Seeking photos and biographical info for Barry Jennings
I have written an article for Wikipedia on Barry Jennings (here), and I am looking for at least one good photo of Barry to illustrate the article. If you have such a photo which is your own property and that you would be willing to share with Wikipedia, please consider uploading to Wikimedia Commons at http://commons.wikimedia.org. Links to biographical information on Barry, and photos depicting his history, would also be potentially useful for the article. In particular, biographical information from outside of the 9/11 event and subsequent controversy is desired. For Wikipedia purposes, sources such as blogs, forums, and youtube videos are not usable. Newspaper articles, government documents, and academic papers are preferred. Suggestions on improving the existing article are welcome. Please keep in mind that the information must be presented with a neutral point of view, and that it has to be backed up with "reliable" sources, as described earlier. Thanks!
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Wikipedia.
Updating Wikipedia is an awesome service to the 9/11 Truth Movement and everyone else. Thanks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_Truth_movement
I suggest
You contact Dylan Avery.
Re: contact Dylan Avery
Thanks, I will contact Dylan. I figure I will give everyone here an opportunity to offer what they might have. If nothing turns up, we know that Dylan has images which he might be willing to share.
There is a lot on Mr Barry Jennings here at blogger
Click the first link for his obituary
http://911blogger.com/news/2009-05-02/new-york-city-housing-authority-ba...
http://911blogger.com/search/node/barry%20jennings
Oh My, nominated for deletion
The resistance is fast. The article has already been nominated for deletion and flagged as "This article may not meet the general notability guideline." Is the Truth movement strong enough to defend this article? There is more urgent work to be done than finding a photo.
Well done, Wildbear.
Just what is
the general notability guideline?
Not that we should give up, but it wouldn't be the first time Wikipedia has practiced double standards where 9/11 truth has been concerened.
general notability guideline
It looks like the general notability guideline is to prevent kids from making a page about their garage band, or similar cases. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Guide_to_deletion
On a level playing field we could definitely win this.
Notability (people)
There are specific guidelines regarding crime victims:
Victims
1. The victim is notable for something beyond the crime itself.[11]
2. The victim, consistent with WP:BLP1E, had a large role within a well-documented historic event. The historic significance is indicated by persistent coverage of the event in reliable secondary sources that devote significant attention to the individual's role.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VICTIM (emphasis added)
EDIT: Oops I linked to the wrong page in my previous post. Here's the general page on the notability guideline: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability
The 'Talk' page...
For any Wikipedia article, you can go to the 'Discussion' tab to reach the 'Talk' page. That is where issues like this are discussed -- and I suppose everyone knows this here? If we state the case well it should be easy enough to support the notability of this topic. One states the case on the 'Talk' page.
By the way, one's voice is heard more strongly on wikipedia if one registers there as a user. It also helps to add content there and edit things every now and then. And it helps even more if a user deals with more than a single topic of interest.
Be careful
This is considered "Meatpuppetry" by WIkipedia and will likely have the exact opposite effect.
Unfortunately, Wikipedia is not a poll, a news article or a forum which we can all storm with comments. Wikipedia editors are predominantly left-leaning JREF types. Concessions with respect to 9/11 research hardly exist. That's why History Commons is the Wikipedia for 9/11 researchers. Wikipedia, in the domain of heated, politically charged topics, requires significant insight to navigate without being misled. Sometimes conspiracy theories are rightfully dismissed, and sometimes not. This is because all "conspiracy theories" are habitually lumped in together with false equivalency and therefore regarded with an extreme level of distrust.
Just read all the specific Wikipedia policies and guidelines and make sure to cite them frequently in support of your argument. If policy is interpreted by a double standard by adversarial editors who wish to unreasonably suppress all 9/11 topics which might deviate from the JREF brand of pseudoscience and pseudoskepticism, consult this page for further remedies.
Even then, you have little chance of success, unless you can convince the arbitrators you are brutally neutral in your editing, that you know what 'reliable and verifiable sources' are, and that your page meets notability guidelines.
See also my blog entry The Truth According To Wikipedia.
P.S. I know of instances where I strongly suspect deliberate distortions of technical Wikipedia articles not even directly related to 9/11, but related to 9/11 research. I don't know by who. But I've seen it, and it was probably deliberate, maybe more on that later. Always, always, review the sources with extreme scrutiny.
Truth In Numbers film
The film about Wikipedia referenced in your earlier post has apparently just been released, though public screenings are likely hard to come by:
http://www.truthinnumbersthemovie.com/
It took Wikipedia quite a while to decide that Richard Gage
was "notable" enough to have a separate entry on their "illustrious" site, so don't be surprised if they keep unpublishing "minor" characters like Barry Jennings.
The CIA has to have some way to try and control what is considered "valid" history, after all.
It is worth noting that one of the original reasons given for the creation of the Council on Foreign Relations was to influence the teaching of history in the U.S.
The truth shall set us free. Love is the only way forward.
Keep moving forward
The resistance is indeed fast. My approach, however, is to keep moving forward; improving the article, making it notable and comprehensive, while maintaining a neutral point of view. It is already better written, better referenced, and more notable than hundreds, perhaps thousands of other Wikipedia biographical articles, so technically I do not see a valid argument for deleting it, unless the advocates of deletion intend to weed out all biographical articles of lesser notability, which would be a large and contentious task. Keep cool, keep working, and the verifiable facts will ultimately get documented.
