Talk:9/11 conspiracy theories/Archive 7

This is an archive of past discussions about 9. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

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Archive 5

Official version

I want stated on the top that the most known account called a "conspiracy theory" is the official account, i did it here, but it was delted. I did not add that to state what Sheen belived, but to give a source of the official theory being called a "conspiracy theory". Im going to readd the section. --Striver 13:22, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

I think this is very important. If someone who doubts the mainstream account must be labelled a conspiracy theorist, then there should be an appropriate term to be used to refer to that mainstream account. "Official story" fits the bill rather accurately, I think. Kaimiddleton 18:42, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

We've been through this a couple of times here. "Official" is just too constraining, because although it may be accurate to state that there is an official account, in the sense that Congress appointed the 9/11 Commission, and that Commission rendered a report, calling it the Official Account excludes the fact that that same account is also the one reported by the mainstream media, and accepted by all but a harmless few. Common account or mainstream account is the better term. Morton devonshire 00:36, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

I'd say that our Government has put together many "official reports" that have been proven to be missleading. Past and present. The first "official report" that comes to mind is that of the Warren Commission, which I have a hard time, logically, believing.

The way in which Wiki has handled the 9/11 arguments is, well, pathetic. Of course it's the same way the public and the rest of the world have handled the issue, so I guess we should just accept it right?

If we were to put these accounts into scientific, hard facts why wouldn't the defferent viewpoints on 9/11 just be Account #1 and Account #2?

It's because majority people are not willing to accept the latter 'account,' the "conspiracy." Either way, I'm not dissing anyone personaly on this site (except those rediculously ignorant and non-acceptant towards the idea of 'unorthodox' points of view.

(Pardon grammar and spelling, I'm in a hurry and have no time to proof read)User: Nic Barnes

I believe the Warren Report. (Don't crucify me yet.) I used to believe all the conspiracy hoopla but then I saw an explanation for the "back and to the left" phenomenon (When the bullet went through one side of Kennedy's head it left a small hole, when it came out the other side it made a large hole with brain matter spewing out, which caused his head to shoot back like a rocket.) I do think Lee Harvey Oswald was hired to do it by the mob (who had plenty of good reasons to hate Kennedy), but that is as far as the "conspiracy" really goes.

Enouth personal opinion though. Wikipedia requires that you need to cite authoritative sources. The government is an authority on this. In order to claim that the government is not an authority, you have to assume a conspiracy and that everything is a lie. That isn't really a leap Wikipedia is going to make, sorry.

This doesn't mean there are not other authoritys you can cite. You just have to give some time to what the media and government have to say, because whether or not you personally believe them, they are authoritative.

If we were to put these accounts into scientific, hard facts why wouldn't the defferent viewpoints on 9/11 just be Account #1 and Account #2?

The mainstream account is the one that is most developed, most widely documented, has the most supporters, and has the most scientific research backing it up. There hasn't really been a 9/11 conspiracy theory put out that "blows the lid" off all this. There is basically a lot of speculation on the subject from conspiracy theorists, and no real working theory.

I'm not saying it never will be revealed that the whole thing is a conspiracy, but right now there isn't a conspiracy theory with evidence beyond "this guy in this video said 'pull,' and that might have been a Freudian slip, so it is obvious this is all a conspiracy." or "there was like this shadow in this one picture, and it kind of looks like what I'd imagine a missile pod looks like, so it is obvious that there is a conspiracy."

Now wikipedia is giving time to these conspiracy theories, otherwise this page wouldn't exist, they're just not going to give equal time this.

They are also not going to let this page be a soapbox where the reader is persuaded to accept the conspiracy theories. They will present the reader with what the theories are, but they're not going to try to sell the reader on them. That is up for the reader to decide.--DCAnderson 14:59, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Information War on this Page

I'm getting tired of defenders of the official story constantly sifting through and deleting key points and inserting defenses of the official story. Those points end up being the ONLY content of some areas because they simply erase the actual positions of the alternative case and pack the section with often unsubstantiated links, or redundantly link to FEMA and NIST reports over and over as support. Someone looking at the article then can't even understand what evidence the theory is based on! The article is supposed to be about the theories and why they exist at all, not only "here is a conspiracy theory (no source) and here is why it is wrong (source, source, source)." Bov 21:10, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

I apologize up front for the length of this response.

I appreciate the credit for the footnote conversion Bov, but that was, in fact, not my work. As far as the information war you mentioned, let’s talk about that for a bit. The article currently has clean up tags and neutrality tags for a reason.

A few examples of the edits I recently made:

I deleted the comment Ruppert had to offer about the SEC investigation. This statement offers nothing to the actual point only to pull the reader to a conclusion that there had to be something sinister going on here. Ruppert presents no real evidence to suggest anything underhanded took place, just his keen interpretation.

I deleted the testimonial statement about the suspicious activity on September 11th; this is a redundant piece of the article. The reader should already understand that questions were and have been asked about these trades. There’s no reason to lengthen the already massive article for such a repetitive quote.

I added the point about Meyssan for the reason I, and others, have previously stated. He was well known for publishing his book. Simply because Griffin disagrees with him doesn’t change history. This is an article about conspiracy theories; he was a big part of that.

I added the individual responses to the supposed warnings for those that were addressed. It is important to hear what these people had to say in response.

I turned the Silverstein section from the only conclusion of a massive windfall profit to read, “financial situation,” allowing the reader to conclude for themselves how successful or unsuccessful the destruction of the structures were for the real estate developer.

“Everytime one person writes something, others like Doctor9 come along and completely reformat the entire page, in the process making select pov changes to try to debunk those questioning the official story”

If, by this statement, you are referring to the reverts I made as Izwalito was working on the article, I think few would argue those changes were progressive.

“here is a conspiracy theory (no source) and here is why it is wrong (source, source, source)”

That is an interesting interpretation when I see the first claim in relation to the towers summed up with a quote from Steven Jones. The second claim summed up with a quote from Steven Jones. The NIST report critiqued with a quote from Steven Jones followed by two more disagreements among engineers, one of them promoted in Steven Jones’ paper. The following section has yet another point with a Steven Jones statement. All totaled, Mr. Jones get a generous seven references. I fail to see how the “defenders of the official story” is the depth of the article.

The discussion and quotes from fire teams observing damage and noticing movement in Building Seven was removed and replaced with “None of the existing videos and photographs of WTC 7 after the Twin Tower’s destruction show evidence of serious fires described in testimony provided by firefighters and EMT personnel about the severity of the damage to WTC 7.” Although wordy it does sound shady…it had to have been a bomb! What else could have done that? There are photos as well as video of fire inside this building; how serious or not depends on other evidence. That other evidence came in the form of the actual firefighters describing it as a very severe and dangerous fire.

I’m not sure what was meant by the official story defenders redundantly linking to FEMA or NIST references as the last user to link to one was…Bov. In fact, I could only find that one link to FEMA compared with 17 links for 911research.net

I won’t even mention the Pentagon section as it clearly has a number of issues.

And finally, the article is too wordy as it is. I rewrote the introduction to exclude the multiple links to other like-minded conspiracy articles only to have it reverted back to the same rambling introduction as before.

This article should be a reflection, a description of a certain set of theories within our society; other than obvious intelligence failures, these theories are not representative of the views of the majority of the population. The civil and structural engineering community disagree with these demolition theories; perhaps MIT degrees don’t really mean anything these days since we have Alex Jones and Charlie Sheen to show us the light. This is not the place to promote validity or parade the staggering insightfulness of Steven Jones. Leave that to 911Research.net or Thewebfairy.com or Prisonplanet.--Doctor9 23:57, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

I think I will leave it to you guys to duke it out over the informational content of the article. I just want everyone to keep this a clean, easy to read article without all the organization problems it has now, which can be done even while the content is being changed. Grand master ka 00:04, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

>>"other than obvious intelligence failures, these theories are not representative of the views of the majority of the population."

In fact, whether or not these views are representative of the majority of the population is unknown without statistical research (i.e., internet polls suggest that vast majorities on the internet do believe it was more than intelligence failures). Nonetheless, whether or not the majority of the population agrees with the conspiracy theories should not affect the description of their contents on this page. Should MIT get a page while Charlie Sheen's views should not? Is Charlie Sheen too lowbrow because he isn't an engineer? If the concern is about the view of the majority of the public, are they all engineers too? If they aren't, then why should their views count at all according to this view? Does Charlie Sheen better represent the majority of non-MIT-engineer views?

These are not simple questions with simple answers, but keeping this page a war zone by inserting refutations and deleting CT content will not improve the quality of the page. This page is about conspiracy theories, what they are, where they came from, who is agreeing and disagreeing, etc., not 'Why conspiracy theories are wrong according to MIT.'

Grandmasterka, I hope you can help improve the page. People in the 9/11 Truth Movement who I have referred this page to have described it to me as only another presentation of the official story, and biased against even presenting the actual CT content. Consequently, they see wikipedia as just another off-limits venue to the information in the theories. I believe that honing down the CT's content isn't always going to improve the article, only make it less understandable as to why anyone would believe such theories. Bov 18:39, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

At the same time wiki, and this page in particular, shouldn't be willfully ignorant of reality just because the subjects choose to be. Are you implying that Charlie Sheen has some significant contribution to the body of conspiracy theories? His professional qualification is that he pretends to be people. No, neither he nor any of the amateurs (along with economists, water testers, and theoretical physicists included) deserve equal footing with engineers just because they have an opinion too.--Mmx1 18:50, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

>>"His professional qualification is"

His qualification is that he is like the many Americans who are not engineers but who doubt the official story, only he is a household name, so what he is saying is meaningful to the average person you meet on the street, and who reads wikipedia. If the page can only cite engineers or members of MIT then it should note that in the title - "Debunking of 9/11 Conspiracy Theorists by MIT Engineers." That would be a different page than one which talks about what the 9/11 CTs are, where they came from and who is supporting or not supporting them, in other words, a general 9/11 Conspiracy Theories page.

>>"deserve equal footing with engineers."

Physicists are scientists, as are engineers. In the crash of American Airlines Flight 191 the person who figured out what actually caused the crash was not an airline engineer, he was a metallurgist. The NTSB started off saying it was a single bolt failure and was going to leave it at that, was busy replacing all the bolts on other DC10s, and had it's engineers backing that story up. That story was wrong. It wasn't just the bolt, it was a mistaken procedure for engine maintenance that stressed the bolt beyond capacity. But it took a metallurgist examining the fractures on the pylon on a microscopic level to determine that. As the History Channel describes it:

"the investigation that followed was a firestorm of a different sort: everyone involved--the FAA, American Airlines, McDonnell Douglas and the pilot's union--pointed fingers in an attempt to avoid blame; a key witness mysteriously disappeared; important documents and physical evidence was misplaced. Now, a quarter century later, some of those close to the case speak for the first time, revealing why key players chose to live with the "acceptable risk" of such an accident rather than correct a known problem." 198.207.168.65 20:43, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

A metallurgist is a materials engineer. Engineers are not scientists. They don't do original research. Someone who's profession is in dealing with quarks and neutrinos, as bright as they are, is not qualified to be an engineer or to speak on engineering issues. Things are VERY different when you leave the laboratory and your assumptions about spherical cows and frictionless sleds. --Mmx1 20:53, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Not surprisingly, when push comes to shove, defenders of the official story will even parse out bench work from field work -- now bench work doesn't count, only field work does. Never mind that the information being used by those in the field often originated in labs, such as in testing fire resistance. But according to this view, a physicist can't imagine what a codebook is, nor could they possibly calculate sheer or loading or understand how an I-beam behaves when subjected to fire.

In reality, the metallugist I'm referring to in the above example had to employ lab research to reach his conclusion, and wasn't part of an engineering firm. Engineering is based on science; it's not like there's a firewall between engineers in firms and scientists in labs, they co-exist.

I expect that in the end, even if Jones also had degrees in structural engineering and operated his own firm in NYC as well as doing bench research and being on the faculty of BYU, the defenders of the official story on here would then say that he wasn't from MIT, so his views don't count. Just more and more reasons to try to block information from being shown on here which they disagree with. Bov 01:11, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

And if I were a millionaire.....I'd be a millionaire. The fact of the matter is that the conspiracy theorists have turned up nobody more qualified than a theoretical physicist (which doesn't mean he deals with theories of building collapsing - he deals with theories of atoms colliding) and a water tester to claim that the towers couldn't have fallen the way they did. Any physicist worth his salt would have found my comment humorous - it's a standard physics joke.

I'm not claiming there's a firewall, I was responding to the poster who claimed physicist = scientist and engineer = scientist so physicist = engineer. There isn't a firewall but there is a clear divide. In typical parlance (and since I come from a math background), my notion of scientist is weighed more heavily toward the theoretical side. Certainly there are scientists (on the other side of campus) that deal with engineering issues, but people here are conflating the two. Jones works with the guys in the Physics building drawing equations about energy release from particle collision. The engineers are the ones with their handbooks of materials properties and whatnot. --Mmx1 01:21, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Charlie Sheen . . .

