Talk:WTC Towers Memorial
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Bernie, you are such a bore! lsmcguinn
Several of the project's originators are disappointed in this article. The following is the discussion section as it is. The section below is in reverse chronological order, something Lynn started and I probably should not have gone along with. Just for the record, Lynn doesn't own any images or designs, and everybody left the foundation because of her and not because of Ken Gardner. - Bernie
Bernie - Stop it! - Lynn McGuinn
Lynn - You used our pictures and the pictures that were given to us for photoshopping (we have the originals) for over a year on your website. Now that Ken has dumped you and nobody wants anything to do with you, you have objections. Get a life. - Bernie
In reading the comments made below, I have come to realize that Bernie feels he has some sort of proprietary position in this project that he ascerbically defends. While he is to be lauded for his dedicated input into the website MakeNYNYAgain, he refuses to acknowledge my in depth involvement with the project. In addressing the immediate remark that is stated below regarding "my" alleged website wtctowersmemorial.org and photos that appeared on it when the site was active, I offer this simple explanation. At some point during the 7/28/05 event held in Union Square, a colleague of BG's photographed the project with the new memorial design that was commissioned by and influenced by 9/11 family members. (For a glimpse of the original memorial design on the Twin Towers II site plan, please refer to photographs taken on May 18, 2005 at a press conference held in Trump Tower). After the event, BG placed the photograph picturing the new memorial design on the MakeNYNYAgain website in an effort to once again bring positive attention to the project. He then emailed the .jpg of the photo to KG who in turn sent it to the website coordinator for the site twintowersii.com, a site that was reconstructed 2 weeks later with a new name, wtctowersmemorial.org. The domain for both websites falls under Ken's jurisdiction, not mine. Neither site is mine and any decisions pertaining to content on either were ultimately decided by Ken. It is important to note that Bernie neither asked permission then to use the photo on his website, nor did he feel he had to - he acted on his own. Regardless, the point is that at that time in 2005 Bernie did not know that I was a fiduciary partner of Ken's because Ken neglected to share that information with him. Therefore, it is understandable that he would be confused as to my role in the project.
Regarding the balance of Bernie's questions in the paragraphs below, I will answer them honstly and to the best of my ability. The circumstances that surrounded the dissolution of my long term friendship and working partnership with Ken were disconcerting at best. In every sense, the partnership ended not as a result of KG terminating an "employee" or "dropping" me but more as a conflict of interest regarding the future direction and promotion of the project. To continue, my involvemnt with the project was multi-faceted. Much of my work revolved around developing promotional strategies that would expose the project to a larger audience in an effort garner support for the project as an alternate site plan for the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site. Just after the new design of the Freedom Tower was unveiled, I commissioned Ken to rebuild the memorial portion of the Twin Towers II site model as a result of some mild interest from a small group of other 9/11 family members aside from myself who were willing to support Ken's memorial design over the memorial design proposed by the LMDC. The 7/28/05 Union Square event was planned around unveiling the final redesign of the memorial featured on the Twin Towers II site model. The large scale event did not go unnoticed by the press as Bernie alleges in his paragraph below. The Daily News and the Staten Island Advance each ran an article; News 88 Radio ran live coverage; WABC-TV ran it on the 6 o'clock news; CNN headlined it; Fox 5 News ran it as did NY 1. I don't know why Bernie feels he needs to disparage my investment into the Union Square event, perhaps it is because he was not a part of it.
Regardless of Bernie's perception of who owns what etc., etc. it remains clear that he has no intention of honoring my request to replace the current photograph of the project seen on Wiki and on the MakeNYNYAgain website with a photographs picturing the Twin Towers II site model with the memorial design original to the project. This non-compliance is in keeping with the way he presents himself on this talk page; he is negative, spiteful and self-righteous. To continue, I will address Bernie's statement regarding a 9/11 family member poll. Firstly, 9/11 family members were not polled, they were surveyed. It was tantamount that their private contact information be kept private. The survey was conducted through a private email list and all respondent information was kept confidential. Two 9/11 family members wrote and then disbursed the survey. The survey focused on three ideas; rebuilding the Twin Towers vs. building the Freedom Tower, an above ground memorial vs. an underground memorial and Ken's alternate site plan vs. the LMDC's site plan. It was quite straightforward, there was nothing misleading about it. The sentences involving the "poll" were deleted from the Wiki page because of the way it was worded implying that a majority of 9/11 family members supported rebuilding the Twin Towers II site plan and its newly designed above ground memorial. This is simply not true and misleads Wiki readers. I believe Bernie's reticence to replace the picture here and on his website belies the fact that I am a 9/11 family member and after working for 15 months with Ken which included redesigning the memorial portion on the site model, taking down the photo along with the removal of the statement would leave the project in a less desirable position as a choice for an alternate rebuilding plan for Ground Zero. This in and of itself is wrong and disresptful to Ken's idea of healing as a purpose for building the project at Ground Zero. It further misleads the Wiki audience when they click onto Bernie's website link at the bottom of the Wiki page, a site that further embellishes on these misleading and incorrect idea that Ken Gardner's project is supported by a majority of 9/11 family members. The majority of 9/11 family members support an above ground memorial exclusive of the Twin Towers, period. Therefore, let's be clear. When Bernie says that I "don't represent the victim's families" he is correct if he is referring to my preference for the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site; new Twin Towers and an above ground memorial.
