Talk:Roswell incident/Archive 8

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Walter Haut affidavits signed in 1993 and 2002. Video made in 2000

Article does not mention that there were 2 affidavits. Article sounds like it is only discussing a later one. Does not mention the video at all.

News media articles still available that cover the Walter Haut affidavits released to the public in 2007 after his death in 2005. They were signed and witnessed in 1993 and 2002. Also a Walter Haut video made in 2000 that was released to the public in 2021.

17 Aug 2021: “My father saw the bodies”: chasing the truth about Roswell. By James Jennings. Archived here.

5 June 2022: Roswell officer's deathbed confession about theory of alien cover up. By Declan Carey. Archived here.

14 May 2021: Ex-Army officer ADMITS he saw ‘alien the size of a 10-year-old child’ after famous Roswell UFO crash in incredible video. By Emma Parry. Archived here. This article has a short excerpt of the video.

May 2021: Roswell Officer Speaks From the Grave: Video Released, Confesses that Alien was "the size of a 10 year old". By Anthony Bragalia. Archived here. From article (emphasis added): "This video clip is part of a memoir video / oral history over two hours in length that covers many personal and professional aspects of Haut's life. The video was taken at the Roswell Museum in 2000 with friends Dennis Balthaser and Wendy Connors."

September 2007. Haut's Daughter Tells How Affidavit Came to Be. By Julie Shuster (his daughter). MUFON UFO Journal. Issue 473. Page 15. Dec 2002 affidavit is on page 14.

30 June 2007: Roswell officer's amazing deathbed admission raises possibility that aliens DID visit. By Nick Pope. Same article also published here and here. Archived here and here.

2002 and 1993 affidavits. Archived here. Scroll down for the affidavits.

This version of the Walter Haut article is pretty good. --Timeshifter (talk) 03:07, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

I added mention of the 1993 and Haut's prior interview statements, where he denied being an eyewitness. The video clip is interesting, in that, if genuine, it would confirm Haut privately saying things that he denied in public interviews during his life. But without better sourcing, we can't know the video is genuine, and even if we did, it's probably UNDUE for this article. Feoffer (talk) 05:29, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

In his 1st affidavit in 1993 he did not deny he was an eyewitness. He just didn't say he was. The archive is more readable.

In his 2nd affidavit in 2002 he opened up more. He claimed there were 2 sites, and that he was a first hand witness of wreckage samples, a craft, and alien bodies.

His doctor at the time in 2002 said he was of sound mind. That info is in the first link below. Along with both affidavits and much more:

See: https://web.archive.org/web/20211028182152/http://www.roswellproof.com/haut.html

The 2002 affidavit is here, too.

September 2007. Haut's Daughter Tells How Affidavit Came to Be. By Julie Shuster (his daughter). MUFON UFO Journal. Issue 473. Page 15. Dec 2002 affidavit is on page 14. I recommend reading her whole article. From page 14 below the 2002 affidavit: "It was verified as the accurate text by Lt. Haut’s daughter, Julie Shuster, who is the Director of the International UFO Museum. See her comments on page 15". EXCERPTS: my father and I verbally discussed each and every sentence. ... My father died in December 2005. The statement was completed in December 2002. Three years difference makes a statement an affidavit of information, not a “deathbed confession.” END.

17 Aug 2021: “My father saw the bodies”: chasing the truth about Roswell. By James Jennings. Special Broadcasting Service. Haut's daughter, Julie Shuster, said it was no deathbed confession, and that she had gone over the 2002 affidavit with him word by word, sentence by sentence.

The 2002 affidavit, and much more, is here too:

See Google Books: Witness to Roswell, 75th Anniversary Edition. Unmasking the Government's Biggest Cover-up. By Thomas J. Carey, Donald R. Schmitt. 2022.

Google Books can search inside the book.

Search for Haut. And Haut affidavit. And 2002 Haut affidavit. The 2002 Haut affidavit is on page 240 according to that search. --Timeshifter (talk) 01:12, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

What are the most reliable WP:FRIND (non-ufology) sources on the Haut affidavits? Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 02:42, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

WP:FRIND at the top says (emphasis added):

"Fringe theories in a nutshell: To maintain a neutral point of view, an idea that is not broadly supported by scholarship in its field must not be given undue weight in an article about a mainstream idea. More extensive treatment should be reserved for an article about the idea, which must meet the test of notability. Additionally, in an article about the minority viewpoint itself, the proper contextual relationship between minority and majority viewpoints must be made clear."

The Haut affidavits are in Roswell incident#Witness to Roswell (2007). References 139-144. It's a mixture of books and skeptics, and a couple of articles from media that cover a lot more than UFOs. Special Broadcasting Service. And The Sunday Telegraph.

So, I think it meets the WP:FRIND guideline of having a mix.

I only added one reference to that section; the article by Special Broadcasting Service (SBS). "Australian hybrid-funded public service broadcaster. About 80 percent of funding for the company is derived from the Australian Government."

The links in my posts above come from a mix. The bottom line is the existence of the 2002 notarized sworn affidavit is well established by both UFO media and mainstream media. That affidavit is the one that matters. The SBS article explains why Haut exposed so much more in the 2002 affidavit than in the 1993 affidavit: EXCERPT: “Walter [Haut] confirmed to Don and I that the reason he kept everything a secret is because he promised Colonel Blanchard that he would not divulge the secret while he lived,” confirms Carey. END. --Timeshifter (talk) 06:53, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Sure, but the SBS article is mostly an interview with his daughter, who in her longer MUFON explanation says the affidavit was written by the book's author and approved and signed (but not drafted) by Haut. Are there independent reviews out there of the book? Or ideally something peer-reviewed? Rjjiii (ii) (talk) 05:24, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't know about book reviews. I only have so much time, health, and energy nowadays. So for this article I have been focusing on the 2002 Haut affidavit. In the SBS article Haut's daughter, Julie Shuster, said it was no deathbed confession, and that she had gone over the 2002 affidavit with him word by word, sentence by sentence before he signed it with notarization. --Timeshifter (talk) 06:22, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

I only have so much time, health, and energy nowadays. Take care of yourself; life can be much. Rjjiii (ii) (talk) 06:43, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

2002 affidavit completely removed from article

Why was the Witness to Roswell (2007) section completely removed on Dec 17, 2023? See the article version before the removal. So the eyewitness testimony of Walter Haut (via the 2002 affidavit) has been completely removed from the article. Affidavit where he states that there were 2 crash sites, and that he had seen a craft, wreckage samples, and alien bodies. See that section:

Extended content

Witness to Roswell (2007) In 2007, Donald Schmitt and Tom Carey published the book Witness to Roswell, which prominently featured a 2002 document said to be a sworn, notarized affidavit by Walter Haut, who had written the first Army press release about the Roswell crash in 1947. In 1993, Haut had sworn an affidavit containing recollections of the Roswell incident; in that document, and in later interviews, Haut consistently denied being a firsthand witness. The 2002 affidavit, alleged to have been left by Haut and opened only after his death in 2005, contradicts Haut's prior statements by claiming that there were 2 sites, and that he had seen a craft, wreckage samples, and alien bodies. The claims, however, drew an unimpressed response from some ufologists: Dennis Balthaser said that the document was not written by Haut, and that by 2000 Haut's mental state was such he could not recall basic details about his past, making the detail contained in the affidavit seem dubious. Physicist and skeptic Dave Thomas commented: "Is Roswell still the 'best' UFO incident? If it is, UFO proponents should be very, very worried." Haut's daughter, Julie Shuster, said it was no deathbed confession, and that she had gone over the 2002 affidavit with him word by word, sentence by sentence. References Carey, Thomas J.; Schmitt, Donald (2007). Witness to Roswell: Unmasking the 60-Year Cover-Up. Franklin Lakes, N.J: New Page Books. ISBN 978-1564149435. Thomas, Dave (2009). "Roswell update: fading star?" (PDF). Skeptical Inquirer. Vol. 33, no. 1. Alexander, John B. (2011). UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-1-4299-9483-5.

--Timeshifter (talk) 08:52, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

It's a FRINGE source, of course -- no one can verify Haut's supposed late-life statements; but it's not a source that seems to have influenced the mythology/folklore. You don't need to know about the 2007 book to know about the Roswell Incident. Feoffer (talk) 10:38, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Multiple people verified the 2002 affidavit, including his daughter. And it was notarized while he was alive. --Timeshifter (talk) 23:04, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Hello, since Donald Schmitt wrote the 2002 affidavit, I see 2 quite viable places to discuss Schmitt's book:

• I've made Donald R. Schmitt a redlink in this article, if you want to do a subarticle there going over his books and theories.[1] An even older, larger version of this article had a lot of Schmitt content that was cut.[2] I think he would likely pass WP:GNG, and it would be fairly straightforward to do a bio section and a section on his books.
• After I asked about sources, I gathered the print interview with Julie Shuster, an audio interview with Schmitt, a thorough book review, and the existing skeptical criticism. I've updated Walter Haut to try to make clear the nature of the document (based on interviews with Haut, composed by Schmitt, and signed by Haut).[3]
• I do not think Schmitt's 2007 book is due in this article. I don't see reliable sources about the Roswell Incident discussing Haut. If you think I'm in the wrong about WP:DUE, feel free to ask for an outside opinion (Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard, Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard, or Wikipedia:Third opinion)

Regards, Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 23:32, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the changes to the Walter Haut article. The 2002 affidavit was signed in front of a notary on Dec 26, 2002:

Page 240 of the 2022 edition of the Carey & Schmitt book has the affidavit too. Excerpt shows the date.

There needs to be a link to the 2002 affidavit that anybody can read without buying a book. See links above. The affidavit is not just in the Carey & Schmitt 2007 book. It is also in their 2022 edition.

4 main points of the affidavit need to be mentioned: Haut states that there were 2 crash sites, and that he had seen a craft, wreckage samples, and alien bodies.

If the info is good enough for the Walter Haut article, then it is certainly good enough for the Roswell incident article. --Timeshifter (talk) 01:15, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

If the info is good enough for the Walter Haut article, then it is certainly good enough for the Roswell incident article

Oh, if only it were so simple. I understand your pain at seeing info you care about removed and left to sub-articles: I've had a lot of my words chopped from the article recently -- on some level I want to say "hey, if it's good enough for the Gray Aliens article, it's good enough for here". But wiser minds caution us that we should stick to the CORE Roswell story, and that's something from the 1970s and 80s, not a story from the 60s about gray alien abduction and not a story from the 00s that never really gained traction. Feoffer (talk) 03:09, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes. WP:ONEWAY is a consideration. Bon courage (talk) 07:16, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Reference cleanup

While cleaning up the references, I noticed an edit summary from VdSV9 commenting on issues.[4] So I'm dropping a ping and also inviting broader input on any references that seem confusing or ill-formatted. Rjjiii (ii) (talk) 03:43, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Also Bon courage, regarding the citation style, do you see any issues up to footnote [91] in this version: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Roswell_incident&oldid=1190401722 The remaining full citations in ref tags should be shorter works (but I may have missed some). This seems to me how the references were reorganized back in 2013.[5] Thanks, Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 18:33, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

I have no strong opinion, other than that we should be consistent. That old versions looks like a good basis ... Bon courage (talk) 18:37, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Gotcha. I think it's there now in this version: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Roswell_incident&diff=1192896898&oldid=1192886367 Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 23:40, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Alien autopsy hoax

This seems irrelevant here, and what we have is not in WP:SYNC with the main article. Bon courage (talk) 07:21, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Like the Aztec and Hangar 18 material, my text obviously didn't connect the dots very well; It does come off sounding irrelevant, but it's actually probably the most culturally influential component of the Roswell story after The Roswell Incident (1980) which undoubtedly holds the top spot. Rjj's excellent chart above seems to bear this out, albeit that's not currently reflected in the text. I'll tag it to remind us it needs work. Feoffer (talk) 07:33, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Took a shot at it. Feel free to trim, modify, and amend as needed. Regards, Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 11:53, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

It's unclear it has any relevance to Roswell (apart from both being about space aliens). Can we just cut it? Bon courage (talk) 12:15, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

It was explicitly claimed to be the Roswell autopsy, and it's a hoax -- why would we ever miss out on the opportunity to remind readers it's been debunked? Feoffer (talk) 12:17, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

This article doesn't mention that it is "the Roswell autopsy" at all. If the purported alien is meant to be a space alien crashed at Roswell we could say that in one sentence and link to the hoax article, everything else just seems irrelevant or off-topic (why is the X-files mentioned in this section?) Bon courage (talk) 12:22, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

As I said before, the text needs fixing. In past drafts, I tended to trust readers to connect the dots themselves, rather than directly quoting RSes to explicitly make the connection. We know better now. The text needs work, we'll work on it. But Rjj's chart makes it clear -- RSes routinely discuss the Santelli film as part of Roswell Incident lore; We can't just "cut" it and pretend the now-debunked film never existed! why is the X-files mentioned in this section? Because RSes discuss the X-Files as evidence of how influential the Santelli film was in Roswell mythology and popular culture. Feoffer (talk) 12:35, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Seems to be repeated in the Popular fiction section, where it doesn't have such a "huh?" factor. Bon courage (talk) 12:48, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

To my eyes, the satire and replication of visual style helps the reader to recognize the conclusions of RSes: the footage is a product of the 1990s, not the 1940s.