. . . is eminently qualified to render scientific opinions about the collapse of The Towers. How dare any of you say otherwise!!! Morton devonshire 00:39, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, of course, this is clear. Anyone who can effectively play a lovable major-league pitcher with a heck of a fastball but a little trouble getting it over the plate is of course eminently qualified to give expert scientific opinion. --Deville (Talk) 00:43, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Reference to Charlie Sheen is important because it offers a window in the reaction by the wider population of people obtaining their news from mainstream media about what's going on inside the bubble of 9/11 conspiracy theories. It seems the theories do not have much support. patsw 02:25, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

I second that Charlie Sheen be mentioned somewhere in here, because he is a well known celebrity who has publicly endorsed these theories.

I'm not saying he has any idea what he is talking about, but it is still an important bit of trivia --DCAnderson 01:23, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

I have no objection to Charlie Sheen being mentioned here, though I'm not sure where a good spot would be, or that it is very important. It's possible he could be added to the Researchers article. SkeenaR 01:46, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Gold stored under the WTC

Sorry if this has already been addressed, but wasn't a significant quantity of gold stored under the world trade centre, much of which has not been recovered? I recall several news stories related to this, but there is no mention of it on in the article. Unless this has been disproven, I think it should appear under the motives section --Insertrandomname 00:25, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

I've not heard this, but it's possible. Do you have a link backing this up? --Deville (Talk) 00:42, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that's here. Bov 01:13, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, you spared me the trouble. It's also mentioned on the Loose Change 2nd Edition video. I am pretty sure that the wikipedia article used to mention it, but now it is missing. Does anyone know if that is true and, if so, why? This sounds like a legitimate point to put under the motives heading. --Insertrandomname 01:27, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

So, does anyone object to adding this information to the article?

The information that 9-11 research says there are rumors of Billions in gold? That 9-11 research says the rumors are true, and that this gold motivated a government conspiracy? I don't have a problem in principle with saying that 9-11 research says so, but I'm not convinced that this is a notable element of the conspiracy theories around 9/11. Tom Harrison ^Talk 03:05, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I do have a problem with this being added as is. First of all, this is not a neutral source. If there are no neutral sources claiming that something occured, I think we should be careful. But forget this, let's say it's a completely mainstream article from a completely reputable source. The first line in this article is "There are rumors that..." Sorry, if that's the only source you can find, I don't think we're anywhere near establishing WP:V. "Some dude wrote it on a website" is not a credible source. --Deville (Talk) 03:15, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

A number of sites that mention these rumors have links to NY Times, Washington Post, ect., but the links all appear to be deleted. Maybe because the articles are 4 years old. Regardless, it would be from a neutral POV if the article stated that "some conspiracy theorists believe that..." and you put the sources. It's a fact that some people believe this. If you want, you could point out that from another POV, these guys aren't credible. I mean, the scientology theory is mentioned even though it makes absolutely no sense. --Insertrandomname 03:38, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

But you realize that you're skating a thin line here. Is there any statement you could write down that's not believed by someone? In this scenario, I could make up any thing I wanted, make a website about it, and then insert it in a Wikipedia article under the "some people believe..." meme. This isn't really in the spirit of WP:V at all. Look, if you can find any source on Earth which asserts that the gold existed in the first place, then it's reasonable to put the conspiracy in. If we can't even establish the existence of the gold in the first place...

And, FWIW, I agree, the Scientology thing is pretty out there, it's probably not going to last either. --Deville (Talk) 03:58, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

See 1933 Double Eagle It was a single coin. patsw 03:39, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

I know about the double eagle, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the bricks of gold stored in the WTC. It's been confirmed that there was at least a few hundred million dollars worth, and that's just the stuff they recovered. --Insertrandomname 03:44, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

The mainstream gold sources are cached on 9-11 Research here —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 198.207.168.65 (talk • contribs).

Sorry, but that is the link we already had which we have discussed in the paragraphs above.--Deville (Talk) 21:55, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

But it looks like the reader above thinks the mainstream articles on this don't exist anymore - they do because they are cached on that page at the bottom. This is about access to information, not whether or not you agree with the contents of the mainstream news stories on that page . . . 198.207.168.65 01:59, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't see where the conspiracy is in this. There are vaults for precious metals... therefore there are precious metals. J.reed 08:52, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

It's 2006, some of this is now over four years old

I'm not a regular editor here, but there are numerous references to brief news items from 2001 and 2002 without any follow-up. Were any of the leads followed-up? Or is this article full of investigatory dead-ends that never went anywhere? patsw 02:35, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

They never went anywhere because of pack journalism. Let’s say so and so newspaper reported in September 2001 as many did that a foreign government warned the U.S. of an impending attack. By 2004 the topics of the week were the 9/11 commission and Michael Moore, in 2005 it was Able Danger and by 2006 9/11 in general is fading into history. So the original reporting has long been forgotten. This does not mean the “old” topics as I stated above in my plea for a Bin Ladin/Bush family section are of less importance then the “controlled demolition” theory being discussed in such detail today. 01:54, 5 April 2006 (EK)

So the article is full of investigatory dead-ends that never went anywhere. patsw 16:19, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

The reality is that the information about the attacks is full of investigatory dead-ends that hit a brick wall through suppression of evidence, which this administration has a strong pattern of engaging in. We are not allowed to see the plans of a building that was not a government building and is now gone - the WTC towers. The report is over. The codes are rewritten. New buildings are going up. How long will the plans of that building remain secret? Why are we not allowed to see the images that the government has of the plane impacts at the Pentagon? How about the black box contents of Flight 93 which have only flight data and not voice data, or 77? The suppression of the evidence comes with a consequence and that is documented on this page. 198.207.168.65 21:13, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Just who is it that is suppressing this information? Morton devonshire 01:26, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

guvmint. 198.207.168.65 01:56, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Heh heh! "guvmint"- I love it. SkeenaR 04:03, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

that's exactly because the content of the article was outdated and sometimes obsolete, that I first started to rewrite and update the content, hoping to eventually reach a minimum up-to-date quality article. But I gave up after my modification were reverted before I could even finish the job. Seems we have a case of "if they don't know, you can't tell 'em" here. for example people are still reinserting that there is doubt about pulling being a controlled demolition term for pulling a building down, even though it has been widely in use for decades.

(...) such as pre-cutting steel beams and attaching cables to certain columns to "pull" a structure in a given direction. excerpt from the 1960's chapter of "A History of Structural Demolition in America" by author Brent L. Blanchard , or you can hear it here or see it in the howstuffworks article explaining how building implosion works:Blasters may also secure steel cables to support columns in the building, so that they are pulled a certain way as they crumble..

Thanks to doctor9 and other this has been edited out at least twice before I even finished working on the WTC 7 section. There's not even a link to the building implosion article anymore. Why is it that one has to explain to clueless laymen who don't dare research or read by themselves to justify an inclusion in a wikipedia article ? Do anyone here know that absence of evidence is not evidence and absence and that in absence of evidence a wikipedian should research the evidence instead of deleting and reverting ASAP. izwalito

Conspircy Theory

Week by week, like the death of a thousand cuts, the term "conspiracy theory" is relentlessly censored from the text on this page. Not NPOV.--Cberlet 20:35, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

People probably remove it because they don't want these theories associated with the "Conspiracy theory article" which itself associates conspiracy theories with paranoid schizophrenics and catatonic thorazine victims. I think "conspiracy theories" is appropriate too as far as the meaning is concerned, but not when the term has been hijacked like this. SkeenaR 22:08, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

clean it up

Here is an example of how an alternate theory page should look,...Kennedy assassination theories.

I think the Kennedy format looks pretty good and tidy. What do other people think? (and what's with those footnotes? thats crazy looking)SkeenaR 19:19, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, go for it. Much better organization format, readability, coherance. Morton devonshire 23:31, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Weasel words

I'm the one who added the weasel tag. I didn't even get past the first parapraph, and it was crawling with them. Sorry this is my first edit, but I've been lurking on Wiki for quite a while and have played with Uncyclopedia. I'm going to register a name in a minute, probably some variation of "Anderson." I'll point out some of the more blatant weasel words I found. I can tell you the first ones are "A number of researchers..." 72.153.6.137 03:15, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

This whole section can easily be deleted

"What follows in this page is an examination of alternative theories and analysis of the alleged anomalies of that day, all of which question elements of the 9/11 Commission Report and the mainstream media account, summarized as follows:

Nineteen al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial aircraft on the morning of September 11, 2001. Two of these planes crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, one flew into the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense at the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, and the final plane crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania after passengers attempted to over-power the hijackers."

If you're reading a page about 9/11 conspiracies, I'm pretty sure you know what 9/11 is. This is just a blatant attempt to persuade the reader to an opinion. Also phrases like "question elements" and "mainstream media account" are heavily loaded.DCAnderson 03:28, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Weasel words are used, frankly, because there's no reliable support for any of these theories -- it's all original search, with no reliable sources for any of it. Morton devonshire 16:34, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Now Morton, that's just your opinion. It may be true but it's still just your opinion ;) DCAnderson 19:55, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Wargames section

Some theorists claim that government and military exercises being performed on the morning of 9-11 point to a cover-up . US Rep. Cynthia McKinney, economist Michel Chossudovsky, and publisher/editor Michael Ruppert of From the Wilderness are a few of the individuals who have questioned these exercises.

The way this is phrased is either bad or misleading.

Do the experts listed believe that this was part of a conspiracy, or did they just ask questions about it?

If they beleive it, it should be phrased

US Rep. Cynthia McKinney, economist Michel Chossudovsky, and publisher/editor Michael Ruppert of From the Wilderness are a few of the individuals who have questioned these exercises.claim that government and military exercises being performed on the morning of 9-11 point to a cover-up .

If they do not support these theories, it should be phrased so that it doesn't seem like they do. DCAnderson 05:07, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Split into sub-articles

I think some of the sub theories need to be split into their own articles, or deleted, because this sucker is loooooooooong.--DCAnderson 08:03, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Request for Claim/Rebuttal Format

Allright, as various other users have allready suggested, somebody needs to go through this thing and offer a rebuttal section for each claim.

A good place to start would be any of the links listed for "skeptical or debunking." The US State departments page on the subject is particularly excelent: [1]

I would do this myself, but I'm a lazy bastard, and I spent all last night converting this thing to NPOV.--DCAnderson 20:00, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

You need to tell us before you decide to destroy the article. And read the tag at the top of the page.SkeenaR 22:52, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Those state department articles are lame. If I were going to try and debunk these theories, I would do my best to not let anybody see them. And can you imagine taking tips on identifying misinfo from them? ~~But thanks for all the work towards improvement, it's much appreciated and this article needs it.~~ SkeenaR 22:20, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

What about making an article specifically about 9/11 misconceptions, listing the various urban legends and why they're wrong. I suspect many people, not just the conspiracy nuts, would find it interesting. It would also separate out the plausible and implausible speculations. Peter Grey 22:58, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm afraid that would develop as a POV fork. Tom Harrison ^Talk 01:46, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

If I had to guess, a bunch of guys would think this was somehow trying to give undue legitimacy to plausible theories, make a big stink, nominate it for deletion, etc etc. Happens every time. But it doesn't seem like a bad idea. SkeenaR 23:07, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

DISCUSS major changes

I changed the article back to after SkeenaR made the changes about "pull."

I will assume on good faith that "pull" is an industry term.

However Skeena R, as has been stated WIKIPEDIA IS NOT A SOAPBOX.

I have kept all the facts and points in the article. What I have removed are the rhetoric and weasel words.

