Talk:Terrance Yeakey

Redirect

Thanks for drafting this article, I'm not sure if Yeakey is notable enough. So for now I've made Terrance Yeakey a redirect to the main Oklahoma_City_bombing page. Jonpatterns (talk) 18:47, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

The debate surrounding Yeakey's death is relevant on it's own and leads to conclusions regarding the OkC bombing as a whole amongst other subjects. I propose to remove the redirection to OkC bombing due to these reasons. --Samwolfe (talk) 16:42, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Terrance Yeakey in a newspaper.png

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 09:04, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

Article tone and content

Biased and conspiratorial tone in article. Not necessary for me to elaborate a large amount—article clearly attempts to implicate the American federal government in Oklahoma bombing attack. Total lack of reputable sources. Article needs total rewrite or even deletion. 206.55.177.124 (talk) 23:33, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

You take issue with CNN? Harry Sibelius (talk) 06:58, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

You do realize that the CNN article came out over two years after the IP commented? -Location (talk) 17:37, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Nope, thanks for letting me know, though. Harry Sibelius (talk) 21:16, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

LOL. Thinker78 (talk) 06:22, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

just because you don't like the source doesn't make it fake glowie 65.25.172.12 (talk) 01:15, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

RfC on fringe theory

Does this biographical article overemphasize a fringe theory and rely excessively on sources that promote conspiracy theories? Our relevant content guideline declares: the term fringe theory is used in a very broad sense to describe an idea that departs significantly from prevailing views or mainstream views ... a Wikipedia article should not make a fringe theory appear more notable or more widely accepted than it is ... examples include conspiracy theories. By presenting opposing narratives as if the Alternative were more plausible than the Official, this article tests the limits of WP:WEIGHT. NedFausa (talk) 17:22, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Yes , this article needs a rewrite. After reviewing the sources, many them appear not to be reliable sources as per WP:RS and I agree that this article seems to be WP:FRINGE. This article should be rewritten or deleted. Andromadist (talk) 18:30, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

• Yes Particularly in the lede. ~ HAL333 22:13, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

RFC Discussion

• Is there an AfD for this article that I'm missing? Outside of the content discussed in what appear to be WP:FRINGE sources, I'm not sure if Terrance Yeakey is WP:NOTABLE, and we may be voting on rewriting a topic that doesn't warrant an article. Maybe we should establish consensus on notability first? Andromadist (talk) 18:41, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Citing WP:RS, Wikipedia's Oklahoma City bombing page mentions Terrance Yeakey as among the first officers to arrive at the site.

References

I believe his heroism that day, and his tragic suicide one year and three weeks later, make him notable. I oppose deletion of this BLP. NedFausa (talk) 19:06, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Wouldn't his relationship with the Oklahoma City Bombing, and the fact that his suicide is only notable because of his relationship to the Oklahoma City Bombing, make him WP:BLP1E? I'm not familiar enough with either the event or Terrance to start an AfD as I would not be a good judge of it, but it seems to me that if we were to significantly rewrite this article as per the RfC to eliminate what content that seems to be WP:FRINGE, we would be left with an article that isn't notable on it's own. Andromadist (talk) 19:27, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

I'm no expert either. But I construe Yeakey's role as a first responder to the April 19, 1995 bombing and his May 8, 1996 suicide to be two distinct events, not one. Each was separately reported by WP:RS, thus conferring notability. NedFausa (talk) 19:35, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

• Seems enough RS out there e.g. NPR, more about his death - AP news, Sun Sentinel, The Oklahoman, SF Gate, NY Times, ... plus minor coverage of his rescue efforts, and a later large horde of fringe sites with conspiracy theories. I don’t think it would be proper for the article to skip that his death has become the subject of many such. Seems better to separate early life, rescue, death, and the conspiracy theories. And to add some of the more reputable sources. Plus perhaps a link to Oklahoma City bombing conspiracy theories. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 17:28, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

No. The extreme circumstances of Yeakeys death and immediate classification as a suicide by authorities lends credence to alternative theories. Theories of federal involvement are both notable and widely accepted. 65.25.172.12 (talk) 01:20, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Keep or delete the article, but keep out the fringe stuff

