User talk:Gaijin42

Problems with Darren Wilson's story as told by the leakers and

You wrote:

 Salon - Wilson’s defense entirely hangs on what happened next, and witnesses seem to be divided. 
 The best-known account goes that Brown turned back toward Wilson and put his hands in the air in the universal sign of surrender, 
 when Wilson shot the teen in cold blood. Others say that Brown moved toward Wilson, possibly in an aggressive way, leading Wilson 
 to believe that his life was in danger. It was then, some say, that Wilson decided to shoot Brown in self-defense.

The Wilson team, hapless as they are, have put themselves into a box, in my opinion. Apparently, they concocted their stories before they knew where the bullet holes were and before they knew how many shots had been fired and before they knew how many witnesses were actually watching that day.

The funny thing is that Michael Brady gives them the best defense that they could ask for at this point. Brown's hands were down at his belly and he was stumbling forward. That isn't charging. That's a person who could plausibily be going for that gun that he hasn't bothered to use up to that point. But they were so quick to put all of this on the theory of a charging rhinoceros who was going to kill him with a body slam that they are hopelessly incapable of salvaging their own credibility at this point.

I actually believe that the last three shots were taken when Brown's hands were down at his stomach. What is clear to me at that point, and I recently found a reliable source that discusses this idea but can't recall where exactly, is that Brown was collapsing, due to the loss of consciousness, due to the loss of so much blood. Wilson misreads his arms and his forward motion as a threat somehow.

If you listen to the audio, there is a bit of a pause after the seventh shot. Then bullets 8, 9, and 10 are fired about as quickly as one can squeeze off three shots. Bullet 7 may have started his fall forward. Then two of the three final shots went into his head in basically a top to bottom motion, anatomically speaking, though obviously not top to bottom with respect to elevation above the ground. After all of those misses, Wilson final got two shots to the lethal torso shot area. But the lethal torso was no longer being presented to him. Rather the top of the head. Hence the final two shots.

The realization that Brown never had a gun after all is what I think explains the look of grave concern that we see on Wilson and the other officers who were with him at that point. And so a decision was made to make up a different story. Wilson, being so focused on the actual encounter between himself, Brown and Johnson, never had any idea how many people actually saw what was going on. Of course, the police got many witness statements in the four hours that ensued. But it takes a while to synthesize all of that. What they did believe after knocking on the door of every apartment in the area was that there was no actual video of the shooting. So they decided that they would take their chances with a he-said-she-said approach, knowing how sympathetic prosecutors and white juries and grand juries are to the police version of events in such matters.

Then the audio recording came out -- a recording that its maker didn't realize contained the sound of gunshots at the time that the police were interviewing residents on August 9th. And all of a sudden, the police have a lot more to explain. And they can't explain it without contradicting earlier claims. So they are stuck. They put all of their eggs into the "charging" basket for which there is almost no witness support whatsoever. So the best they can do now is to go back to the car encounter, as was Jon Belmar's total focus when he told the Wilson story on August 10th. They roll out little new tidbits and the loudly proclaim as leakers that the physical evidence supports Wilson's version of events.

Editors such as the person who started the blood thread and I find that ridiculous. But the New York Times was so happy to get the exclusive that they don't want to poison their relationship with the leakers by discrediting them in their article where they reveal what the leaker said complete with the leakers synthesis of what they said. So we have this reliable source article which is about as journalistically questionable as it gets. But its out there. And we run with it. And the Wilson defenders win. And truth loses. Which renews my lack of faith in Wikipedia as a source for truth. And makes me depressed. -- since it's all there is.

P.S. Did you see that Mr.X is threatening to block me again? Michael-Ridgway (talk) 21:45, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

To be clear, the salon thing you quoted above is a direct quote from Salon, and not any kind of paraphrase or interpretation by me. You describe one plausible scenario above. But the known evidence is consistent with many other plausible scenarios too. (Although I think almost all of them will deal with the final 3 shots the same way, yes he was likely falling to get the headshot). The shots are so close together it is very unlikely Wilson had any intent/decision making whatsoever between them. He was trained to shoot in bursts, and shot in a burst. (One may argue that the burst itself was unjustified however).