If you want to make a seperate webpage where you present your case, that is fine, but Wikipedia is not the place for it.--DCAnderson 23:29, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Don't throw insults like that at me. And DC, you have to discuss changes like that before you go ahead and do that. It doesn't really matter how much sleep you missed to do it. Have a look in the archives and you will see that we work together on these things, and collaborate on far less substantial changes than this. Plus, you add weasel words. Like in the whistleblower section. Exactly, this isn't sup[posed to be a persuasive article. SkeenaR 23:31, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

The Whistleblower sections title was misleading. The whole point of the section was that it was an explanation for why there was a lack of whistleblowers--DCAnderson 00:05, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

It is an opinion that there is a lack of whistleblowers and this has been discussed previously and it was decided to call this section "Whistleblowers". What makes you think the point of the section is explanation of a lack of whistleblowers? I know why-because of this: "Depending on how many of the above theories one believes, the list of collaborators needed can grow or shrink. Opponents of these theories say that one weakness of the conspiracy claims is the absence of credible whistleblowers." This is obviously POV as others claim there is a flood of whistleblowers. The italicized sentence should be removed for neutrality. SkeenaR 00:27, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Or maybe not. The next is "While many researchers in opposition to the above conspiracy theories suggest that a conspiracy would require silencing a vast number of individuals, the proponents of those theories tend to disagree." I suppose the title "Whistleblowers" is adequate with the section as is. Also, adding this "Critics of these conspiracy theories claim they are a form of conspiracism common throughout history after a traumatic event in which conspiracy theories emerge as a mythical form of explanation. (Barkun, 2003) See conspiracy theory for a general examination of conspiracy theories, and a description of the fallacies sometimes involved in formulating them." is going to cause more controversy here. SkeenaR 00:35, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Firstly, I didn't add that at the beginning. I even added a request for a citation of it, that was quickly provided. Secondly, it is good to have that section in there, because this is a controversial subject. It even says that at the top of the discussion page.--DCAnderson 00:49, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

I moved that from where it had been at the bottom of the page to the top of the page after DCAnderson's changes made it appropriate. I added the cite he reqested. Tom Harrison ^Talk 01:02, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

In section titles, only the first word should be upper-case, except proper nouns. Tom Harrison ^Talk 01:08, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

I've made a number of edits that I think SkeenaR will find acceptable - changing section titles to lower case, linking to the main article about flight 93, adding a citation, etc. The last such change has the edit summary 'cite Barkun'. If anyone wants to revert my subsequent work, please consider reverting to here. That way we can maybe make some progress. If we must have an edit war, we can at least have a well-mannered one. Tom Harrison ^Talk 01:42, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Besides the fact that me and a lot of other people don't like that Conspiracy theory article the way it is, one of the reasons I don't really like that new addition to the beginning of this article is because of just that...another edit war. The change may or may not be appropriate, but it is bound to stir up more controversy and we have already had an unbelievable amount of edits and sort of an edit war here for the last week or so. I wasn't really bothering to edit anything because it seems like the wind would have just blown it away. I was just thinking that right now it's possible the best thing we could do is tidy up this article really well and try to avoid too much dispute simply because I get the feeling that the community is kind of not digging this article because it is a mess. SkeenaR 01:53, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

OK, it would be good to hear some thoughts from people about the Kennedy format. I think it looks ok and Morton seems to think so too. But it would be a lot of work I think. SkeenaR 01:35, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

I have no preference on the format. I do think DCAnderson's edits improved the article. I'll be restoring as many of them as I can, but at a slower pace. Tom Harrison ^Talk 01:56, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Changes I had made to the article

Well here was the version of the article I had going [2] before it got changed back.

I think a lot of the changes I made to it were for the best. Most of it involved deleting "fluff" sections which were not really stating main points, and restating the more weasely language.

I think it would be good if we reached some sort of happy medium on this, because I would at least like to think that the changes I made to the article were not a big waste of time.

And I don't want to start an edit war, so if anyone could help with this.--DCAnderson 01:57, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for trying to help. SkeenaR 02:06, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Flight 93 movie reference

Wouldn't this statement from the Claims cell phone calls were impossible section be more appropriate in the Flight 93 page?

"These passenger actions have been the subject of two television movies and one scheduled for theatrical release ."--DCAnderson 03:10, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

September 11, 2001 attacks in arts and literature might be the place. Tom Harrison ^Talk 03:14, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

The movies presented the official or common view so maybe the line should be reworded. Or better yet a section or a completly new article should be setup discussing how different elements of society treat the official story compared to the types of theroies presented here 01:41, 10 April 2006 (EK)

Internet citations

I have decided to remove the "footnotes" section, as it consists entirely of internet links, which makes it totally unnecessary. I am adding an {{inuse}} tag and will clean this up in no time, so that each internet citation is next to its sentence, where it should be. Grand master ka 00:20, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

HOLD UP. I think it's better to fully cite them using {{cite web}}. --Mmx1 01:54, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Too late. I've cleaned up the entire article (a lot of the formal publications are already cited within the text.) I hope my changes are appreciated. Grand master ka 02:37, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

They are very much appreciated by me. I mentioned those footnotes a few days ago. Thank you. SkeenaR 02:59, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm with Mmx1, I think full citations would have been the right way to go. Making that change without consensus was a bad idea. Шизомби 04:44, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Grandmasterka's changes, while not perfect, are a step in the right direction; all of wikipedia is moving to the new <reference/> style, which keeps all references inline for ease of maintenance. Still, a lot more work needs to be done on including the appropriate citation info. JEREMY 12:04, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Am I missing something? The <ref></ref><reference/> is the style that was removed in favor of keeping the URLs in the main body and not in the <reference/>. Шизомби 13:06, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Lemme explain myself better to Mmx1 and Schizombie... There was relevant discussion about this on this talk page, it's not like I changed everything completely without discussion. And besides, there was some extremely poor quality work on this page having to do with citations - I'm talking about missing words in the middle of sentences because the footnote style placed a word meant for the sentence in the footnotes section. Errors like this were present all over the page, which tells me that no-one did anything to correct it for a long time until I decided to be bold and fix everything myself. Wikipedia is not for peanut galleries!

That being said, go ahead and do what you need to do to include more info with those citations. But my work did more than just change footnotes to inline citations; I cleaned up other small things (like putting words back in their proper places) and I think (hopefully) I've laid the groundwork for your efforts in introducing <reference/> style and keeping this thing clean and easy to read. (It was horrible when I first got here.) Keep up the good work! Grand master ka 14:26, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the work. I've been away for a few days but now am back and will try to keep whatever work I do in this format.

In general it's difficult to maintain format consistency here because there are so many content changes constantly. For example, I see that a whole new section on engineer replies has now been added, despite the page already being too big. Does it matter that the page is endlessly increasing in size? Bov 00:12, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

If that footnotes section has to be there, please try to include the actual citation info as you re-create it. Thank you. Grand master ka 13:52, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Criticisms and Loose Change section

This section is almost vestigial. Somebody either needs to put some meat on it, or delete it all together. In the interest of balance, probably the former.

Also, the Loose Change Video seems out of place in this section.

Maybe it should be replaced with a link in the "see also" section?--DCAnderson 01:14, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree with all that. I'll let you go ahead on it since it seems like ou are full of motivation right now. SkeenaR 01:17, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

DC, I believe that Bov was correct in removing that paragraph on conspiracism and also agree with you that it should be moved to Criticisms. It is not necessary for it to remain in the opener to maintain NPOV because the beginning states that this is an article that only describes these theories. There does not have to be an immediate rebuttal. SkeenaR 01:57, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm cool with that --DCAnderson 02:00, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Neutrality

Who still wants the disputed tag up? Say something or I'll delete it. I don't think we need it, nobody will ever be perfectly happy with this article anyway. But I think there is progress happening here again. SkeenaR 02:55, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

I think until there is a little more rebuttal in this article, it isn't quite NPOV.--DCAnderson 03:17, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

It might not be NPOV, I doubt anyone will agree on that, but I'll put it back and we can wait for some consensus before we scrap the tag I guess. SkeenaR 03:20, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Well now that I look at it more, it does seem to actually be pretty close to NPOV. Not perfect, but close enouth for the time being.

The article could still use a lot of editing though, maybe you should put some other tag up to adress that. --DCAnderson 03:23, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Ok, lets scrap the neutrality tag. We could put a copyedit tag up and go from there, but I think that one just left. Since we are on top of it, we should just roll with it and keep going. We can always argue again later hey? SkeenaR 03:30, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

I was just about to bring that up. I don't think it needs to be there anymore. Grand master ka 04:44, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Superfluous Categories

I was looking at the catergories this was listed under, and a lot of them seem like they are more relevant to the main 9/11 article.

In particular:

Crimes
Famous numbers
Fires
Airliner hijackings
Al-Qaeda activities
New York City disasters
Terrorist incidents in 2001
Terrorist incidents in the United States

I'm going to delete the first three, the others are up for debate.--DCAnderson 03:53, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, according to the conspiracists they weren't hijackings, Al Queda activities, nor Terrorist incidents, so I don't see how they fit. I particularly don't see how an article about theories falls under NYC disasters. --Mmx1 03:54, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

They fit because the explanation given was Al Queda activites, Terrorist incidents, and hijackings. They fall under NYC disasters because they involve a NYC disaster.

Pentagon Impact Video

"The FBI confiscated a video from a nearby gas station attended by Jose Velasquez, and from the Sheraton Hotel roof. These videos have not yet been released. [85]" The external link here only seems to support the confiscation of the gas station video. I can't find any reference to the Sheraton Hotel. Kernow 23:32, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Hezbollah Claims About Israelis

The section "Claims Related to Jews And Israel" contains a quote from Hezbollah, the terrorist organization, which claims no Israelis were even within the World Trade Center on September 11. A minister at the Israeli Consulate General in New York, however, is quoted by the U.S. Justice Department, in an article dated 14 Sept 2001 Article, as saying, "There might have been up to 100 Israeli citizens working in the World Trade Center. ... Two are known to be missing."

For those who may point out that 2-in-100 is a very small proportion, the same article notes that 140,000 people would enter the World Trade Center on a given day. The accepted number of casualties there on 9/11 is less than 3,000. This is appoximately a 1-in-50 (or 2-in-100).

Snopes.com has a few good articles on these claims; [3],[4]. OhNo itsJamie ^Talk 19:20, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

"Rosetta Stone" of the 9/11 Investigation

AM New York reported that former FBI agent Warren Flagg and an unidentified former Federal Investigator that two pieces of Luggage were found that had papers inside that led to the quick arrest of the 19 Hijackers [5]. Flagg called one of pieces of luggage the the Rosetta Stone of the investigation. Alternative theorists are questioning both the timing of the release of this information and why people who knew they would be dead in short order would be bringing luggage on to the planes. Others are doubting that the events described in the article could happen in an operation that was so well planned. Have no idea if or where this should go in the article. But as an earlier discussion mentioned most articles quoted here go back to 2001 or 2002 so I thought I should try and bring in new reporting. 04:31, 21 April 2006

Giuliani's bunker in tower 7 used to remotely control planes?

That's what a former German minister of defense is saying on interview with Alex Jones. The link: www.prisonplanet.tv/audio/200406vonbuelow.htm Former German Minister Says Building 7 Used To Run 9/11 Attack]. No mentioned yet in this article. He is the highest profile politician to make these accusations.--tequendamia 12:56, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

A link to an earlier interview with him is given in the main article. This interview appears to be recent as they mention fifth anniversary coming up. The most important part in the interview for me is his mention that it would take less then fifty people to conduct that type of operation. This would be the type of thing he would be an expert in. He might not necessarily have the expertise to look at a video and conclude that he is watching a controlled demolition. Despite the biased nature of the interview still a good find. 10:59, 22 April 2006 (EK)

I urge you please to include this important information in the article. We need to hear more about this discovery. Morton devonshire 17:23, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

This is his speculation. It is based on the fact that the command center was moved out of WTC7 on 9/10 for a training drill. The drill was about an attack on the WTC. In the interview it says that Mayor Giuliani supposedly confirmed this in the 9/11 commission hearings. 13:44, 22 April 2006 (EK)

Silly, this is a conspiracy theory. Once the establishment considers it a fact is no longer conspiracy theory.--tequendamia 01:21, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Alex Jones is a crackpot. These claims border on the lunatic. --Cberlet 01:32, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

The mental stability of Alex Jones is irrelevant. What matters for this article is that former Defense Minister of Germany is suggesting that the 9/11 operation was run out of the building next door to World Trade Center 7 03:56, 24 April 2006 (EK)

There is a book by this person: Die CIA und der 11. September. Internationaler Terror und die Rolle der Geheimdienste. Piper Verlag GmbH, München 2003, ISBN 3492045456 y 2004, ISBN 3492242421 (The CIA and September 11 (book))--tequendamia 21:37, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Mossad Addition to Government Foreknowlege

This does not belong in the summary to that section. Also what is SAMS??? 11:05, 22 April 2006 (EK)

Splitting the article

This article is much too long, and needs to be split. I propose that we break out the following sections into their own articles, leaving a stub section here for each topic:

World Trade Center Towers
WTC7
Flight 93
Pentagon

Any thoughts on this approach? -- MisterHand 14:07, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

The article as it is relies far too heavily on primary sources, and is becoming a link farm for web site promoters. Rather than multiplying this problem by adding four more articles, and four more links to prisonplanet.com, et al., this one should be shortened and correctly sourced. Tom Harrison ^Talk 14:22, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I fully agree with Tom. This article can definitely be trimmed by removing anything that is unsourced, or uses primary sources. -Aude (talk | contribs) 14:31, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Good luck with that. I agree with the approach, but I'm not keen on getting involved as an edit war will undoubtedly ensure. -- MisterHand 14:32, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I too agree with the approach but I can see an edit war coming up soon because of this. --S iva1979^{Talk to me} 17:36, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

All too often the purpose of 'cleaning-up' on here is to delete content wholesale. I'll be glad to replace it on here as long as it takes, or we can all have discussion and debate and not wholesale removal of information. Bov 21:19, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Okay, discuss. I'm going out, so excuse me if I don't reply promptly. Tom Harrison ^Talk 21:27, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

There is a cleanup effort going on (a good thing), so I'm going to hold off for now. By May 7, if the article is still large (> 50 kb) I'm going to start splitting off sections as indicated above to make things more manageable. That allows for about 2 weeks. -- MisterHand 13:29, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

After reading the article, I think that shortening may be helpful, but should not be overdone. The article should be split up into multiple new articles and even further expansion should occur. There are many extra theories and support for those theories, and I think that Wikipedia is a good place to house detailed information. (If you don't want it to become a 9/11 link depository, try to cut out multiple sources for the same fact.) 66.65.197.38 00:45, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

First Cleanup attempt

made to Claims regarding the actual collapse [6]

First of all, let me give all a brief primer on Primary and Secondary sources.