In conlusion, Bernie Goetz is a taciturn sort who offers biased edits to Wikipedia. He disallows other users to edit the page and when they do, he harrasses them in an effort to make them stop making changes to what he considers "his" site. While harrassment of a fellow Wikipedian is not considered vandalism, perpetrating a personal attack on one is. 68.198.236.221 18:31, 12 December 2006 (UTC) - Lynn McGuinn
"He has no right to use the photo he displays on this site without the permission of Mr. Gardner and myself." Well, where did your website (www.wtctowersmemorial.org) get these photos from? I notice they appeared on your website AFTER MakeNYNYagain.com published them. - Bernie Goetz
Ken dropped you - you are no longer involved with his project or him. And he dropped a lot of people along the way who contributed significant money,or did a lot of volunteer work. Weren’t you in charge of fund raising? -Weren’t you going to raise milllions for Ken or the project? I couldn’t care less about you being the “9/11 family who was the largest investor in Ken's project after the Trump conference” or your “money infused into the promotion of this project from July 2005 through November 2006.” I’m not impresseed with your claims of intellectual ownership - but I am impressed with the accomplishements of Ken and some of the volunteers around him. When you threw away $20,000 to set up the phony news conference in Union Square, and it got no media coverage, it served you right and you should have learned a lesson. Your website shamelessly copied its content and pictures from MakeNYNYagain.com, and then you eventually deleted the Wiki link to MakeNYNYagain.com! And it’s good your website failed - what you added to MakeNYNYagain.com content was an embarrassment. What did you accomplish with your “promotions?” You didn’t even get any media coverage that I’m aware of. I’m not impressed with what you accomplished as “Communications Director”. Why did the media ignore you? You don’t represent the victims families, at least that’s clear. I’m glad you deleted the statement about your misleading poll from the Wiki article. I also deleted it again recently because it was a misrepresentation - why did you delete it? Sally Regenhard or Ross Tallon represent a significat percentage of the victim’s families. I never claimed “you represent a large family member audience.” I claimed you represent yourself. - Bernie Goetz
Mr. Goetz's statements are based around limited knowledge of both Twin Towers II and Twin Towers II Memorial Foundation, Inc. He has never held a position with either organization. Mr. Goetz is aligned with people who support the rebuilding of the Twin Towers at Ground Zero. Furthermore, he has no inkling regarding business relationships between the fiduciary partners of this project from May 30, 2005 through November 2006. His opinions are strictly his own and based based loosely around a few facts. He has no right to use the photo he displays on this site without the permission of Mr. Gardner and myself. He is free to use any other photo of the original Gardner-Belton site model completed before May 30, 2005 - but he will not do that.