Keep or delete the article, but all of the hysterical fringe stuff needs to be kept out of the article. One person, User:Samwolfe, keeps adding it, but it should be removed and kept out. All of it comes from two totally unreliable sources. One is a book from a publisher, Skyhorse Publishing, which has published 35 titles about JFK assassination, mostly conspiracy theories. The book's author, Donald Jeffries, has promoted JFK conspiracies since the mid-1970s according to his own author blurb. His blog posts are full of “9/11 false flag” and “Mafia-style voter fraud that permeated the 2020 presidential election”[1] and COVID 19 is a “a plandemic” being “artificially exaggerated” so that “our economy, and social interaction itself, is being purposefully ruined.”[2] The other source is a film full of “details” not found anywhere else, produced by Free Mind Films which is “dedicated to speaking truth to power and exposing the web of corruption and illicit control that engulfs our lives and impedes our progress as human beings.”[3] Those are the sources. There is absolutely nothing there that a fact-based encyclopedia should publish. We should actively keep it out, and I will delete the latest addition of it while we discuss. -- MelanieN (talk) 03:12, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

MelanieN, thank you for your clear response and guidance about this article. Ganesha811 (talk) 04:01, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Not that people should learn it in an encyclopedia, but a web of corruption and illicit control does in fact engulf our lives and impede our progress as human beings...it even brings us Vimeo. InedibleHulk (talk) 04:21, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Keep recent (MelanieN's) version of the article or delete it -- that's MelanieN's suggestion. I disagree.

Who the heck is Yeakey? Why does anyone seek this name in Wikipedia? Most of all because of those speculations that MelanieN branded as "conspiracy theory", hence omitted from the article.

In this case, Wikipedia would perform its encyclopedic function, if at least it mentioned the single reason why this man / name became famous. In its recent form the article doesn't even mention it, even though it is also the reason why the article accounts the official statements about his death. So no one understands how comes into an encyclopedia a policeman who committed suicide due to his family problems.

This strange censorship culminates in the lie claiming that he is "Known for: Rescue activities at OKC bombing." No. He is known for his family’s and some of his colleagues’ speculations about his death, claiming that his suicide was highly unlikely, that Yakey himself may have had speculations about OKC bombing, and that the officials were highly conspirative in this issue, etc., and these were spread by some sources, reliable or not.

The correct version of the article of course mentions these speculations, in the appropriate wording, indicating precisely their speculative nature, their being unproven. It gives the original source(s) of them, which helps the readers to be really informed, to judge for themselves how (un)grounded these speculations are. These are certainly among the facts you have to mention concerning this case "in a fact-based encyclopedia". Whatever you think about "conspiracy theories" in general and in this case, you're not correct, nor objective, if you ignore or silence their very existence.

Maybe Samwolfe's version is the other extreme with its lengthy quotes in the footnotes (longer than the main text of the article), but at least it tries to sum the main sources and allegations of the conspiracy speculations. These would be the material of a possible article "Yeakey Conspiracy Theories".

All in all, whoever would want to make a grounded opinion whether those speculations about Yeakey are really worth investigating or they are just a muddy bullshit -- unfortunately, the Wikipedia article in its recent form is not their source.

I don't know the original sources, I don't have any opinion on this issue.

But I bumped into MelanieN's talk comment, and its Party commissar / Holy Inquisitor style. She holds herself not only to be the chosen one to classify what is "fringe" and what is "reliable", but also the exterminating angel to eradicate even the traces of "conspiracy theories" of those without power, access, information etc., and to "officially", bureaucratically, "methodologically" denounce and silence their concerns about the abundance of conspiracy practices of the govt and all those having exclusive power, access, information etc.

If I had to make a choice which source can be more reliable: one which claims to be “dedicated to speaking truth to power and exposing the web of corruption and illicit control that engulfs our lives and impedes our progress as human beings”, and an other source which sees this dedication as a self-evident proof of unreliability, of being lunatic, I wouldn't hesitate. It's not a valid argument to delete the very mention of a source, that it is "a film full of 'details' not found anywhere else", because such has been and will ever be any work that ever provided real novelties, be it fact-finding journalism or new scientific theories.

MelanieN's ideological bias poses itself as a psychiatrist's verdict. Maybe this Donald Jeffries guy is a bad author, I don't check it. But the "hysterical" way MelanieN presents the evidence of his total insanity does not convince me at all. She just enumerates the guy's themes, which are typical of "conspiracy theory people". It's not a proof of his/their being unreliable; it's only a proof of their deep mistrust concerning nowadays' politics. Surely the COVID-19 pandemic can be a totally natural phenomenon, so to know for sure that it was artificially created is surely a mistake. However, we can not exclude this possibility. The JFK assassination is a classic case when conspiracy is so dense that no wonder that it remains a classic. It is not necessarily a sign of mental illness to write many books on it. As for 9/11, well, I think there are no ghosts, no bigfoot, the Earth is rounded, Moon-landing and the Holocaust did happen, and those buildings were not collapsed but carefully demolished. So huge our differences can be.