In the end, I wouldn't object to an indictment. Certainly the burden of proof to have a trial should be less than the burden of proof to convict. However, I think its going to be almost impossible to secure a conviction. Race could play some part in that, but even given a "fair" jury, I think its going to be really tough to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Brown didn't assault Wilson or present at least a reasonable (if possibly mistaken) threat. (Particularly when there is video of him assaulting someone mere minutes before hand). As I've said before, perhaps the bar for self defense in general is set in the wrong place, and there should be more burden on the defender to prove justification - but that's not something that is going to (or should) change during an individual trial. And as multiple sources have stated, Federal rights charges are very unlikely.

Regarding a hypothetical ban for you, You have valuable input (the suggestion for the Tahoe recently as an example), but you regularly come across accusing the other editors (and the media/public) of various failures. Some of those are mere incivility. Some of them (dealing with the media/officials) are themselves BLP violations. If you continue on that path a topic ban is fairly likely. I say this as someone who is myself subject to a topic ban - and for similar reasons to the path you are on. That would be a shame, because if you could reign it in a bit, or restrict yourself to user talk pages for the WP:POLEMICs you can be a valuable contributor to the topic. Quite often you come across as matching WP:THETRUTH and WP:TIGER. Please read them (I am not trying to attack you here, or be condescending. I am seriously trying to point out where you are going astray so you can fix it). Gaijin42 (talk) 22:03, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Template:Did you know nominations/Zombie star

Input on which hook you prefer, please. I think we got this turned around on a dime. Nicely done! Good team effort. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 20:50, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Considering the article is 2 hours old, I'm pretty proud of it. Thanks for the help :) Gaijin42 (talk) 20:54, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

My pleasure. It is nice to see editors working together, not sniping. DYK has become very bitchy lately. Unfortunately, lately the politics of DYK is sometimes like dealing with the Queen of Hearts, or God forbid, the Red Queen. I can see why reviewers are disappearing, but that's an issue for another forum. If I can help, please let me know.7&6=thirteen (☎) 21:01, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

We need one more citation. User: Yoninah is looking into getting an administrator to queue jump. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 22:10, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

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Zombie (disambiguation)

I always try to add links to other pages when I create a page. Its one thing to create a page, it's another to make it visible. Does this say enough? 7&6=thirteen (☎) 23:47, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

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Homecoming DYK

Hello,

Returned to article with aim of putting webpage cites in same form as text cites, only to find your changes. Linked to article on main detractor of Homecoming. Used your useful book review links. Can you please review the result?

Georgejdorner (talk) 20:26, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Georgejdorner I made no changes to the article. Perhaps you have confused me with Yoninah ? When I mentioned the Amazon reviews, I did not mean the end-user reviews, but the two reviews listed as "Editorial Reviews" which are probably out on the net somewhere as sources themselves. I think the additions you have made improve the article, probably enough to get past the DYK sourcing barrier, but it could certainly be improved further. Searching for the book title in Google Books/Scholar finds a number of citations, it may be worth seeing if any of them have anything worth adding.

I still think there may be too much reliance on the source itself, which risks WP:OR in analyzing the book. For example the article states "The most extreme example cited states" - Who has decided it is the most extreme? The selection of which details to include also hints at OR. Using the citations in other books will help with that, because it will identify which bits other sources found important.

Also it seems like some of the "compilation" actually belongs in Summary. I will make a stab at that now. Gaijin42 (talk) 20:34, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, this tag team editing can lead to some confusion on my part—it was indeed Yoninah who changed the form of my cites. As for reliance on the source itself...a plot summary is standard in a book review. In the absence of an ongoing account of events amounting to a plot, I have generally described the book contents in lieu of a plot.Georgejdorner (talk) 20:42, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

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Copyright checks when performing AfC reviews

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The issue is in rather large numbers of copyright violations ("copyvios") making their way through AfC reviews without being detected (even when easy to check, and even when hallmarks of copyvios in the text that should have invited a check, were glaring). A second issue is the correct method of dealing with them when discovered.

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SOMB

Just letting you know that I have backed away from defending the BRD process against Bdel555 because things were getting out of hand. The issue is in the D phase of BRD with a 3-3 tie, no consensus for the change. I would summarize his position as: "No one has countered my (latest) arguments for inclusion, so I will include". That's contrary to my understanding of how things work. You and others can do with it what you will, but I've had enough. The thread is here. ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 01:19, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

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StG 44

Hey Gaijin, not that I'm trying to skirt the line of our topic ban, but from a historical and terminology standpoint what do you think of this edit. I thought it was a better explanation and certainly had better sentence structure and flow. Happy Belated Thanksgiving! --Scalhotrod (Talk) ☮ღ☺ 18:45, 28 November 2014 (UTC)