Talk:Heather Cerveny

May be B-class

The article is not very long, but appears well-cited. It might be worth testing against B-class criteria. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.179.71.70 (talk • contribs) 04:59, 2008 January 16

tagged

a {{notability}} tag was added to this article on February 26 2008.

The edit summary asks a rhetorical question rather than offer a explanation:

"(adding notability tag. submitting an affidavit making accusations based upon something she heard in a bar is notable?)"

FWIW our rhetorical questioner seems to be overlooking that not only did Cerveny have off-duty JTF-GTMO staff brag to her about routine abuse of the captives, but:

1. Cerveny and her boss, Colby Vokey, had gag orders imposed on them.
2. An official inquiry was ordered into her report.

I am going to encourage the contributor who added the tag to refrain from placing rhetorical questions in edit summaries. Rhetorical questions, like this one, suggest the answer is "obvious". Nothing is "obvious".

The use of a rhetorical question here gives the appearance the wikipedian who added the tag is trying to suggest that this affidavit was unimportant, when they didn't have any substantive arguments to back up that suggestion.

Are affidavits always important? No, of course not. People swear affidavits for for things like observing traffic accidents, or swearing they got food poisoning at restaurants. Was Cerveny's affidavit "important"? That is a judgment call. It is not up to us wikipedia contributors to make judgment calls over matters like this. However, that her affadavit was very widely reported, and was commented upon by legal scholars does not require a judgment call.

The wikipedia contributor who placed this tag has questioned, on another talk page, whether this article should exist.

I think that its deletion would be a grave disservice to readers. After reading about the affidavit it would be natural to want to read about its author. And the best place to read about the author would be in an article devoted to the author.

Some mergists would argue that what we know about Cerveny should be covered in some other article. Personally I disagree with general claim of this sort by mergists. Ignoring the other strong arguments against the mergist design methodology, let me point out that there is no good candidate where what we know about Cerveny belongs. Every other article a mergist might try to shoehorn this information into would be a bad choice and a disservice to readers.

I am going to repeat myself. I am going to urge the wikipedian who added this tag to put real substantive arguments in their edit summaries, not rhetorical tricks.

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 22:26, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Notability Tag

Happy to explain. Cerveny is a paralegal of note, so this article claims, because she swore an affidavit claiming to have heard others bragging of abusive treatment towards detainees at Guantanamo and then was ordered to not speak publicly about this claim.

First, Cerveny is not a witness to any illegal activity - the article's claim to notability is based upon what she overheard in a bar. Her claim to fame, in other words, was hearsay. This is not notable as it was simply her word vs. others. It may be interesting to note that hearsay is generally inadmissible evidence in United States law.

Second, instituting a gag order relating to a possible criminal investigation is a common practice by all parties involved in the proceeding. By basing in large part the article's notability on this is an example of WP:SYN.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, Cerveny's accusations were unsubstantiated.1 2 She was also then accused by the military investigator of making false accusations against the soldiers named in the affidavit. In other words, the primary reason the article claims that the subject is notable has been proven false.

The justification by the page creator of Cerveny's photo as a fair-use image may be notable in and of itself, in which the article creator states that: "A picture, demonstrating that she is young and attractive helps explain why guards would brag to a stranger." This explicitly is an example of WP:OR and is clearly not an example of WP:NPOV.

These reasons as well as WP:BIO1E led me to place the notability tag on the page to see if there are any other reasons for an encyclopedic entry on Cerveny. Thank you!BWH76 (talk) 04:45, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

You write that her report was "unsubstantiated". However the Associated Press obtained an unredacted copy of the report. They wrote that Colonel Basset had chosen to discount information that confirmed her affidavit. Some sources assert that her affidavit was proven false. If you meant to assert that this was an established fact, I would have to strongly disagree.

May I remind you that Cerveny was widely interviewed, including on nationwide TV? Geo Swan (talk) 01:38, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Deletion

This article is not a topic. It's an article on a female Marine that wrote a report that (from what I gather) was later decided to be a lie. This was not big news when it happened. I don't understand what makes this an article worthy of Wiki. I will give it two weeks for someone to explain, then nominate it for speedy deletion.Chexmix53 (talk) 23:03, 6 July 2008 (UTC)