As a personal note, we have SUCH different visions for Wikipedia's role in fighting fringe... "Let's cut the debunk of the Roswell Alien Autopsy" is a shocking suggestion to me, but I'm sure some of my ideas are shocking to you. To indulge in hyperbole, I feel like your ideal article might be a tiny one-paragraph stub that simply declares the Roswell debris to be a MOGUL balloon, while my ideal article might be summations of the entire set of Snopes articles that debunk each and every element of the Roswell mythology. But hey, with RJ's help, things seem to be improving. Feoffer (talk) 13:45, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

For my own part this is nothing to do with "fighting fringe". I was just reading the text and completely baffled about why it was there. Bon courage (talk) 14:19, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Fair enough! I'm the first to admit my text needs an editor, and thankfully we have one. Feoffer (talk) 14:24, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Took another swing at it. Made connection more explicit based on the discussion above. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 23:33, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Feoffer, I left the admission and explicit "Roswell" in. I changed the ref from URL to short citation. I think that titling sections on works with the titles of those work is more clear. Bon courage, I hope this is more clear. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 04:23, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, its relevance is now apparent. Bon courage (talk) 04:25, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Bon courage, somewhat related what do you think about cutting the UFO religions? Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 04:30, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Feoffer mentioned it as a problem above. After I cut out un-sourced content it's only a paragraph. Reliable sources about Roswell don't really discuss it, and the sources cited here are about UFO Religions. Even Ricketts (2011) which goes into a lot of detail about how Roswell functions in a way similar to religion, doesn't mention Heaven's Gate, Raelism, or other new religious movements. Regards, Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 04:32, 1 January 2024 (UTC) Edit: This is the most any source about Roswell connects the incident, myth, or place to UFO religions: "UFO enthusiasts held confer- ences in Roswell on UFOs and religion, arguing, among other things, that God is an alien and extraterrestrials seeded the Earth with life. The fact that Roswell had experienced an actual hierophany of sorts - given that a UFO had supposedly crashed, witnesses were still alive to testify, and the government acknowledged the incident - conspired to turn the city into nothing less than a tourist mecca for people searching for meaning from the heavens (Rickets 2011, p.251)." I think even that though is more about tourism. Feoffer, I'd be fine if you want to cut the section outright, 04:40, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, logic would dictate that Roswell would be a huge element of and contributor to UFO religions, but the sources just don't seem to bear that out. American UFO religions tend to descend from Theosophy, not UFO Conspiracy Theory. Feoffer (talk) 04:43, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

UFOs quickly became synonymous with alien spacecraft

This is another verification nightmare with twelve different pages cited in the Peebles source. Could somebody point to a single location (preferably in just one source) for this 'quickly became' thought? Again, what is this 'quick becoming' telling us about the Roswell incident? Bon courage (talk) 08:47, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm at a little bit of a loss myself as to what this means. I'll take a peek through Peebles and see if we can pin that down a little bit. Certainly by the 1952 flap, UFOs are alien space in the popular mindset, but I suspect Peebles will actually place that shift earlier, maybe as earlier as 1948. Feoffer (talk) 09:36, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

I rephrased this to try and make the relevance more clear and have cited a single page, with a quote in the edit summary.[6] Peebles places the shift in 1950-1951. The significance is in establishing that "flying saucer" or "flying disc" had changed significantly in meaning between the 1947 incident and the conspiracy theories and so on. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 09:38, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Good solution. Feoffer (talk) 09:52, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Fu-go balloons

Doing some more WP:V spot-checking and wondering again about the Fu-go balloons. The article says

In 1947, a few years removed from Japan's World War II (1944–45) Fu-Go balloon bomb attacks, many Americans had attributed the saucers to a foreign military.

And this is cited to two sources. But

• The second source (May) does not seem to verify the text at all.
• What are 'the saucers' ?
• How is this relevant to the Roswell incident?
• The first source (Ziegler et al) has four page locations given, which sets the WP:SYNTH klaxon sounding. Is there something in there which directly supports this text as WP:V requires? Bon courage (talk) 10:55, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, going by bullet points:

• I added a quote to make clear what in May was relevant.
• 1947 flying saucers
• The original press release claims possession of a flying disc which to a modern reader equals alien space ship. In 1947, that was not yet the case. Some of the actions make more sense in the context of a potentially soviet flying disc.
• I think Feoffer added the quote from page 7.

It honestly does not come up as big focus in most Roswell sources, but does come up frequently in sources about the 1947 flying disc craze. For example, From Airships to Flying Saucers: Oregon's Place in the Evolution of UFO Lore by Robert E. Bartholomew is about the 1947 larger event and says, "The "flying saucer" story also had greater effects, encouraging those who had observed mysterious aerial phenomena to report their sightings and heightening fears of a Soviet attack. A significant factor in the importance Bequette and others gave the story was the public's recent memory of the 93,000 Japanese Fugo balloon-carrying incendiary bombs that had been launched into the Jet Stream during 1944 and 1945." Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 14:40, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I can see why it's relevant to pre-Roswell 'flying saucers' in general, but not to the Roswell debris. It just seems off-topic. If however, it's the case that "the [Roswell] actions make more sense in the context of a potentially soviet flying disc" is there a source saying this? Bon courage (talk) 14:44, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

@Bon courage: When you say "pre-Roswell", I realize I may have been unclear. The 1947 flying disc craze/panic/hysteria includes the original Roswell debris recovery and announcement rather than preceding it. Reliable sources often contextualize the original 1947 events and press release as being not necessarily related to an alien spaceship at all. Korff (1997, p. 245) explains Haut's Roswell "flying disc" press release ending with, "It should also be understood that the term 'flying disc' was not at this time, in 1947, synonymous with 'space ship.' It denoted a disc-shaped flying object of unknown, or suspected Soviet, origin." May, Korff, Launius (discussed above), Ziegler, and others all offer this context about the 1947 craze and also about the 1947 Roswell debris events within that craze. Regarding the Fugo connection is the concern that it does not meet WP:V (and should not be in wikipedia) or that it does not meet WP:NPOV (and should be in the flying disc craze article only)? I think it meets WP:V but am ambivalent on NPOV as only some sources that I've checked place an emphasis. Rjjiii (ii) (talk) 15:49, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

I can't see it meeting WP:V in a way which is NPOV, if you see what I mean. While I can see the Japanese balloons may have been a factor in the general take on UFOs of the time, I can't see anything that ties it to Roswell. But, since we now have a source about 'Soviet origin' that would seem more pertinent. Why are we mentioning old Japanese balloons and not the Soviet origin concern, when that seems less tenuously connected to Roswell in RS? My concern is that Wikipedia would end up being the only source in the Universe making an explicit connection between fugo balloons and Roswell - OR in other words. Bon courage (talk) 15:56, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

FuGo comes up regularly in the RSes -- as contributing to the belief that flying discs were foreign, as being suspected of having caused Roswell, and as serving as the impetus/inspiration for developing Mogul. It's discussed in Zeigler, Gulyas, Pflock, Keel, Smith (2000), and USAF reports. Feoffer (talk) 03:25, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

as being suspected of having caused Roswell ← then the article needs to say that, rather than the current text which looks like irrelevant WP:SYNTHESIS. If a source says the Roswell debris was suspected to be a Fugo balloon then it should be simple. What is that source? Bon courage (talk) 07:41, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

The article should not say the Fugo balloons were "suspected of having caused Roswell". Ziegler (1997) and Pflock (2001) both discount it as implausible and also portray 80s–90s ufologists as discounting it as boring. Gulyas (2014) talks about Keel and Redfern voicing this suspicion but frames it as a minority viewpoint in ufology and "at least as plausible as one involving aliens, which is probably damning it with the faintest of praise."

Regarding the original Fugo→Saucers→Roswell connection being discussed, I see 2 sources making that connection explicitly. Ziegler (1997, p. 7) makes it outright, and Smith (2000) includes an interview with Jack Williamson who makes it outright. The Fugo→Saucers and Saucers→Roswell connections are very common, but I get your concern about using those sources to bolster Ziegler. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 08:24, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

I see. What we have now makes a lot more sense that before (especially if reading it as a naive reader!) I think this is however undue, as it is only speculation about (the causes of) the mindset of people in general at the time of the Roswell crash, and does not tell us anything about the incident itself. I remain unconvinced that any source makes the point Wikipedia is trying to imply. Bon courage (talk) 08:43, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

only speculation I get what you're saying, but its incorrect to characterize it as "speculation" -- 1947 sources explicitly connect the ongoing wave of sightings to the recent Japanese balloon attacks.

However we get there, readers need an ironclad understanding that on July 8, "flying disc" did NOT mean "alien spaceship" to anybody, least of all the folks at Roswell.

Another point that's not mentioned in our current version -- the USAF mentions as a serious possibility that Mogul balloons could have caused not just Roswell but the much of the flying disc craze itself. Feoffer (talk) 09:14, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Sources might well explicitly connect "the ongoing wave of sightings" to Fu-go balloons. But that is not the same as an explicit connection to the Roswell incident.

"flying disc" did NOT mean "alien spaceship" to anybody

Do we have a source for that? Bon courage (talk) 09:19, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

When you take out my hyperbole, we have lots. The Zeigler p7 quote satisfies my WP:V concerns, but you could certainly find others making identical points. Feoffer (talk) 09:33, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

break

Okay, so it seems the intent of this is to make a statement about the overall context of 1947, as something in which nobody was thinking of "aliens". But while I'm aware from 1947 flying disc craze (an article which has its own issues) that this is the Wikipedia POV, I'm not sure it's the NPOV. If we look for example at

• Keith Kloor (2019). "UFOs Won't Go Away". Issues in Science & Technology. 35 (3): 49–56. (which we cite for other things!)

The flood of flying saucer reports spooked the military. Were people hallucinating, or seeing something from Moscow or Mars? Experts grasped for answers. A scientist interviewed by the New York Times in July 1947 called it a “mild case of meteorological jitters” and “mass hypnosis”.

But the UFO sightings kept coming in waves over the next few years. Initially, Air Force investigators thought that the objects had been “domestically launched devices such as weather balloons, rockets, experimental flying wing aircraft, or celestial phenomenon.” Some investigators gave serious consideration to the possibility of extraterrestrials.

So from this, I think this exclusive focus on military explanations and fu-go balloons is odd. Bon courage (talk) 10:43, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Well don't infer "intent" of Wikipedia OR RSes from anything I've said on talk, especially not when I'm speaking with intentionally over-the-top language. Obviously, crackpots were seeing "alien spaceships" even before 1947, but Flying Disc didn't mean "alien spaceship" in the way it does today -- Peebles makes that point for us.

I think this exclusive focus on military explanations and fu-go balloons is odd.

Why? It makes sense to me why RSes on Roswell devote more attention to the two top-secret high-altitude balloon programs than other explanations: Can celestial phenomenon or meteorological jitters be mistaken for debris from a military balloon? Feoffer (talk) 11:06, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Context:

• Bartholomew, Robert E. (2000). "From Airships to Flying Saucers: Oregon's Place in the Evolution of UFO Lore". Oregon Historical Quarterly. 101 (2): 192–213. ISSN 0030-4727.

