Category talk:Ghouta CW attack

Split-Up

As we're making new pages to give this mass of information room to breathe, there might be thoughts to air. or example, is the new 2013821 label best, or should we change this before it gets further along? Also, how much splitting up should be done into how many pages? I say broad subjects only, something like 5 or 6 sub-pages total - victims analysis, etc. Maybe thermobarics should be on a page for chem/weaponry possibilities, or the alternate explanation page? But a lot of pages could work too, just with lots of interlinking to keep them connected. --Caustic Logic (talk) 23:34, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the move - didn't think of this space. --Caustic Logic (talk) 00:42, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

These are called subpages. This kind of naming was used in Wikipedia at the start in 2001, but is now only used for project pages. It makes linking to pages difficult. If we are to use subpages, then we should at least use main article name as the master page (first part of name). Doing so makes navigating automatic.

Page name should be shorter than my arbitrary format we've been copying. Maybe just for this one page, to make new names easier. At least in this case, "alleged" can be gotten past. --Caustic Logic (talk) 00:42, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

I do not agree for the facticity of "attack". A neutral title would be "CW incident" – no, wait, no children were killed! -- Petri Krohn (talk) 00:48, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Agreed with the disagreement. I was just deciding on this: "August 21 Chemical Massacres" - powerful, arguably accurate either way - "attack" is leading. So is massacre, but a bit less and in the direction we've publicly staked, on a professional basis. And year - let's hope we don't get into more than a year or two of this. If you agree, I'll submit a copy of the main page under that title with a heading CE can remove to christen it if she approves. Whatever we decide, some copying pages and altering internal links will have to follow. Can that be automated? --Caustic Logic (talk) 07:56, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

"Incident" is least leading but not adequate. Although "CW" is shorter, "Chemical" is less leading. Even suffocation, which seems possible, fits - air all depleted of oxygen is a fatal ... gas combination, right? --Caustic Logic (talk) 08:24, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

What I find most worrisome in this new approach is the cryptic naming that looks like code and is totally impossible for readers to understand. If we use a date, we should at least use something humanly readable like August 21 or something. (Note, that Tim Berners-Lee's web guidelines originally stated that URLs do not and should not be humanly readable. Wiki page names need to be!) -- Petri Krohn (talk) 00:26, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. I can make it work easily, but that's as user of the system on the inside. Maybe a note under the main page "aka 20130821," but better yet, re-name the pages. --Caustic Logic (talk) 00:42, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

What do you mean by "makes navigating automatic?" Frankly I don't see the problem. Ideally these pages are just for not having to collect information on a single monster page - the goal should be that the condensed information ends up on the article page. And to link from there to the respective "raw investigation", my proposal is "better" as it needs less characters to type the links. --CE (talk) 09:47, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Ah, I see now what you mean by "makes navigating automatic?" It means that if I put a link here in this form [[/Videos]], it links to "Category talk:Ghouta CW attack/Videos". That's quite handy. So then I think your proposal to use the proper "master page" is a good one and we should rename the stuff as long as we reasonably can. Should we use the article or the talk page as "master"? --CE (talk) 10:46, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

IMO, main page. The talk page is most current at first but only for so long, hopefully. For the rest of time, the main page ideally is the best/main place, and can prominently link to talk in the interim. That's general. This page, we can make sure the front page is great, which it almost is. CE, goodto have you back, out what, a day? Wow. Your thoughts on a name? --Caustic Logic (talk) 11:19, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

I wouldn't change the name, not only because the Talk page has been extensively linked in several places already. "Alleged" still fits and to have them all in one scheme is a good thing. Some others like the March 19 one aren't alleged anymore, at least not according to both US and Russia. When we take the front page as "master", links like /Videos would link to another front page, though, and what we are splitting up is a talk page. If we take "Talk:Alleged Chemical Attack, August 21, 2013" as first part, we can link on that to a new subpage simply by ‎[[/another part]] and that would link to a new Talk page of that name "Talk:Alleged Chemical Attack, August 21, 2013/another part". Maybe wait for our wikipedia guru's final verdict. I'm out again, these days are busy. --CE (talk) 11:43, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

I suppose that's fine too, just long. Talk or main, pref.latter. It's a subject of the attacks, with talk sections each, not just a division of the talk. Makes it shorter too. Petri? --Caustic Logic (talk) 12:00, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Too Split-Up?

Moved from Talk:Alleged Chemical Attack, August 21, 2013/Zamalka ghost house

The ghost house gets its own subpage? How many pages are we going to end up with? I think we got too spread out with Houla, things too hard to re-locate, pages you forget even exist when you made them, etc. Just a thought, but IMO more centralization is good, and this is straight up locations page material. That could end up an empty page with the same redirect links on the main talk now. 3-4 links to get to the stuff you want, not best. --Caustic Logic (talk) 06:56, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

I now believe the Zamalka ghost house is not an isolated incident, but archetypal of the 400 Zamalka victims. It needs far more analysis. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 07:08, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, it could. Ideally we'd get all that done and compress everything back together into one readable main page, but ... whatever, various space to work. I did like having this at the original spot too, for people directed there. It seemed worthwhile, a high point to be included. Redundancy, I dunno. Whatever. --Caustic Logic (talk) 09:10, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

The main talk page is still too large to properly handle and I think still more stuff, like the delivery and agent discussions, should be shoveled over to subpages. If anything went wrong with our Houla approach, I think it is that we are left with a very thin main page. Here, what we have produced are talk pages with mostly our musings and the (on wikipedia) dreaded "original research". Take the Zamalka ghost house page, for example - do you think anybody wants to read my disgust and associations to the Douma Coca-Cola t-shirt we once identified? What they want are our conclusions, and those should be condensed on the main page, not a gigantic talk page. Like I started it with the Precise Locations and Nature of the Attack paragraph where I incorporated the "Zamalka ghost house" page with the simple statement that some of the videos are "clearly at best misattributed and at worst manipulated," and made that a link. If someone doubts that conclusion or wants to see how we reached it, they can click it and find the nitty-gritty. Ideally that was how Clay ended there "yesterday". --CE (talk) 12:57, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

In most ways, not split up enough yet, agreed. Each step is a mini-surgery I sometimes don't feel up to. --Caustic Logic (talk) 13:53, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

TODO list

We should create a list of all the original videos, with original upload times and YouTube channels. This could go to Talk:Alleged Chemical Attack, August 21, 2013/Sources/Videos. Morher Agnes says they have studied 35 videos. I think there are some more. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 08:10, 20 September 2013 (UTC)