Deleted
I'm not surprised to see this Arthur Rubin character involved. I once added to a Wikipedia article about a certain well-known person the mention that he is a supporter of the 9/11 truth movement, and the sentence was deleted within minutes. More precisely, some bot - automatic program - first deleted it, and later Arthur Rubin arrived on the scene in person.
(He finally had to give in after I linked to the individual's official website.)
In other words, there are editors whose task (at least one task) is to monitor and control the occurrences of 9/11 related edits on Wikipedia.
...
Very interesting.
Re: Arthur Rubin
I don't disagree with anything that you just said, Vesa. I just want to mention that, while Arthur Rubin and I have our differences, in this instance I think he did everything correctly and appropriately, and I want to give credit where credit is due. Someone created a Barry Jennings article which was little more than verbatim copies of Jennings interviews taken from web sites. Arthur had this marked for speedy deletion, which was the correct thing to do - the article exhibited little conformance to Wikipedia standards. Feeling that I had enough reliable sourcing to create a decent article, I marked the article with a "hang on" tag, and again Arthur did the correct thing, by postponing deletion and directing that an "article for deletion" discussion take place. I engaged in intensive research to learn the story and find sources, and rewrote the article almost entirely, to what I felt were reasonably good standards for a new article. Others disagreed; perhaps a bit hastily, since the article was still young and I was still engaged in research and writing about the topic. In my research, I found reason which has me suspecting that Jennings may have been off on his described timeline, and he may have misinterpreted some of what he experienced. Further investigation and documentation, including interviews with the firefighters and other personnel present at the time, is needed to clarify exactly what happened. Unfortunately, I won't be able to continue documenting the matter in Wikipedia. When controversial issues are kept squelched and hidden, instead of openly documented with verifiable sourcing, the wound just continues to fester, IMHO.
So you are not able to continue?
So you are not able to continue working on this piece in Wikipedia? If so, that is too bad IMHO.
That is correct.
If I (or anyone else) recreated the article, it would be viewed as being unacceptably uncooperative, and could result in a topic ban or a site block. An exception might be granted if a large amount of new and relevant information on the topic came out in the mainstream media, and if the new information made it unquestionably clear that more than one event in the biography of Barry Jennings was notable.
Wikipedia standards?
My experience is that Wikipedia articles can vary widely in terms of quality and originality of content. Many is the time that I've been learning about a topic online, and the Wikipedia article is a verbatim copy from a website that deals with that particular topic. A lot seems to get through that doesn't seem to meet particularly high standards. So why the double standard? Are they supposedly more stringent when it comes to biographical pieces? Is the simple fact that there is a mystery surrounding Jennings' death a sufficient reason for their being extra careful with what they permit on their site? Or is it just that they're being extra hard-assed when it comes to anything touching on 9/11 truth?
I sympathize, Wildbear. I think it's not uncommon for people to learn, in the course of doing research, how much more research they need to do before they'll be ready to write. (Then there are those who don't have this realization when they should--yet they manage to find a publisher anyway!)
Coatrack
I think what Wikipedia editors see when they see that article is WP:COATRACK, and they have a point.
Yet, I think it's evident there exists a little gatekeeper commission at Wikipedia to virtually exclude any contributions by people who might be suspected to be 9/11 truthers. It doesn't really matter if the information contributed is reliable and verifiable, it only matters what the suspected beliefs of the contributor are.
The result is that certain Wikipedia policies will be favored and cited over others in order for the arbitrators to achieve their own double agenda. I believe these people are past the point of even being capable of behaving objectively with respect to this matter, and it's a bad thing these conflicts are mediated by people who have become emotionally invested themselves.
check out my website
JenningsMystery.com
good luck
Re: JenningsMystery.com
Thanks, David, that's an excellent site. It provides good coverage of the whole topic. I'm not seeing anything there which can be added to the Wikipedia article at this time, but with luck it might be useful in the future. If the mainstream media were to cover the bannering, or any other aspect of Jennings' death, photos from this site (with copyright release) would be potentially usable.
Wouldn't it be great, if say a whole
Journalist class from a college, took a look @ the Barry Jennings story & tried to find out what really happened.
journalism schools
We never got to the point of bannering at journalism schools. Here is the list of 50 US journalism schools.
http://www.journalismschools.com/
I'm happy to hold anyone's hand over the phone who wants to banner there.
Tuesday through Thursday is best.
410-499-5403
photo of Barry
I can do a frame capture from one of the videos if that would be useful. It's a feature of VLC Videolan player. Generally video frames are a lot less sharp than they seem when viewed as a video so don't expect a high quality result.
Re: photo of Barry
A capture from a video frame would be a good start... better than nothing. The issue that we need to be sure of is that you are the copyright holder of the image. If you are the copyright holder, please upload the image to http://commons.wikimedia.org, specify the copyright terms, and I will add it to the article. If you, or anyone else needs help in the technicalities of uploading an image to Wikimedia, let me know. Thanks.