Interestingly, virtually no one during the 1947 saucer wave believed that the mysterious objects were of extraterrestrial origin. Instead, the American obsession with the Cold War and possible atomic conflict were evident in the sighting explanations. On August 15, 1947, only a few weeks after Arnold's sighting, a Gallup Poll revealed that 90 percent of Americans surveyed were aware of flying saucers, and 16 percent believed they were U.S. or Russian secret weapons.49 "Nothing [in the poll] was said about 'alien visitors,"' one study reports, "not even a measurable 1% toyed with the concept."50 During the several weeks after Arnold reported his sighting, the FBI was seriously concerned that many reports were disinformation spread by Soviet agents who were attempting to promote fear and panic, and at least until late July, local Bureau offices conducted background checks on saucer witnesses.51

• May, Andrew (2017). Pseudoscience and science fiction. Cham: Springer. ISBN 978-3-319-42604-4.

When Kenneth Arnold first saw his “flying saucers”, he imagined they were secret military aircraft. The general public, too, did not initially make a connection between UFO reports and the notion of extraterrestrial spacecraft. During that first 1947 wave, only two witnesses expressed the opinion that the objects they saw might have been spaceships. In a Gallup poll held in August that year “outer-space explanations were so negligibly held that they were not even listed in the results” [8].

Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 11:07, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Different sources say different things. But why when one source says "16 percent believed they were U.S. or Russian secret weapons" are we mentioning Japanese balloons and attributing only this 'military' context thought to "many Americans" and not mentioning the weather/hypnosis/Mars speculation. More to the point, why are we trying to make a highly leveraged statement about the 1947 UFO mindset here at all? Bon courage (talk) 11:27, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Why... are we mentioning Japanese balloons... and not mentioning the weather/hypnosis/Mars speculation

Because we're taking our cues from reliable sources on Roswell like Zeigler and USAF who discuss the two high-altitude balloon programs but do not seriously consider weather/hypnosis/Martians.

why are we trying to make a... statement about the 1947 UFO mindset here at all Because RSes make a point of contrasting how "flying disc" is modernly understood vs what the term meant in 1947. Feoffer (talk) 11:42, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

But the article is pointedly ignoring "cues" from sources saying the military was seriously inclined to consider extraterrestrial origin. Like Kloor above, or https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34398-8_2 which says

However, the US Air Force, established in 1947 from the United States Army with the enactment of the National Security Act of 1947, seemed to react ambivalently, depending on the persons involved. While Nathan Farragut Twining, third chief of Staff of the United States Air Force and later chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as William Madison Garland, chief of the Air Technical Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, seemed to have leaned towards the extraterrestrial hypothesis, Hoyt Sanford Vandenberg, second chief of Staff of the United States Air Force remained unconvinced.

Also ignored are "cues" about homegrown USA programs, mass hysteria and weather phenomenon. By limiting sources to teasing out one narrow strand, NPOV is lost. Bon courage (talk) 11:50, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

saying the military was seriously inclined to consider extraterrestrial origin. You want to include that?!?! It's not wrong, but it could amount to pouring fuel on a very fringy fire.

If we do mention that, then obviously, yes, we should mention all the "less-fringe" options you list, like rockets, weather and hypnosis . I thought we might limit the realistic possibilities to "balloon debris". But you're not wrong, there's no doubt within a few months or years, some important people in the military had fallen for the interplanetary hypothesis for UFOs (but not Roswell so far as we/I know). Feoffer (talk) 12:03, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Hah. I don't think the US military believing weird shit is really news! I don't think we should be including just one part of the context (suspicions of hostile military), let alone one part of the context of the context (fu-go ballons). I think the chief problem is that Wikipedia is trying to imply what people must've had in their minds as they learned about Roswell at the time, but no source lays it out like that. Bon courage (talk) 12:35, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

lol well put!!

Anyway, I'd be happy to write up something to round out the text with the other mundane explanations like weather, celestial objects, and especially US tech. Extraterrestrial, that's gonna take some convincing, lol. Feoffer (talk) 12:49, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Hang on! Looking at the Peebles source it says on July 6 the NYT had run a story suggesting that the saucers were 'visitants from another planet'. Why is this not 'context'? Bon courage (talk) 12:51, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

I really do apologize for speaking hyperbolically, I think it really got us off track.

It's not that people weren't speculating about the interplanetary hypothesis -- they were. It's that "flying disc" and "flying saucer" did not automatically imply "alien spaceship", as would be the case just a few years later. Feoffer (talk) 13:00, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

@Bon courage: Regarding Different sources say different things., reliable sources that analyze or explore the question of what was a flying saucer in 1947, conclude that the modern idea (flying saucer = alien spaceship) was uncommon during the 1947 craze. By 1948 it was already gaining traction, and by 1951 it was a part of the culture. Many sources take the modern meaning for granted, but that's not disproving the scholarship that other reliable sources have provided:

• Kottmeyer, Martin S. (2017). "Why Have UFOs Changed Speed Over the Years?". In Grossman, Wendy M.; French, Christopher C. (eds.). Why Statues Weep: The Best of the "Skeptic". Oxfordshire, England: Routledge. ISBN 978-1134962525.

Despite a considerable variety in the reports, the form of the objects was consistent with a type of aircraft. Propellers were often seen, one witness even claiming it was larger than the rest of the plane. Jet pipes, pilot's cockpits, glass domes, fins, legs, and antennae featured on some of the objects. Smoke, vapour trails, and rocket flames repeatedly marker their flights. A wide range of aerobatic stunts turn up among the reports: loop-the-loops, roll manoeuvres, banking, weaving, climbing, diving,, tipping, circling, and swooping. Some 'UFOs' buzzed cars, but unlike decades later, the car engines never died. It has been thought significant that animals sometimes reacted to the objects, yet a close reading suggests it wasn't because of their spooky alienness; the saucers were doing barnstorming manoeuvres.

Notable by its absence is any indication of extraterrestrial technology: no lasers, heat rays, paralysis rays or gases, mind control rays, power rings, levitation of people or objects, denaturalization, matter interpenetration, space-suited entities, robots, remote eyes, or even simple observation ports. Nobody was looking for aliens, and nothing was seen to suggest any were there.

• Olmsted, Kathryn S. (2009). "Chapter 6: Trust No One: Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories from the 1970s to the 1990s". Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199753956.

At the beginning of the summer of 1947, the first summer of the cold war, hundreds of Americans began calling newspapers, radio stations, and government agencies to report mysterious, unidentified objects hovering in the night sky. By early July, a wave of “flying disk” sightings had rippled across the American West. Many of these early witnesses assumed that they were seeing secret U.S. or Soviet military vehicles, not ghostly ships from another planet.

Regards, Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 16:44, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

The Olmsted source seems on point then: "Many of these early witnesses assumed that they were seeing secret U.S. or Soviet military vehicles". But I'd suggest people thinking of extraterrestrials were probably more common than those thinking of Fu-go balloons. Bon courage (talk) 16:48, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

I've trimmed the sentence to remove Japanese and Soviet possibilities.[7] Flying disc craze is linked where broader context can be provided. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 17:06, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

footnote

The relevant text of that 1947 NYT piece Peebles mentions is:

We have no disposition, however, to laugh this phenomenon off. A lot of people have seen the disks, and one and all dismiss the thought that they were sun-spots-not the whirling spots on the sun itself but the after-images of light on the human eye. The flying saucers could be real. They may be pieplates for that "pie in the sky by-and-by" once immortalized in song by the IWW. They may be visitants from another planet launched from spaceships anchored above the stratosphere. Maybe they are atoms escaping from an overwrought bomb. They could even be something as prosaic as an Army experiment in anti-radar devices. During the war we managed to gun up the German radar with silvery streamers d'opped from our planes. The flying saucers are silvery, too. Who knows? No Republican Congressman has yet come forward to claim that high-riding Government officials have been scattering quarters and half-dol-lars around, not in a sincere effort to reduce the overhead but just to see if anybody noticed.

Bon courage (talk) 17:03, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

The Hills

For

By the time Roswell returned to media attention, Scully's spindly grey aliens had become a part of American culture through the Barney and Betty Hill incident and the 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

neither of the cited sources seem to be discussing Roswell? Bon courage (talk) 14:20, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

When RJ wrote this, I knew it might be controversial with you. :)

Between 1947 and 1980, the myth of the grey alien emerges in Aztec, is popularized by Barney Hill, hits the big time with Close Encounters, and is ultimately incorporated into the Roswell.

There's no shortage of sourcing about the origins of the "grey", it's only a question of how in-depth we should go. Rj has a very barebones approach, while I would prefer to see a whole section about the evolution of the "grey" in the 70s. Nothing is 100%, but it really seems to have come from an episode of The Outer Limits. But again, I get that's a little far afield from Roswell, so Rj's version works for me. But there's no shortage of sources about what we could say in regards the grey alien myths. Feoffer (talk) 14:36, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

If we're going to get to WP:GA, then text needs to be verified (well, in any case it does). This came up[8] a few years ago too. Bon courage (talk) 14:46, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

@Bon courage and Feoffer: I've added the most reliable source I could find that clearly makes the connection. The Toby Smith book also makes it in a similar way. The most reliable source I could find that also connected Close Encounters were online news articles (spooky column) and an episode of PBS's Monstum (a history of monster folklore documentary show for a YA audience). Those seem too low-quality so I removed Close Encounters. Rjjiii (ii) (talk) 21:33, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Works for me! Thanks for your hard work. Feoffer (talk) 01:20, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, that sews it up nice. Bon courage (talk) 13:20, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

'Other debunked theories' should be 'Other debunked or fringe theories' Here's why:

The existing sub header implies that everything by the authors in this section is debunked, It also implies everything in the 'Roswell in UFO conspiracy theories (1978–present)'section is debunked by the use of the word 'other' and yes a lot is debunked, the important stuff. For the same reason we have not labeled the section 'Roswell in debunked UFO conspiracy theories (1978–present)' it should not just state 'other debunked theories'; adding 'or fringe theories' is inclusive to that since a lot of this is done for entertainment value, not academic research. Drocj (talk) 14:11, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Improving cohesion of the 'Modern views' Section

The readability & flow of the 3 quotes by B. D. Gildenberg, Karl Pflock & Kal Korff at the top of this section felt isolated from the following sub sections including 'Roswell as modern myth and folklore' & 'Statements by US Presidents'. I attempted to mesh things together and add context + cohesion in a minimal way but would appreciate feedback because this is challenging to get right and there is still not a clear connection to the 'Roswell as modern myth and folklore' section. Drocj (talk) 19:29, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't know if we still need the "Roswell as modern myth and folklore" section anymore. It used to hold material about Aztec, Hangar 18, and the different versions of the myth -- all that material has now been integrated into the main body of the article. Feoffer (talk) 01:57, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

I am on the fence myself. I think its a good section to have but should be refined, it adds context for all the conspiracy theories. Maybe we condense it & refine it? Such as:

The mythology of Roswell has been analyzed and documented by anthropologists and skeptics. Anthropologists Susan Harding and Kathleen Stewart highlight the Roswell Story as a paradigm of fringe narratives transitioning to the mainstream, aligning with the 1980s zeitgeist of public fascination with "conspiracy, cover-up, and repression." Skeptics Joe Nickell and James McGaha labeled the myth making process the "Roswellian syndrome," where the myth cycles through five stages of development & anticipates recurring stages in UFO and conspiracy-theory stories. Anthropologists Benson Saler, Charles Ziegler and Charles Moore identify the Roswell story's resemblance to traditional folk narratives, pointing to multiple distinct storylines shaped by a transmission process involving storytellers within the UFO community, where additional "witnesses" are sought to expand the narrative, while dissenting accounts are discredited or excluded by designated "gatekeepers." Drocj (talk) 04:24, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

I wonder if we could cut the term "Roswell Syndrome" -- it seems 'hokey' to create a 'syndrome' and name it after the subject under study. It's not as if Roswell was the first myth scholars ever saw. "Roswell Syndrome" suggests something sui generis about Roswell at one extreme and tautological on the other. IF we had other examples of "Roswell Syndrome", and the name had caught on, that'd be one thing. But it seems silly for us to say "The solution to Roswell is something called Roswell Syndrome", ya know? I don't think that phrase gets us much.