Primary sources are eyewitnesses. Secondary sources collect primary sources and coalese them into a point or story.

Wiki is not a secondary source. The act of coalescing primary sources into a point is OR, a fundamental no-no of wiki.

Diffs and reasoning:

removed link to videos - wiki does NOT coalesce primary source materials to synthesize them into an original point. Primary sources should only be used to present the subject itself (e.g. from the 9-11 article itself), not for "readers to draw their own conclusions".
Most widely used? Says who?
Changed Jones quote to summary of his statements.
removed unattributed dust quote that does not appear at the link [7]
rm leading quote from Jones that is wondering aloud about gravitational energy to convert concrete into dust without any conclusions.
rm two bullet points about dust that simply say X conducted an analysis of the dust. Irrelevant unless there is a conclusion in the analysis relevant to claims about the collapse.
rm "like a bomb" quotes that are reproduced from the linked source; the summary and links are still there. am of half a mind to remove the section entirely as these are primary sources.
rewrote the collapse section to include "total collapse" as the madrid building clearly involved a collapse of the steel members.

Please do not start an edit war. Mmx1 you should have discussed it with everyone else before you went and deleted most of that section. I Lov E Plankton 16:47, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

What do you think of the substance of his edits? Tom Harrison ^Talk 16:52, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I appreciate the sentiment but this was not wholly out of the blue. It was motivated by the section above. How about some substantive criticisms, which I'm wholly willing to engage? After all, that was the point of putting this edit summary here. Whenever I post "proposals for edit" I get no replies until the edit's made. Then everybody jumps on my back. Face it, nobody but the regulars read the talk page anyway. --Mmx1 16:55, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I personally found nothing wrong with them, and I do understand no ever says anything about proposals. We need to make the article shorter and we need to clean it up, which is what Mmx1 was doing, so I support the changes. I Lov E Plankton 17:11, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

At this point, maybe we should let them sit for a day and hear what people think of them. I support the changes. I agree with making the page shorter, with finding good secondary sources, and with the need to not 'synthesize primary source material into an original point," which I may have done myself on other pages. Tom Harrison ^Talk 17:31, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't plan on extending it beyond this section for a while for the aforementioned reasons + Siva's comment above. I'll let this be a showcase of the types of changes proposed and see what flak I attract. I do think editing a section en bloc is a better example of the changes I'd like to implement than moderately changing one sentence at a time. --Mmx1 17:41, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

>>"We need to make the article shorter and we need to clean it up, which is what Mmx1 was doing, so I support the changes."

But what of the outcome or content of the changes? He might as well cover his eyes and hit erase if the content is not considered.

>>"*removed link to videos - wiki does NOT coalesce primary source materials to synthesize them into an original point. Primary sources should only be used to present the subject itself (e.g. from the 9-11 article itself), not for "readers to draw their own conclusions".

I would argue that some videos are necessary sources to understand the situation. The video of the collapse of building 7 is necessary to visually understand why people are concerned. If all you do is say "Conspiracy theorists say this and MIT says this is why they're wrong" and then dispute the actual timing of the collapse, then an average reader won't easily understand why there might even be a conspiracy theory. I don't see that there need to be many videos, but the Building 7 video is a key one and should not be deleted. Videos that are being promoted as DVDs are no different than books and articles and websites - they are not eyewitness evidence, they are analyses of the events.

>>*Changed Jones quote to summary of his statements.

I don't think this will work. Jones's statements are often unique. One or two quotes from him doesn't substantially alter the size of the article.

>>*removed unattributed dust quote that does not appear at the link [8]

It probably comes from one of the cached sourced on that page. You shouldn't just remove a quote but should instead find the source yourself or put a citation note on it.

>>*rm "like a bomb" quotes that are reproduced from the linked source; the summary and links are still there. am of half a mind to remove the section entirely as these are primary sources.

And yet you replaced it with a mess. You ran on two completely different ideas. Your goal was NOT to clarify the section but to eliminate information. Instead you created an unreadable area.

I would suggest instead of throwing a wrench into this article by removing information at the cost of being able to even read it, that the section of engineer responses on this article should be eliminated or else reciprocated on the September 11th article with conspiracy theorist responses to the official story. This addition is one of the largest additions to the page. I have a concern that there is a different standard being applied to this article by those who agree with the official story and wish to minimize this one instead of equal treatment for all pages. This is clearly evident in the effort to insert a rebuttal in the very first paragraph of this page, which is ridiculous. Readers have not even read the table of contents of the page before official story defenders are trying to stop them from reading any further. 198.207.168.65 23:39, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

What a pack of lies.

Readers have not even read the table of contents of the page
before official story defenders are trying to stop them from reading any further.

Um, dude, my edits are AFTER the TOC. I will fix the grammar. Point by point again:

videos: and what is so telling about the primary source videos that viewers can infer a conclusion of their own to match the conspiracy theorists or engineers? You are asking them to draw conclusions that cannot be taken from the videos alone. Videos that are promoted are subject to equal scrutinty as books and other promotional materials. Primary source materials should be cited for the subject of this article - namely the conspiracy theories, not the content of the theories.
Quotes. It is bad form to reproduce quotes for ANYONE on wiki as it amounts to allowing the subject to soapbox. The purpose of an encyclopedia is not to provide a microphone for people, but to neutrally describe their beliefs.
Unattributed dust quote. What's the point of a quote if it's unattributed? I removed it because I couldn't attribute it. Then it just becomes an allegation that should be at least sourced, particularly as it's expressing a technical opinion. "uncharacteristic of a gravity-driven collapse" according to who? You? Hoffman? Santa Claus? It matters who's making that statment. I googled it and got 28 results [9]

, all of which are wiki or wiki copies (which you can tell by the inline links). If you are quoting the 911research page, it's not a collaborative effort or some community consensus, it's Jim Hoffman's page and reflects Jim Hoffman's views. Another thing we should be especially careful about is citing that page as a source for the conspiracy movement when it's one individual who seems to have been pushed rather hard on this page. See above.

like a bomb quotes. Look at it objectively. It's amateur testimony where people are relating a disaster using analogies. These aren't engineers looking at the video in their living room, they're people watching a fucking building come down on them, usually for the first time. Make the accusation if you really need to. But does reproducing their quotes do anything more than the statement that witnesses used bomb terminology to describe the collapse? The quotes are linked anyway. Secondly, what two ideas did I run on? I admit the grammer is a bit clunky but the core of the statemnent is that witnesses used the word bomb to describe the event. --Mmx1 01:27, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

You did it again with your revert and then left it that way. I'm working to make the collapse section readable instead of senseless.

It looks like you think that on a page supposedly about the 9/11 conspiracy theories that the refutation by the MIT engineers should take up a larger section than what the CTs believe to be true about the collapses themselves. As it is you've whittled it down to a few sentences. I disagree. Bov 21:56, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

If you've read the discussion, you'll see that it stands as an example of the cleanups I'd like to apply globally to the article. Since you're no fan of the MIT article, why don't you go ahead and edit the MIT section accordingly? I take it you don't have any other objections than just that one is bigger than the other. I'd do it myself if I weren't in class. --Mmx1 22:13, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Ah, I see. So by "make readable" you mean revert changes that don't push your POV. Including putting back in unattributed quotes and other crappiness. I edited the grammar this time - added two commas and moved one clause. I teach English; would you care to point out what the "unreadable" portions are? Or by "unreadable" do you mean, "disagreeable" --Mmx1 22:25, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

if I've said it once I'll say it again; Please don't start an edit war. And now for something I haven't said before; Please no personal attacks, no you haven't yet made a personal attack but it seems like we are getting close to some personal attacks. So please just keep this dispute civil. I Lov E Plankton 00:15, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice; I attempt to remain civil but I refuse to let stubborn intransigence by conspiracy theorists who think they own this article stand in the way of substantive improvements. I've yet to get substantive arguments other than that a) it's not comparable in size (because I've yet to expand beyond this one section to avoid edit wars) b) the grammar sucks. This criticism was followed by a strict revert, including of obviously flawed parts like the unattributed quote. Moreover, having run through the edited piece again, I don't see the severe readability issues that were brought up. --Mmx1 01:23, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree, and thank you for seeing my point. I Lov E Plankton 01:37, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Around the expression "Conspiracy theory"

In the article Conspiracy theory we can read this paragraph:

The term "conspiracy theory" is considered by different observers to be a neutral description for a conspiracy claim, a pejorative term used to dismiss such a claim, and a term that can be positively embraced by proponents of such a claim. The term may be used by some for arguments they might not wholly believe but consider radical and exciting. The most widely accepted sense of the term is that which popular culture and academic usage share, certainly having negative implications for a narrative's probable truth value.

So, given this negative implications of the term, according to the "most widely accepted sense of the term", there is bias in the title "9/11 conspiracy theories". Isn't there? If it have negative implications it's not neutral. A title like "9/11 alternative theories" or "controversies over the official account of 11/9" would be much more neutral. What do you think?--Pokipsy76 08:54, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

You know Pokipsy, you have me convinced. In fact I think we should change the names of anything that has any negative implication whatsoever. Take for instance Nazis. Poor buggers, all they were trying to do was build the Autobon and improve the German economy. But they have gotten such a bad wrap that Nazi has become an insult in and of itself. We should call them something more neutral, like WWII Germans.

And what about [pedophile]? now that's a word with negative implications. Imagine going to a party and saying:

"So what are you into?"

"Oh I'm a pedophile.""

Yeech, that just doesn't do at all. How about, "Lover of Children?"

In my country, I vote Democrat, but the way they are talked about on talk radio and by Ann Coulter, they have become almost a dirty word themselves. Maybe they should be called the "Blue State Party?"--DCAnderson 00:10, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

1) Are you really comparing Nazis and pedophiles with 9/11 skeptics?!?

2) Yours is pointless rethoric. If something is colled by almost anybody with a name (even with negative implications) then we must adopt that name. If instead there are different ways to call something, all equally used and usable, we must choose (if available) the one without negative implications. For example we should prefer to call a page "black people" instead of "niggers". It doesn't look so difficult to understand.--Pokipsy76 14:55, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

1.)And to Democrats. (I vote Democrat.)

2.)Conspiracy Theory is the most accurate term, because:

These can not be proven, at this stage they are at best speculation or a "working model." i.e a theory
These theories are that either:

There was a conspiracy by some group other than Al-Qaeda to willfully allow 9/11 to happen through inaction, or...
There was a conspiracy to orchestrate 9/11 and make it appear Al-Qaeda did it.

Therefore, they are conspiracy theories. "Alternative resaerch" or "9/11 controversies" are not only vague, they could describe any number of things.

It has been discussed and voted on in the talk pages of both Wikipedia:Words to avoid and Conspiracy Theories that there is nothing wrong with the term "Conspiracy Theory." (So your argument has allready shot dead by precedent.)

"Nigger" is not the same as "Conspiracy theory." Nigger is:

Slang, so it should never be used in a formal capacity.
It is a racial epithet originally created for the purpose of disparaging black people.

