Talk:Dick Button

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[edit] Flying camel?

Button did so many firsts. The photo of him competing in the Olympics at an outdor arena is great. How the standards have changed. I wonder what they did without a Zamboni. One spin description that is missing is the flying camel spin. Despite a name change it still isn't in Wikipedia. Kd4ttc 23:06, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

• The pages for figure skating elements are still a work in progress. I've been doing writeups as I have time, but right now I'm just too busy. Maybe after the Olympics? BTW, re the name change, the convention we're using for elements is "foo spin", "bar jump", "baz turn", etc instead of just "foo", "bar", and "baz". Dr.frog 23:12, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Head injury

Since someone felt the need to air the incident in Central Park, I took the liberty of clairflying this incident. It was not a random bashing and although it was unfortunate what had happened to him...he was from the neighborhood and know of the possible dangers of jogging at night. He is not without responsibility?

Your "clairflying" [sic] was purely speculation without a reliable source, and has been removed per the Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons policy. The contemporary New York Times coverage of the attacks was very careful not to identify Button as gay or assign any motive to his presence in the area other than that stated in the article: namely, that he was passing through the area while jogging and had stopped to watch a fireworks display when he was attacked around 9:30 pm on July 5, 1978. Quote from the NYT (July 8, 1978): "But the police were at pains to point out that there was no specific indication that people who frequented the area or those who were victims of the attacks--which apparently took place suddenly and at random--were in fact homosexuals." Dr.frog 03:12, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Since there was no need to mention the bashing to begin with, i shall remove the lines alluding to the bashing. This is only fair. Whoever posted the bashing was telling everyone that Button might be gay?. The incident is not relevant to his Bio to begin with and is therefore shall be removed.

Nobody posted any "bashing" of Button in the article. Button was the victim of a high-profile, well-documented hate crime. Whether he is gay or not, I have no idea. FWIW, the article also mentions that he was married for a time. Should we delete that, too, because people could interpret that as meaning Button is not gay? Documented facts are documented facts; the article as written merely reports them and doesn't attempt to draw any particular conclusions either way. Dr.frog 19:10, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I only questioned the reason "why" this paragraph was inserted? It is an "incident" and by definition, an "incident" is singular and non-repetitive. Therefore, in the over all scheme of things, mentioning this incident almost 30 years later is superflous and does not add to the enlightenment of his life or achievements. This inclusion is not objective as it "inadvertedly" adds speculation.

This is why I forbid my students from citing "Winkipedia" as either a primary or secondary source of information. There is entirely too much melodrama, subjectivity, revisionalism and political correctness spewed throughout Winkipedia for it to be useful as a primary or secondary source of research information. It is unreliable as there are far too many individuals who are allowed to post and far too many monitors who do not possess the necessary grammatical, educational, or intellectual skills to ensure accuracy and truth.

Furthermore, if the person who took exception to what I inserted, would have read carefully and understood proportionally, he or she would have known what I questioned and why I questioned it.

The attack on Button was front-page news at the time it happened. It was a notable incident in his life, and was well-documented by reliable sources. As for being a "singular and non-repetitive" occurrence, Button also sustained a second serious head injury from a fall on the ice in 2001 that left him hospitalized for several weeks. Some folks did wonder if the seriousness of the second injury was due to his previous skull fracture; I have not had time to track down references for this, so it is not yet mentioned in the article.