Talk:7 World Trade Center

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Proposal for new content based on the latest NIST report

I propose to add details from the final NIST report and the q&a section on NIST's website.

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After critics on the previous report have been raised during the NIST WTC7 technical briefing on Aug.2008, the revised final report was published in Nov.2008. Different from the previous report assuming the building to descend at an approximately constant speed, does the new report assume an approximately constant acceleration in three phases: (confer NIST q&a page as well as the attached image)

• Stage 1 (0 to 1.75 seconds): acceleration less than free fall, due to buckling of exterior columns in the lower stories.
• Stage 2 (1.75 to 4.0 seconds): gravitational acceleration (free fall), indicating no support from the structure below.
• Stage 3 (4.0 to 5.4 seconds): decreased acceleration, due to increased resistance from the collapsed structure and debris below.

The symmetric appearance of the downward fall of the WTC 7 that could be observed was primarily due to the greater stiffness and strength of its exterior frame relative to the interior framing. For the investigation, the NIST investigators did not look at actual steel samples from WTC 7. Steel samples were removed from the site before the NIST investigation began.

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  Downward velocity of north face roofline as WTC7 began to collapse

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Is it possible to include this information, or are there any reasons why it can/should be excluded? The detailed (and really funny) Youtube investigation is here: WTC7: NIST Finally Admits Freefall (Part I) (Part II) (Part III) Johninwiki (talk) 02:21, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

The fact that NIST corrected its findings should be related to how NIST used these findings to support its conclusions. It is in this respect that this information becomes relevant to the Seven WTC article. --Cs32en (talk) 19:36, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Update:Moved the proposal here (WTC7 talk). I also added a new part on how NIST used their findings to support their conclusions.Johninwiki (talk) 01:26, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Is the explanation I wrote above conform with the article writing rules of Wikipedia ? I would like to include it in the main article but would like to have acknowledgement from at least one administrator first. Johninwiki (talk) 01:10, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Way way too much detail and wouldn't belong here anyway. Boil it down significantly and it might fit in Collapse of the World Trade Center but probably not even then. It's really not very meaningful. RxS (talk) 02:59, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

I hope the new version is acceptable - I boiled the explanation down to the most important facts. According to Acroterion(see User_talk:Johninwiki) and Cs32en, the new facts belong here to the 7 WTC article, which is what I believe as well, as they are an update to the existing description. The new findings are significantly different from the previous report, which is why they have to be mentioned. - Johninwiki (talk) 05:00, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Why are they significant to this article? RxS (talk) 05:25, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

The current article already contains an explanation of the previous NIST article. However, the page needs to be updated and has to refer to the most recent article published by NIST as well. It is further important to mention why the article has been revised and to state the major changes. Contrary question: Which of the facts I wrote above is not of public interest and why ? - Johninwiki (talk) 06:03, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

This (or any really) article should generally always refer to the latest information sure. Talking about how the understanding of the rates of collapse has changed over time is way too much detail in such a general topic article. Even the varied rates of collapse during the event is too much detail. There's very little public interest in any of this. RxS (talk) 14:13, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Especially the varied rates are of great public interest. So far, the NIST commision has kept denying the fact that the building descended in free-fall, which they suprisingly revised in their final paper. From the beginning people have been curious about if the building descended in free-fall speed and if controlled demolition was the cause. These questions still belong to the most interesting topics of WTC7, which can be confirmed by a quick search of wtc7 "free-fall", returning about 35.000 hits. Due to the public interest of this issue in general, even a complete article has been created Collapse of the World Trade Center (you mentioned earlier). The revised explanation of the collapse sequence is therefore a significant detail, which is, I would say, perhaps even more exciting to know than many of the other details. - Johninwiki (talk) 16:37, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Could you demonstrate somehow the great public interest? Outside the controlled demolition community that is? Outside that group of people, there has been little if any interest in the rates of collapse and if demolition was the cause. It has always been a fringe theory and continues to be one at the present. I think it's clear that the general public has zero interest in the speed at which the building(s) collapsed. And setting aside the public's interest in this, reliable sources have very little if any interest in the topic. They see no issue here, no debate or controversy, so the material really doesn't belong here. RxS (talk) 17:52, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