The rest looks good. Feoffer (talk) 07:29, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree, its the first time I heard of it, it doesn't belong. Drocj (talk) 19:54, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Should we include a mention of the Documentary film Mirage Men (2013) some place?

I think the film Mirage Men adds a lot of context. Let me know if you have seen it and your thoughts. Drocj (talk) 20:53, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, but very very carefully. The film seems to uncritically accept that Doty was Air Force -- I think this is a mistake. The entire subject certainly seems FRINGE, but I don't think it is -- the Pilkington book is published by Little Brown!

I worry about "losing the narrative" and I would love to sort of "yada yada yada" over the whole thing, but we can't -- Bill Moore came out as a liar, we can't not tell readers that. I don't know how much of the rest of it we should get into, but it's definitely on topic. Feoffer (talk) 00:29, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

@Drocj I may be mistaken, but is the film not largely an arrangement of interviews? If we're not citing Doty/Moore for their dubious statements then why can we cite them for their plausible statements? It would be substituting plausibility for verifiability.

Check out the sources currently cited in the article, especially Goldberg. Gulyas, Ziegler, and Peebles all have a lot of content also. Rjjiii (ii) (talk) 04:25, 7 January 2024 (UTC) misunderstanding struck, 09:59, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

We def shouldn't be citing Doty or Moore, but the book and film feature interviews with a variety of folks who appear to be sober, reliable sources: Pilkington, Valdez. Doty's voice is present, but thoroughly rebutted as he is unmasked as being part of ongoing deception. Feoffer (talk) 06:22, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Please explain why 'Air Force response (1994–1997) and aftermath' is not its own section

It makes zero sense to me that it is buried in the conspiracies section, its hard to find. I think it should be pulled out into its own section. Appreciate your feedback. Drocj (talk) 19:46, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Or maybe it makes more sense in the 'Modern views' section. Drocj (talk) 19:50, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

The first 2 subsections in the modern views section roughly correspond to the 2 reports' main focuses. I don't think we should attribute these views to the USAF more than we have to though. They're now the mainstream position in reliable sources. Additionally the 1978-present section would likely be easier to parse if some of those lowest level subsections are condensed out of the table of contents. What was the reason the USAF reports ended up in two places initially (Modern views & the chronology)? Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 22:41, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Originally, we just have a chronology, and then someone suggested a "conclusions" or "modern views" section, so it got split over two places. I don't know how problematic that it -- the USAF reports are explicitly in response to conspiracy theories, after all. I agree condensing the TOC will help per your suggestion. Feoffer (talk) 23:44, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

I've changed the media using a documentary with the thumbnail showing both books for the part within the chronology on the "Air Force response" section, and using a photo of Project Mogul from the reports for the "Project Mogul" section. I'll think more about the "Air Force response" section because if this is the turning point where Randle, Friedman, etc. drop the body claims, then that is notable and also something that doesn't belong in a "conclusions" section. I need to check back over the sources. For a bit, I'll pause on using the sandbox to edit. There are a few sections past Marcel that are kind of messy and still using some odd sources.

Before I start reading and taking notes, are there any key points for each work/section that you're thinking the article needs to touch on? And at the risk of going completely off-topic do we know who faked the MJ-12 memo and/or why they faked it? The way it's written now implies that Bill Moore faked it for a government disinformation program. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 02:25, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

do we know who faked the MJ-12 memo and/or why they faked it?

Bill Moore claims it was a overseen by a man named Rick Doty who was allegedly a "disinfo" agent for the Air Force. Doty has appeared on camera and claimed this is true, but that doesn't mean it's true. Doty claims that it was done to protect top secret programs. Also targeted were Paul Bennewitz and Bill Cooper. Meanwhile, alleged CIA UFO "whistleblower" John Lear was linked to Doty, and the famous alleged Area 51 whistleblower Bob Lazar was himself linked to Lear. Meanwhile, I'm not convinced any of them are really linked to Air Force or the CIA.

Meanwhile, Moore absolutely stands accused of promoting the MJ12 docs despite knowing they were anachronistic forgeries. This whole subject is well outside my wheelhouse, but the guy who wrote the book on Roswell definitely went on to claim he'd been lying about UFO stuff. Feoffer (talk) 03:26, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

I tried to focus the chronology section covering the reports on the timeline and the social impact. I'll revisit MJ-12 at some point. I'm also trying to go through and reduce the complexity of the citations by pruning extra cites and using a minimal number of pages where possible, but making sure to pair primary sources with secondary. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 10:06, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

How much weight do reliable sources put on the weird stuff?

The chart below shows the weight that reliable sources place on the main UFO books, the Alien Autopsy film, and the Aztec hoax. I didn't check the Jesse Marcel and Glenn Dennis accounts because I didn't think their significance was being debated. Ziegler lists 6 versions of the myth, and Korff lists 7 major books. Otherwise, I've just listed the approximate amount of coverage. I've used "chapter" kind of liberally to describe multi-page sections with headings. The sources vary considerably in length, so I've tried to highlight in green where it seems a source if giving signification weight to something. Also, some sources talk about Aztec and most sources talk about RiP without explicitly stating that they have contributed to the Roswell story.

Roswell myth contributors

Source Item	Peebles (1994)	Ziegler (1997)	Klass (1997)	Korff (1997)	Smith (2000)	Goldberg (2001)	Pflock (2001)	ABC (2005)	Olmsted (2009)	Ricketts (2011)	Gulyas (2014)	Clarke (2015)	Bullard (2016)	Kloor (2019)	Frank (2023)
Aztec hoax (1949)	notable hoax	prototype	other incident	none	pages	mention	other incident	none	none	other incident	mention	template	none	none	"noteworthy"
Roswell Incident (1980)	chapter	version 1	pages	major	page	pages	chapter	first book	page	paragraph	first book	page	page	page	"the first"
Majestic 12 hoax	chapter	version 2	none	chapter	pages	pages	chapter	none	page	none	pages	none	mention	none	none
UFO Crash at Roswell (1991)	paragraph	version 3	pages	major	pages	pages	page	none	none	mention	none	footnote	footnote	none	none
The Roswell Report (1991)	none	footnote	none	major	none	none	footnote	none	none	none	none	none	none	none	none
Crash at Corona (1992)	paragraph	version 4	pages	major	none	paragraph	mentions	none	none	mention	none	none	none	none	none
The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell (1994)	NA	version 5	pages	major	mention	page	page	none	none	mention	none	none	none	none	none
Roswell in Perspective (1994)	NA	version 6	other narrative	other narrative	none	mention	mentions	none	none	none	none	none	none	none	none
"Alien Autopsy" (1995)	NA	sentence	none	chapter	paragraph	paragraph	chapter	paragraph	none	paragraph	none	mention	page	none	notable hoax
Roswell UFO Crash Update (1995)	NA	none	none	major	none	mention	footnote	none	none	none	none	none	none	none	none
Top Secret/MAJIC (1996)	NA	NA	NA	major	none	mention	paragraphs	none	footnote	none	footnote	none	mention	none	none
The Day After Roswell (1997)	NA	NA	NA	NA	pages	mention	pages	none	none	footnote	none	pages	pages	none	none
Area 51 An Uncensored History (2011)	NA	NA	NA	NA	NA	NA	NA	NA	NA	NA	none	paragraph	none	paragraph	none

Hopefully this is useful when deciding which weird items need more weight [The Roswell Incident (1980)] and which need less weight [Crash at Corona (1992)], Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 04:54, 26 December 2023 (UTC) Update: I moved the columns so that the works are in chronological order.03:10, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Serious kudos for that (who needs a Christmas tree?). This will help with NPOV. Bon courage (talk) 05:36, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

This is incredible work, thank you!! I thought about doing something like this several years ago and instantly balked at the thought of how much effort it would entail! Per Bon, thank you for our Christmas present! wow. Feoffer (talk) 07:16, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

The Day After Roswell

I rewrote this section Roswell_incident#The_Day_After_Roswell with only reliable secondary sources. It probably needs to be trimmed. Cut details can likely be moved down to The Day After Roswell article. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 10:27, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Making an outline for Roswell conspiracy theories (1978–1994)

Feoffer, I'm looking at the section Roswell incident#Roswell conspiracy theories (1978–1994) and have uncertainties on how to best organize some of the material. Much of the writing is new and much from a decades old version,[9] that was laid out differently. I'm thinking it may be best to create an outline first on what the key points are for each section, Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 23:41, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Looking at the old version you cite, it does seem like we lost the straightforward presentation of the books as presenting a generally consistent conspiracy theory about a crashed UFO. Textual scholarship, like Ziegler's, by its nature comes from a "splitters" not "lumpers" perspective, and it may overstate the differences between the accounts.

I think some of the important take home points are that the basic story of the Brazel ranch debris remains relatively constant albeit exaggerated, while the stories of extra crash sites and humanoid aliens were very controversial even among people who believed in the basic conspiracy theory. The story of a civil engineer, an archaeology team, and a military detail all simultaneously stumbling onto the same crash site hundred of miles away from Roswell is absurd on its face. Every version of the myth has different numbers of bodies that make up a larger portion of the tale -- Marcel says zero bodies, by Moore there's bodies 150 miles away, then bodes make to it Roswell's air field along with the debris, then the bodies actually go to the hospital for autopsy.

The section needs a lot of work -- we never really specify "what" the disagreements are about. The Majestic hoax influenced the narrative more than is captured in the current text, ditto for Glenn Dennis. So yeah, lots of room for improvements here. Feoffer (talk) 02:42, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't quite know how to pull it off, but I have always dreamt that this section might cover the material in two different "streams" or "threads". On the one hand, we have claims that are consistent with, and supportive of, the Project Mogul conclusion -- Marcel, DuBose, the many people who recall being told not to talk, probably even the people who report detention or threats, etc. And then, in a second, parallel-yet-intermingled thread, we have clearly fringe nonsense of every-evolving wild claims i.e. dead alien bodies. It would be great if we could present this material while still keeping those two threads clear and distinct in the minds of the reader. If we err too far on the side of "it was all crazy", the reader won't understand why Congress started asking for the real story (Mogul). Meanwhile, if we can somehow just tell the story of how the crazy stuff evolves over time, in a distinct thread, without talking about the people who obviously just witnessed Mogul, then it becomes quite obvious that the CT is an increasingly elaborate self-contradictory fairytale, not just "better detective work yielding new evidence". Feoffer (talk) 07:59, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Okay, I think I'm following now. I started tracking down reliable sources for MJ-12 and have started drafting here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Roswell_incident/sandbox&oldid=1195567567#Majestic_12_hoax

That is likely already too much information for here (not sure that Doty even needs to be named in this article). Feel free to pull anything from there to this article or Majestic 12. I think for MJ-12, the most clear structure is something like:

• What is it? (hoax via faked memos)
  • Who spread it? (Bill Moore in the 80s)
    • How do we know that? (not sure how much evidence is going overboard here)

And then:

• What was the MJ-12 story?
  • What did it add to the Roswell conspiracies?

I think mentioning Ziegler's versions 1 to 5 is probably confusing outside of version 1 (the Berlitz & Moore book). I'm imagining a reader dropping down to MJ-12 or Kevin Randle's book and puzzling over what the versions mean. I think version 1 is also the only one I see wider agreement on. Perhaps Ziegler's versions offer a more verifiable way to construct the diagram? Rather than descent, Ziegler is using a framework more of what does each version contribute as noted by his "(V#)" throughout chapter 1. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 17:19, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Looks great to me! and yes, Zeigler could be used to make a REALLY amazing table or image. First go round, I just tried to keep things as simple as possible and only keep debris and bodies distinct. I've replaced the old text with that from your sandbox and chopped the version numbers. Feoffer (talk) 07:36, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Outline of different sources

If it's helpful, I took notes of which novel elements Zeigler attributes to which sources: User:Feoffer/sandbox mythogenesis of roswell Feoffer (talk) 03:28, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

This really helps. As far as historical elements, the only thing absent from the Wikipedia article is "Alamogordo stages balloon demonstration for press to divert attention from [Mogul debris found near] Roswell". Are there sources not involved with Charles B. Moore that say this? He wrote a chapter in that book, worked with Weaver & McAndrew, and corresponded with Pflock. I think they all include some version of this. This may be one of the few "cover-up" actions that have reliable, secondary coverage.