In closing, I am the only fiduciary partner in the Twin Towers II project aside from Mr. Gardner. Mr. Gardner is well aware of the proprietary issues surrounding the redesigned memorial. Mr. Goetz, I suggest you get your facts straight regarding the redesigned memorial and use of photos where it is pictured with the Gardner-Belton Twin Towers. Should Mr. Gardner relay to you any information differently from what I have relayed above, beware that you may not be hearing the truth. A dozen people have left this project over the past year and a half for a reason. My suggestion to you is take off your rose colored glasses and then tell me what you see. 68.198.236.221 22:24, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Bernie, for your information, Ken did not in any way terminate me. If he has led you to believe that then you have not read any of the emails that I have been sending you through your webite address. I do have rights regarding the intellectual property of the 9/11 family-inspired memorial. I have the receipts that prove my fiduciary agreements and partnership in Twin Towers II Memorial Foundation and Twin Towers II, LLC. I regret that Ken and I are no longer partnered together in this project, but it was due to a misrepresentation of promotional ideas regarding the project, not "boss fires employee" as you so suggest. I was never an employee of Ken Gardners because Ken has no employer capabilities regarding the promotion of this project. When you consider the money that I infused into the promotion of this project from July 2005 through November 2006, your opinion might be that I was the employer in the Twin Towers II equation for the period of time that I refer to. I have asked you to remove this photo68.198.236.221 16:52, 9 December 2006 (UTC) on several occassions and replace it with a picture of the Gardner-Belton Memorial design and you refuse to do so. You have never and will never be considered apart of Twin Towers II's organization during the time of July 2005 - November 2006. Therefore, you have no first-hand knowledge of what transpired during that time period between Ken Gardner and myself which qualifies you out of the picture on having an opinion regarding Twin Towers II post May 18, 2005 and Twin Towers II Memorial Foundation. I close by asking you one last time to remove the current picture seen on this Wiki page and on your website and replace it with aphot of Twin Towers II prior to my initial involvement with Ken Gardner which began on May 30, 2005. As a 9/11 family who was the largest investor into Ken's project after the Trump conference, I have remained firm in the position that I absolutely DO NOT represent the opinion of 9/11 family members and removed the sentences from the Wiki page in my last edit, NOT YOU, regarding a 9/11 family member survey. It was old information and was deleted from the now defunct WTC Towers Memorial website back in late September 2005. Between this and your statement claiming I represent a large family member audience is patently untrue thereby proving your uninvolvement with this project on an informed level. - Lynn McGuinn
The recent editing and picture deletion was done by a former partner of Ken Gardner's. Ken recently terminated his relationship with her because she demanded control of his project via the Twin Towers II Memorial Foundation. The former partner no longer has any influence with any Ground Zero rebuilding group; she is an organization of one. She is welcome to form her own group and have her own website, although this might be difficult as all the people (about a dozen) associated with the Twin Towers II Memorial Foundation have left this past year. The former partner does not represent the victims’ families; only 1% of the victims’ relatives even responded to the poll, and that’s why I deleted the Wiki reference to this poll. This poll does not stand up to public scrutiny, and if there are complaints about me removing it can be reposted, but it would not pass the smell test. The former partner does not own any designs or photos of this project, and is not as claimed the “proper channel” for anything on this project, but the former partner can continue taking photos and content from MakeNYNYagain.com if that person wants to (like anybody else).
Many people provided input to the website MakeNYNYagain.com (Bernie Goetz is one of the editors), and a number of media people (and Donald Trump) refer to this website for alternative Ground Zero rebuilding. Note this website does not specifically support the Belton-Gardner plan, but supports alternatives based on the Belton-Gardner plan; ie.- memorials based on the original tower facades and/or modern equivalents of the original towers. - Bernie Goetz
01:41, 9 December 2006 (UTC)68.198.236.221The current picture on this Wikipedia page does not wholly belong to Ken Gardner. The memorial portion pictured in 2/3 of the photo currently running was taken in July of 2005. Subsequent to that the name of the project was changed to Twin Towers II Memorial Foundation whose website www.wtctowersmemorial.org is now defunct. The founder of the Twin Towers II Memorial Foundation maintains complete ownership of the memorial design created in July, 2005. Ken Gardner maintains complete ownership of the original Gardner-Belton memorial design which can be seen in media taken on May 18, 2005. As the owner of the July 2005 memorial design, I asked Bernhard Goetz back in November 2006 to remove all photos of the July 2005 memorial on his website MakeNYNYAgain. Mr. Goetz (aka Bernie, What789646,69.170.195.241) commandeers this Wiki page as well and has inferred through his talk comment that edits made to the page were done by a person whose relationship is now terminated with Ken Gardner. This has nothing to do with the accurate changes that were made to the Wiki page. I noticed that Mr. Goetz kept some of the edits but not others and purposefully added back the July 2005 photo that he has been requested to remove and replace on atleast two occassions. In my opinion, this current revision represents the highest form of vandalism since it 1.)misrepresents the project that Ken Gardner is currently promoting, the Gardner-Belton site design and; 2) permission for use by the owner of the memorial designed after May 18,2005 and pictured here was never granted nor was the owner ever approached about use of the photo and; 3.) Mr. Goetz has an overlord attitude regarding this Wiki page thereby feeling entitled to do what he pleases blatantly disregarding requests to stop using this photo for promotion of this project on his website and on this Wiki page. Further, Mr.Goetz grants authirty to all others for use of this photo without authority by claimining that "anyone can use text or photos from the Make NYNYAgain website without permission." Mr. Goetz has never been formally involved with this project on any promotional level, he is merely an avid supporter with a personal desire to see the Twin Towers rebuilt. Until Mr. Goetz goes through the proper channels and gains access of use for this photo, it will be deleted as will his link MakeNYNYAgain where he exhibits this photo in multiple areas of the site. - Lynn McGuinn