Conspiracy Theory is:

An official term that can be used in formal writing. (And has been used by conspiracy theorists themselves, till they decided they had image problems.)
Has earned its negative implications, because Conspiracy Theories have traditionally proven false, unreliable, and based on flawed logic.(Much the way that "Nazi" and "Democrat" earned their negative implications.)--DCAnderson 03:53, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

There are skeptics that simply don't believe in the official account and there are theorists that elaborate theories about an alternative version of the facts. This second activity is much more difficult and more exposed to criticism than pure skepticism. This is the motivation because the literature that want to defend the official account uses the word "conspiracy theories" and "conspiracy theorists" to give a lower value to the claims of the skeptics. The literature that want to promote skepticism about the official account never uses this wording and in general prefer to speak about "skepticism" and "skeptics". You can find this different uses of the words in all the site that have one or the other POV. This article that should have a neutral POV uses *IN THE TITLE* the language of a specific part of the debate. This should be changed. Moreover this title misreprasent the skeptic POV. Why shouldn't the skeptic POV be represented in the title and in the article, why should all the attention be concentrated on the "theories"? I know that the stress on "theories" about "conspiracy" is useful to discredit and misrepresent the skeptic POV but this should not happen in Wikipedia.--Pokipsy76 08:44, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Pokipsy, we have discussed this issue ad nauseam, and the reasons for keeping the title have been given repeatedly. I don't care how many new titles you come up with (alternative theories, controversies over, skepticism of) you're just making the same inane argument over and over again. Just let it go, I'm sorry but that horse is dead.--DCAnderson 18:22, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

This has been discussed at some length. See the talk page archives here, at conspiracy theory, and at Wikipedia:Words to avoid. Tom Harrison ^Talk 13:29, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

But nobody has ever expressed my argument before. What do you think about it?--Pokipsy76 13:40, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

The idea that conspiracy theory has negative connotations that make it inappropriate was put forward at length by User:Zen-master. Again, I refer you to the talk archives. Tom Harrison ^Talk 16:08, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

True but that 6 months old debate was very poor and the argument wasn't defended as it should have been. So what do you think about it?--Pokipsy76 16:32, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

You can read what I think in the archives. I'm not going to reply further unless I hear a new argument. Tom Harrison ^Talk 16:36, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

In Archive 1 and 2 you are not present. In Archive 3 you say that the question "has already been discussed". It seems to be a taboo argument for you so I will not insist further in asking your opinion. Is there anyone wanting to say his opinion?--Pokipsy76 16:49, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

negative implications for a narrative's probable truth value is, if anything, being charitable to the credibility of these kinds of speculations. Peter Grey 18:09, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

This is definitely *your* POV about the speculations in the article, but the title (and the article) must not exibit a POV, it must be neutral.--Pokipsy76 18:34, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

There are real controversies out there, but speculations based on paranoia and misinformation are mere conspiracy theories. NPOV does not mean putting reality and fantasy on an equal footing. Peter Grey 18:42, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Believing that speculations in the article are "fantasy" "based on paranoia and misinformation" is *definitely* your POV and should not affect the title nor the article.--Pokipsy76 19:08, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

The theories discussed in this article fit with the defining features of conspiracy theories. They are based on partial, circumstantial, cherry picked details amassed together to form illogical arguments, among other characteristics. That said, Wikipedia adheres to WP:NPOV by providing space for this article to present these conspiracy theories. As Peter says, NPOV doesn't mean putting these conspiracy theories on equal footing. -Aude (talk | contribs) 19:28, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

1) Even if these theories fit in some of the definitions of "conspiracy theory" you shouldn't use that expression because it has "negative implications" and therefore is not neutral like wikipedia's titles should be.

2) Believing that they are "details ammassed togheter to form illogical arguments" and believing the "illogicity" of the arguments is definitely YOUR personal POV and should not affect the title nor the article. In [10] you can read: "The neutral point of view is a means of dealing with conflicting views", so given the fact that there are conflicting views (your POV and other ones) the title MUST be netral. And the present title is not.--Pokipsy76 22:01, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

>>"There are real controversies out there, but speculations based on paranoia and misinformation are mere conspiracy theories."

Show me what's based on paranoia and how you can debunk the claim that is paranoid. Show me what's based on misinformation and how that creates a conspiracy theory. The wmds were misinformation and yet I see no reference on the 'conspiracy theory' page about wmds in the the need for a war in Iraq. The State Dept told us no chemical weapons were used in Falluja, although later it was proved that there were. I see no 'conspiracy theory' page about the US military in Iraq.

>>" NPOV doesn't mean putting these conspiracy theories on equal footing."

Indeed, it means cutting them apart at every opportunity. What an encyclopedia this is! Some things are important, and some need to be hacked apart at every opportunity, to maintain the consistency of what's important.

>>"The theories discussed in this article fit with the defining features of conspiracy theories."

So does the official story. It just has more people that want to accept it as reality because it often feels better to identify with authority and get on with your life than to wonder if people our own government could have been involved in what amounted to a stand-down of the US military. Try looking at the timelines and you'll see that the Commission's timeline doesn't match NORAD's. Which one of them is the real timeline? Is one of them a conspiracy? It makes me a 'conspiracy theorist' just for asking that question on here, doesn't it? And therefore I may be paranoid and even delusional according to the CT page, and yet, we're dealing in simple facts. I think NORAD probably knows what it's talking about, and the Commission had a job to do. But they cannot both be the correct timelines. However, because I point this out I am a conspiracy theorist. Bov 21:43, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

"Show me what's based on paranoia and how you can debunk the claim that is paranoid. Show me what's based on misinformation and how that creates a conspiracy theory. The wmds were misinformation and yet I see no reference on the 'conspiracy theory' page about wmds in the the need for a war in Iraq. The State Dept told us no chemical weapons were used in Falluja, although later it was proved that there were. I see no 'conspiracy theory' page about the US military in Iraq."

The claim that elements within the US government would initiate an attack on its own people to serve its own secret political agenda and then cover it up is a pretty paranoid statement. I don't really support these theories, but the old adage goes, "Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not plotting against you."

Hmm, misinformation. Well there's just about every claim revolving around Jews and 9/11. Also, even the other 9/11 conspiracy theorists think that Meyssan's statements about a missle hitting the Pentagon are basically crap.

As far as the WMDS are concerned, all of that is well documented by the media and reputable sources, so in essence it is a conspiracy "fact."

>>" NPOV doesn't mean putting these conspiracy theories on equal footing."

Indeed, it means cutting them apart at every opportunity. What an encyclopedia this is! Some things are important, and some need to be hacked apart at every opportunity, to maintain the consistency of what's important."

NPOV means presenting what the claims of are Conspiracy Theories are and what the opposing viewpoints are, without inflecting a judgement of value to them.

WRONG! "The neutral point of view is a means of dealing with conflicting views"[11] so given the fact that there are DIFFERENT POV about what claims are Conspiracy Theories or not, you can't decide this for everybody and you must write with a NEUTRAL POV. *This* is NPOV.--Pokipsy76 07:22, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

This doesn't mean they should get equal time. The official account of 9/11 is the one that gets the most support from scholars and experts on the subject, and can be the most easily verified. The conspiracy theories are speculation supported by a minority of individuals who have somewhat sketchy claims to expertise on the matter, and are generally not taken seriously by any authorities.

Now if there were to be a serious instance of a "Woodward and Bernstein" who "blow the lid off this whole thing." Then these theories would get equal footing, but all we have right now just amounts to blind speculation.

"The theories discussed in this article fit with the defining features of conspiracy theories."

So does the official story. It just has more people that want to accept it as reality because it often feels better to identify with authority and get on with your life than to wonder if people our own government could have been involved in what amounted to a stand-down of the US military. Try looking at the timelines and you'll see that the Commission's timeline doesn't match NORAD's. Which one of them is the real timeline? Is one of them a conspiracy? It makes me a 'conspiracy theorist' just for asking that question on here, doesn't it? And therefore I may be paranoid and even delusional according to the CT page, and yet, we're dealing in simple facts. I think NORAD probably knows what it's talking about, and the Commission had a job to do. But they cannot both be the correct timelines. However, because I point this out I am a conspiracy theorist.

The official story isn't a conspiracy theory, it is another conspiracy "fact," because the conspiracy involved (Al Qaeda) has openly admitted they have done it. We even have one of the conspirators (Mussaui, or however you spell it) currently standing trial, and even he isn't denying involvment ("I am Al-Qaeda!")

Look, bottom line is the "alternative theories are conspiracy theories. They are 'theories' which cannot be verified, and are claims of conspiracy. If that doesn't make it a "conspiracy theory" I don't know what does.--DCAnderson 03:22, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree that 'conspiracy theory' has a negative connotation for many readers. That being said Wikipedia does not live in a vacuum. Most people would call persons who believed in the theories discussed in the article ‘conspiracy theorists’. Now that these theories are starting to get more mainstream media coverage they are in many cases using that term to describe these theories. 03:02 26 April 2006 (EK)

Quick example of misinformation

The claim: It is alleged that the Twin Towers fell at close to free-fall speed, a characteristic of controlled demolition. Firstly, this is not a characteristic of any controlled demolition that I've ever seen. In demolition the minimum energy should be expended that can reliable cause collapse; a truly controlled demolition would have been noticeably slower. Secondly, there is no reason to think there is anything remarkable about falling at 'close to free-fall speed'. I pulled out a civil engineering textbook and did a few back-of-an-envelope calculations, and it was pretty clear there once that kind of mass was in motion, there was no chance of anything slowing it down. People, even those who know the demolition myth is nonsense, suspend disbelief because they want to believe in a conspiracy. Peter Grey 04:32, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm aware of that. The sentence should make it clear that the "fell at free-fall speed" and "characteristic of..." are both allegations. Haven't yet thought of a way to do that without a totally awkward method or list. --Mmx1 04:41, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Please remember that in this section the topic is not the content of the article, the topic is the *proven* negative POV of the title that instead according to wikipedia's rules should have a Neutral POV. Acutally nobody was able to assert the position that the title haa a NPOV, so why don't we change the title?--Pokipsy76 07:22, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Please recognize that most reputable published sources consider the claims on this entry page to be "conspiracy theories" with full awareness that this has a negative connotation. It is NPOV to use a title that reflects the overwhleming view of most reputable published sources. Many of the claims on this entry page are incoherent, hysterical, paranoid, illogical, nonsensical, and easily refuted as factually false by the average high school student. That this page is more than a few paragraphs long is a testament to the fanatic POV pushing of a handful of editors.--Cberlet 14:22, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

1) Cite the sources.

2) Prove that these sources refer to ALL the claims in the article as "conspiracy theories".

3) Remember that Wikipedia has the NPOV policy, your souces may not.

4) If there are SOME (or even many) claims that are "hysterical, paranoid, illogical, nonsensical, and easily refuted" this does not allow you to name the WHOLE article "conspiracy theory". To have this name you should have ALL claims of this kind.

5) The opinion that the claims are "hysterical, paranoid, illogical, nonsensical, and easily refuted" is definitely YOUR PERSONAL POV. Wikipedia isn't there to express YOUR POV (or even my POV), Wikipedia requires a NEUTRAL POV.--Pokipsy76 18:50, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Finding a place for conspiracy theories

There are a number of articles related to the September 11, 2001 attacks. This one is about conspiracy theories. Legitimate controversies should not be on this page in the first place. Peter Grey 14:35, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

1) The article is about what we can read inside it. To give that title to this content is to present a particular POV when there is another well represented one, and it's not correct in Wikipedia.

2)Are you suggesting that it would be all right if I write another article named "alternative theories about 9/11" speaking about the same identical claims of this article?--Pokipsy76 18:50, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

You mean like these?

9/11 Truth Movement
Criticisms of the 9/11 Commission Report
Jim Hoffman, et al.
Martial Law: 9/11 Rise of the Police State, et al.
People questioning the 9/11 Commissions account or whatever we're calling it today
Researchers questioning the official account of 9/11
Scholars for 9/11 Truth
The Citizens' Commission on 9-11

Tom Harrison ^Talk 18:58, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

No, I didn't mean artciles which speak about this claims as secondary topic.--Pokipsy76 19:58, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

it would be all right if I write another article named "alternative theories about 9/11" speaking about the same identical claims Simple answer, no. People have already assessed the merits of these theories, and found that these are not good-faith disagreements about the conventional narrative, and have no acceptable supporting evidence. If new evidence were to turn up, these theories would be re-assessed. It one established credibility, it would be moved to a more appropriate article.

For other alternatives, it depends on the alternate theory as to where it belongs. For example, the notion that the US government (or a few members thereof) engineered a spectacular terrorist hoax, kept their involvement secret for five years, but were so amateurish as to leave behind 'evidence' 'proving' government complicity, is a classic conspiracy theory and belongs here as a pop culture reference. On the other hand, officials who were negligent in the analysis or reporting of terrorist threat, who fear being accused, justly or unjustly, of failing to do their duty, and who band together to obscure the facts from scrutiny, would be a literal conspiracy, possibly even in the criminal sense. That's a realistic theory, and quite possibly has actually happened to some degree. Peter Grey 00:09, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Peter, you seem to assume that the spectacularly violent and aggressive Bush Administration isn't capable of the level of a misdeed like a terrorist hoax which happens to involve murder. While it may strike you as amateurish or impossible, so does much of the rest of their behavior. The idea that they did it in front of us and had the gall to assume they could get away with it is not unlike their behavior in Iraq (fake wmds), Afghanistan (thriving drug trade there now), Falluja (chemical weapons used in the open and attacks on those who tried to report on it), Abu Graib (torture in the open, attempts to shut everyone up about it), renditions all over Europe (now being exposed by legislators in the EU), and on and on. They don't care if we know because there's nothing we can do about it. Whether the evidence is provable or not only means some low-level clerks head will roll or someone will assume a new position in the White House. It's also in line with the US history of false allegations and staged events to get a public behind a war.