I don't think we'll have the space to cover every detail, but this looks like a good way to organize the Berlitz & Moore (1980) book. A lot of this can be sourced to other secondary sources as well, like the current lightning strike paragraph cited to Olmsted. I'm thinking anything from the book that can't be found in one of the secondary sources is likely out of scope. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 05:40, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I've reformatted and trimmed the existing section in the sandbox.[10] Let me know if that's looking more clear or less clear. The primary source citations are still present for quotes, but every passage cited to the Berlitz & Moore book is marked with . I'll start working on checking the secondary sources soon. Those bits may be covered in the more reliable sources but in a different way. For example, Ziegler makes note of Marcel's "nothing made on this earth" comment as an example of how Marcel was pulling elements from other crashed saucer stories (16-17). Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 06:05, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Looking good to me! If I'm not mistaken, we have contemporary sourcing from 1947 on the Alamogordo balloon demonstration in connection with Roswell. (It might have been a demo at Ft Worth).

In the sandbox -- the archaeology group got cut from the 1980 book, but they'll come up again in subsequent versions. It is probably important for the reader to know that Barnett wasn't with the archaeology group in the legend and he didn't lead them there -- instead the claim is that three different groups descended on the same San Agustin site almost simultaneously.

Looking good. Feoffer (talk) 08:46, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I've gone through the parts cited only to primary sources. I need to see why the Klass cite is so many pages and then copyedit. When I update the live article, I may ping you about the archaeologists because their significance is escaping me. They just seem like this bizarre and random nameless group that are plopped all over New Mexico. Rjjiii (ii) (talk) 09:28, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

the archaeologists because their significance is escaping me

If I'm not mistaken, Barnett and the archaeologists were a major source of schism between the Friedman camp and the Randle camp. At some point in the history, Barnett and the archaeologists get discredited and an entirely different group of archaeologists is invoked to witness a crash hundreds of miles away.

Zeigler, p.23-24: "However, some ufologists, notably Friedman, were unconvinced by the core scenario of Versions 2 and 3, which placed Grady Barnett and the archaeologists not on the Plains of San Agustin but more than 100 miles (160 km) away on the ranch operated by Brazel.... The key to Friedman and Berliner's Version 4 was the testimony of Maltais (1991) and Anderson that placed Barnett and some archaeologists on the Plains of San Agustin. At the 1992 conference, Randle, Schmitt, and Carey (1992:19) argued cogently that Anderson's tale was "no more than a fabrication." These authors also indicated that they had evidence that Barnett never claimed (as Maltais had alleged) to have seen a crashed saucer. Insofar as something resembling a consensus resulted from this conference, it appears that Version 3 triumphed over Version 4. For example, the conference moderator concluded that Anderson's story presented "warning signs of a hoax" and that evidence for the Barnett story was "extremely soft" Nevertheless, despite a general trend of commentary favoring Randle and Schmitt, their Version 3 also came under fire. One ufologist (Whiting 1992:35) noted that "the basic weakness in the Randle-Schmitt argument is that it fails to provide a credible reason for moving . . . Barnett miles [240 km] to the east," where, according to Version 3, Barnett and some archaeologists had stumbled upon the crashed saucer near Roswell.Perhaps sensing that the tide of opinion was running in their favor, in their next book Randle and Schmitt (1994) produced Version 5 of the Roswell myth. In this version Barnett does not appear, thus eliminating the need to explain why he was near Roswell rather than on the Plains of San Agustin. However, new witnesses had come forth (or had been ferreted out by Randle and Schmitt), and their testimony indicated that an archaeological team did stumble upon the crashed saucer near Roswell. This, of course, was not the archaeological team of the Barnett-Anderson story (which had been largely discredited in the eyes of some ufologists) but rather a different group of archaeologists. Indeed, in their book Randle and Schmitt (1994:191) declare that, for lack of evidence, "Barnett's story and, in fact, the Plains [of San Agustin] scenario must be discarded." It was also necessary for them to change some details, such as the date of the crash and the shape of the alien spaceship, to conform to the testimony of their new witnesses. Despite these changes the core scenario of Version 5, which follows, is essentially a replay of Versions 2 and 3 " Feoffer (talk) 09:57, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Well done on incorporating this content into the narrative! It's such a luxury to sit back and watch the article be improved by leaps and bounds! Feoffer (talk) 10:47, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

In re your recent removal, the Globe's significance is them being the first to report bodies actually brought to the base at Roswell (and flown to Wright Field by Pappy Henderson). I don't know we need to actually bother the readers with that level of granularity, but it is an element that gets incorporated into the narrative, and it helps to understand that it came from a tabloid. Feoffer (talk) 10:49, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

The date given (1981) is likely an error. It says that the article cited his widow Sappho. Henderson seems to have lived until 1986.[11] Korff (1997) credits Randle (1991) for getting the story from surviving Henderson family members. Randle (1991) and Stringfield (1989) attribute the story to family members interviewed after Henderson's death, which would be 1986 at the earliest. The 1981 date seems to be a misreading of Stringfield (1989) who says that Sappho only heard the story in 1981 when Pappy saw an article in Globe about Roswell.[12] Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 17:12, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Edit: to anyone reading this who has not read the sources, I realize I should make clear that I believe an error was made by Smith (2000), not Feoffer. When looking into it, I found several other sources that repeat Smith's Globe/Henderson claim (sometimes with the almost certainly false detail that he was dead in 1981) but none of these cite an issue of the tabloid. Stringfield (1989) wrote, "On February 17, 1981 the story appeared in the tabloid Globe and Henderson admitted to his wife and daughter that the story was true." Here's a clip of his wife Sappho Henderson and daughter Katherine Groode explaining the 1981 supermarket conversation:[13] Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 20:32, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Great catch, that would explain why I could never find the Globe article that actually mentioned bodies, why it didn't appear in the RSe, and why it didn't fit into the chronology! Good solution. Feoffer (talk) 22:16, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Lead image

Could we brainstorm a way to show a cropped image of the front page that shows the relevant headline, but still provide the reader with an easy and obvious way to click through to full page if desired? The current lead image is an invaluable resource for people who want to read the entire front page, but it's challenging to parse in thumbnail. Feoffer (talk) 10:48, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

The Phineas Gage#Cerebral localization section uses a cropped public domain image with an inset of the full image, which links to the full image on commons, which links to both the cropped image and the cropped image with the inset. That's a bit complicated (and I think only allowed for public domain media) but it's the example that pops to mind Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 23:39, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Marcell's background

I noticed that back in December, this passage was removed: Independent researchers would find patterns of embellishment in Jesse Marcel's accounts, including provably false statements about his military career and educational background.

This appears to be reliable sourced.....and the edit summary that removed it didn't give much of a summary as to why.

I think this should be restored. This is a important part of the story.Rja13ww33 (talk) 06:33, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Readers don't need to open that can of worms. The Todd study of Marcel's background gets a brief mention in Saler et al, but mostly so it can be dismissed. The core tale has multiple independent attestation (DuBose, Jesse Jr, etc). Todd's hypothesis doesn't have much explanatory weight because per Saler, "The fantastical element of [Marcel's] tale lies chiefly in his interpretation of what he saw and heard and in his assertion that the debris 'was nothing that came from earth'". Marcel was clear that was just his personal suspicion, not something he was ever told or factually concluded. Todd (1995) ends with the extremely questionable conclusion: "Major Marcel was a mythomaniac who was responsible for the brouhaha back in 1947", but the article offers no proof for Marcel being "responsible" for the 1947 events; He didn't order the press release, Blanchard did. While Todd highlights what are genuinely apparent discrepancies between Marcel's late life interviews and his service record, it's a far leap to declare Marcel a habitual liar; I note even sources very friendly to Todd characterize his 1995 piece as merely "casting serious doubt on Jessie's memory". Under questioning from full-blown conspiracy theorists, Marcel consistently decline to 'confabulate' his tale: No "intact flying saucers" and no "alien bodies", just something more-or-less consistent with Mylar ie unfoldable and unburnable. (For comparison, we do have an article on an actual mythomaniac who habitually lied about his war service : Pseudobiography_of_L._Ron_Hubbard#Military_career) Feoffer (talk) 09:48, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

This appears in multiple RSs. And not all sources "friendly to Todd characterize his 1995 piece as merely "casting serious doubt on Jessie's memory"". Kal Korff's book (which is cited in the article) pretty much flat out calls Marcell a liar. And quotes a large passage from Todd's research. Furthermore, this info does offer a great deal of probative value for the reader. It helps explain Marcel's claims of the foil that a sledge hammer would "bounce off" of, or couldn't be cut, burned, bent, etc. The fact of the matter is, Marcel did make a number of conclusions. (Including the notion that the material was "not anything from this Earth".) Conclusions that were not shared by people around him. This short passage (and was long standing content) help put that in perspective.Rja13ww33 (talk) 15:43, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Well Korff definitely helps, it's a full-throated endorsement of Todd's conclusion; It was cited only to Saler et al, so I didn't know about Korff's treatment of the material. Most of the discrepancies seem like falsehoods typical of aged veterans: if a famous general was in your chain of command, you worked for him. If you EVER went up in a plane before joining the Army Air Forces, you had flying experience. Two Air Medals can turn into five. A presidential statement gets mistaken for a transcript of a presidential address.

But two discrepancies highlighted by Korff are more serious -- false claims of attending GWU and false claims of shooting down enemy planes. There are innocent explanations for the former, many bios of ww2 vets reveal they attended military schools physically located at university, taught by university professors, but it's not something the University registrar would know about. But I can't reconcile the claims of having shot down multiple enemy planes with records showing total absence of even serving as a gunner -- at no point in Marcel's life would it have been acceptable to fudge or misremember that point. I'm still not sure how much weight we should give it, but Korff definitely goes in-depth on it.

The article's changed a lot since December, so I'll just ping @Rjjiii: and let them see where it would go now and what weight it should have. Feoffer (talk) 02:23, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

It was more that attending GWU. He also claimed he attended LSU, Ohio State, University of Wisconsin, and NY University. At least in the case of LSU and GWU, they have no record of him. I'm not sure if the others were ever contacted (Todd said he didn't try to verify the others because there is no record of him living close enough to those places to attend.) There is a lot of other stuff. In (for example) the 'Unsolved Mysteries' episode on this, Marcel was referred to as "an experienced combat pilot whose primary duty in peacetime was to investigate air accidents". Needless to say: that's not accurate. The fact this stuff kept following Marcel around is no accident. No debunker worked on that episode: as far as I know, the only consultants were Kevin Randle and Stanton Friedman. Speaking of Randle, it is kind of interesting how he has evolved on Marcel. I've monitored his blog for years and even he has recognized the fact Marcel had a tendency to exaggerate things. All this is not to disparage Marcel.....but frankly a lot of the UFO buffs have tried to say that some of the people with Marcel were in on the cover up. (Because they don't back his version of events.) And what I am suggesting adding back is a (very good) alternative explanation.Rja13ww33 (talk) 03:06, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

@Feoffer and Rja13ww33: I'm not against the sentence remaining with Korff (1997) as a source, but I also don't see it as adding much. The reason I changed it before was due to sourcing, which Korff's book resolves. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 03:23, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks Rjj. Rja13ww33 (talk) 03:30, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

I've reverted to the previous language, now citing Korff (1997). When I started looking over the article there was something similar cited to Todd's self-published newsletter.[14] I changed it to the wording (and citation) that Rja13ww33 quotes above because the newsletter doesn't meet WP:RS.[15] Then, I changed it again last December because I realized I was citing a point to Ziegler that he didn't put any weight on.[16] I'm not set on that wording, but I think that reverting is the appropriate thing to do per WP:BRD and that if I do it to my own edits, it lessens the potential for arguments. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 03:09, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

1947 military balloon crash

I have tried to sort the opening para out here, but it's still a disaster, largely because it has a long parenthetic flashback in the middle of it (to Kenneth Arnold). Try, as a new reader, making sense of what's going on here, paying attention to how many times the word "June" is mentioned. Bon courage (talk) 05:01, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Many small things

• The short description is a bit off. "unspecified object" seems meaningless. Putting out an invitation for others to rewrite it because my gut says "1947 crash" but that may be too brief.
• At some point should the Saler, Ziegler, and Moore full citation be broken up into the sections of the book? I think most shortened footnotes are pointing to the Ziegler section. At least a few point to the Moore section. I don't know if any point the Saler or Saler & Ziegler sections.
• Marcel says he was unable to speak with the press after the cover story. Klass (1997b) notes that news reports after the cover story include quotes and personal details from Marcel. Should we note this somewhere?
• "Modern views" should probably have a more clear title. My first thought is "Explanations".
• Do we want to mention the weather balloon demos? They seem to be one of the few things that is clearly part of a coverup. Loads of front page stories showed them on July 11, 1947. This one from The El Paso Times [17] is mistakenly cited by ufologists via Kevin Randle as a Mogul array.[18]
• Is there anything missing from the article? Or anything present that is completely out of scope?
• The ample quotes in the citations help with verification and collaboration right now. Per the WP:NOT guideline, we should start to prune these down at some point.

Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 06:52, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

• Strong yes on covering the subsequent balloon demos for press, whether it was an intentional coverup or not.
• Explanations is better than Modern Views
• I don't think it's a high priority to split the Saler, Ziegler, and Moore citation, but it would probably be an improvement. That said, when I see a citation to a multi-author text, it's sort of implied that some people worked on some parts and other people worked on others.
• I'll have to look more into Marcel's statement he couldn't get to talk to the press. In one of his filmed interviews, he recalled talking to the press but that he wasn't at liberty to honestly answer them, or something to that effect; At least in that interview, he did recall talking to the press, or that's my recollection at least.

Having had time to look at Klass (1997b), it seems pretty obvious to me that Marcel is talking about not being allowed to talk to the press openly; He's not denying being in a room full of press who want answers from him or sticking to a pre-approved cover story. Maybe other eyes see it differently, but I haven't seen any source that suggests Marcel told anyone he never got to interact with press. Besides, Marcel quotes could have come from releases from the press office, not directly from Marcel. I think it's an unnecessary detour unless there's more to the story that I don't yet know about. Feoffer (talk) 11:00, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

In my view Marcel's claim that he was unable to be forthright to the press is a claim that should be noted in the conspiracy section. Drocj (talk) 16:55, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

We already quote him: "They wanted some comments from me, but I wasn't at liberty to do that. So, all I could do is keep my mouth shut. " Feoffer (talk) 22:18, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Flow Chart

In the article there is kind of a flow chart (for a lack of a better way to put it), that cite references #44, 47, and 71. It looks kind of like OR (no offense intended)....pieced together from those references. Does anyone else see it that way....or am I missing something? What caught my eye was the San Augustin bodies being in 1980.....on a separate branch from Marcel being re-discovered 1978. The San Augustin body story (i.e. Barney Barnett) surfaced within a few months of Stanton Friedman first interviewing Marcel (in '78).Rja13ww33 (talk) 20:06, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

It is a bit confusing to me too. It is trying to show how these things contributed to the myth, but the San Augustin bodies are not mentioned in the body. It should be mentioned in the article and then a seperate feed in, I think. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 20:17, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

The diagram is indeed out of date and needs updating / replacement with a better image. It's an artifact from when an earlier version when the evolution of the myth was confined to single subsection with accompanying body text. Now we cover that evolution in the main body of the article. We have a table of elements that is fully verifiable and could be used to help created a better diagram if we wanted.

The general thing I'd want some infographic to do is to convey on sight that factual historical elements from 1947 got mixed with fringe beliefs about UFOs and a succession of increasingly elaborate hoaxes and wild tales. Feoffer (talk) 02:05, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Clean up work in sandbox

Clean up: 'Weather balloon' as cover story for Project Mogul

☛ Talk:Roswell incident/sandbox ^{[ starting point permanent link ]}

Hello all, I've merged the section I was working on from the sandbox into the article. Considering the interactions above, I've moved that section into the sandbox to give us more room to edit. Regarding previous discussions, check out the section Reference scratchpad. I've started two bundled citations. The nuance I see in reliable sources post-1997 is whether they are talking about a military program, Mogul overall, or Flight number 4 specifically. I don't think there is a reliable sources that casts any doubt on it being from a military program. Many sources outright say it is Mogul, and the ones that don't are citing someone who says it is or saying it likely is. For Flight 4 specifically, there is less certainty, and some sources that do outright say it is Flight 4, cite Charles B. Moore who says it "seems likely ".

Feoffer, do you think there is enough in the existing sources quoted in the sandbox[19] plus the Smithsonian and NYT sources linked by LuckyLouie to call it Mogul? If not, what is the threshold you're looking to pass? Regards, Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 04:23, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Well, the current question is can we verify that "The military decided to conceal the true purpose of the crashed device – nuclear test monitoring – and instead inform the public that the crash was of a weather balloon". So far as I can tell, that it's not verifiable as fact. Note the Smithsonian scholar's quote (emphasis mine): “Apparently, it was better from the Air Force’s perspective that there was a crashed ‘alien’ spacecraft out there than to tell the truth". The Air Force source consistently attributes conclusions to the Weaver & McAndrew report, nobody asserts it as fact, not even Olmsted tbh. I'm very open to alternate wordings, but we can't declare a decision took place -- we can say "scholars conclude", we can go stronger with "scholarly consensus" even. We could even say the military "apparently" decided -- we can source that. Feoffer (talk) 04:55, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

I think consensus is clear we can assert as fact that is a MOGUL balloon and the military decided to conceal that. Bon courage (talk) 05:11, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Does this seem more verifiable, "The military concealed the true purpose of the crashed device – nuclear test monitoring – and instead informed the public that the crash was of a weather balloon."? That's just cutting "decide" out. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 05:34, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Weaver's conclusion section is clear (emphasis mine):

• "All available official materials, although they do not directly address Roswell per se, indicate that the most likely source of the wreckage recovered from the Braze1 Ranch was from one of the Project MOGUL balloon trains."
• "Although the Air Force did not find documented evidence that Gen. Ramey was directed to espouse a weather balloon in his press conference, he may have done so because he was either aware of Project MOGUL and was trying to deflect interest from it, or he readily perceived the material to be a weather balloon based on the identification from his weather officer, Irving Newton."
• "It appears that the identification of the wreckage as being part of a weather balloon device, as reported in the newspapers at the time, was based on the fact that there was no physical difference in the radar targets and the neoprene balloons (other than the numbers and configuration) between MOGUL balloons and normal weather balloons."

Weaver is clear -- they might not have concealed anything, they might have just not connected it to Mogul. Hell, it might not be connected to Mogul, though all scholars agree that's "most likely". Feoffer (talk) 06:05, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Alternatively, go the secondary source and simply WP:ASSERT what it says. That would be policy compliant. Bon courage (talk) 06:09, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

I see you've editwarred to do just that. You should self-rv back to the stable version while we discuss this. Feoffer (talk) 06:26, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Bon courage, Hob Gadling and Rjj. In this case, the secondary sources support a simple WP:ASSERTion. Feoffer, you may feel you know this subject inside and out, but it may be time for you to WP:DROPTHESTICK. - LuckyLouie (talk) 15:11, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Bon courage As a matter of habit. I appreciate the work you two do fighting fringe, but deletions, editwarring, and frankly bullying don't write an encyclopedia. Weaver says most likely -- we don't get to misrepresent his conclusion. You can't just fudge or yada yada over WP:V. It might have been a non-MOGUL military balloon and the entire article falls apart if we lie to the reader on this point. Feoffer (talk) 04:40, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

I agree the stick needs to be dropped on this. Bon courage (talk) 05:14, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm not the problem here. I'm not the first to object to WP:ASSERTing this material as fact, I won't be the last. Nobody gets to GA by failing WP:V. Feoffer (talk) 05:21, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Consensus is what it is. There has been no sustainable opposition to asserting the crashed balloon was a MOGUL one since the Olmsted source was in play. Before that, there was a push to keep the article suggestive about 'an object' crashing. As you know, on many WP:FRINGE articles there will be periodic objections to neutral text, and I would expect that to happen here too. That, in part, is why getting to WP:GA is desirable, better to 'lock in' the desired neutrality. Bon courage (talk) 05:28, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Even if editors agreed to assert as fact that it was MOGUL (we don't), the current text that asserts as fact the the military consciously concealed that fact. You don't get to GA by making up history as you go along. Feoffer (talk) 05:32, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Consensus is not unanimity; maybe read WP:1AM? The question of concealment is a different one, and I don't think there is consensus on that because it has not been much discussed. Personally, I have no firm view on how the sources fall on that matter. Bon courage (talk) 05:37, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

The question of concealment is a different one, and I don't think there is consensus on that because it has not been much discussed. Personally, I have no firm view on how the sources fall on that matter.

I appreciate that very much -- but that's exactly what I have been debating. The disputed sentence begins "The military had decided at the time to conceal" and its NOT verified. We can attribute that conclusion to Olmsted, to a list of scholars, to scholarly consensus in general, or any other verbiage. With the excellent Smithsoninan source Louie dug up, we could even say they "apparently" decided to cover it up. But Weaver is clear -- they might have just taken one look at it, assumed it was a weather balloon, and tossed it in the garbage; People at Roswell didn't have a need to know about MOGUL, the people in Texas might not have either.

In a larger sense, I don't think Wikipedia articles should "assert" the material they're trying to "prove" -- it's bad writing and it's bad education, even in subjects of complete certitude like math. In History, like Geometry, a true assertion can't be marked "correct" unless you can show the "proof". What does it buy us to assert as fact that it could NOT have been a weather balloon or other military balloon? Weaver doesn't exclude that possibility, why should we? It certainly doesn't help us to concede to the UFO nuts that the only two possibilities are MOGUL and aliens. Feoffer (talk) 06:10, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Weaver is one old outlier source and his co-author went on to clarify this was deffo a MOGUL balloon. Any general push not to assert historical fact on Wikipedia is extremely ill-advised, and would feed (for example) Holocaust denial (so yes, it is fact Jews were gassed at Auschwitz in large numbers), 9/11 truther narratives (so yes, it is a fact hijacked planes flew into buildings causing their collapse), and so on. Just align with the WP:BESTSOURCES and all will be well. Bon courage (talk) 06:22, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Alright well, setting aside the theoretical; On this article, how would you feel about us NOT asserting as fact that a conscious decision to conceal occurred in 1947. You say you have no firm view on whether that occurred, would you like to brainstorm alternate wording for the disputed sentence? Feoffer (talk) 06:56, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

It's could be as simple as "the military apparently decided..." and citing it to Louie's Smithsonian source. Feoffer (talk) 07:02, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Goldberg flat out refers to "the 1994 admission that the weather balloon story was a cover for the secret Mogul Project". And the current text is currently well-verified by Olmsted. If by the "Smithsonian" source we mean Peebles, I don't think that is relevant since it apparently was written before the MOGUL information came to light. Bon courage (talk) 07:28, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Oh no, Louie hooked us up. It's from 2017 [20]:

“Apparently, it was better from the Air Force’s perspective that there was a crashed ‘alien’ spacecraft out there than to tell the truth,” says Roger Launius, the recently-retired curator of space history at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
“A flying saucer was easier to admit than Project Mogul,” Launius adds, a chuckle in his voice. “And with that, we were off to the races.”