I find the conspiracy theorists far less dangerous than the practitioners. I think it most incorrect politically that the syntagm "conspiracy theory" has become a powerful curse, an effective stigmatization, and derogation. The term "conspiracy theory" is, first of all, descriptive. It says nothing about its tenability. "Conspiracy theories" exist wherever conspiracy practices exist; they are natural companions. I think it more correct politically to make theories about the businesses of an ever more conspirative politics -- then to follow the latter's strategy to derange everyone who dares to speculate about their conspiracies.

History is full of examples when the mainstream oppressed the truths of fringe people. "Madness is something rare in individuals -- but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages, it is the rule." (Nietzsche) I also have serious doubts about the equation of "mainstream media" = "reliability". One harsh example are the "documentary / educational" TV channels flooded with endless bigfoot / ghost / alien searching and finding, or blast-everything pseudosciences series, and numerous unwatchable trash, instead of treating and clarifying the real issues, be they scientific or political. Like, with the NIST 9/11 C/Omission Report, we have a clear example of an "official" = "unreliable" equation. Wikipedia certainly would have lost its credibility if there wasn't a "Conspiracy Theories on 9/11" article besides the one containing exclusively the official version of those events. And it would have lost its usefulness if there wasn't any article about flat earthers and their claims and whatever phenomena.

True, there are a lot of people confabulating and/or spreading bullshit about things they don't know well, and their intrusion must be confined in this great enterprise called Wikipedia. But the way is not to censor and falsify facts, the existence of theories of lay/outsider/civil people about the practices of highly exclusive institutions and politics. Since the latter has all the resources, it can determine the "mainstream" and keep the former in a "fringe" position, but it's politics, not epistemology; it's about power, not truth. The professional/insider/official/powerful people seem to me more dependent on having all the resources, then on truth. The more exclusive they are, intact from any lay/outsider/civil control, the more unreliable. It holds true for scientific discourses, too. But this is clearly a classified kind of issue, which means that if those speculations were right then you are simply not allowed to have the sufficient information. So let Wikipedia remain independent, and not stigmatize formally all the sources that have no resources, capacities enough to thoroughly and professionally investigate their case. Sure, many of them are not quality sources, and many of them are just uninformed, silly, psycho fantasizing, but a great encyclopedia will enlighten them, not suppress them and their problems further into the darkness, further igniting their mistrust. And please be critical toward official, mainstream sources, too, don't automatically believe everything the FBI or politicians say. Istenaldja (talk) 08:53, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Istenaldja, thank you for your thoughts. Bear in mind that civility is key to making Wikipedia work. Keep your focus on the article, not on your opinions of MelanieN. If you would like to make changes to the article, go ahead and do so, but remember that statements must be referenced to reliable sources. If you want to confirm that a source is reliable, you can post and check at the reliable sources noticeboard (WP:RSN). Ganesha811 (talk) 13:26, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Another option is to delete the article and add the information to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing_conspiracy_theories D emcee (talk) 08:22, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

I think there should definitely be a "Conspiracy theories" section. natemup (talk) 09:39, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed

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CNN article

@MelanieN, Ganesha811, InedibleHulk, and Natemup: An article about Terrance Yeakey's death is currently the featured article on CNN.com. Please see Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard#Oklahoma City bombing conspiracy theories. -Location (talk) 21:47, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Having read the article, the most surprising thing about it is that it's on CNN. It is the usual conspiratorial genre - long on supposition and hearsay, and short on evidence. If you look hard enough, you can find the medical report online - unsurprisingly, it doesn't mention any rope burns / ligatures, only superficial cuts, as this article admits but skips right over. The evidence better-fits the idea that Yeakey attempted to commit suicide by cutting himself in the car, was unable, got out and walked for a bit, and then shot himself in the head. However, as Wikipedia regards CNN as a generally reliable source, it's reasonable to add a sentence or two to the article here discussing alternate views promoted by CNN. I'm not interested in doing so myself, but would not object if someone else did. I would recommend waiting before adding anything further / overly detailed at this time to allow other reliable sources to weigh in as well. —Ganesha811 (talk) 22:19, 3 March 2023 (UTC)