Talk:El Agheila

Is calling El Agheila a city exaggeration? It's called a village here (Al Aqaylah) and when I searched for it with google satellite I could find only fistfull of houses scattered around there. --Ukas (talk) 17:28, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

district name not known?

The second sentence begins

"In 1988 it was placed in Ajdabiya District; between 1995 and 2001 the district name is not known..."

Well what the heck does that mean?

1. It was in some district (maybe), but I the writer of that sentence don't know what it was.
2. It was in some district (maybe), but the Libyan authorities have successfully managed to hide and remove all evidence of which (if any) from written records.
3. It was in some district (maybe), but even at the time the Libyan authorities and populace did not know which (if any).

Well #3 is impossible -- if nobody (even the authorities) don't know which district a city is in, then it can't be administered as part of any district and so de facto has no district, and we should say that. (This is above and beyond #3 being extremely silly.)

And #2 is very very unlikely -- why would they do that? It makes no sense, not to mention that after the regime change there'd be no reason it couldn't then be dug up. All you'd need is to interview people -- "Yeah Qadaffi told us never to speak that we were in XYZ district, but he's dead and now we can".

I suspect #1 is what's going on. But we don't do that! If a writer doesn't know something we don't state that (that inserts the writer into the article) or imply that it's unknowable (a falsehood). Rather better to just leave that era unaccounted for. Herostratus (talk) 17:02, 11 June 2016 (UTC)