Feoffer (talk) 07:44, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

That doesn't tell us anything about the genesis of the weather balloon story, does it? Bon courage (talk) 07:55, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

It's a little uncomfy how it "anthropomorphizes" the Air Force -- I would love to prove that Ramey had been read into MOGUL and knew to cover it up, but I can't connect those dots yet, Weaver specifically admits Ramey might not have known, because the actual components are physically identical to weather balloons, raising the possibility that it wasn't a cover-up so much as semantics -- MOGUL flights really did include a "weather balloon", even though their purpose wasn't to monitor weather. I feel like this nuance is getting lost when we just look at the Olmsted popular history book declare a coverup and adopt its narrative as consensus fact. Feoffer (talk) 12:04, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm fine with saying they used the weather balloon story for a cover story, without saying they 'decided to', citing Olmsted and/or Goldberg. BTW, Olmsted's book is not really pop history, but a monograph published by the Academic division of OUP.[21] Bon courage (talk) 12:26, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

That's a big step in the right direction -- "cover story" is well sourced, "decide to conceal" is not.

My point about Olmsted is just that she gives us no way to verify her conclusions (insofar as they differ from Weaver, who shows his work). Feoffer (talk) 12:55, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

It's a distinction without a difference really: either they 'decided' to cook something up as cover, or they 'decided' to let merely mistaken weather balloon story run as it served for the purposes of cover up. So, I'm easy about which form of words is used. Bon courage (talk) 13:01, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Cool.

Yeah, it's a distinction that doesn't make a lot of difference to me personally either, but I know that to a certain subset of readers, people with a certain type of susceptibility, it can be a big difference. It won't disturb me one wit if it was a planned cover-up operation -- I actually want to find sources to prove it, and hope to add more quotes from Weaver to support that conclusion. Feoffer (talk) 13:17, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't think the Weaver source should be used in this article. Rather, independent secondary scholarship should be preferred. Bon courage (talk) 14:23, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't think the Weaver source should be used in this article. Can you clarify this opinion: Weaver shouldn't be used in this precise way or it literally shouldn't be used anywhere in the article?? It's been stably cited as RS in the article since time immemorial.

While I have you -- do you have any opinions on how we should cover the teletype coverup claims and the death threat claims, or any good sources to add to that convo? Rj felt like the sourcing on that was very weak and we moved it the sections about FRINGE. It seems to be very likely a proactive coverup (as opposed to a mere cover story) DID occur, but damn if I can prove it. Please be on the lookout for source that do. Feoffer (talk) 14:56, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm leaning to not using it at all (except maybe to touch in the odd detail). The 'Roswell incident' itself includes the documents/statements made by the military, some of which are mis/disinformation. It is not our place to determine which are which, but we can use secondary WP:SCHOLARSHIP looking back on all the material and offering a settled and independent view – the "accepted knowledge" that Wikipedia wants to relay. Bon courage (talk) 15:11, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Bon, we have VERY different things we want out of wikipedia articles, but C'est La Vie. :)

The idea of citing the bulk of this article without depending on Weaver is sort of blowing my mind right now, because literally EVERYONE and their brother cites Weaver as the gold standard. I can't even fairly respond to that suggestion until I've taken the time to really think about it :) lol. In principle, I'm on board to help find and add independent sourcing, but in practice I think we'll find all roads lead back to the 1995 Air Force report; '97 never contradicted 95, it tried to explain the bodies (that no one in 1947 ever actually saw) might have been crash test dummies -- which is more likely than alien bodies of course. Feoffer (talk) 15:28, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

literally EVERYONE and their brother cites Weaver as the gold standard ← that's cool then: use everyone and their brother as sources. Bon courage (talk) 15:36, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Well, I'm happy too when possible -- but when they cite Weaver, we should also ref Weaver so they can click through to him too, right? I guess what I'm getting at is that you're certainly not denying 1995 AF report is a RS, right? lol. When I first read your words, I think my hair caught on fire, but experience had taught me it's prob a miscommunication lol Feoffer (talk) 15:42, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

It's reliable for what it says. Whether it's accepted knowledge or not relied/relies on the reaction of others. It's fine to quote it alongside independent sources. A warning flat would be any delta between Weaver and historians, or if Wikipedia paid attention to stuff in the USAF reports that the rest of the world had ignored. Bon courage (talk) 15:45, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Good answers, we see eye to eye on that, I get what you were saying now.  :) Yes, Weaver could be fruitful for cherrypicking, and whenever possible we should take cues from (and cite) independent sourcing to demonstrate DUE weight, even if we supplementary link to the '95 report. I'm totally on board to help with that effort as we push to GA. (I just couldn't fathom writing an article if Weaver wasn't a RS lol). Feoffer (talk) 15:53, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

any delta Small world, I use that term too. Engineering / physics background? Feoffer (talk) 16:08, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Did some maths at one time. Roswell is interesting case from a WP:PSTS perspective. If one views the 'primary' material as including the military reports and the UFOlogist lore, then the secondary material is that which looks back on that whole big bundle of stuff. Bon courage (talk) 16:31, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Did some maths at one time Yeah I started off with History but took to maths like waterfowl to water. Funny how often I heard of people like us who share that overlap -- they seem like disparate fields, but they're both about putting puzzle pieces together

Strictly speaking the 90s reports don't qualify as primary sources to the events of 1947 (wouldn't that be wonderful if they were, lol? Historian's paradise, if the 95 report was written in 47! lol) . But I hear ya, we should lean on the most recent sources when possible, citing the 90s sources as supplementary when appropriate :)

Someday, in a far off future when the article is GA, I really do want to revisit the dispute about whether it might be possible to suggest to the readers that it really was just a weather balloon or other non-MOGUL military balloon. Not to be weird, but it's a little bit "pro-FRINGE" to suggest it couldn't possibly have been a weather balloon. Feoffer (talk) 16:56, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

I synced the sandbox to stable (crosses fingers) live article,[22] and I've condenses and reorganized much but tried to retain the language on the controversial points above. Changes are pretty big, so feel free to offer feedback or directly improve the sandbox draft. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 04:12, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

You've got a gift! The language looks great to me. Feoffer (talk) 04:25, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, Feoffer. I've put it into the live version. (Along with alt text for images and 2 sources to cite later on belief and tourism.)

Also, I have just realized when testing the page at different zoom levels that when condensing an earlier section I accidentally removed Template:1947 flying disc craze when removing the section header. The only reason I haven't put it back in yet, is because I'm not sure the best placement to reduce stacking. At full zoom, the Ramey photo is already pushed down to the Aztec section, but I'm hesitant to move, remove, or combine any images. I'll trust wherever you place it, Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 04:43, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

I chopped the image from the sidebar (on this page), so hopefully that will fix collisions. Feoffer (talk) 06:22, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Cleanup: lead

☛ Talk:Roswell incident/sandbox ^{[ starting point permanent link ]}

Something Bon courage noted above was the ambiguity in the lead, so I've copied:

• The current lead. This most reflects the current body text.
• And several old leads to borrow from:
• The lead from 2014 when Bon did major cleanup. This is a good example of ways we can get shorter and clearer.
• The lead from 2007 after Canada Jack did a massive rewrite while openly opposed by a professional ufologist who declared C.J. to be his nemesis, openly opposed C.J., and forked a shadow article of memories. (Was it really just like this then?)
• The lead from 2013 last edited by Invertzoo. Gulyas (2014) quotes a few paragraphs from this lead as a summary of how Roswell has become a significant part of the culture absent evidence. (Courtesy to ping to let the editor know they were cited by Gulyas.)

I'm thinking the best next steps are:

1. Do a really clear first sentence to say that the "Roswell incident" refers to [a] a 1947 balloon debris cleanup in New Mexico, and [b] the myths that have developed around it.
2. Condense, clarify, and just clean up the existing text, minus the final paragraph. That stuff seems mostly okay already.
3. Probably rewrite the final paragraph, maybe stealing some phrases from circa 2013. The explanation for adding that stuff in the edit summary, "insert summary paragraph to address pop culture influence"[23] is fine, but the wording needs work. Eg, a description of pop culture shouldn't come off as contradicting reported events, scholarship, research, and so on.

The lead gets a lot more attention, so I may ping a wider group before pushing anything live, Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 05:56, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

I trend toward verbosity, so ledes are my Achilles's heel. Everything else you've done looks great, I'm sure this will too. We can cut the gray alien refer in the lede since we cut that section, we could add a super brief summation of the newly-polished Aztec material. Thank you for all your incredible work, we'll be at GA in no time thanks to your efforts. Feoffer (talk) 03:44, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Feoffer, thanks! I think I'm close to done on the lead draft. I've added Aztec in a brief mention. Regarding verbosity, the word count is only about 20 words shorter and everything cut was from the final paragraph. The parts about 1947 and conspiracy theories are likely a few words longer than before, but I don't have much room to trim without removing content that is given major attention in the article's body. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 16:51, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

The lead in the Sandbox is a significant improvement. From my readings (i.e., WP:MOS:LEAD and the subsections therein) we are not obligated to make it four paragraphs long, or to include citations, or to mention everything in the body, or to painstakingly include every single element of "context." So long as it presents (from the Nutshell description) a summary of the body "with appropriate weight," the mission, so to speak, will be accomplished. When I have a chance tomorrow I will take a stab at condensing it further - I will create a dummy section in the Sandbox 'article' for my version. JoJo Anthrax (talk) 20:26, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

I have added a modified version of the lead to the sandbox. The changes obviously reflect my opinion of how an encyclopedic article should be structured: the lead is a brief introduction free of nitty-gritty details, akin to the abstract of a scientific paper; specific details/reports/claims/concepts/tangential relationships/personalities/sequelae/etc. are in the article body (in this case, in abundance) along with their reliable citations. I believe readers are sufficiently capable of reading the entire article, and clicking on the reliable sources therein, if they are interested in the material and/or want additional information. The citation in Rjj's version of the lead seems helpful and appropriate, so it was retained. JoJo Anthrax (talk) 10:43, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

I like the cutting of proper nouns in general. Ramey, Friedman, Highdive, Berlitz, Moore, The X-Files, and Star Trek are probably all names we don't need in the lede.

Marcel is an integral name, there's no understanding the article without it, we may as well introduce in the lede. We also do need to mention the 1980 book by name, that's where the article title comes from, after all. The ongoing disc hysteria needs a mention -- you can't undertand Roswell without it. We also should mention the Air Force reports and date them to 94 and 97 respectively -- those details got cut. Feoffer (talk) 11:44, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

All of those details were cut because, in my opinion, that information is not necessary in the lead for anyone, be they long-standing ufologists or ignorant of the topic, to understand what this Wikipedia article is about. Regarding there's no understanding the article without it (that is, Marcel's name and book title in the lead), that is not true. JoJo Anthrax (talk) 13:04, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

@JoJo Anthrax: Really appreciate it! I copied your version up to the top to work from but haven't changed much. A lot of the specific details removed (Ramey, Aztec, High Dive, X-Files) should make it much clearer to someone just trying to get the general idea.

