Talk:Abd Al Aziz Sayer Uwain Al Shammeri

Replaced transcluded image with inline image - {{npov}} tag as per dispute on Template talk:Combatant Status Review Tribunal trailer image and caption

Replaced transcluded image with inline image - {{npov}} tag as per dispute on Template talk:Combatant Status Review Tribunal trailer image and caption. Geo Swan 14:39, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Category:Kuwaiti extrajudicial prisoners of the United States

Now that he is no longer a prisoner, he cannot be included in Category:Kuwaiti extrajudicial prisoners of the United States. The category's parent, Category:Prisoners and detainees, is a category for people that are currently in prison. Look through all the names listed in the category. They are all currently in prison. Also, look at the articles of convicted criminals that are already out of jail or dead, they are not included in the category. Category:Vietnam War prisoners of war is fundamentally different in that the name of the category clearly indicates that they are no longer prisoners. The Vietnam was is over and all the prisoners were already exchanged. In addition, they were not being held for any specific crimes like the prisoners at GB. They were held just for being an enemy soldier. The fact that they were in prison and the fact they were released says nothing about them personally. So the prisoner category can stay with them. Prisoners being held for crimes that are later released, should not have the stigma of being prisoners attached to their name for the rest of lives. --brewcrewer (yada, yada) 05:28, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Being a prisoner of war held at Guantanamo has no more a "stigma" than being a Prisoner of War in Vietnam. The list of prisoners captured in wars do not list "current" prisoners of the Crimean War, but past prisoners. This works the same. Sherurcij ^{(speaker for the dead)} 05:42, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Sherurcij here on the "current" vs. "past" issue. In general, categories are neither "past" nor "current" in their application. Category:Prisoners and detainees and its subcategories are appropriately used for anyone who is partly defined by having been a prisoner or detainee, not just for people who are currently in prison. We routinely delete categories that are explicitly limited to "current" or "former" status. For "current" and "former" issues, the general consensus has been that lists are appropriate. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 07:00, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Should Paris Hilton, Kiefer Sutherland be included in Category:American prisoners and detainees?- Should Al Sharpton, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Jesse Jackson be included in the category? These three were arrested a number of times in their protests. and were thus "detained." -brewcrewer (yada, yada) 07:04, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Only if it's defining for them—same as any other category. Though I'm no expert on any of the examples you mention, I would guess no, for all of them. And especially no for Sutherland, because he's Canadian. :) Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 09:13, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Hey GOF, I did realize that he's Canadian after I posted my comments, but I was hoping nobody would notice :-) But turning to the substantive issue, I am happy to see that you moved away from your initial reaction that all people that were detained or jailed at one point in their lives are permanently placed in Category:Prisoners and detainees. Your most recent post which indicates that most ex-prisoners and detainees do not belong in the category is far closer to the correct intentions of the category scheme. However, your latest comments are problematic for a number of other reasons. Firstly, as far as I know there's no requirement that a category define a subject before it is placed on the subject's article. Of course the creation of a category requires that the category be defining in some fashion, but there's no requirement that we go through another round of defining-analysis each instance that we place the category on an applicable bio. Indeed, such a requirement results in vague and subjective edit-warring.

The lack of acceptance of your proposal is manifest in the Al Sharpton, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Jesse Jackson articles, as examples. These people spent their lives protesting and getting arrested. No reasonable argument can be made that being detained and imprisoned was not an essential part of their lives. Yet correctly, none of them are included in Category:American prisoners and detainees.

Finally, assuming argundo the validity of your arguments, Abd Al Aziz Sayer Uwain Al Shammeri is not defined by the fact that he was at one point a Category:Kuwaiti extrajudicial prisoners of the United States. He is not defined by the fact he was held - in the vaguely termed - "extrajudicially". At most, he is defined by the fact that he was held at Guantanamo Bay. To this end, he is already included in Category:People held at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and Category:Guantanamo detainees known to have been released (the redundancy of these two cats must be resolved as well). --brewcrewer (yada, yada) 17:32, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, yes, I agree that guidelines on whether to apply a category to an article is one of the great fuzzy grey zones in WP without much written on it. There are no real brightline rules about it, but I personally adopt the defining-ness standard I mentioned above, and it seems to work in most cases. Of course it's a standard that is POV and subjective to a large extent, but it at least can help avoid the unthinking, automatic—almost "mechanized"—application of categories to articles that some editors endorse, and which has the tendency to lead to absurd category applications.