I emailed Kenneth Gardner to ask his permission to use images from the site for Wikipedia purposes, he kindly agreed. But on May 19th, I saw something on here I can't find anymore that said the rules here changed to ban images used with permission, but which have not been explicitly released via the Wikipedia GDFL (I think that's what it's called) license. So I didn't put it up. I did think about using the poster instead, because there's a poster image tag and it seems that posters can be used under fair use. LeoO3 18:34, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
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[edit] tagged NPOV
This article is blatantly sympathetic to the position that this tower proposal should have been built, with phrases like "political machine" and "healing, not hubris." It needs a lot of work, or possibly that section should just be taken out. It doesn't seem to add much to the article. Night Gyr 23:24, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Rewrite
This article has been rewritten and the NPOV neutality issue should be satisfied. Feel free to Wikify. Note that anyone can use pictures and information from the web site MakeNYNYagain.com without permission.
[edit] What was the purpose of the recent edits changing the links?
Why the recent link changes from the actual articles describing the various authors opinions of the project, and adding links about the media outlets? The purpose of this article is to inform readers about the project, not the media outlets. The new links are useless to this article, I'm putting back the links the previous way. The text changes are fine.
- First of all, sign in with your account or at least your IP address so your contributions and responses can be recognized and people can have conversations with you. Secondly, you didn't realize that my wikifying media outlet names in no way removed or jeopardized the links to the articles they wrote on the subject; the numbered citations with article links remained intact after the media outlet names/links. LeoO3 00:48, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
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- Leo- I wrote those original links! If there is an article about a subject in the NY Times, a reader wants to see the article, not information about the NY Times. I know your additional links didn't take down the original links, but they BADLY distract from those links with no purpose. Get back to me soon please. What789646@aol.com I'm not making a big issue of this; if you really think its better I'm not going to push it. PS- You are a good writer.
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- I appreciate your kind words and understand your point (I'm assuming you're Kenneth Gardner). As you can see in an earlier version of this page, I added those links (or most of them) to the article based on the list on the official site. In that version, the first link you come across after the name is to the article, and the linked media affiliation only follows afterwards. So let's at least begin to address your concerns that way. LeoO3 02:05, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
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- OK, but I'm not Ken Gardner. (What789646)
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[edit] Article still speculates too much - hopefully resolved
There is speculation about the motivations of the people backing the plan. Unless there is a public record of these people stating their motivations, which can be cited, that speculation needs to go. -Harmil 15:46, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
- If there "is speculation about the motivations of the people backing the plan", this discusssion page is a good place, so if you have speculations bring them up, but please be specific. You or anyone can criticise the messages or the messangers. On a more positive note, I think the people who support this plan think its a better plan, and their reasons are cited in their articles, websites, and media. Plus I think the waterfalls are negative for the enviorment. Anyway, I added 2 links about polls indicating support for the plan. But I'm not thrilled with the honesty of the LMDC poll or these polls.
Unless there's an honest third party poll where the public is offered all the reasonable choices, polls don't mean much. I would have preferred using an independant third party poll with a number of choices that distinguishes between family and non-family signatures, and maybe optional information such as occupation. Could you support a poll like this? (Bernie) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.175.58.4 (talk • contribs) 23:15, 30 April 2006.
- I think you misunderstood. I was saying that the speculation in the article is not currently sourced. It suggests that certain unnamed people have certain feelings and motivations with respect to backing the plan. We can't know that unless these people are a) named and b) we have some citation that indicates that they said that they feel that way. -Harmil 23:30, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
- OK. I hope the two links I added satisfied your concerns. ..... if not just say so. Thousands of people have opinions ....... should they be named in the article? "It suggests that certain unnamed people have certain feelings and motivations with respect to backing the plan." What exact sentences are you referring to? I could have linked to an online petition at: http://www.petitiononline.com/NYCWTC2/petition.html. That petition has statements from over a thousand supporters with their names ....... do you think it would be helpful if I added a link to that petition? (Bernie)