The incompetence angle cannot account for the unimpeded attack on the Pentagon on 9/11, or the fact that Flight 93's debris was spread out over miles, or the fact that the put options traded on the day and before were worldwide, among many others. Enron and Texaco aren't making well over 400% profit right now because Bush is incompetent. Rove is not incompetent. Generally these things are about making a great deal of money. They were incompetent about Katrina because they don't care about black people, as well as the rest of us (if we aren't their voting base or their funding sources), but that wasn't the case with 9/11. These are very different situations, very very different outcomes. The deaths from Katrina are over, the ones from 9/11 are endless. Bov 01:45, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

The difficulty of implementing an operation(s) of this type as well of lack of whistleblowers is used mostly by people in support of the official theory or as mentioned above to support a cover up of incompetence theory. All these arguments literally do is argue against the Make it Happen Theories. These arguments can be used as support of the Let It Happen Theories. By the way why was the shortcuts MIHOP and LIHOP taken out of the article? I have seen these terms used in stories in Newsday, The Village Voice and The New Yorker 02:51, 27 April 2006 (EK)

In bold, because you missed it: If new evidence were to turn up, these theories would be re-assessed. Conspiracy theories lack evidence and plausibility. Peter Grey 03:19, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

This is YOUR PERSONAL OPINION, it's definitely NOT a fact.--Pokipsy76 11:50, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

It's not any kind of opinion, it's the definition of conspiracy theory. Peter Grey 04:28, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, if conspiracy theories "lack evidence and plausibility" (by definition) then you can't call this article "conspiracy theories" because you would be implicitly asserting a position about the plausibility and evidence of the content, but this would be not neutral. So we have to change the title according to NPOV.--Pokipsy76 07:41, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

"Conspiracy theory" makes an objective and neutral statement about the merit of a particular hypothesis. It's not calling it inherently evil or anything like that. Maybe a title like 'Disproven speculations concerning the September 11th attacks' would work better? Peter Grey 00:42, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Would be better if you are able to cite scientific disproof of *all* the claims that are presented.

What do you think about "Skepticism about 9/11 official account"? Wouldn't it be objective and neutral? If not why?--Pokipsy76 08:50, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Fear of Edit War

"Good luck with that. I agree with the approach, but I'm not keen on getting involved as an edit war 
will undoubtedly ensure."

- quote from above.

Okay, that's fucking outrageous. Good faith edits being stifled out of fear of edit warring with editors that think they own this article and revert any movements from the status quo with nary an explanation [12] [13] .

I cleaned up the Claims regarding the actual collapse section [14] and posted my reasoning for each edit. Talk:9/11_conspiracy_theories#First_Cleanup_attempt.

So far the only complaints I've had thrown at me are: a) it's unfairly short versus the rebuttal section (since I've not continued the cleanup out of "fear of edit warring") b) my revisions were bad grammar.

Despite this, it's been reverted no less than three times

Is edit warring bad? Yes, because it clutters up the history. But it's the lesser evil against having an article stifle under the weight of terrible, clunky writing, unattributed quotes, and massive soapboxing by proxy (reproduced quotes where a summary would suffice).

I intend to continue editing in this fashion in the near future, under the following guidelines:

I WON'T delete outright any point that is sourced
I WILL convert quotes into neutral prose wherever possible
I WILL check citations and remove or rewrite allegations that are not present or misattributions.
I WILL remove unrelated and irrelevant crap like leading quotations that go nowhere and make no conclusions. E.g.

 A USGS study showed the elemental composition of a number of dust samples collected from outdoor 
 and indoor locations. [15]

under collapse allegations.

If you have objections, you'd better bring them now, because I'm dropping the hammer on this article.

--Mmx1 04:19, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I 100% agree with Mmx1, it is outrageous, we should be able to make legitimate edits with fear of an edit war. I Lov E Plankton 16:05, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Go right ahead. Everyone try to leave descriptive and accurate edit summaries through this process as well. Grand master ka 17:41, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I'll try to detail on the talk page as well; (goofed on the first attempt and didn't include a link in the edit summary). --Mmx1 17:47, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Again, the section you have edited - claims regarding the collapse - is a jumble of ideas thrown in together with no rationale and no longer in keeping with the system put in place of italicizing the claims to distinguish them. Why are you deleting content about the dust cloud? There is currently a hugely significant event in NYC wherein the pollutants of the dust cloud are now determined to be the cause of death of rescue workers. The studies related to the analyses of the dust cloud are significant not only for conspiracy theories about collapse, but the positions around the lies put forth by the Administration, such as the EPA. Please stop deleting the information already posted and what I'm continuing to post about the dust clouds. This is the result of someone who has no interest in the topic whatsoever, except to delete it's information, doing the editing. Bov 21:17, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

There's a bait and switch argument if I ever saw one. Yes, the dust is significant to the recovery....so put it in the Aftermath_of_the_September_11,_2001_attacks. That doesn't mean the dust analysis is relevant to the collapse theories, certainly not the way they were phrased. "X Agency did analysis on the dust" How is this relevant to the collapse? If there is a connection, make one and cite the source of the claim. Just sourcing the analysis without ANY explanation of its relevance is pointless. --Mmx1 23:38, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Be careful what you wish for. After reading over the links, I put them back in:

Second Round of Edits to 9/11_conspiracy_theories#Claims_regarding_the_actual_collapse

[16] Rewrote to address concerns of readability and establish some continuity to the section. Major points of contention:

removed the clause "firefighters and building workers" with respect to witnesses as that does not lend technical credence or authority to their statements above the generic term "witnesses", and that helps the sentence flow greatly.
Changed "No study has been done to determine if explosive residues were present." to state that numerous studies were performed but no evidence was found. Thanks for the links, BOV!
rewrote the hirise collapse section for readability (even deleted an counter-argument!).

It's clear to me that the readability issues come from the sloppy way this article was thrown together and the refusal to delete ANYTHING, not my edits. The numerous descriptive and qualifying clauses are clunky and poor English. The inline links look like shit, IMHO, and I will change to reference style once this section calms down.

--Mmx1 00:15, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

>>Changed "No study has been done to determine if explosive residues were present." to state that numerous studies were performed but no evidence was found. Thanks for the links, BOV! The use of thermite would not leave explosive residue. Other links showed unexplainable sulfidation in the metallurgical analyses which did suggest explosives. I've posted this previously but of course it's been deleted, as everything here would be if I weren't constantly posting. Instead, an entire article of the MIT engineers refuting CT claims without including any details of the claims except in run-on sentences thrown together in a jumble would probably quickly evolve. So we'll need to change your section on that claim, among other aspects of the one section you've chosen to try to dismantle which happens to deal with a highly contentious and litigious issue in NYC at the moment - the dust and the side effect of how it killed people. Bov 01:23, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

There's an Aftermath_of_the_September_11,_2001_attacks to discuss environmental fallout (i thought there was an environmental article but apparently not). It's very disingenuous of you to try to keep the material under this heading, which discusses the collapse, and not the aftermath.

The link to your sulfidation page is, frankly, nonsense. It's titled Metallurgical Examination of WTC Steel Suggests Explosives" but neither of the cited studies [17] [18] say anything about explosives. You highlight the words oxidation and sulfidation, but what's that supposed to mean? They're chemical processes that happen naturally (in slow processes) as well as apparently very quickly in the presence of heat. It's not "explosion" but essentially heat and sulfur-accelerated rusting. --Mmx1 01:31, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

What they do say is this:

"The results of the examination are striking. They reveal a phenomenon never before observed in building fires: eutectic reactions, which caused "intergranular melting capable of turning a solid steel girder into Swiss cheese." The New York Times described this as "perhaps the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation."

So whether or not its explosives remains a mystery. It remains one. If this article is going to be titled 'conspiracy theories,' we should at least be allowed to have them on here.

Bov 01:53, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I'd support putting that in the collapse article as it appears to be a legitimate scientific examination. However, it's still disingenuous for you to claim a link to explosives. It's not that "explosives reamin[s] a mystery" but that there's still no evidence. --Mmx1 03:34, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Conspiracy Theories

Cberlet had it as "These claims are widely dismissed as conspiracy theories, a claim that has negative connotations".

I put it as "These claims are regarded to by opponents as conspiracy theories, a term that has negative connotations."

The term conspiracy theory is overused here. I called what I deleted from the intro redundant because the same sentence was simultaneously present in the Criticisms section.

Not only that, but we should realize from Cberlets addition is that the title is POV by Wikipedia definition. I'm just saying, ease up on it already. SkeenaR 04:50, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Actually nobody has been able to defend the position that the title is NPOV. They seem to say that the title must not be netutral because their POV is the right one and the others are not. This is definitely NOT the right way to work with Wikipedia.--Pokipsy76 11:56, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

The title has been defended as NPOV for months. Please do some homework and check out the many debates on several pages. In each and every case, the majority of editors concluded that the use of the term "conspiracy theory" in the title of some pages was appropriate. There is no minority veto here on Wikipedia; and "consensus" does not mean "unanimous."

If it "has been defended as Neutral" why nobody is able to do this now? And why do you admit that it has a "negative connotation" (and therefore can't be "neutral" (do some homework and check out the meaning of the word neutral))?

As for the phrase: "While those who accept the 9/11 Commission Report dismiss alternative hypotheses as conspiracy theories," -- this is a good example of a biased claim that uses a fallacy of logic. One does not have to "accept the 9/11 Commission Report" as a pre-requisite to "dismiss alternative hypotheses" presented on this page "as conspiracy theories."

The term conspiracy theories has negative connotations because history has demonstrated that usually these types of claims turn out to be based on fallacies of logic, hyperbole, irrational beliefs, unfocused anxiety and fear, incompetent research, or lies. Perhaps those who object to the term could ponder their role in history and engage in some self-criticism. Effective social change that transforms the instituitions, structures, and systems of power, wealth, and privilege requires solid facts, not slippery myths. Conspiracism distracts us from these tasks. Conspiracism is part of the problem, not part of the solution. --Cberlet 15:16, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Skeena and Pokipsy on here about enough is enough with Conspiracy in the title and then trying to push it in the very first paragraph. It's overboard and ridiculous. The fact that we have multiple timelines on 9/11 put out by NORAD and the Commission is not conspiracy theory, it is fact. If someone questions this they are then considered a paranoid and delusional conspiracy monger when in fact this is a normal and healthy response in a country whose government is conducting worldwide secret detentions and torture and engaged in a war based on what happened on the day of 9/11. NOT questioning these contradictions is the real problem. Bov 15:46, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

If (as Cberlet says) "conspiracy theory" has a "negative connotation" (regardless of the motivation) I don't understand why don't we choose a NEUTRAL expression that could be the title according to wikipedia standards (see NPOV)? What's the problem about it?--Pokipsy76 22:15, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

<---------Lack of evidence and unanswered questions do not prove anything. They suggest further research--nothing more. The leaps of logic on this entry page are a disgrace to a serious encyclopedia. It is totally appropriate to point out that for over 50 years conspiracy theories have been studied as a form of -- at best -- misplaced understanding of power relationships in modern society. Here is a little something I wrote a few months ago:

Conspiracy theories are common after traumatic events in the United States. What follows is just a partial list of periods when conspiracism flourished and entered the public arena through social or political movements. Entries in brackets are reference points.

[1797–1800 Freemasons/Illuminati (Europe).] 1798–1802 Freemasons/Illuminati (U.S.). 1820–1844 AntiMasonry (Early Nativism). 1834–1860 Catholic Immigrants (Nativism–Know Nothings). 1830–1866 Slave Power Conspiracy. 1873–1905 Plutocrats and Bankers (“The Octopus”). [1903–1920 Jews (Protocols—Russia).] 1919–1935 The International Jew (Protocols—Britain & U.S.). 1919–1925 Anarchists and Bolsheviks. 1932–1946 Bankers, Liberal Collectivists, Reds, and Jews. 1940–1950 Reds and the End Times. 1950–1960 Liberal Internationalists & Reds. 1958–1968 Civil Rights Conspiracy. 1960–1970 Secret Kingmakers. 1963–1970 Assassination Conspiracy Theories. 1960–1980 Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll. 1970–1990 Secret Elites. 1975–Secular Humanism: Feminists and Homosexuals. 1986–1990 Secret Team. 1990–New World Order.

2001-Post 9-11 Cheney/Bush Neocon Terror Complicity. 2001-Post 9-11 Cheney/Bush Neocon Mossad/Zionists/Jews Terror Complicity.

2001-Post 9-11 Islamic Menace, Cultural Barbarism, "Clash of Civilizations."