Regarding Feoffer's notes: I've included the book title. Reliable sources mention either Marcel or (more often) the 1980 book as the starting point for the conspiracy theories. Also, if the book is not in the lead, its title is so similar to this article (The Roswell Incident (1980 book)) that it should probably be in a hatnote. Marcel and the book make almost no difference to the wording (Marcel could even just be a piped link). I added the 1947 flying disc craze as a piped link ("flying disc"). I did not add the USAF books. I think stating their relevant conclusions as unattributed facts works well in the lead. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 17:41, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Including the book and Marcel isn't my first choice for the lead, but I can live with it. Long live WP:CONSENSUS (and WP:COLLAB). JoJo Anthrax (talk) 19:13, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Looks good to me as well! Long live collab :) Feoffer (talk) 02:55, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Tiny subtle suggestion -- can we make it clear in the lead text that The Roswell Incident is a book (as opposed to tv or movie) or perhaps a "bestseller" (if that's true). Feoffer (talk) 10:58, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't see that as necessary since it's linked and has a section in this article. I've gone ahead and pushed the sandbox draft live as the current discussions are now about really minor points (link vs. name Marcel, & do we say it's a book). Reliable sources note that it was influential but not a bestseller and that it was the 90s books and documentaries that reaped the rewards. (Your favorite band's favorite band.) Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 22:45, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Sandbox looks good. My only thought:

• Obscuring the true purpose of the crashed balloon, which was nuclear testing detection, General Roger Ramey told the press that the crashed object was a conventional weather balloon. Decades later, conspiracy theories accused the government of a cover-up. There's something disharmonious about suggesting a coverup occured and then calling it a conspiracy theory to accuse the government of a coverup. Maybe intro conspiracy theory after Marcel along with the claim of ET origin, and then do Mogul? I dunno, see what JoJO thinks. In any case, much improved over current. Feoffer (talk) 00:43, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

This issue has been solved. Feoffer (talk) 13:20, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Before going "live," perhaps some additional editors can provide comments/suggestions here about the alternative leads, which are available here. JoJo Anthrax (talk) 08:44, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Cleanup: 'Alien bodies' as later hoaxes or test dummies

☛ Talk:Roswell incident/sandbox ^{[ starting point permanent link ]}

This hopefully keeps the details from the live version while moving away from a "critics say" format, to something more straightforward, Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 03:44, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

@Feoffer: if you don't spot any issues I'm planning to push this live. After this section, are there other areas that have issues? I'm feeling near the end of this cleanup work, Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 00:41, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Looks good to me! You should be SO proud of yourself. If you have idea on a new and improved diagram, I'd be happy to try to create one based on the table of elements in Saler. If not, we could just cut it, as it's not as essential now that article has been improved so much, but I know these sorts of charts really do help a certain type of learner. Feoffer (talk) 01:18, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, I've thought on ideas for visual guides, but haven't come to anything concrete. I was thinking that a timeline is the simple solution, but that leaves out a lot of context. Feel free to bring up any ideas for feedback, and I'll try to get back to you on that. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 06:32, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

@Feoffer: I've tried a different organization of some of the material from your chart.[24] I would be okay with cutting the diagram. If we want to retain something like that, I don't see a way to fit it into a sidebar. A logical place could be the "Roswell as Modern Myth and Folklore" section. Perhaps a more straightforward visual aid would work as a sidebar under "Roswell conspiracy theories (1978–1994)". I had considered a timeline at one point but never had something I was really feeling good about. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 06:01, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

THank you for the re-organization! that's perfect -- it's easy to let the diagram go in favor of your table! Feoffer (talk) 06:34, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

@Feoffer: Glad it helped! I plan to go through the footnotes and citation templates next. I have sometimes cited what I want (a bunch of relevant pages for research) instead of what other editors/readers will need (the quickest place to verify the content they just read). I also want to double-check that I've cited the correct pages on some early edits; I started without direct access to some sources. As far as content, I think I've gone over everything I intended to. At this point, if you want to put the article up for a GA review, copyediting, or peer review, I feel ready and will gladly help with any issues other editors find. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 01:52, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

Coverage of this article

https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2024/03/the-wikipedia-conspiracy-that-wasnt-or-why-wikipedia-says-roswell-was-a-balloon/ Guy (help! - typo?) 13:09, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Great article. Wikipedia should be proud. HiLo48 (talk) 01:48, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

At the time, it was quite a struggle to have Wikipedia say it was a balloon that crashed.[25] Bon courage (talk) 08:51, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Trimming images

I believe considerable trimming is needed in this article, as it seems overloaded with minor/insignificant details that might be fine in a book about the subject, but not an encyclopedic entry (see WP:NOT). Much of the prose needs trimming, but I will start here with the images. Firstly, having two maps of New Mexico is unnecessarily repetitive, as the content and geographical information depicted largely overlap; I suggest either combining them or simply deleting the first second map. Secondly, two images of people posing with debris, both apparently taken in what appears to be the same living room at the same time, are not needed, as one is sufficient to make the point; I suggest deletion of the image with Ramey and DuBose as neither person is clearly depicted. Thirdly, no image of ufologist Stanton Friedman is needed for understanding of this topic, the image adds nothing insightful, and including such an obvious glamour shot is distracting and comes across as a clear case of WP:PROMO. Fourthly, as with the Friedman image, including images of both Davis and his museum smacks of WP:PROMO; I prefer the second as it 'represents' both Davis and the local tourism industry. Fifthly, three depictions of 'alien corpses' are overkill, with the first being, once again, a seeming example of undue WP:PROMO; I suggest deleting it and retaining the second, which by itself makes the encyclopedic points perfectly clear. JoJo Anthrax (talk) 08:38, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

I agree, except that I would keep all images of the debris. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 15:03, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

@JoJo Anthrax: I removed the photo of Glenn Dennis, which was also stacking at higher resolutions, and see that Feoffer removed Friedman's photo. I tend to favor more media and don't mind two debris photos. Regarding "Firstly, having two maps of New Mexico is unnecessarily repetitive, as the content and geographical information depicted largely overlap; I suggest either combining them or simply deleting the first map." The way the maps are composed, the first one shows relevant locations in New Mexico, and the second one shows events and places from The Roswell Incident (1980). Are you thinking of adding the known places and purported events together on one map, or adding the relevant locations (Aztec, New Mexico & Plains of San Agustin) to a map similar to the first one? Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 21:36, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

I understand what the maps represent. Because it is directly reflecting a book written by two well-established practitioners of, let's just say suspect theories, the second map seems a bit on the credulous, WP:PROMO side of things (this article is of course not about The Roswell Incident). I support simply removing the second map. But if someone really, really wants/needs to explicitly illustrate the second map's locations, I suppose adding some of them to the first map would be fine. I won't repeat what I wrote above about the two debris images. JoJo Anthrax (talk) 06:27, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

"I support simply removing the second map." Gotcha, I misunderstood. I thought you were suggesting removing the one with the towns and bases and debris. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 06:44, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

You didn't misunderstand, I mistakenly wrote "first" in the original post. I will make that correction now. JoJo Anthrax (talk) 09:08, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

I've removed the first 'alien corpse' image per WP:PROMO; as mentioned above, two similar pics remain in the article. I plan to move the Aztec and Barnett pins on the second map over to the first map, and then remove the second map given the maps' overlap/redundancy, but I'll wait a day or two per WP:NORUSH. If someone wishes to beat me to it, that would be great, as who knows what formatting mayhem I might cause in the attempt. By the way, is there a reliably sourced basis for using the label "Barnett Legend" rather than something a bit more neutral, like "Barnett's Claim?" The word "Legend" seems/implies WP:SENSATIONAL, and it isn't used elsewhere in the article. JoJo Anthrax (talk) 13:21, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

We'll see what others think, but it's unclear the removal of the still is an improvement -- by showing the image and clearly labeling it a prop, readers are immunized against seeing it on FRINGE sites and being misled into thinking it's authentic.

Barnett never claimed to have seen any bodies -- he is a character in the legend, not a proponent of it. I've updated the text and sourced to PFlock. I'm uncertain if it's wise to merge the two maps -- we've worked very hard to help the reader SEPERATE the events of 1947 from the LEGENDS of the 1980s; If we take the 1980s legends and put them on the 1947 map, it will confuse the people when they read then 1940s section, and then when they get to the 1980s section, people will have to "flip back" to the very top of the article if the want to look at the map? I think this is a case to just invoke WP:NOTPAPER. Feoffer (talk) 02:33, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

I think that the images of the prop should not be there, but you make a good point for including them and labeling them "prop", so maybe that is OK. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 03:40, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

I do not believe we need to adopt such a pedantic approach toward "the readers." This is an encyclopedia, not a book or fan-site about the subject. It is difficult for me to imagine any reader who, having gotten any distance into this article, would, or could, be confused about a unified map or aggrieved by 'flipping' back to it. I will admit, though, that two maps is preferable to the seven or eight that argument could logically justify. Nor does any reader of this article require multiple images of obvious props; and at the risk of repeating myself, the first prop image, no matter how it is labeled, is infused with un-encyclopedic, pro-fringe WP:PROMO, a point that is curiously not addressed here. But...given how both the dual maps and promotional image seem to be of such critical importance to some editor(s), I will drop those particular sticks, inspired in part by Bubba73's wise either/or comments.

However, I am deeply concerned about such phrases as we've worked very hard and, to a lesser degree readers are immunized. The latter suggests WP:NOTHERE behavior, but more importantly from a policy perspective, the former indicates ownership issues. Let's please not go down those particular roads. JoJo Anthrax (talk) 07:31, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

Corona, New Mexico

Plains of San Agustin

Aztec, New Mexico

class=notpageimage|

The Roswell Incident (1980) conflates the 1947 debris retrieval near Corona with elements from unrelated crashed saucer stories, set hundreds of miles away from Roswell or Corona.

I wonder if we could tweak the maps to make their points more direct? If the second map comes across as either confusing or too in-universe to some people, would something like this help? I think the first map would be more useful for a reader with pins pulled rather than pins added. Thoughts? Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 03:15, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

The original instinct behind the first map was to show how you can't throw a dart at 1947 New Mexico without coming close to a USAAF and Corona wasn't even particularly close to RAAF. People try to link abomb stuff at RAAF to the incident, but it doesn't hold up. If you think it wise, we could pull the other AAF pins from the first map, leaving only RAAF, Corono, and then Alamogordo. Feoffer (talk) 03:36, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

The first map works for me as is, but I'm also more familiar with the material than most readers will be, so it's hard to say. I do think a combined (historical facts plus legends) map would be a bad idea the more I think about it. @Bubba73: do you have any preference on whether to replace, remove, combine, or retain the second map? Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 03:50, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

I think either retain both maps (because one shows the military bases and the other shows purported events) or combine them. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 04:58, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

Atomic / Rocketry hypothesis

Multiple versions of the myth suggest that the "aliens" were observing atomic or rocket technology. We just removed mention of speculation going back to July 6 '47, which is fine as that's very early and not Roswell-specific. But currently there's no mention of that aspect of the myth -- should we add some mention of that element later in the narrative? Feoffer (talk) 07:16, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

I am fine with that. I removed that line in the 1947 section because it was cited to Ziegler who seemed to be describing it as an element of the myth and not a relevant historical detail (p. 17). If the article is framing it as an aspect of the larger myth or a specific conspiracy theory, I don't have any issues. Frank (2023, p. 529) also gives it a passing mention as part of Berlitz and Moore's 1980 book, "According to their book, what really happened was that a saucer flying near US nuclear weapons test activity got hit by lightning." And Olmsted summarizes Ziegler on the 1980 book as, "Charles Ziegler calls “Version 1” of the Roswell myth, the “weather balloon” was actually an alien spaceship that had been flying over New Mexico to monitor the U.S. military’s atomic research." Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 13:20, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

If you wanted to add something like that to the text, I'd appreciate it and consider it an improvement. It's "interesting" that the atomic/rocket speculation goes back to '47 and if we dug hard enough I'm sure we'd fine a non-PRIMARY source talking about that, but it also conflates "in-universe" myths with genuine '47 events, which is the last thing we want to do! Better to do as you suggest and pick up around 1980. Feoffer (talk) 15:50, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

It's in the " The Roswell Incident " section as, "The book argues that an extraterrestrial craft was flying over the New Mexico desert to observe nuclear weapons activity when a lightning strike killed the alien crew." I thought that was sufficient, but am fine if you decide to expand. If you find non-primary sources for 47, that's also fine, but regardless of the sources, it could be pretty confusing to break down that [a] in Summer 1947 people were leaning towards some kind of high-tech nuclear rocket to explain UFOs and [b] by the 50s it was a major cultural trope that UFOs were not nuclear rockets, but rather alien crafts observing nuclear rockets. It could probably work better somewhere like Flying saucer or Unidentified flying object, where there's room to explain the transition. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 16:51, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Looks good! Feoffer (talk) 03:47, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 8 May 2024

Under "Roswell in Popular Culture" add ICONIC Roger the Alien from the "American Dad!" His entire character is that he was a grey alien, "crash test dummy" who crashed in Roswell and was later rescued by CIA agent Stan Smith (which is why he is part of their family).

Re: Season 1 episode 5 "Rodger Codger" (and later re-examined in Season 6 episode 12 "You Debt Your Life"), with a full flashback to the night he crashed is seen in the Season 18 episode 1 "Fellow Traveler."

The show references it A LOT as being an alien in disguise is his entire schtick 73.175.25.75 (talk) 22:19, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

 Done Excellent suggestion, thank you for it. I've added it. Feoffer (talk) 22:39, 8 May 2024 (UTC)