Talk:Wikinews interviews Amir Abbas Fakhravar about Iranian nuclear intentions

Sent e-mail with script to "scoop". --Computron (talk) 08:59, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Review of revision 1871790 [Passed]

Revision 1871790 of this article has been reviewed by Pi zero (talk · contribs) and has passed its review at 19:26, 9 April 2013 (UTC). Copyright: Passed Newsworthiness: Passed Verifiability: Passed NPOV: Passed Style: Passed Comments by reviewer: It would have been good to provide slightly more background on the interviewee. The intro does cover this, somewhat, but by identifying the interview through affiliations with two organizations it sort of begs the question of what those two organizations are. A word or three about each organization would probably do it (e.g. some organizations are 'liberal thinktanks', or 'conservative thinktanks' or whatever). Conceivably one might even have snuck a bit of this sort of information into the interview itself, as for example by tweaking the first question to something like 'What is the Iranian Freedom Institute? What is your role there?' The reviewed revision should automatically have been edited by removing {{Review}} and adding {{Publish}} at the bottom, and the edit sighted; if this did not happen, it may be done manually by a reviewer.

Revision 1871790 of this article has been reviewed by Pi zero (talk · contribs) and has passed its review at 19:26, 9 April 2013 (UTC). Copyright: Passed Newsworthiness: Passed Verifiability: Passed NPOV: Passed Style: Passed Comments by reviewer: It would have been good to provide slightly more background on the interviewee. The intro does cover this, somewhat, but by identifying the interview through affiliations with two organizations it sort of begs the question of what those two organizations are. A word or three about each organization would probably do it (e.g. some organizations are 'liberal thinktanks', or 'conservative thinktanks' or whatever). Conceivably one might even have snuck a bit of this sort of information into the interview itself, as for example by tweaking the first question to something like 'What is the Iranian Freedom Institute? What is your role there?' The reviewed revision should automatically have been edited by removing {{Review}} and adding {{Publish}} at the bottom, and the edit sighted; if this did not happen, it may be done manually by a reviewer.

Highly slanted

This news article is heavily slanted without balancing the article with POVs from other sources considering Amir Abbas Fakhravar sounds like the Iranian version of Curveball.

Ganesh.rao (talk) 03:01, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

No, this news article is an interview. The opinions of the interviewee are highly slanted. --Pi zero (talk) 03:04, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Nevermind, I've resolved the issue myself by better understanding the article's approach and Wikinews' policies. Sorry. Ganesh.rao (talk)

No problem. :-)  --Pi zero (talk) 04:09, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Please correct: 20% enriched Uranium is not just for producing nuke

HEU (20% at least) is needed to produce medical isotopes,[1] something that Iran badly needs, especially after sanctions.[2] --ZxxZxxZ (talk) 15:36, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

That is of interest, certainly. I am marking this thread to be sure we don't lose track of it till we have time to delve into it (since the review queue has suddenly gotten very long this morning). I'd expect to find a lot of back-and-forth about the issue. It may be that the wording in the article is not altogether unfair since it has some flexibility due to the word "usually", but I'm not making a judgement on that, just noting that further investigation is required. If this issue had emerged either before publication or within 24 hours after publication, the preferred solution probably would have been to simply remove the passage. However, the only recourse now, if investigation determines the wording is problematic, is to issue a {{correction}}. This is done because we consider it anathema to revise the historical record, therefore an explicit note is required rather that burying flaws in the article history.

{{flag}}

--Pi zero (talk) 16:03, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. Regarding 20% and "usually", that sentence is completely wrong, actually, because weapon-grade uranium is 80-90% (usually around 90%) enriched uranium, ([3] see "Enriching Uranium" section) and 20% enriched uranium is no threat per se. The concerns over this 20% enrichement are because enriching up to 20% will make it easy for further enrichment. --ZxxZxxZ (talk) 16:56, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Just on preliminarily reconsulting the synthesis source for the article, I observe two flaws with the passage right way: the word "in" should be "for" (for nuclear bombs, not in nuclear boms), and the statement should be attributed (I'm very annoyed with myself for missing that during review). The source passage in question is:

Nuclear power plants use uranium that is enriched to 5%, while making a nuclear bomb requires uranium to be enriched 20% or more, Arnie Gundersen, chief energy adviser with the nuclear consulting group Fairewindes Associates, said last year.

--Pi zero (talk) 17:05, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

(There is, of course, still the question about usually, which is an over-generalization of the source.) --Pi zero (talk) 17:07, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Okay, some more thoughts.

• The "in" versus "for" thing is perhaps less of a big deal than I'd first suspected. Granted "for" would have been better than "in", but it's not altogether unreasonable to use the phrase "use in nuclear bombs" for "use in making nuclear bombs". So there's merely the question of whether the distinction is big enough to warrant a correction. As a standalone issue I'd say it's pretty marginal. So marginal, in fact, that I could just about see simply editing it from "in" to "for" as a non-substantive copyedit (reducing ambiguity without actually changing meaning), which is allowed under the archive policy.
• The medical use is, I think, irrelevant. If we're accepting the statement in the CNN source that Iran claims the purpose is power, then it's not unreasonable in a brief intro (such as we have here) to remark on the comparison between use in bombs versus the use Iran actually claims, rather than comparison between use in bombs and some other use that isn't being claimed (according to the CNN source, which we're supposing we accept).
• The remaining issue is attribution. But I'm not seeing a disagreement here about the comparison between power-use and bomb-use. So while it does seem we should have attributed, it's not clear that it warrants a {{correction}}.

Overall, what I see here is evidence we could have done better on writing-and-review, but so far a rather weak case for {{correction}}. --Pi zero (talk) 20:19, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

What you read in CNN is wrong, Iran declared the 20% enriched uranium is produced for Tehran medical reactor.[4] --ZxxZxxZ (talk) 05:04, 12 April 2013 (UTC)