitios vitales para intereses de Washington". El Universal. 7 December 2010. Retrieved 13 December 2010. (English)

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