You define general public by a subset of poeple visiting this page. However, general public applies to everybody visiting Wikipedia. If these people believe the one or other thing is irrelevant. If the information is interesting to a significant percentage of visitors of this page, interest for the public is justified. Free-fall is futher eligible to be included in the article, as the Collapse of the World Trade Center article already contains a statement about free-fall (cite:crushing the entire tower at near free-fall speed). This information is not only interesting to the "controlled demolition community". It is interesting for basically everyone who read the previous NIST report and wondered why the building should descend at a constant speed, as the video evidence shows the building to accelerate. The actual explanation of WTC7's collapse already lasts over 2.5 pages, yet there is no explanation of how the collapse sequence in the video evidence can be explained. Aside from that, your last statement is very interesting. Could you elaborate on the definition of "reliable sources" ? - Johninwiki (talk) 01:09, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure how you come to the conclusion that I define interest in this topic only to those visiting this page. No matter, my question to you remains unanswered. The definition of reliable sources is covered in some detail here: WP:RS. Such a high degree of detail on the collapse belongs in the article about the collapse, not in this article (which covers a more general topic). RxS (talk) 05:58, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Hm.. to add it to the WTC collapse article would be an option. Along with this, even more parts should be shifted there, to make the WTC7 article consistent with WTC. In WTC, the collapse is described in just two lines, whereas WTC7 still contains the full description. The public interest is, as before, proven by 35.000 hits returned by the google search of wtc7 "free-fall". How else do you want to guarantee an unbiased measurement of the public interest for a given topic ? - Johninwiki (talk) 12:56, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Google hits are a poor indication of notibility. See WP:GHITS. I'm afraid the burden is on you to show notibility at this point. Try bringing it up at the collapse page, though you'll likely get the same objections there. RxS (talk) 14:41, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Let me explain step by step. As you mentioned earlier, Wikipedia should be kept up to date and refer to the newest articles. You already agreed that the page has to be updated to include the citation to the new NIST report. Along with that, it is natural to briefly summarize what is new and why it has been changed. Everybody is interested to know what is new, which is why we have a Newspaper everyday. Next, the new findings in the actual article are significantly different from the previous article, which is why this needs to be mentioned. The previous report was simply based on a false assumption, which obviously questions the result and the conclusion. Taking a look on Wikipedias actual WTC7 article, I also wonder why a whole and very detailed section is dedicated to the Borough of Manhattan Community College's Fiterman Hall building (including photo), which is obviously not the main focus of the WTC7 collapse section. How can the importance of this section be justified by other than the personal interest of certain administators? A search of this particular bulding in google merely returns 2000 hits. You mentioned that my explanation is too detailed. Now lets take a look at the actual WTC7 article again. Cite: "The first visible sign of collapse [...] 8.2 seconds, before the north wall began to collapse, which took at least another 7 seconds". This means, the existing explanation already explains the collapse in two steps, however, describing it in three steps would be too much detail according to you. As the complete chapter is called collapse, it is eligible to explain especially this part more detailed - no other part deserves more detail. Moreover is the actual explanation in the article false and not consistent with NIST's new findings. The first visible sign of collapse occured in the penthouse at 1.75 seconds prior to the collapse, not 8.2 seconds, also did the north face descend within 3.65 seconds rather than 7 seconds. I strongly recommend to fix this and update the actual page properly to remove existing flaws. - Johninwiki (talk) 09:55, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

The edits you suggest above are well beyond simply updating some numbers. The collapse section already has too much minutiae as it is and I'd favor cutting it back a little. It's also clear that you're just trying to shoe horn controlled demolition fluff into the article. So no, like I say try the controlled demolition article or something. RxS (talk) 04:59, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

You should be very careful with your arguments. Those numbers are not published by any "controlled demolition community", but by NIST themselves. There is not ANY reason for not updating them. If your opinion is that updating those numbers creates a link to controlled demolition, then you imply that NIST belongs to the "controlled demolition community". So unless you can prove that NIST belongs to the "controlled demolition community", there is no reason for not updating those numbers. For cutting down the article, you obviously plan to cut back the detailed timing numbers as they are not of interest of "reliable sources" due to new findings of NIST, right ? This proves my initital assumption in a talk with Acroterion (User_talk:Johninwiki) that Wiki administrators act as puppets of the US government. Once you remove those numbers I suggest to add this as example to Internet_censorship#Portal_censorship. - Johninwiki (talk) 10:14, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

"are there any reasons why it can/should be excluded?". Yes, this YouTube video is not a reliable source. It should not be used in this article. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 06:07, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, you are right - also it was not my intention to include the youtube videos. The only part I want to include is written between the dashed lines above (- - -). I took care to only refer to NIST sources. - Johninwiki (talk) 06:29, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

7 World Trade Center / Seven World Trade Center

I've created a template to clean up the WTC7 / Seven WTC / Salomon Brother Building etc. pp. mess.

Template:Sept11/content/WTC7

Display of transcluded template:

• Without parameter {{Sept11/content/WTC7}}: WTC 7

• With "long" as first parameter {{Sept11/content/WTC|long}}: Seven World Trade Center

Should the long version rather read "7 World Trade Center" or should there be "title" version "7 World Trade Center"?  Cs32en  04:05, 30 April 2009 (UTC)