As for the specific examples—as I said I'm no expert and don't know how significant the detentions have been in the subjects' lives. I'm also unfamiliar with this Kuwaiti person so don't feel qualified to venture an opinion on it. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 21:28, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

GoF: You gotta be kidding me. You have a little box on your user page that says you attended Harvard, yet you don't know if MLK's arrests and imprisonments were a defining characteristic of his life? --brewcrewer (yada, yada) 23:07, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Hey, whatever—I'm not an American, but having lived there and attended university there I probably know as much about him as maybe a typical U.S. citizen my age knows. I was just saying I'm not a junkie—I haven't read any of his works, etc. I know the brief outline of his life. I couldn't tell you off the top of my head how many times he was arrested or how long he spent in jail for instance. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 23:16, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

The typical US citizen of your age (I'm assuming you're 40-ish) knows that MLK, whose birthday is national holiday along with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, was at the forefront of the civil disobedience movement within the African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955–1968). My point is not to discern what you knew and when you knew it. Nor is my point to lecture you about the fundamentals of American (world?) history. My point is that it's plainly obvious that being arrested and jailed was probably the defining characteristic of MLK's life. He's included in - count em - 35 categories (including the silly Category:Extrajudicial killings), but there's not one mention of anything related to Category:American prisoners and detainees. I can promise that if you try adding the category to the article you will be (rightly) reverted in about three seconds and you'll get a note on your talk page requesting that you stop vandalizing. This whole discussion about MLK is only to manifest your misconception about how the category is actually used. You can just look through the entries at Category:American prisoners and detainees and you'll clearly see that the cat is only used for current detainees. Just look at the first 10 entries. Category:American criminals is the category that is the "permanent" category, not Category:American prisoners and detainees. Indeed, your understanding of the category scheme effectively creates (with the rare exception for criminals that were never detained) a redundant category.--brewcrewer (yada, yada) 23:50, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that's true that the category only includes current detainees. Obvious examples are the subcategories Category:People executed by United States jurisdictions Category:Executed American people and Category:Prisoners who died in American detention Category:American people who died in prison custody. There are a host of other historical examples of people who were imprisoned and later released. I'm not sure what point you're trying to prove, really; you asked for opinions and I've provided one that's relatively well-accepted in the "category world". To point out that there are category-application issues surrounding MLK is an interesting anecdote, but I don't think it does much to illustrate the larger issues.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Good Olfactory (talk • contribs)

The entries within the categories are a far better indication of how the category is used then two of its subcategories. Category:People executed by United States jurisdictions is technically not a subcat of Category:American prisoners and detainees for other reasons because you can be executed without being detained, so I wouldn't place much stock there. I do agree that the MLK issue does not "illustrate the larger issues", but the fact that the category is simply not used for what you're purporting it be used for and the fact that your application effectively creates redundant categories is indeed illustrative of the larger issues. --brewcrewer (yada, yada) 00:34, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, how anecdote-y with articles from the category do you want to get? MLK may be one example, but it's not hard to find others: Carl C. Perkins (alive, no longer in prison); Nathan Heard (dead, but spent a little time in prison and didn't die there); George Q. Cannon (Mormon leader, spent a few months in jail for polygamy, but didn't die in jail); William J. Flake (ditto); Tom Green (polygamist) (fundamentalist Mormon who went to jail in Utah for polygamy; now released); Tony Tursi (released from prison prior to death); Mike Tyson (in and out of jail but currently out—I think); DeWayne McKinney (person released from prison after it was determined he was wrongly convicted). There are many others. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 01:00, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Using entries to prove your point is one tree that you don't want to bark under. Just start from "A" at Category:American prisoners and detainees and work your way down. The rare entry of a subject that is no longer in prison is simply because the category was not updated post-release (this applies to some of your examples as well). --brewcrewer (yada, yada) 01:17, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I wasn't aware that WP was around when George Q. Cannon went to jail. :) Anyway, you can always come up with a rationale for viewing it the way you'd like to, and you're free to. It doesn't change my position the general position that has been adopted that categories are not temporally-dependant. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 01:20, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Well it might have been around the day before he was released. :) I might agree with your "temporally dependent" concept, but when I have the practical use of the category and the resultant redundancy with Category:American criminals smacking me in my face I would make an exception to my general positions. --brewcrewer (yada, yada) 01:44, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I think Category:Prisoners and detainees of the United States and its by-jurisdiction subcategories are far more useful than the American (nationality) one. I think the nationality ones started out first, so they developed prior to the jurisdiction ones, and both have now been created. Part of the whole WP obsession with dividing everything by nationality and ethnicity, I suppose. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 02:08, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to support the basic position that we don't differentiate by current or former in general. There may be cases where this makes sense. I will ask if this category is better as a list? What purpose does the category really serve? I think that a list would be better if it included their nationality, when they were detained. When those events occurred. When they were released and when they resumed their previous activities. So, unless this is defining for a large number, why not simply listify? Vegaswikian (talk) 21:48, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

First, I suggest defining the category as people who are presently or who were in the past extraj. prisoners of the US. Second, I usually support dividing up by nationality, and I certainly do in this case, for it provides among other things a guide to where we will find futher sources. A person working with Kuwati sources might well want to work on this group of articles. DGG (talk) 04:44, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

We generally discourage "current" categories, probably because of the updating burden they entail. Thus there are alumni categories but no "currently-enrolled students" categories and Category:Heads of state automatically includes former heads of state. If being detained is a defining characteristic for the subject of this article, than it remains such after his release. If not, then the categorization was a bad idea in the first place. - Stepheng3 (talk) 20:16, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Is this the same person as Abdul Aziz al Shamari aka Abu Ahmad al Kuwaiti?

Even if not his similarity of name and place of origin explains his detentionRichardBond (talk) 09:01, 3 May 2011 (UTC)