Conspiracism is not about exposing vital new information, but about revising tired old myths. Better if we pay attention to practical organizing against the systems, structures, and institutions that oppress us.--Cberlet 19:06, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

That doesn't say anything. There is nothing wrong with questioning the facts, especially when the "facts" are so inconsistent. If fallacies of logic, hyperbole, irrational beliefs, unfocused anxiety and fear, incompetent research, and lies are common traits of conspiracy theories, they are practically the rule when it comes to the pablum fed to us by government and media. SkeenaR 19:23, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

One does not negate the other. That's a fallacy of logic. Ironic, no?--Cberlet 19:49, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

To put it another way: fallacies of logic, hyperbole, irrational beliefs, unfocused anxiety and fear, incompetent research, and lies are not an effective way to challenge the pablum fed to us by government and media.--Cberlet 19:51, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

You might find this interesting Cberlet: [19], [20]

Just because I recognize that most conspirary theories are forms of junk activism does not imply that I support the flagrant and venal propaganda being peddled by the Bush Administraion, of which I am a harsh critic. Another example of a fallacy of logic. Next?--Cberlet 21:47, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean by logical fallacy because I was not implying anything, but it is nice to see an activist doing his part. SkeenaR 22:39, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

That government and media aren't being challenged by wikipedia Cberlet. And I don't see the relevance of your point. This article is only supposed to describe the 9/11 conspiracy theories, not pontificate on the merit of them or lack thereof. It is obvious that many do not want these theories expressed at all, anywhere, and feel that if they must be expressed that they be portrayed as negatively as possible. What I said about the government and media is my opinion and I'm not trying to put it in the article, but some are hell-bent on giving this article a negative connotations by association. It is propagandistic with this "negative connotation" in the first paragraph and then repeatedly hammered in througout the article. At least it was. They should cut it out. SkeenaR 20:06, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Like I said, many are determined to portray it as negatively as possible. "Widely dismised"? Okay. How widely? By who? By opponents, thats who. Tom, you edit is non-descriptive and biased. SkeenaR 20:24, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

An encyclopedia does not favor minority viewpoints, it favors majority viewpoints backed by cites to reputable published sources, and it starts by reporting the overall consensus of those reputable published sources. To be balanced and NPOV, a page devoted to minority viewpoints must include in the lead a mention of the overall consensus of the majority reputable published sources. It is a bummer to be a fan of a minority viewpoints while editing an encyclopedia. On many pages I represent a minority viewpoint. I recognize that I do not have a minority veto, and that "consensus" does not mean "unanimous."

Please check out the policy on Verifiability:

policy in a nutshell | Information on Wikipedia must be reliable. Facts, viewpoints, theories, and arguments may only be included in articles if they have already been published by reliable and reputable sources. Articles should cite these sources whenever possible. Any unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Wikipedia:Verifiability

Also Logical_fallacy; Consensus reality, FUTON bias, and Wikipedia:Reliable sources--Cberlet 20:31, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Ok, but that sentence should be fixed. SkeenaR 20:48, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

There should not be a pov attack of the theories in the first paragraph. Bov 00:35, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

And there should not be a POV attack in the title itself!!--Pokipsy76 07:45, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

No forecasting

"...but are gaining acceptance and being further developed by a growing minority of scientists, government officials, military experts and some in the intelligence community." To say that they "are gaining," and to refer to a "growing" minority is to make a prediction. We can only legitimately say what has happened. Tom Harrison ^Talk 21:46, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

If a minority is said to be currently growing, please expain to me how that is a prediction. Who is forecasting? Is a seedling growing? Is a 5 year old child growing? Yes, and it's demonstrable.SkeenaR 21:51, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

You are forecasting, when you say it "is growing" instead of "has grown" or (better yet) "grew from 10 in 2002 to 17 in 2005, according to Professor X." You hear this all the time in the context of investments. "3M is going up! Buy now!" Hog wash. 3M went up; Maybe it will go up. But nobody knows if it is now going up. Tom Harrison ^Talk 22:01, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

In either case, you need to provide a source showing that number is growing. Most likely the number of researchers and believers are shrinking because of lack of evidence.--Bill 22:02, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Are you saying that we could not state encyclopedically that a particular child is growing? Or that the Earth is presently making it's way around the sun? Is that not as obvious as a blue sky? What sort of verification would you find worthy? SkeenaR 22:05, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Whether or not the movement is a growing child or a decaying mushroom (sorry, running out of metaphors) is the question. Saying it is growing because that is what seedlings do, and it is a seedling because it is growing, is unpersuasive. Tom Harrison ^Talk 22:14, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I think he is saying that it is a peacock and/or weasel word. Which it is.--DCAnderson 22:08, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Any study that contradicts the obvious which is that fewer and fewer people believe these theories once they hear the faulty logic used and the lack of evidence provided.--Bill 22:09, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

"once they hear the faulty logic used..." Heh heh. Tom Harrison ^Talk 22:14, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

"once they hear the faulty logic used..." to what? Justify POV? "Saying it is growing because that is what seedlings do, and it is a seedling because it is growing, is unpersuasive." SkeenaR 22:35, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Obvious? Let's see your citation for that. SkeenaR 22:13, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I doubt I could find one. Thats why I didn't write "shrinking minority" in the article. Not many news stories about .02% changing to .01%.--Bill 22:19, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I said that these researchers etc are a growing number, and they are. Scholars for 9/11 Truth has a growing membership for example. And where did you get this .02 figure from? SkeenaR 22:40, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Even if there are more today than yesterday, how do you know there will be more tomorrow? Tom Harrison ^Talk 23:04, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Is wikipedia a growing encyclopedia? I'm not going to argue this. SkeenaR 23:50, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

So who are these "scientists, government officials, military experts and some in the intelligence community?"

File:TinFoilHat Superfriends.jpg

My cat says that substantial scientific methods were employed to arrive at the conclusion that the Towers were destroyed using pre-planted explosives -- that should be good enough for you! Morton devonshire 00:27, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

In the intro it says:

"These claims are widely dismissed as conspiracy theories by journalists and scientists in publications ranging from Scientific American[13] to Popular Mechanics[14] but are being further developed by a minority of scientists, government officials, military experts and some in the intelligence community."

Seriously, who are they?

Now I'm not saying there aren't any, but so far I have not heard of any of these conspiracy theorists who could be described as

a scientist
govenment official
military expert
member of the intelligence community

If you guys can't come up with any 9/11 conspiracy theorist who can accurately be described by that statement, that sentence is getting the ax.--DCAnderson 22:05, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

So far I've got Sibel Edmonds who is a member of the intelligence community. I don't that justifies "some in the intelligence community," that's just "a person" in the intelligence community.

Venezuela is supposedly going to do an investigation, but they havn't really drawn a conclusion yet.

I'm still waiting for the other three categories.--DCAnderson 22:14, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Please, no axe, please. Cynthia Mckinney is a politician, Prof. Jones is a Scientist, Robert M. Bowman is a military expert, Wayne Madsen is a member of the intelligence community. This is just a few, there are many more. SkeenaR 22:24, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

We need a few more. So far we have a handful of individuals, but they don't seem to justify the weight that that sentence implies--DCAnderson 23:08, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, right. And that sentence isn't so weighty. Do you want me to spend a whole bunch time compiling a list or something?. How many do you need? You can look too if you like. SkeenaR 00:36, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Well I looked into Edmonds, and she doesn't even seem to support a conspiracy theory, she just seems to have criticisms of the FBIs handling of the investigation.

Which brings us to another problem that needs to be addresed on this page.

There seem to be a large number of persons mentioned on this page who are implied as being in support of a conspiracy theory, but are only critical of the government's handling of the situation.

We need to fix that.--DCAnderson 22:27, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Actually, we don't know exactly what Sibel thinks yet. But anyway, before we can fix anything, which people and specifically how are they erroneously reffered to? SkeenaR 22:31, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

In the whistleblowers section it implies that Sibel Edmonds and David Schippers support these theories.

In the Intelligence Issues section, it is implied that Rep. Curt Weldon supports the theories.

This article also implies that Kevin Ryan of UL supports these theories. (I can't quite figure out his deal, maybe he does, hard to tell.)

Including people in here who do not support the conspiracy theory but say things that could be construed as evidence for a conspiracy is original research.--DCAnderson 23:02, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't know about Edmonds or Weldon, but I know that Schippers is a supporter and I am pretty sure about Kevin Ryan. I'll look. SkeenaR 23:46, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Okay, so far you have:

1 scientist out of their area of expertise (atom collision != airplane-building collision)
1 congresswoman (out of 500+, more if you count incoming/outgoing)
1 manager at a water testing facility who gets fired for publicly questioning findings of a separate department
1 retired AF Col with a political axe to grind, who lies about his awards, and has been out of the service for close to 30 years.

Moreover, Bowman headed up technology research and can hardly be called a "military expert". There are plenty of civilian analysts that are far more knowledgeable abt the military than he, especially as all his info is dated.

1 coke-sniffing, hooker-chasing actor

Nice minority. All you're missing is a steroid-pumping ballplayer. Anyone know what José Canseco thinks of this issue?

I'm not going to argue with you on every single individual, it would take too long. You could do your own research. A place to get a start at least is the 9/11 researchers page, though even if a roster of former US presidents were added to the list of people you no doubt would try and discredit that too, what with oval office blowjobs, drunk driving convictions and all. Oh yeah, and non-existent WMD's and restored opium crops. Nobody mentioned any coke sniffer here. But whatever. I don't think any of these theories necessarily desreve credibility, but they are notable and deserve an NPOV article. SkeenaR 02:55, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

The Charlie Sheen dig was tongue in cheek. The rest are serious, though. A physicist attempting to play mechanical engineer, without any formal training or certification. One congresswoman out of many (minority of one, perhaps). A manager (not an engineer or scientist) being misrepresented as an authority on steel. And a former AF Col who lies on his resume. Those are not personal or ad hominem attacks - it does call into question their qualifications and in particular, the quality of your "minority".

The physicist isn't studying an airplane building collision, it's the collapse he's going on about which is apparently a relevant field for a physicist. There is representative Ron Paul, former gov't guys Morgan Reynolds and Andreas Von Buelow just off the top of my head. I don't know what lying you are talking about, though I'm not saying you are wrong. There's Col. Don de Grand Pri(that spelling is wrong, I'll look it up for you later if you like but it's getting to have been a long day) and other military guys. Any politician's or whoever quality is always a matter of debate or for dispute, but that's not the point anyway, we need notability and they qualify. Thats why they have articles. SkeenaR 03:26, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

No....engineering matters are not relevant matters for a physicist who studies atomic collisions. In any case, Talk:Robert_M._Bowman#Misrepresentation explains Bowman's lying. He never won the SAME medal once, never mind twice. Nor did he win the prestigious Eisenhower Medal, and nothing can be found about the "George F. Kennan Peace Prize". --Mmx1 03:42, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, that's good to know about Bowman. I will never tell anyone that he won the prestigious Eisenhower Medal. I will dig up the relevant physics that Jones has studied in the meantime. They are collpase time matters and fire and molten metal matters and such.SkeenaR 03:49, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

And what about the other people?

What about the

journalists and scientists in publications ranging from Scientific American[13] to Popular Mechanics[14]

how may of them can you mention?--Pokipsy76 07:52, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Well sources are cited right there. I mean it's a link to the article in Scientific American where they talk about it. Then there is a link to Popular Science where they talk about it. If you realy want me to, I can go copy/paste the author's names off the article.--DCAnderson 08:02, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

So we have just 2 (two) articles of this kind? Why it is sayd "from... to..." what is between? It is written

These claims are widely dismissed as conspiracy theories by journalists and scientists...

so where is this "width" of the dismission?--Pokipsy76 09:56, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

That "width" would most likely include just about anyone who is not a member of the fringe group of conspiracy theorists. (Oh sorry, "alternative researchers.")

Here is a list of the people Popular Mechanics consulted[21]--DCAnderson 10:15, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

"Most likely" is your opinion. You are not allowed to assume that people different from the "conspiracy theorists" believe in the official account. Moreover: in any 9/11 "conspiratory" site (for example [22]) you can find a number of mentioned people more or less comparable with the people mentioned by Popular Mechanics.--Pokipsy76 10:37, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

So are you trying to tell me that the people who believe the official account are not in the majority? Seriously dude, try and tell me that. I want you to say it. Come on, seriously. Believe me you'll be hard pressed to even find an "alternative researcher" who is that disillusioned.

But if you are that insistent, we've got FOX News, CNN, MSNBC, The Jewish Defamation League, The Governments of the United States, England, Germany, France, Poland, Canada etc. Penn & Teller, the New York Times, MIT...

I could keep going like this.--DCAnderson 11:01, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

In the article you can read

In a Zogby International poll commissioned by 911truth.org, half (49.3%) of New York City residents and 41% of New York citizens overall believe the US Government "knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act."

Even if 49,3% is not "the majority" I think it is enought to say that the theories are NOT "widely dismissed as conspiracy". FOX News, CNN, MSNBC don't defend a particular position about the claims of the alternative researches, The Governments of United States does but it is interested to defend itself, the government of other states never took position about this controversies and however what they say to believe is influenced by politics and diplomacy.--Pokipsy76 12:26, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

You know what, then just go delete the word "widely" if it is upsetting you so much.--DCAnderson 13:36, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Are you giving your agreement about that?--Pokipsy76 21:24, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Proposal for new sub-articles

Okay, I've been looking at this bad-boy, and I think this should work if we're going to split this thing up.

The following sections:

Government Foreknowledge
World Trade Center Towers + 7 World Trade Center
Flight 93
Claims Related to Jews and Israel

need to be split into their own sub-articles and replaced with a summary and a link to the appropriate sub-article.

That should fix the length of the article and not constitute a POV fork.--DCAnderson 01:33, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

As I said above, "The article as it is relies far too heavily on primary sources, and is becoming a link farm for web site promoters. Rather than multiplying this problem by adding four more articles, and four more links to prisonplanet.com, et al., this one should be shortened and correctly sourced." Tom Harrison ^Talk 01:40, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

I oppose splitting this article and support editing using standard Wiki policies--which should cut 2/3 out of this entry.--Cberlet 02:16, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

No opinion on splitting, but I would point out that 'foreknowledge' can mean 1) the sum of available intelligence at the time, 2) knowledge that was available but ignored out of negligence, 3) specific knowledge that was deliberately concealed in collaboration with the attackers. These are all substantially different topics. Peter Grey 04:49, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

DCAnderson, that New York Magazine article is a GREAT FIND! It's exactly the type of neutral source this article needs, not citing the primary sources. I am working on using it to replace much of what's in here. I too am opposed to dividing up the article.--Mmx1 03:15, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Extreme POV in Main Categorizations Section

Right away this section is in trouble because you are quoting from a person associated with the 9/11 truth movement. "The received Bushian line: Osama, nineteen freedom-haters with box cutters, etc.” 'The received Bushian line' and 'nineteen freedom haters' has a negative connotation. As a whole this line is not understandable. This should something along the lines of nineteen members of Al Qaeda hijacked four planes then used them as missiles in a suicide bombing terrorist attack against four targets etc. The motivations behind these attacks were the spread of Fundamentalist Islam and hatred of Western values such as democracy and freedom of religion. The collapse of the Towers One and Two were a direct result of the plane crashes and the collapse of tower seven were the result fires stated by falling debris from towers one and two.

‘This line was advanced, with much ass-covering compensation, in the 9/11 Commission Report’. First of all a curse word is completely unnecessary. The other point is that the 9/11 Commission findings are the official or mainstream theory these days. The “We had no warning” could better be described as “The original official theory” or “mainstream belief in the months following the attacks”

The main problem was the attempt to take out Original research and Uncited Material. While a good idea in general this is a summary section. For this type of section trying to cite everything is counterproductive. 01:20 28 April 2006 (EK)

I put that quote in, because it helps clarify what the 9/11 conspiracy theorists believe. The quote is somewhat biased (that's why there are the big blue quotation marks around it) but it really helps the reader's understanding of the article. --DCAnderson 06:15, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Given the extreme POV of the title that you seem to defend I really don't understand how can you debate on the neutrality of the rest, I find this ridiculous. If we accept a POV title why culdn't we accept it in the article itself?--Pokipsy76 08:04, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

It is late at night so forgive me Pokipsy is your comment directed at me or DCAnderson?. Do you mean the titles in the main article or of this section? My opinion is the way LIHOP (or “Let It Happen on Purpose”) and MIHOP (“Made It Happen on Purpose”)” Theory titles and the wording in the main article are preferable to the The Official Story (a.k.a. “The Official Conspiracy Theory”) and The Incompetence Theory (also the Stupidity, Arrogance, “Reno Wall Theory"). As for the discussion pages POV is the main idea. But if you object change the title of this section to "Main Categorizations Section" or whatever works for you. 05:11 28 April 2006 (EK)

(Why don't you sign?) My point is that the main problem of this article is the POV title "Conspiracy theories" (an expression that has "negative implications" according to "Conspiracy theory" and according to everybody in this talk page). This is the first thing to change to the article in order to make it have a NPOV!! It makes no sense to debate about the Neutrality of the content given the title!!--Pokipsy76 09:53, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Extraordinary deletions

The article appears to be in the process of being dismantled. Removal of the critical PNAC and Operation Northwoods statements (which are certainly not "original research", having been cited endlessly by 911 sceptics) guts the article of much of its basis, and seems to indicate a deliberate purpose behind these edits (although I will continue to assume good faith, in the hope this material will be restored in a sub-article). It's a good thing wikipedia maintains a permanent history, and thus such valuable material can be readily retrieved and restored. JEREMY 05:30, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

What's the link between PNAC and Operation Northwoods and 9-11? --Mmx1 05:46, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

The PNAC — whose members make up a large proportion of the current administration — stated openly that a new Pearl Harbor style event could serve their political ends. Operation Northwoods demonstrates that an arm of the US government has, in the past, conspired to murder others and engineer the evidence to serve its political ends. This is circumstantial evidence in favour of the theory that the US government might have been aware of or involved in 911.  JEREMY 07:29, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Right, but give us a citation to a secondary source that makes this claim.--DCAnderson 07:39, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

If you have reliable sources which make these claims then cite them. JoshuaZ 05:53, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

I am the one deleting all this. All these statements are unsourced. It has been discussed at length that this was the reason the article is too long. If you can find sources for the statements, feel free to put them back in.--DCAnderson 06:07, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

I understand your dislike of unsourced statements, but the usual method is to use one of the cite-source templates (indicating scepticism to the casual reader), and leave it to others to provide justification. These wholesale deletions seriously misrepresent the sceptics' case.  JEREMY 07:29, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

The problem isn't just that there are unsourced statements. The problem is that a lot of the statements have a source, but that source will be a news article that didn't say anything about a conspiracy. These sources are then implied to point to a conspiracy. The problem is, is that is Original Research, which is a big faux pas on Wikipedia.--DCAnderson 07:36, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

The problem could be resolved much more easily without these deletions if you realize that "conspiracy theories" is not a correct title for this article.--Pokipsy76 08:01, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Even if we changed the name of the article it would still be filled with unsourced statements and original research.--DCAnderson 08:06, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

I have looked at several of the 9/11 general articles such as background and after effects. I have looked at Pearl Harbor alternative theories, Kennedy assassination alternative theories pages. The only article that comes close as far as being held to this rigorous a standard is the Kennedy assassination theories. As you said a newspaper source might mention an event but not tie it to a conspiracy theory. But a Web site sourced in another section or the links at the bottom of the page will. People would get annoyed if the same source is cited in ten different sections. Another factor is that many conspiracy websites and movies like Loose Change and do list events then let the readers or viewers draw their own conclusions. Wikipedia Guidelines are just that guidelines not hard and fast rules. This is an article about theories not hard facts. It is an article about an very emotional event for hundreds of millions of people that occurred in the internet age. You can not edit it the exact same way as you would an article on the War of 1812. 04:44 28 April 2006 (EK)

The problem is that:

There are a large number of random "facts" listed that make up original research. i.e. A user just cherry picks news articles to support his own personal theory.
There are a large number of theories here that are not attributed to any source. Which is just more original research

I have no problem with this type of thing getting deleted 05:23, 28 April 2006 (EK)

What is appropriate for this article is a list of theories put forth by third parties outside Wikipedia that can be cited.--DCAnderson 09:00, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that most sources I have seen are like this article using news stories or showing somebody speaking and interpreting it in thier own way. What is a correct outside source? Micheal Moore's Websites or films? Seventeen Page debate in the Current events board of Suicide Girls? ,911truth.org which is more of a mish mash then we are? 05:39, 28 April 2006 (EK)

You were saying that "The problem isn't just that there are unsourced statements" and so on... I was suggesting that these *other* "problems" are just due to the uncorrect (and POV) name af the article.--Pokipsy76 09:10, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I heard you the first time. Look an unsourced statement is still an unsourced statement no matter what you call the article. It is not going to magically become cited just because the title changed.

The statements that are original research are not going to suddenly change from a list of disparate facts to an actual theory put forth by a secondary source just because you changed the title.

What the title of the article has nothing to do with this, okay. If you want to go talk about the bias in the title of the article, talk about it in one of the appropriate sections above.--DCAnderson 09:20, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

But (as I alredy said above) I was not speaking about the problem of unsourced statements, i was talking about the *other* problems that you exposed after saying that "The problem isn't just that there are unsourced statements".--Pokipsy76 09:45, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Look I'll rephrase myself then:

"The problem is that a lot of the statements have a source, but that source will be a news article that didn't say anything about a conspiracy or alternative theory. These sources are then implied to point to a conspiracy or alternative theory."

What I said is still true.

So can we stop whinig about semantics?--DCAnderson 10:08, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

And what if the new title would be "Controversies over the official account of 9/11"? What is the problem if the source is implied to have given rise to a controversy between different interpretations of the fact?--Pokipsy76 10:55, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Because the original research was still just original research. Most of it was just random news articles that in and of themselves didn't imply anything. And besides, "Controversies over 9/11" is straying very far from the origianl goal of this article, and is a pretty damn vague statement to boot.--DCAnderson 13:46, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Most 9/11 researchers

There was a bit in the Flight 93 section which claimed that Most 9/11 researchers believe that Flight 93 was shot down. If this is indeed true, it is important to find a poll describing this.

I suspect that what was meant was that Most 9/11 researchers critical of the official story of the fate of Flight 93 believe that the plane was shot down.

I cannot be sure if the use of the word most is warranted without more research, but I chose to keep it intact rather than make unresearched changes.

Even if the majority of 9/11 researchers (including those who support the official story) believe that Flight 93 was shot down, it may be less controversial and more in keeping with NPOV to retain the distinction that those who believe that Flight 93 was shot down are those who do not believe the official story.

Please comment, and feel free to alter the statement to conform to proper standards of terminology. Superluser 18:04, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

That quote has a reference cited, but after looking at the reference I think the quote should be changed to "One blogger believes that Flight 93 was shot down..."--Bill 20:28, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Hey, at least that statement has a citation. That's better than a lot of the statements on this page.--DCAnderson 02:34, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

It seems if this were any other topic then people editing would do a simple google search and not just deride the page as it stands. A google search for "Flight 93" and "shot down" returns thousands of entries, many conspiracy sites [23],[24],[25],www.prisonplanet.com/articles/april2004/042104flight93.htm],[26],[27]and some mainstream stories [28][29]. I'd say most conspiracy sites agree on this point. Bov 04:35, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Term "conspiracy theories"

The term reminds me of the FBI term in the 50s for civil rights workers; "outside agitators". Could we please stop using it for any theory which does not confrom to the government theory or spin? May I suggest "Alternative Theories"? 64.229.28.213 13:06, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

"Alternative Theories" actually reminds me more of the governments term for civilian casualties, "collateral damage."

This is just an attempt by the conspiracy theorists themselves to avoid the bad reputation that conspiracy theories have earned in the past. We shouldn't cowtow to a PC attempt by conspiracy theorists to give conspiracy theories a facelift.

And check here [30] and here [31] for the pages where it was discussed whether "conspiracy theory" was a biased statement. There is a reason "conspiracy theory" does not appear on Wikipedia:Words to avoid.--DCAnderson 14:32, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

I see that the editing down of text occurs for all the CT views but Commission views are left fully intact with long quotes.24.4.180.197 17:29, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

This article is the place for actual 'conspiracy theories'. That should not include every speculation that opposes the conventional view, only those that fail to establish sufficient plausibility. Are there any versions of events that don't fall into one of those two groups? Peter Grey 19:59, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Now that the Commission response to the financial questions was edited down -- just like all the CT have been -- it was suddenly quadrupled in size and now is nearly larger than any of the rest of the case that is made by CTs for the whole section. How hard is this to understand, what's going on here? The goal of the people editing here is not to explain what the conspiracy theories are or why they exist -- as one might imagine the purpose of this page would be -- but to simply list them as minimally as possible and then provide a large and detailed debunking of each one by the Commission, which far exceeds the content of the CTs themselves. In that case the page should be called "Official Debunking of 9/11 Conspiracy Theories." 24.4.180.197 21:01, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

The Jews and Israel Debunking info is full of OR

To maintain consistency, we need to remove the OR in the section. Here is a link [32] where links can be found to sites that debunk it as secondary sources.

I might work on it later, but I need to take a nap.--DCAnderson 21:49, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Rewriting

Personally I think the way this article is written is wrong, and the constant adding of all kind of weird theories is making it less and less readable. Instead of focusing on what could have happened, it should focus on a point by point list of what doesn't work in the official story, from the cell phones, towers collapse, pentagon hole, etc and then add what could have happened.

Also I find it very sad that some people keep trying to present every alternate theory as crazy talk and put the major focus of the article on the official story, when this isn't what the article is about. For example, link 29 is used to prove that a study was done and concluded that there was no sign of other explosions to bring down the towers. But if you follow the link, it's an Al-zajeera page which actually claims that the planes were robot planes with a minimal crew and that the US Gov was behind the attacks. The whole article is a spin in favor of the official story. Elfguy 19:13, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Goldmine of Secondary Sources on Conspiracy Theories on AlJazeera.com

Here is a link [33] to all the articles about Conspiracy Theories on AlJazeera.com

And since AlJazeera is an actual news source, we will be a step above the whole "some crap that somebody said on their blog" level of journalistic integrity that most of these theories have.--DCAnderson 19:56, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

That looks useful. There may also be some stuff at Google Scholar, but I haven't been able to muster the will to dig through it yet. Tom Harrison ^Talk 02:01, 2 May 2006 (UTC)